Re: [xmca] moral life of babies

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Here is a brief summary of Mandler's theory, from the abstract of one of her articles:

"An overview of a theory of the foundation of conceptual thought in infancy is presented. The theory proposes that perceptual analysis redescribes perceptual information into meanings that form the basis of an accessible conceptual system. These early meanings are represented in the form of image-schemas that abstract certain aspects of the spatial structure of objects and their movements in space. Image-schemas allow infants to form concepts such as animate and inanimate objects, agents, and containers. It is proposed that this form of representation serves a number of functions, including providing a vehicle for simple inferential and analogical thought, enabling the imitation of actions of others, and providing a conceptual basis for the acquisition of the relational aspects of language."

Martin

On May 7, 2010, at 9:26 AM, mike cole wrote:

> Jay raiises your question in another, Andy. Plenty of uncertainty to go
> around.
> Is sublate a particular kind of transformative relationship?
> 
> If we are going to get keep into this, the work of Jean Mandler seems to
> require some kind of consideration. She quite explicitly critiques the
> "sensori-motor first"
> idea in Piaget's version of it which seems a least similar to Jay's
> formuation.
> mike
> 
> On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> 
>> Sorry for my unclarity, Mike. The 3 options I had in mind are (1) that the
>> so-called "infant morality" remains in its independent form albeit overlaid
>> by social acquisitions, (2) by sublate I mean it is taken up into a more
>> complex form of  behaviour such that it no longer exists as an independent
>> mode of behaviour, and this I called "sublated" and (3) it just disappears.
>> So yes, I guess (2) sublated is "transformed".
>> 
>> I don't know what here would be a "proto-concept" though. Personally I
>> think LSV can call syncretism a concept only on the basis that it is an
>> early stage in the development of what later becomes concept-use; the same
>> sense in which crawling is a form of walking. In that case, what we see is
>> by definition a proto-concept, I suppose.
>> 
>> Andy
>> 
>> 
>> mike cole wrote:
>> 
>>> Larry and Andy (and Martin and David I guess).
>>> 
>>> I would rather withhold judgment on some to the categorization going on in
>>> this discussion. Andy wrote:
>>> 
>>> "To me, it does raise the question, as Jay commented in his belated
>>> commentary on the infant communication discussion, how much is retained or
>>> built on, how much is sublated into more complex neoformations and how much
>>> actually just fades away to be replaced by other neoformations?"
>>> 
>>> Is sublation not a transformation?
>>> Are you sure that what the baby arrives with are not proto-concepts?
>>> Everyone understand (e.g., can specify new examples in an unambiguous way)
>>> what counts as a neoformation?
>>> 
>>> I feel quite uncertain about these issues.
>>> mike
>>> 
>> --
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype
>> andy.blunden
>> An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity: http://www.brill.nl/scss
>> 
>> 
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