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Re: [xmca] concepts



Actually, Larry, I think xmca is my first space.
Andy

Larry Purss wrote:
Jay, Andy, Martin, David, Carol, Mike and others. Thank all of you for creating a hybrid third-space bridge or COMMON POOL in which to swim communicatively. Jay, thank you also for your article reviewing Dynamic Systems theory. I would like to give some recognition to the need for valuing "folk" narratives as it is locations such as elementary schools where various folk discourses on ideas such as "concepts" and "identity" and "learning" are constructed and shared. Moscovici's social representation theory is an example of an approach which values folk narratives as central to emergence of new and novel possibilities. It is conversations such as this one on "concepts" [created in a third space] which are central to transforming those folk tales [that so profoundly structure our perspectives and children's development in institutional structures such as schools.]

I've printed out this conversation to re-read and re-cognize as it offers a map in order to help locate the different perspectives from the many conversants contributing to constructing this particular cultural clearing.

FASCINATING

Larry

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:

    OK, thanks for that Jay. I understand your position and it is
    clearly well-founded. I will nonetheless keep working at what I am
    doing, and I really doubt that I will find myself elaborating and
    justifying folk theories. It is a fact, I believe, that human
    beings are born realists, and we will continue to spontaneously
    populate the world with independently existing things. But this
    does not stop us from acting as if we were meaning-making rather
    than manipulating objects. So I think there is value in a general
    theory of these reifications.


    Andy

    Jay Lemke wrote:

        I agree that there is  both a rhetorical-political dimension
        to the issue of "concepts" and a theoretical one. If you're
        talking to people who don't have any other way to make sense
        of some things except with a notion of "concepts", then you
        have to create some hybrid third-space or translation bridge
        or common pool in which to swim communicatively.

        But I like to hope that I can offer interlocutors some
        alternative ways of talking about and so making sense of
        things, and that they might get to feel a bit more comfortable
        with it over time, and that I can then point out that their
        old language has a lot of drawbacks, without leaving them with
        no alternative to it (since they surely won't give it up
        without one).

        This is an alternative rhetorical-political strategy to the
        one of trying to, as someone put it earlier, hollow out the
        usage of the old terms and fill them with new meanings. I'd
        change the metaphor there to something more like re-situate
        the old terms in new discourses, with new semantic
        relationships to a new network of terms (and some of the old
        ones).

        I'm all for trying both these approaches and seeing what happens.

        But I don't want to buy into the conventional discourse
        repertoire (Foucault's "discursive formation") that goes with
        taking some notion to be "a concept". If I do that, say, for
        "identity", then people expect that it's possible to define
        what identity "is", and to do so precisely and in a way that
        allows us to determine whether any given instance is an
        instance of "identity" or not. I frankly think that's crazy,
        and not the least bit productive for either scholarship or
        good thinking. And if there are good reasons to criticize
        various uses of the term identity, and various more extended
        discourses that incorporate the term (and these extended
        discourses are the relevant units in theoretical discussion,
        not the term) -- and there surely are -- these have nothing to
        do with trying to fit "identity" into a preconceived mold of
        what a good "scientific concept" ought to be. There is a term
        here, and an associated set of discourse patterns and extended
        meanings, but no "concept". Going around attacking the
        "concept" of identity would be pointless -- but it is just
        this sort of discussion one often gets.

        Here I'm aiming my argument at the notion of concepts, but the
        bigger point about what the units of analysis for theoretical
        discourse and intellectual history are most usefully taken to
        be was made by Foucault in the Archeology of Knowledge (esp.
        the section on method, defining discursive formations,
        enunciative possibilities, etc.) a long time ago now, and on
        the basis of exhaustive research with the historical source
        texts for tracing major changes in ways of making sense of the
        world, especially in the social sciences (also in medicine,
        technology, etc.) over long periods of time (a few centuries).
        That work led him to the same conclusions as functional
        linguistic analyses of extended meaning-making in text, and by
        completely different methods, and operating on completely
        different scales. The conclusions in both cases are contrary
        to our folk-theories about words, meanings, and concepts. And
        way too much philosophical discussion of these matters really
        looks to me like not much more than efforts to elaborate and
        justify the folk theories.

        I recognize the necessity of communicative compromise. But I
        also recognize some educational responsibility. The first in
        the shorter term, to ground the second in the longer term.

        JAY.

