Dear Mike and everybody—
Mike, I am not interested in playing intellectual games either
(e.g., I do
not like playing a chess game). But I liked your challenge or my own
challenge: to find out if there are any unconditional statements
that I
would agree. I almost believed that you offered one… but, at the
end, it did
not pass my final test. Since, I’m trying to be consistently
inconsistent,
consideration of truth, whatever it leads me, does not bother me.
I’m happy
that you did not play the game either (although, you would not
offend me if
you did).
I think I respectfully disagree with you and maybe with Jay that the
binary
logic is inherently (and unconditionally) bad while contextual
statements
involving leakage of sides are inherently (and unconditionally)
good. I
think (=expect) that you agree with the latter but might still
disagree with
the former. I admit that at times, I have conversations with my
computer
despite the fact that I agree with you that it is an oxymoron ;-) It
is also
oxymoron to speak to myself – what new I can say to myself that
myself/I do
not already know? Despite this apparent paradox (and my
inconsistency), I
have conversations with myself and with my computer.
I think that our suspicion of the binary logic comes from our
criticism of
positivism and scientism. There is nothing wrong in this suspicion,
especially, when the binary logic is treated as the universal one
but I
think we should be careful in not overdoing our criticism. There is
a danger
that our post-modernist criticism of modernist, positivistic
science, aligns
with pre-modernist criticism of modernism. However, as we all know,
enemy of
my enemy is not necessary my friend but it can be an even bigger
enemy.
Bush’s premodernist critique of science should be also criticized
from a
post-modern position rather we should join him.
As your question about freshness and Jesus, I think that there is
only one
freshness: the first and the last one (very binary! J). I do not
know about
Jesus, but I believe that Kot Begemot would agree with me (for non-
Russian
audience, Kot Begemot was a part of the Devil’s court from
Bulgakov’s novel
“Master and Margarita”, literally “Tom-cat Hippo”, a very cunning,
ironic,
and smart character). I wonder what Dewey or Vygotsky would say
about it…
;-)
Take care,
Eugene
From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 9:23 PM
To: Eugene Matusov
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; PIG;
backontrack@wwscholars.org; Zoi
Philippakos
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus
I am a Cretan, that anyone can tell you, Eugene. As to Sandra
"having a
conversation with Ella(Z):
I have long taken it as axiomatic that the phrase, "Conversation
with a
computer"
is an oxymoron. Sort like an oxy-Cretan (poor people from Crete-
judging
from the
size of their houses when Zeus was roaming around, they were very
small and
led difficult lives).
Computers, and chatbots, are artifacts created by other humans (or
other
computer programs created by humans) and are, eventually, in the
sequences
of
mediations, connect to other humans. I agree with the conclusion,
but am
saddened by the lack of orientation to the discourse that generated
this
journal.
I was not playing Gotcha. I was trying to explore the way in which
categories
create insides and outsides and generalize and in so doing, err. But
if I
lost a game
of gotcha and it brings you pleasure, go for it. Thanks for the new
insight
into that
issue of two kinds of people. Diversity uber alles, up to the point
where it
causes blood to flow. Then it start to worry me a lot, but I am a
worrier.
Do you think that Jesus believed there were only two degrees of
freshness of
fish?
What would Kot Begamot think about this issue?
mike
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu>
wrote:
Dear Mike and everybody—
Mike, you almost got me! Very good challenge – thanks!, “And, as you
know,
there are only two kinds of people in the world --- those who
believe there
are only two kinds of people and those who think there are more.” I
almost
unconditionally agreed with your statement and then I noticed its
meta-statement, “there are only two kinds of people in the world….”
that is
congruent with “those who believe there are only two kinds of
people…” thus
the person who stated this claim that I had initially liked belongs
to the
first category him or herself… It is like, “One Cretan said that all
Cretans
are liars.” Very smart, indeed! ;-) Thanks for this Sabbath’s puzzle
(I did
not know it)…
Have an unconditionally tasty fish,
Eugene
PS I like to hear more about your reading of discursive psychology
and their
use of the terms “activity” and “culture” and about reasons for your
wonderment. Can you share more, please?
From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 7:37 PM
To: Eugene Matusov
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; PIG;
backontrack@wwscholars.org; Zoi
Philippakos
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus
da net! Eugene. :-)
Of course there are several degrees of freshness. This is a trout
fisherman
writing.
And a resident of the coastline of California. Caught and cooked on
the
spot/ caught and
frozen and taken home safely through the desert/bought at my local
fish
store on thursday,
bought at my local fish store on monday..........
