Dear David and Martin
Thank you for your questions on wolves large and small - and the
interest in
the blocks which reveal them. I can think of few other forms of
technology
that continue to be in use unchanged since the turn of the last
century -
yet these humble little blocks continue to engage our attention and
our
discussion about subjects much larger than they (puts me in mind of
David
and Goliath...).
A.1. My understanding of the "ontogenesis of concept formation" is
that it
is about the processes involved in the development of concepts from
earliest
childhood to adulthood. Vygotsky says that the form and content of a
conceptual (or preconceptual) representation are determined by such
elements
as a developmental trend (the age of the subject), the genesis/
history of
the concept over time in the subject's mind, the history and
situation in
which the concept appears, and the signifying function of language
on the
content and form in themselves. (The attachment may illustrate my
understanding of these points more clearly.)
A.2. I think that concept formation without the "ontogenesis"
refers to the
things in A.1. above, but with less emphasis on the developmental
trend:
concept formation without the "ontogenesis" for me refers to the
thinking
strategies that adults would be more likely to invoke in coming to
understand something new. And also when they encounter something
beyond
their own field of expertise - nuclear physics or rocket science -
and when
they use short-hand to create generalised representations of things
(everyday concepts; concepts-for-ourselves-and-not-for-experts). In
concept
formation without the "ontogenesis", the signifying function of
language
would possibly also be augmented because adults (and adolescents)
will tend
use one system (like maths or ethics) to understand another.
A.3. I don't imagine that Vygotsky's asking us to think about concept
formation without changes in ontogenesis: in fact, quite the opposite.
Changes are obviously par for the course in adults too - but not to
the same
degree as changes in the structure and role of the thinking modes of
children.
It seems to me that the thinking strategies and modes which feature in
Chapter 5 are about A.1. and A.2.
B. I suspect that "lupine behaviour" can't easily be separated from
the
"sheep's clothing" because pseudoconcepts superficially resemble
"real"
concepts in both role (what the word meaning does) and structure
(how it's
put together). Yet how long the wolf is likely to be kept from the
door may
not have been explicitly revealed by the blocks experiment (unless we
conduct follow-ups in some way?) - yet I find that Vygotsky's
references
about the experimental procedure and its results to be sufficiently
compelling to prevent me from "deep sixing" Chapter Five
altogether. David
and I do agree that the extent to which we can generalise these
findings
outside of the experimental situation is not clearly supported by
research
or clear links in Chapter Six and that Vygotsky frequently
acknowledged the
need for more investigation, ever cautious about the extent of his
studies
and the reality of (genetic forms coexisting as) geological strata.
Yet I
keep coming back to "the key" from page 146, and what I'd like to
explore
further about the Chapter Fivers in relation to scientific and
everyday
concepts (in more detail hopefully than the measures of generality of
Chapter 6.6). Perhaps some of the key lies in unmasking
pseudoconcepts: we
need to catch a wolf on the move, yet, as you can see from the
paper, they
wear different kinds of wool, some thicker than others. I think the
secret's somewhere in the abstraction, the generalisation, the
juxtapositions, the signifying use of language - and the ability to
use
these consistently (for me, the participant in Figure 20 makes it
very clear
how easy it is to lose the thread...).
C. It seems to me that functional equivalence on the part of a user
who
doesn't know any different would be relative and relational and in
the eyes
of the beholder not the holder: yet, irrespective of who perceives
what and
how, for me what these constructs are about is the movement towards
how
particular meanings are constructed. The blocks may not reveal the
all of
the complexities of processes involved in us coming to understand -
and
master - a range of concepts (not only nouns and adjectives, including
Martin's analytical and dialectical concepts, and perhaps creative and
imaginative ones too), but they do get us moving in a particular
direction.
C.1. David, you and I do agree on this: Pseudoconcepts and concepts
have a
functional equivalence in role - enabling communication - and a
functional
equivalence in structure - which most certainly does not equate to a
similar
structure, but to a structure which apparently functions in a way
which
makes it look like a conceptual structure. The dreams are very
different
indeed - even from heads on the same pillow. Concepts and
pseudoconcepts
deal with similar contents, but in different ways, because
pseudoconcepts
put things together according to different rules. The structures
are very
different - and yet, because meanings in the words around children
have been
established by the adults around them, the germinating seed of the
concept-for-myself is contained within the concept-for-others and in-
itself,
just waiting for it to be grasped and mastered. In this vein, it
seems to
me that Martin's children's analytic and dialectical concepts could
well
have their roots, to varying degrees of complexity, in a tendency to
link
concrete, factual, and functional attributes rather than logical,
abstract(ed), essential characteristics or principles; in an
insensitivity
to inconsistencies and contradictions; and in the functional rather
than
conceptual use of a system to compare or juxtapose one's actions
against.
So, hunting in packs concrete and factual alongside those which are
abstract
and logical reveals so much about differences and similarities in
how we go
to places and what we find along the way. Thank you, as always,
David, for
making me think about thinking.
Talk again soon.