        Jay Lemke
        Senior Research Scientist
        Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
        University of California - San Diego
        9500 Gilman Drive
        La Jolla, California 92093-0506

        Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
        School of Education
        University of Michigan
        Ann Arbor, MI 48109
        www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
        Professor Emeritus
        City University of New York







        On Apr 12, 2011, at 8:42 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

            Jay, you say "We make meanings with sign resources in
            contexts." But this is what a concept is, isn't it? And if
            you had to explain to someone what another concept, say
            "identity" or "situation" is, then you would have to come
            to the same kind of summary conclusion. Isn't there value
            in clarifying what a concept is with the concept of
            concept? But if you simply leave the concept of concept
            alone with its "mentalist, idealist, universalist baggage"
            then won't we have to do that with "identity" or
            "situation" and every other concept eventually? How will
            we talk under those conditions?
            Andy

            Jay Lemke wrote:
                I liked Ana's questioning of the cultural value
                attached to particular views about concepts in her
                response to David's commentary on two little passages
                about Jinho.

                David is extolling the formal aspect of meaning as a
                tool: classification, set theory, syllogistic
                reasoning. Ana is emphasizing the value of meaning as
                a tool for story-telling, for engaging someone in an
                imagined world, for projecting possibilities. David's
                first example is, from the second point of view,
                pedantic and artificial, a mere pretext for the
                exegesis of a a system of classification (i.e. all
                boys are either Korean or foreign. This boy is
                Korean.). There is no projected story, no engagement,
                at least relatively to the second one, which could be
                the opening of the saga of a Korean Naruto.

                Of course this overstates things, but it does call
                attention to the multiple functions of verbal
                meaning-making, and its seems to me unwise to extol
                abstract classification and generalization at the
                level of the word-based category as being the higher
                "conceptual" function of language. I always try to
                understand Vygotsky's use of "the word" as meaning not
                individual isolated words (except sometimes) but more
                to speech, to utterance, to verbal meanings, which
                usually require a lot more than one word, or at least
                that word in a richly prepared context (verbal and/or
                nonverbal). A word, or a verbal meaning is not
                automatically a generalization. Isolated words have a
                "meaning potential" a probability distribution of
                possible meanings, and as they are combined with
                co-text and context, the net meanings they help to
                make get more specified, and can be either meanings
                about general propositions or meanings about specific
                instances. Words are sign-tools that when used in
                particular meaning-making practices can indicate
                categories, and relations among categories that count
                as generalizations, or equally well can be used to
                designate particular concrete things or tell very
                specific stories.

                Isolated words are always the wrong unit of analysis
                when considering questions of meaning.

                This applies even to the acquisition of single-word
                utterances in early childhood, as I think is now
                pretty well accepted.

                So verbal meaning making does not automatically imply
                generalization or categories, though languages have
                devices for distinguishing through different wordings
                between meanings made about instances and meanings
                made as generalizations or through categories.

                And the ability to support meanings about abstract
                categories is just one function of the linguistic
                system and our ways of using it, and not necessarily
                (indeed I would say rather obviously not) the highest
                or most valuable of its functions in use.

                So what of "concepts," then? I think we have to
                distinguish between reasoning in terms of abstract
                categories to make general propositions, and doing so
                through language (which is the original sign system
                for doing so) and saying that this process entails
                "concepts". The process surely happens. It surely
                happens most of the time, and originally in
                intellectual-social development, through mobilizing
                the linguistic sign system (along with other sign
                modalities). None of that implies a model or analysis
                of the process in terms of "concepts". Depending
                obviously on what one means by a concept. I am pretty
                sure that this process does not take place by the
                deployment of some fixed (even expandable) repertoire
                of semantic primitives. Nor in terms of any unit of
                meaning that precedes and then gets "expressed in"
                language. The meanings come into being in and through
                the deployment of the linguistic signs and do not have
                any independent or prior existence (contra Platonism
                and its romantic revivals, contra the thesis of a
                "lingua mentis" and contra Fodor and maybe Pinker).

                So whatever LSV may have meant by "concept", in
                linking it as he does to language and speech in
                development, he likely did not mean either idealist
                concepts or internal mental realities that then get
                expressed outwardly in speech.

                The etymology, as was noted, for "concept" meant a
                taking or pulling together. A concept brings together
                instances, giving one name to many similar but
                different things. At least that's the received notion.
                But is it, itself, anything more than the name we use
                to do this? and as a name, merely part of more complex
                locutions we use to do this? or as makes more sense,
                developmentally and in semiotic analysis, merely the
                front-man for a complex systems of speech and gesture
                and integration with context, and generally a very
                multi-modal procedure for con-cepting a lot of stuff
                under a category-term? The object of study needs to be
                this whole complex of doings and meanings (as verbs)
                that produces the category result, and surely this is
                not anything one would call "a concept".