But I love your example and the novel is one of my very favorites.
And, as you know, there are only two kinds of people in the world
--- those
who believe there are only
two kinds of people and those who think there are more.
conditionally speaking
mike
PS-- Reading about discursive psychology in the interims and
wondering why
the word activity is
used as it is and where the word culture is, and what Lois thinks of
it, and
mostly wishing I had more
time to read it!
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu>
wrote:
Dear Jay and Mike and everybody--
Conditionally, Jay, I like Mike's statement as well,
It
is the
heterogeneity within the "two parts" and leakage between them and
their
relations to "their context" that IS life.
but only conditionally. There are situations when this statement is
deadly
but binary logic is on the side of life. I remember a famous allegoric
statement from Russian novel "Master and Margarita" by Michael
Bulgakov. In
short, in the novel's plot, the Devil visited Stalinist Russia
(Moscow to be
exact) in the 1930s during the Stalinist worst purges. Among other
things
the Devil visited a theater to make familiar with New Soviet people.
In
theater buffet, the Devil noticed rotten fish with the label, "Fish
of the
third [degree] freshness." The Devil told the buffet salesperson,
"Dear
salesperson, somebody has lied to you. There is no such thing as
'fish of
the third-degree freshness. Fish can be only one degree of
freshness: either
it is fresh or not. Respectful, your fish is not fresh, it stinks."
This
short exchange revealed the deception of Stalinist "leakage" of two
parts
(namely, life and death). The binary logic presented by the Devil
here was
on the side of life, while non-binary Stalinist discourse of making
'white'
black and 'black' white (that at that time often referred as
'dialectics')
was on the side of death.
I think we might be careful in indorsing any universal statements
even when
they can be true, on average (in our sociocultural conditions). We
should be
also careful with our fight against scientific positivism that has
historically emerged in response to (religious) totalitarian
ideology of
manipulative "leakages". After the Bush administration reign, I have
become
even more careful about dissing positivistic science.... (By the
way, the
Bush administration used discourses that were convincingly based on
both the
binary logic and at the same time on the manipulative "leakages",
like, for
example, torture becomes not torture but rather a permissible grey
area of
an "intense interrogation technique"). Binary logic can bring life
sometimes, indeed....
What do you think?
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Jay Lemke
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 4:46 PM
To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus
Right on, Mike!!
Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
On May 2, 2009, at 8:37 PM, Mike Cole wrote:
What one I think is literally deadening, Eugene, is binaries with
uniformities on both sides. Under such conditions, change is
impossible. It
is the
heterogeneity within the "two parts" and leakage between them and
their
relations to "their context" that IS life.
mike
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 11:13 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:
According to Wikipedia, "Jackie Mason" was born Yacov Moshe Maza
(for what
it's worth).
On Sat, 2 May 2009, Michael Glassman wrote:
Eugene,
I would argue that the intonation is not so much related to
language as it
is to culture - in essence a part of cultural capital that can be
found in
Russia, but in a number of other places around the world with a
number of
different languages. You use the example,
-?? (da-da) is a good translation from Mogenbesser's Jewish
English,
"Yeah, yeah" in Russian. As you, probably, know, Russian is very
intonation-based language - almost any word might have the
opposite meaning
with the right intonation. Like for example, "Have you my taken my
book?" "I
need your book badly!" ("?? ?? ???? ??? ??????» --
«????? ??? ????? ????
?????!») - it is difficult to translate this Russian exchange into
English
because the response has the intonation indicating the opposite
meaning that
its formal semantics suggests. One Russian (Soviet) poet commented
that
Russian language does not support «?????» (i.e., report to a
secret police).
But anybody who has listened to Jackie Mason, not such a good
human being
but a pretty good comedian, has heard him using the type of
intonation you
are discussing brilliantly in English - so brilliantly you would
wonder how
it could work in any other language - but of course it could. I'm
sure the
same intonation, or maybe different types of intonations
expressing meaning
but especially sense, could be used in almost any language as long
as the
speaker was comfortable with it. What is interesting about the
use of this
type of intonation is when somebody uses it - at least in English
- I can
make a pretty good guess about where they grew up in the United
States.
Some people who are really good at this can even limit it to
general
neighborhoods - and you immediately recognize certain cultural
qualities
about that individual and it cuts through a lot of other
information. On
the other end of the spectrum somebody could use the intonation
perfectly in
Columbus Ohio and individuals would just understand the remark
based on the
more straight forward understanding (and might consider you a
little alien
for using the intonation). What also might suggest the intonation
being
part of cultural capital rather than the language itself is the
fact the I
think it is often time used as a form of intimacy, kidding, or
making fun in
a non-maliscious way.
