Re: [xmca] Universalism, Relativism, and Developmentalism

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

Dear David

Thank you for your extremely enlightening series of examples, especially
since they are also relevant to my other work--English language. I am
constantly astonished at how diligent my colleagues/comrades are in making
an extended point/reply.  I will reply off-line.
Carol

PS Andy also sent me a helpful comment off-line.  I owe you guys.

On 14 July 2010 10:37, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dear Carol:
>
> I don't think what I said was illogical, just historical. History appears
> to contradict itself not infrequently. But the mere fact that something
> appears completely impossible on paper does remarkably little to prevent it
> from actually occuring. And even less to render it comprehensible.
>
> For example, one might, with some exaggeration, divide the last five
> hundred years of English language teaching into three very rough two hundred
> year periods:
>
> a) a first, very basic, transactional-interpersonal period which mostly
> dealt with cross-channel trade and the influx of Huguenot refuges, lasting
> from roughly the invention of printed language learning materials by William
> Caxton around 1480 to the death of Comenius in 1670.
>
> b) a second, much more textually based period which dealt with the creation
> of an English canon as a secular equivalent to the Greek and Latin classics,
> lasting from roughly the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis the
> XIVth in 1685 until the birth of the Reform Movement around 1870 with the
> work of Sweet and later Palmer, West, and Hornby.
>
> c) the current period, which has seen the rise of a more meaning-based
> method, first in the rather predictable forms of structuralism-behaviorism
> (which although it had different names in the US and the UK had much the
> same audiolingual-oral-situational content) and then in the more
> unpredictable form of "communicative methodology" (which although it has the
> same name in the US and the UK has completely different and in some ways
> completely opposite content, because the Yanks kept structuralism and
> ditched behaviorism while the Brits kept behaviorism and ditched
> structuralism).
>
> Now, the reason I raise all this ancient history is not simply to deny that
> we are at the beginning of a new epoch (although I DO deny it, as I deny
> that the Communicative Method represented anywhere a complete break with
> structuralism-behaviorism). I raise it to point out that there are moments
> of this ancient history which are:
>
> 1) Universal. That is, the same kinds of questions keep coming up again and
> again, viz. How do we know, when we translate, that children understand the
> English word and not the translation? How do we "present" and "practice"
> something like meaning, as opposed to mere sound? Do we learn grammar the
> subconsciously, unconscioiusly, or deliberately and volitionally? etc.
>
> 2) Relativistic. That is, there are very different answers to all of these
> questions, and not one of them appears to be always right at any given time.
> Children sometimes understand and retain the English word and
> sometimes forget it instantly and only retain the translation or retain the
> English word but go on using the mother tongue concept as its meaning. There
> appear to be very different kinds of meaning, some of which are repeatable
> and others of which are not, and this is not in any direct way relatable to
> their learnability, contrary to what we might suppose. Some grammar is
> subconscious, some of it is unconscious, and a very great deal of it is,
> like murder and other crimes, completely premeditated.
>
> 3) Developmental. That is, some aspects of language teaching appear to
> change cumulatively, and others merely proliferate, producing variation
> without any obvious progress. There is no real sense, that I can see, in
> which English teaching today is "better" than the teaching of Latin or Greek
> in Comenius's time (and there is also no real sense in which English is more
> of a "global" language than Latin or Greek or French was). But there is
> certainly a very real sense in which our understanding of how language works
> (for example, what kinds of meaning there are, and what kinds of grammar
> there are) has managed to sum up the past, complexify our present
> understanding, and go forward to new applications of that
> richer understanding.
>
> It's really not the case, as I once thought, that teaching practice just
> produces variations without any real evolution, while educational research
> produces the very opposite, by "theory culling". Theory and practice seem
> much more mutually interpenetrated, so that there are theories which
> proliferate without any real refinement or even differentiation (I think the
> theory of "comprehensible input" is a good example of this) and there are
> practices which are very clearly and demonstrably more efficient than others
> (e.g. the keyword method of vocabulary learning, or the practice of teaching
> grammar by using examples before rules).
>
> But it really is the case, I now think, that in English teaching (and I
> suspect also in cultural psychology, or cultural historical activity theory,
> or socioculturalism, or phylo-socio-onto-microgenetic epistomology) that
> there are some areas of what we do where universalism is the underlying
> basis, others where relativism is an observeable fact, and still others
> where progress is not only possible but palpable. Do I contradict myself?