                All that of course is just taking categories one at a
                time, and we know things are never that simple.
                Categories are made through distinctions, and so
                systems of categories get created and the meanings we
                make with any one category-term are interpretable in
                relation to to all the others (e.g. foreign vs.
                Korean). But there is lots of research on how
                categories get made and used linguistically and they
                all pretty much show that what you have to pay
                attention to are the complex processes by which the
                connections among things in the categories are
                foregrounded or backgrounded, making category use more
                flexible and indeed potentially ambiguous, polysemic,
                etc. Categories get merged and divided, new ones are
                formed out of the shards of older ones. ALL
                "concepts", not just scientific ones, come in such
                fluid and squabbling families. Scientific and
                especially mathematical category terms, defined by
                their family connections to one another (and in the
                case of scientific ones by links to nonverbal objects
                and activities), TRY to impose an artificial stability
                and fixedness (and in mathematics special conditions
                allow greater success in doing so) -- but these are
                hardly a model for how these matters usually go.

                I think we have fallen culturally into the habit of
                saying that we think in terms of concepts, but I see
                no persuasive evidence that we do. We make meanings
                with sign resources in contexts, and some of those
                meanings sometimes have some of the features said to
                define a concept. Meanwhile the mentalist, idealist,
                universalist baggage that the notion drags in with it
                continues to do immeasurable harm in both education
                and psychology.

                Jay Lemke
                Senior Research Scientist
                Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
                University of California - San Diego
                9500 Gilman Drive
                La Jolla, California 92093-0506

                Professor (Adjunct status 2009-11)
                School of Education
                University of Michigan
                Ann Arbor, MI 48109
                www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
                <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> Professor Emeritus
                City University of New York







                On Apr 12, 2011, at 7:09 PM, Ana Marjanovic-Shane wrote:

                    Dear David and all,

                    Just a small remark or a question:

                    If the two lines you compare were a beginning of
                    two novels, and someone
                    asked you which one of these novels would you
                    prefer to read, what would be
                    your answer?

                    For some reason, I would be more intrigued to read
                    the novel beginning with
                    the second line:

                    "Look! He has a blue sweater. He has no glasses.
                    He has stripey hair. His
                    name is Jinho."

                    It seems not imprisoning me in the visual, but on
                    the contrary, openiing my
                    eyes to see something interesting. The first one
                    is telling me nothing that
                    I don't already know -- except that there is a
                    Korean boy Jinho.  OK - so
                    what?

                    So even though you claim that the first line is
                    conceptual, and that the
                    second one is a mere description of visuals, I am
                    attracted to the second
                    line as a beginning of a possibly exciting story.

                    I wonder if the second line does not carry some
                    other important properties,
                    other than conceptual but equally improtant?

                    Ana







                    _______________________________________

                    Ana Marjanovic-Shane
                    215-995-3207 <tel:215-995-3207>
                    e-mails: anamshane@gmail.com
                    <mailto:anamshane@gmail.com>
                              ana@zmajcenter.org
                    <mailto:ana@zmajcenter.org>





                    On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 11:45 PM, David Kellogg
                    <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
                    <mailto:vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>>wrote:

                        Tonight I have to discuss the difference
                        between the following.

                        T: Look! This is a boy. He's not a foreign
                        boy. He's a Korean boy. This is
                        Jinho.

                        T: Look! He has a blue sweater. He has no
                        glasses. He has stripey hair. His
                        name is Jinho.

                        It seems to me there are three important
                        differences, from the teacher's
                        point of view.

                        a) The first one repeats the concept "boy" and
                        the indefinite article used
                        to mark it as an example of the concept
                        (actually, a number, as opposed to
                        an indicative or a demonstrative like "the" or
                        "this" or "that"). The second
                        does not.

                        b) Imagine the teacher following up this
                        information with the open question
                        "Tell me about Jinho". The first offers
                        conceptual material ("foreign",
                        "boy", "Korean") that can be used by the
                        children with ALL the other
                        characters in our textbook: Joon, Ann, Nami,
                        Peter, Bill, and so on. The
                        second one does not.

                        c) Imagine the teacher following up the
                        answers with a CRITICAL metaprocess
                        question "How do you know?" The first leads to
                        a conversation about what
                        names are boy's names and what names are
                        girl's names, which names sound
                        Korean and which sound foreign. The second
                        merely leads back to the picture,
                        or back to the teacher's hearsay.