Michael
________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Eugene Matusov
Sent: Sat 5/2/2009 1:31 PM
To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu
Cc: backontrack@wwscholars.org; 'Zoi Philippakos'; 'eXtended Mind,
Culture, Activity'; 'PIG'
Subject: RE: [xmca] a minus times a plus
Dear Mike and everybody-
You wrote, "another example of binary logic which is anti-human".
I wonder
what makes this logic anti-human is not necessary that it is
binary, but
maybe the fact that it strives to be the universal, unconditional,
disembodied, and decontextualized. I think that limited and
situated binary
relations can be humane. As you nicely put it before, the
universal answer
to any problem is, "it depends" ;-) The big problem, of course,
what it
depends on... (I always say to my grad students that the answer
for the
latter question will be addressed in a future Advanced Grad
Sociocultural
Seminar that I never teach J)
??
-?? (da-da) is a good translation from Mogenbesser's Jewish
English,
"Yeah, yeah" in Russian. As you, probably, know, Russian is very
intonation-based language - almost any word might have the
opposite meaning
with the right intonation. Like for example, "Have you my taken my
book?" "I
need your book badly!" ("?? ?? ???? ??? ??????» --
«????? ??? ????? ????
?????!») - it is difficult to translate this Russian exchange into
English
because the response has the intonation indicating the opposite
meaning that
its formal semantics suggests. One Russian (Soviet) poet commented
that
Russian language does not support «?????» (i.e., report to a
secret police).
Ed made an interesting and thought-provoking point, "Social
relations
don't give rise to mathematics, but mathematics seems to give,
perspectivally, a rise to social relations." I think that in
general, it is
a chicken-egg problem but I suspect that social relations have
priority over
math. So, Ed, we have a respectful disagreement, indeed. The
reason for my
suspicion is that usually, although not always, social relations
have a
priority over everything else. For example, it seems that
historical
emergency of geometry was a result of a certain development of
private
property on land and conflicts associated with it. Certain (but
not all!)
mathematical questions could emerge only within certain social
relations..
One of these vivid examples can be mathematical division. I'm
always amazed
how difficult for Western kids to understand fractional division
leading to
a number bigger that divided. For example, 2 divided by ½ becomes
4. Western
understanding of fair sharing almost exclusively as splitting the
whole on
equal but smaller parts (private property) makes very difficult to
consider
a possibility for collective sharing in which the more people
share the more
value the whole has. We have a PIG Lab of Internationally
Recognize
Excellence - the more people use it, the more valuable it becomes
(to a
point of course, ;-). By collective sharing, ten PIGgies virtually
have 10
labs! Or 1 divided on 1/10 is 10. I think this fractional division
reflects
collective sharing (and collective fairness) in contrast to whole
number
division based on private property sharing (and private property
fairness).
It is interesting to study this question empirically....
What do you think?
Eugene
PS I know that everyone in this XMCA discussion who replies to my
messages
gets bounced message from the PIG email list (no connection to the
swine
flu!). I try to resend your messages to the my PIGgy colleagues.
---------------------
Eugene Matusov, Ph.D.
Professor of Education
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716, USA
email: ematusov@udel.edu
fax: 1-(302)-831-4110
website: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu <http://
ematusov.soe.udel.edu/> <
http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/>
publications: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/vita/publications.htm
Dialogic Pedagogy Forum: http://diaped.soe.udel.edu <
http://diaped.soe.udel.edu/> <http://diaped.soe.udel.edu/>
---------------------
From: Mike Cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 10:01 PM
To: Eugene Matusov
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity; backontrack@wwscholars.org;
Zoi
Philippakos; PIG
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus
That it works to think that the enemy of your enemy is your friend
is
another example
of binary logic which is anti-human. Shit happens a lot, Eugene.
Your yeah yeah example is in the increasingly long and equally
interesting
trail of emails on
this thread.
da da
?
zhanchit?
mike
On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Eugene Matusov <ematusov@udel.edu>
wrote:
Dear Mike--
You wrote,
And for sure, Eugene, it is a cardinal error to believe that the
enemy
of
your enemy is your friend. Maybe, maybe
not. Like all laws of social science, it all depends.