> Well then, I contradict myself; I am large, and like any other
> language-using animal, I contain worlds.
>
> Sorry, I meant "words".
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
> --- On Tue, 7/13/10, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] The Missing Part
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 6:34 AM
>
>
> Eric
>
> What does this mean?  Am I dense or is there a word missing:
>
> but I have turned the corner and *believe we are who were
> and wherever you go there you are. *
>
> I loved D's illogicality:
> *
> But it's also why there can be, at one and the same moment, universalism
> ("We're all the same"), relativism ("We're all different, but equal") and
> developmentalism ("We're all different, and the differences matter") at
> one and the same time.*
>
> But, for me relativism is a farce--e.g. the witchdoctor having the same
> power as a nuclear physicist? USAID and DFiD don't believe this, and
> neither
> do I.
>
> And on what grounds do we see Shweder as having Mike's stature? (David)  My
> students hated him (Shweder, by the way, they thought he was a sellout, too
> close to mainstream psychology.)
>
> Carol
>
> PS Sorry for spoiling the line of argument: I have missed a part.
>
> On 13 July 2010 15:15, <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
> > How very idealistic of you David.  I don't share in your optimistic view
> > of bringing about a kumbaya utopia.  This veil of tears we share has been
> > shared by our ancestors and shall continue to be shared in all its
> > brilliance and hair covered moles.
> >
> > At one time I did possibly believe that humans were developing
> > phylogenetically but I have turned the corner and believe we are who were
> > and wherever you go there you are.  It is what it is or as the WWII vets
> > say  "comme ci comme ca"
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
> > From:   David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
> > To:     Culture ActivityeXtended Mind <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date:   07/12/2010 06:53 PM
> > Subject:        Re: [xmca] The Missing Part
> > Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > eric:
> >
> > No, as usual, you have my point pretty much exactly, only without the
> > silly flourishes I sometimes add. Remember, though, that Mike's magnum
> > opus was entitled "A Once and Future Discipline" .
> >
> > Mike says this was an accident; Bradd Shore dibsed the title he really
> > wanted, ("Culture in Mind") so he went and stole this one from Mallory
> > ("The Once and Future King", i.e. Arthur).
> >
> > It's not as catchy, but "The Once and Future Discipline" is a better
> title
> > than "Culture in Mind" for three reasons:
> >
> > a) it suggests, correctly, that the key cross cultural insights are not
> > actually Mike's, but date from a much earlier period, when ethnography
> was
> > actually a pretty dirty business. (This is not just true of ethnography,
> > by the way, Yerkes, who provides a fair amount of the monkey business in
> > Chapter Four of Thinking and Speech, was involved in army "intelligence"
> > research dedicated to finding which soldiers were dumb enough to be used
> > to clear minefields, and his interest in teaching apes to talk is partly
> > motivated by his theories that some of us are more closely related to
> apes
> > than others.)
> >
> > b) it suggests, correctly, that in order to use this stuff we need to
> > think a little more about where it came from in the light of where we
> want
> > to go with it, to purge it of its geographical, social and cultural
> > specificity and to harness it for a future where insights made in one
> > corner of the globe become the common property of all its corners and all
> > the bits in between as well.
> >
> > c) it suggests that cultural psych is transdisciplinary rather than
> > interdisiciplinary, that it's a discipline in the process of transcending
> > its historical self rather than one which is merely exchanging
> ambassadors
> > with bordering disciplines. That is actually what accounts for its
> > temporary eclipse, and it is equally what will account for its future
> > resurgence.
> >
> > Shweder, for example, from whom I stole the idea of universalism vs.
> > relativism vs. developmentalism, is still embroiled in a controversy
> about
> > whether anthropologists in Afghanistan can and should collaborate with
> the
> > US Army in the occupation of remote provinces. Shweder's position is that
> > they can and should, because their presence will help troops understand
> > local customs (e.g. the custom of "Loving Thursdays" whereby village
> > elders undertake the sexual initiation of young boys).
> >
> > Whatever you may think of Shweder's view, it certainly corroborates the
> > idea that cultural psychology (of which Shweder is probably the leading
> > advocate after Mike himself) has feet of clay, that it has not yet
> > entirely freed itself from its roots as an adjunct of imperialist
> > occupation, and that we have a ways to go before we can really say it has
> > something to offer every human being it purports to study.