                        Ideologically, the first one suggests a model
                        of a concept that is a
                        generalized and abstracted essence: "boy",
                        "foreign", and "Korean" are all
                        essential QUALITIES (and not, actually,
                        things). The second ALSO has an
                        implicit model of a concept; it is based on
                        the possession of material
                        objects (and not essential properties).

                        It seems to me that for all three reasons, the
                        first way of framing the
                        question provides a way OUT of the enslavement
                        of the visual field and the
                        second does not. I remember that Larry
                        speculated about concepts and
                        conceptualizations that emprison us. It seems
                        to me that prisons are made of
                        much sturdier and sterner stuff.

                        David Kellogg
                        Seoul National University of Education


                        --- On Mon, 4/11/11, Martin Packer
                        <packer@duq.edu <mailto:packer@duq.edu>> wrote:


                        From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu
                        <mailto:packer@duq.edu>>
                        Subject: Re: [xmca] concepts
                        To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
                        <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
                        Date: Monday, April 11, 2011, 8:16 PM


                        Phillip,

                        I didn't mean any petard-hoisting, honestly! I
                        just get excited at times
                        about ideas. Big ones, and little ones too.

                        Let me respond a bit more appreciatively to
                        what you're saying. I'm most
                        interested at the moment, in my own work, in
                        trying to understand Vygotsky.
                        I think I share that interest with some others
                        here, but I'm equally sure
                        not everyone has the interest. But to me it's
                        quite fascinating to struggle
                        to try to interpret and apply texts that I am
                        separated from by time,
                        language, geography and economic system.

                        Is there power in knowledge? Do knowledge
                        claims bolster positions of
                        professional expertise? Do academics not
                        traffic in prestige and advantage
                        even as we make apparently neutral and
                        detached pronouncements about trivial
                        details? Does success in every endeavor not
                        "depend on a very complex
                        knowledge of and ability to manipulate
                        determinative politics, discourses,
                        and institutions -- on professional
                        competencies and social privileges that
                        constitute even the 'organic intellectuals'"?
                        (That's Paul Bové beating up
                        on Charles Taylor in his foreword to Deleuze's
                        book on Foucault.)

                        Yes, of course. I take Foucault very
                        seriously. Does Vygotsky write about
                        any of this? No, not really. Does that mean he
                        was not aware of it?
                        Impossible! This was a man who read Marx, who
                        was living at the time of a
                        revolution whose stated aim it was to correct
                        the distortions that an unjust
                        society had wrought on human beings, and who
                        was in a position of power
                        himself when Stalin took control. How could he
                        possibly not have been aware
                        of the connections between knowledge and
                        power, the micro-politics of
                        concepts?

                        He did write occasionally, as in "The
                        Socialist Formation of Man," of
                        topics such as the formation of the
                        "psychological superstructure of man"
                        and of "the basic assumption that intellectual
                        production is determined by
                        the form of material production." He wrote
                        that "A fundamental change of the
                        whole system of these [societal] relationships
                        which man is a part of, will
                        also inevitably lead to a change in
                        consciousness, a change in man’s whole
                        behaviour." He even wrote of Nietzsche and
                        questioned his assumption that
                        the will to power would continue to dominate
                        human relations. By and large,
                        though, his writings let these things pass.

                        Just as at the beginning of T&S Vygotsky
                        writes that of course emotion and
                        communication are intimately linked to
                        thinking and speaking, but that they
                        must fade into the background in his analysis
                        in that book, I read all
                        Vygotsky's texts assuming that politics and
                        power are also in the
                        background, unspoken but not forgotten. Then,
                        to me, it seems that what
                        Vygotsky was doing is similar to what Foucault
                        was doing in his writings on
                        the ethics of self-formation. He is focused on
                        the *formation* of subjects,
                        and of forms of subjectivity, as children grow
                        into adults in whatever kind
                        of distorted social order they happen to be
                        born into. Could he explicitly
                        put it that way? Did he have the space or time
                        to spell out the whole story?
                        Or do we have to do it for him?

                        Bottom line, I don't see that a politics of
                        concepts is in any clear way
                        incompatible with Vygotsky's project, as I
                        grasp it. His 'concrete
                        psychology' of the Moscow tram driver would
                        also be a study of the American
                        professor.

                        Martin


                        On Apr 11, 2011, at 8:52 PM, White, Phillip wrote:

                            ah, the bliss of being hoisted upon one's
                            own petard!  thanks, Martin.
                        (;-)
                            yeah, Foucault's use of concept is constant.