Paula
ps: A note in closing is this: what readers of the Wolves paper will
notice
is the absence of an explicit explanation of the solution to the
problem
posed by the blocks: this omission was quite deliberate. For those
who've
read Minick or Kozulin, for example, the solution appears to be so
simple
that it can evoke a "Yawn, yawn, so what?" type of response in the
reader's
mind. It was precisely this reaction that I wanted to avoid because
it can
make it easy to dismiss the blocks altogether. The simplicity of the
solution (the double dichotomy) is a design feature of great genius
(Sakharov's), and it really is seldom stumbled across in the first
five
minutes with the blocks. And then there's also Minick's rather bad
press:
in his introduction, he refers more times to Chapter 5 than to any
other,
and very little of this reference is flattering. These two factors
taken
together can lead - and perhaps have led - to these astonishing
blocks being
overlooked, if not forgotten in recent times. Because it's not just
about
blocks in strange experimental situations - it's about how we are
able to
respond to the method of double stimulation and there are as many
ways of
going about solving the problem of the blocks as there are people
who engage
with them. But only one (logical, guided) solution, irrespective of
the
range of hypotheses advanced by subjects in the course of their
engagement
with the blocks (despite the claims of modification studies for
"multiple
solution" approaches, eg, Fosberg's 1948 work which missed the point
entirely and which resulted in 149 solutions and more).
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: 02 August 2009 03:35 PM
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky, Saussure, and Wolves
Speaking for myself, my silence had two causes. First of all, like
Andy, I
was rather awestruck by Martin's paragraphs on Marx's method, and like
Martin himself I was reflecting on them. But secondly I was reading
Paula
and Carol's article, "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing" and reflecting on
whether
I should force my grads to read it next quarter. The first part of it
contains the best synopsis of Vygotsky's sprawling, often
contradictory
presentation of the taxonomy of syncretic heaps, complexes, and
preconceptual formations that I've ever read.
Before I do that, though, I want to know the answer to the following
questions on the first page of Paula and Carol's piece, which I
think are
actually related to Martin's questions about what work has been done
to find
out whether children and the researchers who do word meaning
research are
not "sleeping on one bed but having different dreams".
a) In the abstract, Paula and Carol refer to the "ontogenesis of
concept
formation". What does the ontogenesis of concept formation mean?
Does it
mean the same thing as concept formation or does it mean the way in
which
concept formation changes in the ontogenesis of the child?
b) "Lupine behavior" means conceptual FUNCTION. "Sheep's clothing"
means
that they are STRUCTURALLY similar to complexes. As Vygotsky says at
the end
of Chapter Seven, only the historical, genetic method can really
reveal
either. But the experimental method does not really test the history
of
concept use at all; Vygotsky saw it as a logical test which gives us
the
"essence of a genetic study in abstracted form" (see Minick
translation, p.
146). This really gets us back to the "Strange Situation" question I
asked
over a year ago (which Vygotsky reverts to at the end of Chapter
Six): to
what extent CAN we extrapolate genetic processes from logical tests?
This is
what Martin is asking, and I really don't know the answer. I think
Vygotsky
changes his mind on this question somewhere between Chapter Five and
Chapter
Six.
c) In the first paragraph, Paula and Carol discuss functional
equivalence of
pseudoconcepts and concepts. in some places, Vygotsky talks about
EVERYTHING--including syncretic heaps--as the child's functional
equivalent's of concepts, so in places Vygotsky simply means what is
IN THE
CHILD'S EYES functionally equivalent. But in other places he
suggests that
the pseudoconcept alone is in EVERY WAY functionally equivalent to the
concept (and therefore indistinguishable, even using questions).
Obviously,
functional "equivalence" must be relative, relational, and in the
eyes of
the beholder.
I think that the key is that pseudoconcepts and concepts are
equivalent in
function but they are not equivalent in structure, because the
structure
depends on the SYSTEM and of course the SYSTEM is quite different. For
example, self-directed speech can be functionally different from
social
speech but structurally very similar at three, and still in the
spoken aloud
mode even at seven. Form follows function, but sometimes at quite a
distance; exaptation means that we adopt things functionally first
and only
later adapt them structurally.
d) Finally, I note that the word "pseudoconcept" is a good example
of how
adults as well as children have different dreams when they use the
same word
(or, to adopt Paula, Carol and Lev Semyonovich's expression, how
they wear
different clothing when they hunt in the same pack). It's not
actually Lev
Semyonovich's coinage at all; it's from Stern. But Vygotsky is always
hollowing out other people's words, and placing his own candles
within.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
PS: Martin, I'm a little confused by your refs to folk psychology.
In T&S
Chapter Four (and also in Mescharyakov 2007, which Paula and Carol
reference) we see that folk psychology and folk physics do NOT refer
to the
child's own concepts, but rather to everyday thinking taken from the
child's
social situation of development; they are the inter-mental forms of
the
functional equivalents of concepts tht we find intra-mentally in the
children.
dk
--- On Sat, 8/1/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky and Saussure
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009, 8:19 AM
I'm going to use the silence as an opportunity to reflect on my own
message
- Reading what I wrote about Marx's method again in the context of the
discussion here it occurs to me that Marx, like Vygotsky, was
writing about
the changing character of word-meaning. I'd not thought about
Capital in
quite that way before. On the other hand, LSV doesn't, to my
knowledge, draw
a distinction between children's analytic concepts and their
dialectical
concepts. Has anyone out there worked on this? (Paula?)
I'm currently reading the literature on young children's categories
(folkbiology, folkpsychology), and much of this research seems to
assume
exactly the equivalence of adult and child word-meaning that LSV
called into
question, so the topic is important. For example, the researcher
names for
the child a picture of an animal, and then asks a question (Does X
have a
heart?) to which the child can reply only yes or no. The
characteristics of
the child's 'categories' are inferred on the basis of an assumed
equivalence
of word-meaning.
Martin
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