Take a look at these. The translations are my own but the page
numbers
suggest the corresponding bits in your Minick translation.
“We have first of all succeeded in discovering that generality
(differences in generality) does not coincide with the structure of
generalization and its different stages such as we found them in our
experimental study on the formation of concepts: syncretic images,
complexes, preconcepts, and concepts. (roughly, p. 225 in your
Minick)”
You can see from this that "preconcepts" is NOT a general term
including
syncretisms, complexes any more than "rose" is a general term
including
daisies and daffodils.
“In the first place, concepts of different generality are possible
in a
same generalization structure. For example, in the structure of
concepts by
complexes it is possible for concepts of different levels of
generality to
exist: flower, and rose. In truth, we must state a reservation
from the very
outset, that is to say that the relationship of generalization
”flower-rose”
will be different in each structure of generalization, for example,
different in the structure of complexes from in the structure of
preconcepts.” (225)
We can see from this that LSV does NOT consider a preconcept to be a
complex.
“Thanks to the analysis of the real concepts of the child, we have
been
able to study some less well-known properties of syncretic
formations,
complexes, and preconcepts and to establish what in each of these
spheres of
thinking is shown to be different in the relationship with the
object as
well as the apprehension of the object by thought, that is to say,
how the
two fundamental elements which characterize concepts are revealed
to be
different from one stage to another.” (228)
Once again, "preconcepts" are not the preconceptual functional
equivalents
of concepts (that is, they are not a hypernym for syncretic heaps
and
complexes). But here Vygotsky suggests that there are two
processes and not
one at work in concept formation.
One is indeed a form of activity: it's a relationship with the
object,
e.g. ostension, indication, and naming. But the other is "the
apprehension
of the object by thought", the way in which the object is
represented
(reflected/refracted/semiotically reproduced) by the mind.
“What we have managed to establish here with respect to the
passage from
the preconcepts of the schoolchild to the concepts of the
adolescent is the
same thing that we managed to establish in the preceding study
with respect
to the passage of generalized perceptions to general
representations, that
is to say syncretic formations and complexes.” (230)
This appears to be a direct reference to Chapter Five. In 1931, LSV
considered this to be a study of concept formation in ADOLESCENTS.
But now
he appears to have changed his mind: the previous chapter is
concerned with
the passage from generalized perceptions to general
representations, and is
thus a matter of preschoolers. This is quite consistent with what
Paula did
with three year olds to eight year olds.
“Just as in that case it turned out that a new stage in the
development of
generalizations can only be attained by the transformation, not the
annulment, of the preceding stage, by the generalization of the
objects
already generalized, not by proceeding anew from the
generalization of
single objects, in the same way here the study has shown that the
transition
from preconcepts (of which the typical example is the arithmetical
concept
of the school child) to the true concepts of the adolescent (of
which the
typical example is the algebraic concept) happens through the
generalization
of objects which have already been generalized.”
And here we see why! The generalized perception is the
PRECONDITION of the
general representation. And the general representation is the
precondition
of the concept. The example he gives us is numbers.
Of course, at the very lowest level, numbers really are the result
of the
activity of the perceptible and perceptual activity of counting.
But take
away the objects, and the number remains as a generalized
representation.
And when we take away the number, and deal only with the realtion
of number,
the concept remains.
"The preconcept is the abstraction of the number, detached from
the object
and, founded on this abstraction, the generalization of the
numerical
properties of the object. The concept is the abstraction detached
from the
number and, founded on it, the generalization of any relation
between
numbers. But the abstraction and generalization of ideas differs
fundamentally from the abstraction and the generalization of
things. It is
not a pursuit of movement in the same direction or its
culmination, it is
the beginning of a movement in a new direction, a transition to a
new and
higher plane of thinking. (230)"
This of course returns us to a point that Vygotsky made in the
very first
chapter and returns again to in the very last: the "dialectical
leap" is not
simply from inanimate to animate, but from perception to thinking.
There is a qualitative difference between the abstraction and
generalization of perceptions and the abstraction and
generalization of
thoughts; they are distinct processes, and the word "activity"
applies much
more accurately to the former than the latter.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Wed, 3/24/10, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Subject: Re: [xmca] The strange situation
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 9:30 PM
Steve, briefly and without references, my take was:
* *preconcepts* are a family name for all the thought-forms prior
to true
concepts and so includes potential concepts, pseduoconcepts,
complexes. etc.
* *potential concepts* are, as far as I can, see the highest type of
pseudoconcept, marked by its "transferability" to different
sensory fields.
Here the attributes have been completely isolated from their
substratum.
* *complex* is a family name for a whole group of forms including
both
pseudo- and potential concepts.
Andy
Steve Gabosch wrote:
David, thanks again for these extremely useful files of your
translations
of T&S from Meccaci, Seve, Prout, and your Korean team. I am in
awe of the
work you did, and are still doing.
I thought where we got stuck last year was on that pesky creature
from Ch
5, the 'potential concept,' not the clearer concept,
'pseudoconcept'. I
think Vygotsky leaves no doubt that the pseudoconcept is a
complex. I am
still struggling with precisely what a potential concept is.
Both complicated concepts, potential concept and pseudoconcept,
seem to
be subsumed into the Ch 6 term 'preconcept'. That move gives us
a simpler
term, but leaves many questions unanswered. It leaves us little
choice but
to investigate concept formation ourselves.
Martin, I would be most interested, when you have the time, if
you took
your recent very excellent questions and reframed them, or more
precisely,
sharpened them, in light of Ch 6. I think some important work
can be done
analyzing Ch 5 in terms of Ch 6 - and looking at Ch 6, especially
section 6,
in terms of Ch 5.
Apparently about 3, 4 or 5 years did separate the main writing of
these
two chapters, as you and Paula suggest. On one hand, there is an
explosion
of ideas in Ch 6 sect 6 that are barely touched on or anticipated
in Ch 5.
On the other hand, the rich, specific ideas in Ch 5 are
insufficiently
dealt in light of the new, general ideas in Ch 6 sect 6.
Vygotsky left that
challenge to us as well.
- Steve
On Mar 24, 2010, at 5:35 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
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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