                            what i was obliquely attempting to get at
                            was that the term 'concept'
                        could be seen as highfalutin, rather than,
                        say, the term "big idea".  (hah!
                        of course, my father would rebuke me with,
                        "What's the big idea?!")
                            but what i mean is that concept is another
                            word for idea.  and an idea
                        that appears to be difficult to grasp,
                        abstract in short, could be seen as a
                        'big idea'.
                            it's about lingo, using latinate/greek
                            words, rather than those little
                        ordinary daily words.
                            it even seems to me that when, say, i'm
                            teaching about "community of
                        practice" - i guess we could say that's a
                        pretty big concept, or even
                        "legitimate peripheral participation", that
                        initially it seems abstract, but
                        once everyone in the class talks about it,
                        that over time, with concrete
                        examples from experience, that "community of
                        practice" no longer seems
                        abstract.  in fact, it seems quite real and
                        people can identify it when they
                        observe it, just like they can identify the
                        difference between an ornamental
                        pear tree and a comice pear tree.
                            takes me back to Bateson - that making
                            sense of the world, recognizing
                        the patterns, is recognizing the difference
                        that makes a difference.  and
                        it's that curious difference wherein a child
                        over time can distinguish
                        bertween a cat and a dog and a horse and a
                        donkey, and it's through
                        recognizing the difference that makes a
                        difference.
                            so, while Foucault didn't suggest it, i'm
                            suggesting that one of the ways
                        experts claimed expertise was to employ a
                        vocabulary that would set the
                        profession apart from the everyday world of being.
                            am i being anti-intellectual?

                            because when with my students we been
                            reading Lave, say, and there is
                        always someone who complains about her
                        vocabulary, i always argue in support
                        of her vocabulary.
                            internal contractions.

                            phillip




                            Phillip White, PhD
                            University of Colorado Denver
                            School of Education
                            phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
                            <mailto:phillip.white@ucdenver.edu>
                            ________________________________________
                            From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
                            <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
                            [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
                            <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] On
                        Behalf Of Martin Packer [packer@duq.edu
                        <mailto:packer@duq.edu>]
                            Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 5:38 PM
                            To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
                            Subject: Re: [xmca] concepts

                            But,

                            Phillip,

                            wasn't Foucault's central concern in, say,
                            The Order of Things, to
                        explore the *basis* on which human knowledge,
                        or knowledges, are
                        constituted? In his terms, within a discursive
                        formation there is a
                        dispersion of concepts. An ordering of words
                        is used to order what can be
                        seen in the world. The point was not that
                        there is no such thing as
                        'concept,' but that concepts are not neutral,
                        natural maps of a preexisting
                        and independent reality. For example, he wrote
                        of the "form of positivity"
                        of the sciences - "the concepts around which
                        they are organized, the type of
                        rationality to which they refer and by means
                        of which they seek to
                        constitute themselves as knowledge." To a
                        great extent, his attention to the
                        material practices in which both objects and
                        abstractions are produced was
                        drawn from Marx, so I don't think it is wildly
                        incompatible with Vygotsky's
                        project.
                            Martin

                            On Apr 11, 2011, at 5:36 PM, White,
                            Phillip wrote:

                                though really, i'm more with Jay on
                                this point that there is no such
                        thing as a 'concept' -  i'm thinking that the
                        practice of the word became,
                        what?, let's say 'insitutionalized', or
                        'valorized' during the enlightenment
                        project... that period which Foucault points
                        to of ways of categorization
                        and classifications that emerged as
                        professional experts exercised for
                        themselves the power to label, prescribe,
                        diagnose, etc. etc., as in, for
                        example, the separation of madness and reason.
                                yeah ......

                                another one of my half-baked ideas!

                                phillip




                                Phillip White, PhD
                                University of Colorado Denver
                                School of Education
                                phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
                                <mailto:phillip.white@ucdenver.edu>
                                ________________________________________
                                From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
                                <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
                                [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
                                <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] On
                        Behalf Of mike cole [lchcmike@gmail.com
                        <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>]
                                Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 4:07 PM
                                To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
                                Subject: Re: [xmca] concepts

                                I agree, Monica. Its odd that we make
                                such distinctions and then worry
                        that
                                we do not
                                know what a key term in the discussion
                                (in this case, concept) is
                        supposed
                                to mean (we all find a way to make
                                sense of it for ourselves however!)..