Actually, it worked rather well during the WWII for the Allies
(US-
UK) and
the USSR. Their cooperation in opposition to the Nazi Germany was
governed
by the Arabic wisdom "an enemy of your enemy is your friend." It
can be
powerful indeed but as you said it is not universal.
As to the natural language and the formal logic (math), in natural
language
(+1)*(+1)=-1, according to famous anecdote, "The most celebrated
[Sidney]
Morgenbesser anecdote involved visiting Oxford philosopher J. L.
Austin,
who
noted that it was peculiar that although there are many languages
in which
a
double negative makes a positive, no example existed where two
positives
expressed a negative. In a dismissive voice, Morgenbesser replied
from the
audience, 'Yeah, yeah.'"
Take care,
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
]
On Behalf Of Mike Cole
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 8:38 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: backontrack@wwscholars.org; Zoi Philippakos; PIG
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus
Eugene, the mixture of plus and minus was the focus of my inquiry.
Natural
language understanding
of double negatives solves that problem for 2 numbers, beyond
which I
assume
natural language needs
a notation system to keep track.
So far Jerry Balzano's mirror explanation seems like it has the
best
chance
with my grand daughter (in
part because i can actually imagine creating the demonstration
that
lines up
intuition and notation). I
have not had time to read all of the notes in this thread owing
to
heavy
teaching and extra lecture schedule
and a rash of recommendation letters out of season (which I will
accept
as a
sub for swine flu). But
simply in scanning could I make a plea for socio-CULTURAL
constructivism? If
we do not keep what is
essential to human forms of human sociality in the discussion, we
might
as
well be talking about bonobos
who, at least, know enough to make love not war.
And for sure, Eugene, it is a cardinal error to believe that the
enemy
of
your enemy is your friend. Maybe, maybe
not. Like all laws of social science, it all depends.
mike
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Eugene Matusov
<ematusov@udel.edu>
wrote:
Dear everybody--
In response to Mike's profound inquiry of why a minus times a
minus
is a
plus, I was thinking that it is a mathematical model of the
Arabic
wisdom
that "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." Of course, the latter
is
not
always true -- we have plenty of examples when enemy of our
enemy is
still
our enemy (or just indifferent) and, thus, for these types of
social
relations, the mathematical model of (-1) x (-1) =1 does not
work.
Just
consider, for an example, the relations among the US, Al-Qaida,
and
Saddam
Hussein.
The issue for me is why the Western civilization prioritizes
(and
then
mathematizes) social relations described in the Arabic wisdom.
One
answer
is
because "the real world" works according to these social
relations
(i.e.,
the social relations is just an example of the truth out there).
An
alternative explanation is that the Western civilization can
afford
and
might be even benefit from imposing these social relations on
"the
real
world" that by itself is indifferent to any social relations
(and
thus
mathematical models). Any other explanations?
What do you think?
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
On Behalf Of Ng Foo Keong
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:23 PM
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] a minus times a plus
Is Mathematics _merely_ socially constructed, or is there
something
deeper and inevitable?
I think this deserves a new thread, but I couldn't manage to
start
one.
Let me try to draw out and assemble the line of discussion that
spun
off from the "a minus times a plus" thread.
In her inaugural post to xcma, Anna Sfard about talked "rules
of the mathematical game" among other things.
Then Jay Lemke said:-
...
I think it's important, however, to see, as Anna emphasizes,
that there is a certain "arbitrariness" involved in this, or
if you like it better: a freedom of choice. Yes, it's
structure-and-agency all over again! Structure determines that
some things fit into bigger pictures and some don't, but
agency is always at work deciding which pictures, which kind
of fit, which structures, etc. And behind that values, and
culture, and how we feel about things.
-----
Then I (Ng Foo Keong) said:-
regarding structure and agency, arbitrariness:-
i think now it's time for me to pop this question that has
been
bugging me for some time. i am convinced that mathematics is
socially constructured, but i am not so convinced that
mathematics
is _merely_ socially constructured. if we vary across cultures
and different human activities, we might find different ways
in which patterns and structure can be expressed and yet we
might
find commonalities / analogies. the question i am asking is:
is maths just a ball game determined by some group of nerds
who
happen to be in power and dominate the discourse, or is there
some
invariant, something deeper in maths that can transcend and
unite
language, culture, activity .... ?
Foo Keong,
NIE, Singapore
-----
Then Ed Wall said:-
Ng Foo Keong
As regards your question about mathematics being socially
constructed, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by
mathematics or what kind of evidence would convince you it
wasn't.
Suppose I said that there was evidence for innate subtizing.
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NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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