Martin, Steve:
Last night I showed a picture of an iguana to my graduate seminar
and asked what it was. Everybody said it was an ALLIGATOR. This is
strange, because the word "iguana" exists as a loan word from
English in Korean, and in fact everybody confirmed that they knew
the word, but the word "alligator" does not exist in Korean and
instead we use a Chinese loan word (literally, "evil fish").
What this means is that my grads have the WORD but not the CONCEPT
of Iguana--it is an example of a concept for others but not for
myself. This is not the only situation where that is true, of
course. For example, the words "Miss" and "Mister" also exist in
Korean as loan words, but they are quite impolite and used to
refer to social inferiors (bar girls, prostitutes, secretaries or
waiters or male underlings of one kind or another). Here too the
concept of the English polite form of address exists as a word but
not as a concept.
Last year I suggested to Steve that in Chapter Six Vygotsky uses
the word "preconcept" to refer to this situation, and that
therefore the word "preconcept" is used in preference to
"pseudoconcept" in Chapter Six. Steve objected that Chapter Five
clearly says that a pseudoconcept is not a concept at all, but a
complex, while Chapter Six says that it is indeed a concept,
although not a concept for myself.
I'm still unconvinced. As Steve says there really IS a shift of
opinion on a number of issues in Chapter Six (the carry over from
one structure of generalization to another, for example, and also
the issue of whether concepts can be taught to pre-adolescents).
The word "pseudoconcept", which is so misleading that it even
confuses LSV himself sometimes, is not LSV's coinage; he took it
from the Sterns,who took it from somebody else.
So it seems to me that "pseudoconcept" in Chapter Five is a
concept for others (for the Sterns), and it only becomes a concept
for LSV himself in Chapter Six!
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
Attached is OUR re-reading of Chapter Six, here in Seoul.Sorry
about the Korean!
--- On Wed, 3/24/10, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] The strange situation
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 12:57 PM
Thanks, Steve,
I've been putting off re-reading chapter 6, but I have to bite the
bullet soon. I was thinking that trying to figure out what LSV had
come up with and written about in chap 5 (and Paula has pointed
out that he seems to have had this figured out by 1930) would
itself be valuable. But you make a cogent argument.
Martin
On Mar 24, 2010, at 1:39 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:
These are really, really good questions, Martin. All worth very
serious exploration.
My take on Chapter 5, after doing some study of it, and Chapter
6, last year with David Ke. and Paula T., and some discussion
here on xmca, is that Ch 5 might be best understood in terms of
Chapter 6, especially section 6 starting on pg 224 of Vol 1.
Here Vygotsky gets to his major theoretical discussion of systems
of concepts, and critiques the limitations of the block
experiments on page 228 and 229.
He explains that the block experiment "ignored the fact that
**each new stage in the development of generalization depends on
the generalizations found in the preceding stages.**" pg 229.
He was critical of the block experiment not revealing connections
or transitions between the stages of concept development. He
felt he was able to reveal these connections with the experiments
described in Chapter 6.
It is important to emphasize that he does not at all **reject**
the work described in Chapter 5 - the syncretic heap, complexes,
and what he now calls preconcepts (was pseudoconcepts), and true
concepts, are still intact - but he **adds** a whole new level of
theorizing that he saw as crucial - suggestions for solutions to
"the central problem" of his research in Chapter 6, involving
systems and relationships of generality, the law of concept
equivalence (any concept can be represented through other
concepts in an infinite number of ways), measures of generality,
systems of concepts, etc. Vygotsky's most advanced thinking
about concept formation is here in this section. And some of
your very good questions are addressed.