> >
> > Take English as a global language (PLEASE! Take it away before it hurts
> > somebody!). English even in its benign forms is a lousy language for
> world
> > communication precisely because it is a perfect language for world
> > domination, a perfect exclusive language for the global community of
> > airport hopping rich folks.
> >
> > English is a nightmare choice for a world language. It is phonologically
> > bizarre, grammatically opaque, and pragmatically obscurantist. It has a
> > dark past, rooted in a dominance born of genocide and slavery. But it
> also
> > has a certain promise, a certain future, a certain freedom which we see
> > whenever we teach it in a country like Korea, and we see that the more we
> > teach it, the less English it becomes.
> >
> > I think these problems with English are roughly the same problems that
> > cultural psychology had in Vygotsky's time. Bleuler, who was Piaget's
> > teacher and certainly knew Levy-Bruhl's work extremely well, broke with
> > both Piaget and Levy-Bruhl precisely over the theorized from of these
> > problems, the developmental issue of whether "autistic" thinking was
> > developmentally primary, ontogenetically or sociogenetically.
> >
> > Bleuler, and Vygotsky too, turned the Europocentric view right
> > upside-down; they believed tha autism, far from being developmentally
> > atavistic, required a certain stage of development to achieve: you had to
> > be able to remember first and only then could you really think about your
> > wishes, dreams, desires. They also believed that thinking
> "irrealisically"
> > about wishes and desires led in a fairly direct way to more
> > realistic hopes and plans.
> >
> > For that very reason it was wrong to consider "autism" as an
> > underdeveloped stage; autism, or as he liked to call it, "irrealism" was
> > simply that part of human thinking that was genuinely relativistic, where
> > neither an adult nor a man "at the pinnacle of civilization" (Bleuler is
> > certainly being ironic here since he is writing at the outset of World
> War
> > One) may claim superiority. There may be other areas where one form of
> > thinking includes, subsumes, and sublates earlier forms (e.g. mathematics
> > and science generally) but in the humanities we find variation without
> > development, at least without development in the sense of the emergence
> of
> > superior forms which asymmetrically include earlier ones.
> >
> > That Vygotsky took this on board is very clear from his writings on
> > creativity and imagination. That Vygotsky went even further than Bleuler
> > is clear from his argument that irrealist thinking and realist thinking
> do
> > not turn in parallel, like the wheels of a desk, only in response to the
> > external environment, but have an internal connection, an axle, or rather
> > a differential, which allow them to influence each other, so that in
> > science too we shall find variation without development and in art and
> the
> > humanities some genuine, common, universally valuable (because
> universally
> > shareable) developments alongside the dazzling and dizzying variations
> > which for the most part are hard to share.
> >
> > Nevertheless I think Vygotsky shares Bleuler's basic insight,which we see
> > here in the chapter which begins with the Missing Part. By putting the
> > "autistic" function at the beginning of development, and by lumping
> > selfishness, stupidity, schizophrenia, and perfectly normal cultural
> > variation into a single syncretic heap, Freud, Levy-Bruhl and Blondel are
> > behaving more like idealist savages than intellectual scientists.
> >
> > So it goes. From Bleuler to Vygotsky, and from Vygotsky to Mike, and from
> > Mike to me, and then from me to you, with each of us forgetting something
> > and each of us adding on at every step of the way. This is why Vygotsky
> > comes up with the confusing image of a chain that has a "central" link.
> > But it's also why there can be, at one and the same moment, universalism
> > ("We're all the same"), relativism ("We're all different, but equal") and
> > developmentalism ("We're all different, and the differences matter") at
> > one and the same time.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> > --- On Mon, 7/12/10, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] The Missing Part
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Monday, July 12, 2010, 6:24 AM
> >
> >
> > David:
> >
> > This indeed is an important passage in understanding LSV's developmental
> > theories.  But I believe cross-cultural research speerheaded by Cole and
> > others has discounted 'primitive' cultures as being less developed in
> > thought and practice when compared to 'western' culture.  Or am I
> > misunderstanding your point?
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
> > From:   David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
> > To:     xmca <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date:   07/12/2010 02:38 AM
> > Subject:        [xmca] The Missing Part
> > Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> >
> >
> >
> > This is the beginning of Chapter Two of Thinking and Speech that was not
> > translated into English. I posted it once several years ago, and Anton
> > thought it didn't add very much.