This is why I think that Chapter 5 needs to be seen as something
of a building block toward section 6 in Chapter 6, and that it
might be easier to read Chapter 6 sect 6 first and work
backwards, or work them together as one study. And don't forget
that Vygotsky's publisher or maybe even Vygotsky himself got
longitude and latitude backwards in the globe metaphor when he
explains the law of concept equivalence! (pg 226) LOL
Chapter 6 as a whole, of course, has much material on everyday vs
scientific concepts, as well as the oft-quoted passages on the
zone of proximal development, so that difficult section 6 in Ch 6
kind of gets overshadowed, and maybe a little disconnected from
Chapter 5. The two need to be dialectically joined, I believe,
to really grasp what Vygotsky was trying to do in both chapters.
And there is also some discussion on pg 189 in section 2 in
Chapter 6, and maybe a few other places in that chapter, about
complexes and so forth, that may also shed some helpful light on
some specifics in Chapter 5.
- Steve
On Mar 23, 2010, at 1:25 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
I am taking the liberty of recycling this subject heading, after
having spent some time re-reading the posts over the weekend. I
seem to have played a large part in hijacking this thread some
time last year, with my obsession over the meaning of the term
'reflection.'
So this message is partly penance, but it also me trying to make
sense of LSV's block task and what it tells us about his views
of concepts, and their development. I find myself with the
following questions:
1. It seems to be the case that in chapter 5 LSV doesn't mention
the distinction between everyday concepts and scientific
concepts. Is it at all possible that what in chapter 6 he calls
"everyday concepts" are what he refers to in chapter 5 as
complexes? I suspect not, but the question seems worth asking.
2. LSV seems to offer not one but two explanations of how the
child (or rather the adolescent) forms concepts. The first
explanation is that concepts arise from the advanced application
of the processes of generalization and abstraction, specifically
that the word is now used functionally for voluntary control of
attention, permitting a mastery of these processes. The second
explanation is based on the phenotypical identity and functional
similarity of concepts and pseudoconcepts. The latter are
actually complexes, but they look like concepts and so when
child and adult interact the adult takes them to be concepts.
The child is in a sense then using concepts without knowing it,
and LSV appeals to the familiar Hegelian process of in-itself,
for-others, for-self, to explain how this "internal
contradiction"is the "basic genetic prerequisite" for the rise
of true concepts.
I'm not suggesting that these two explanations are incompatible
or mutually exclusive. But LSV does not seem to try to bring
them together.
3. In other words, this second explanation is another case of
"internalization," and the application of the general genetic
law of cultural development. But LSV adds that this "peculiar
genetic situation" in the move from pseudoconcepts to concepts
should be considered the general rule rather than the exception
in children's intellectual development. Does this not suggest
that this same kind of process occurs as the child moves from
heaps to complexes?
4. Generalization and abstraction are the two "channels" in the
development of concepts - LSV refers to them also as
"complexing" and "segregating." The first is very familiar by
the time we get to chapter 5: he has been writing about the way
a word is a generalization since the start (this is where as
David has pointed out we find the quotation from Sapir.) But
abstraction seems to appear out of nowhere. Is there a treatment
of abstraction/segregating elsewhere in the book that I have
missed?
5. LSV seems to get to the end of chapter 5 without ever telling
us exactly what a concept it. He suggests that it involves
hierarchy, and connections that are abstract, essential, and
homogeneous. He proposes that particular and general are linked.
He adds that "most important" is "the unity of form and
content," for this is what makes thinking in concepts a "real
revolution." Can anyone pull these somewhat diverse
(complexive?) characteristics together for me? Do they harmonize
with the treatment of concepts (of both kinds) in chapter 6?
6. Finally, less a question than an observation. LSV writes at
the close of chapter 5 of the way that “Concept thinking is a
new form of intellectual activity, a new mode of conduct, a new
intellectual mechanism. The intellect is able to find a new and
unprecedented modus operandi in this particular activity and a
new function becomes available within the system of intellectual
functions which is distinctive both in its composition and
structure as well as in the way it functions.” I take this as a
clear indication that for LSV a concept is not simply a new kind
of mental representation. It is, as Rosch proposes, a new way of
relating to the world.
Any guidance through this thicket will be gratefully accepted!
Martin
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