> >
> > I think it does: it structures the whole chapter, because it makes it
> > clear that Freud, Levy-Bruhl, and Blondel share a common idealist basis
> as
> >
> > well as a common canonical stature.
> >
> > &Lt;Мы полагаем, . говорит он, . что настанет день, когда мысль ребенка
> по
> >
> > отношению к мысли нормального цивилизованного взрослого будет помещена в
> > ту же плоскость, в какой находится &Lt;примитивное мышление&Gt;,
> > охарактеризованное Леви-Брюлем, или аутистическая и символическая мысль,
> > описанная Фрейдом и его учениками, или &Lt;болезненное сознание&Gt;, если
> > только это понятие, введенное Блонделем, не сольется в один прекрасный
> > день с предыдущим понятием&Gt; (1, с.408).1 Действительно, появление его
> > первых работ по историческому значению
> > этого факта для дальнейшего развития психологической мысли должно быть по
> > справедливости сопоставлено и сравнено с датами выхода в свет &Lt;Les
> > fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures&Gt; Леви-Брюля, &Lt;Т
> > олкования сновидений&Gt; Фрейда или &Lt;La conscience morbide&Gt;
> > Блонделя.
> > Больше того, между этими явлениями в различнейших областях научной
> > психологии есть не только внешнее сходство, определяемое уровнем их
> > исторического значения, но глубокое, кровное, внутреннее родство . связь
> > по самой сути заключенных и воплощенных в них философских и
> > психологических тенденций. Недаром сам Пиаже в огромной мере опирался в
> > своих исследованиях и построениях на эти три
> > работы и на их авторов.
> >
> >
> > “It is therefore our belief", says (Piaget), "that the day will come when
> > child thought will be placed on the same level in relation to adult,
> > normal, and civilized thought as ‘primitive mentality’, as defined by
> > Lévy-Bruhl, as autistic and symbolical thought as described by Freud and
> > his disciples and as ‘morbid consciousness,’ assuming that this last
> > concept, which we owe to M. Ch. Blondel, is not simply fused with the
> > former.” (p. 201-202). In reality, the appearance of this first works, in
> > regard to the historic importance as a fact for future reference in the
> > development of psychological thought must be on the compared with the
> > appearance of “Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures” of
> > Levi- Bruhl, Freud’s “The interpretation of dreams’, or Blondel’s “La
> > conscience morbide”. It is not simply that between these phenomena in the
> > development of the field of scientific psychology there is a formal
> > resemblance, determined by their level of historic importance, but that
> > there is a deep, internal kinship, a connection in essence which is
> > visible in their philosophical and psychological tendencies. Not without
> > reason does Piaget himself base in enormous measure his own studies and
> > constructions on these three works and on their authors.
> >
> > Last night I was re-reading Bleuler's criticisms of Freud in "Autistic
> > Thinking" and I also came upon these words, which Vygotsky quotes
> > approvingly.
> >
> > "Examining the more grown-up child, I also do not much observe that he
> > would prefer the imaginary apple to the real. The imbecile and the savage
> > are alike practitioners of Realpolitik and the latter, (exactly like us,
> > who stand at the apex of cognitive ability) makes his autistic
> stupidities
> >
> > only in such cases when reason and experience prove insufficient: in his
> > ideas about the universe, about the phenomena of nature, in his
> > understanding of diseases and other blows of destiny, in adopting
> measures
> >
> > to shield himself from them, and in other relationships which are too
> > complex for him.”
> >
> > It seems to me that here and elsewhere in this chapter Bleuler is arguing
> > for, and Vygotsky is agreeing with, a position that is simultaneously
> > universalist, relativist, and developmentalist. It is universalist in the
> > sense that it argues for a universal human autistic response to areas of
> > experience of which we are ignorant. It is relativist in the sense that
> it
> >
> > argues for the independence of an "autistic" response from rationality
> and
> >
> > an autonomous art and autonomous humanities based on that independence
> > that is in no way subordinate to rationality. It is developmentalist in
> > the sense that it argues for an autistic response which develops out of a
> > narrow, immediately realistic (perception based?) reality function rather
> > than vice versa (as in Freud, Janet, and Levy-Bruhl).
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >
> >
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