                                Martin and other conceptual knowers.
                                LSV and Luria insisted that words
                        were
                                generalizations. How is that idea of
                                generalization related to the idea
                        of a
                                concept?

                                A con-cept. With-cept? I have no
                                conception!
                                mike

                                On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 1:13 PM,
                                Monica Hansen <
                                monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu
                                <mailto:monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>>
                                wrote:

                                    Martin,

                                    I have enjoyed reading your back
                                    and forth on this topic of concepts.
                                    Examining the concept of concepts
                                    is indeed problematic, but it is the
                        crux
                                    of the whole issue.
                                    Social/individual, internal/external,
                                    physiological/mental,
                                    concrete/abstract, etc.

                                    You ended with this:

                                    "But to sever completely the links
                                    between everyday discourse and
                                    scientific
                                    discourse would be to prevent the
                                    informing of the former by the latter
                                    that
                                    LSV found so important."

                                    I would just like to go one
                                    further: severing the links between
                        everyday
                                    discourse and scientific discourse
                                    would prevent the former(everyday)
                        from
                                    informing the latter(scientific).
                                    There can be no higher psychological
                                    processes, no scientific concepts
                                    without everyday concepts because it
                        is
                                    the specific and local nature of
                                    experience that informs all the others
                                    (and
                                    is informed by the others as
                                    well). It is the dialogic nature of
                        concepts
                                    that makes them so fascinating and
                                    so powerful.


                                    Monica


                                    -----Original Message-----
                                    From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
                                    <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
                                    [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
                                    <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>]
                        On
                                    Behalf Of Martin Packer
                                    Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2011 11:33 AM
                                    To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
                                    Subject: Re: [xmca] concepts


                                    On Apr 10, 2011, at 12:33 PM,
                                    Martin Packer wrote:

                                                Maybe the notion of a
                                                "concept" might be a
                                                bit like that of a "gene"
                        in
                                    the sense that a gene is a sort of
                                    functional unit, but it has no
                        simple
                                    material reality in itself.

                                    Jay's opening sentence neatly
                                    illustrates the difficulty of
                                    eliminating
                                    'concept.' He writes of 'the
                                    notion' of a concept - which is to
                                    say, to
                                    write about concepts he has to
                                    employ a concept, namely that of
                        'concept'!
                                    (If that seems odd, try reading
                                    some Frege!)

                                    As the Stanford Encyclopedia
                                    article points out, no one has
                        satisfactorily
                                    defined a concept. But the seeming
                                    unavoidability of invoking something
                                    like
                                    'concept' follows from the fact
                                    that we humans (and perhaps animals
                        too;
                                    another seemingly intractable
                                    debate) deal not so much with
                        particularities
                                    as with generalities. We talk and
                                    write not about this think and that
                                    thing,
                                    but this 'kind' of thing and that
                                    'type' of thing. We write not about
                        the
                                    specific concept of 'rabbit,' but
                                    about 'the notion' of concept.

                                    As Henry James once wrote, "The
                                    intellectual life of man consists
                        almost
                                    wholly in his substitution of a
                                    conceptual order for the perceptual
                        order
                                    in
                                    which his experience originally
                                    comes." One may disagree with the
                                    separation
                                    of the two order that James' words
                                    seems to suggest, but it seems
                                    implausible to deny that there are
                                    *two* orders.

                                    Do this order of generalities
                                    involve complex interrelations or
                        systems, as
                                    Jay suggests? Are they specified
                                    in practice, in ways that depend on
                                    context? Yes, of course. I am deep
                                    in the middle of chapter 6 of T&S,
                        and
                                    LSV wrote of all this, 70 years
                                    ago. We have already discussed
                                    here his
                                    notion [!] of a system of
                                    generality, represented
                                    metaphorically by
                        lines
                                    of
                                    longitude and latitude on a globe.
                                     He conceived of this system as
                                    operating
                                    in acts of thought that actively
                                    grasp their objects. He saw both the
                                    dependence of generalities on
                                    language, and their distinction.

                                    Should we avoid, as Jay
                                    recommends, claiming that "there
                                    are concepts
                        as
                                    such"?  I'm not sure what this
                                    claim would amount to. There are, and
                        can
                                    only be, "concepts for us." Should
                                    we avoid reifying concepts?
                        Certainly!
                                    Should we remove the term from all
                                    scientific discourse, leaving it
                        only as
                                    an "everyday locution"? That's a
                                    matter of taste, I suppose. But to
                        sever
                                    completely the links between
                                    everyday discourse and scientific
                        discourse
                                    would be to prevent the informing
                                    of the former by the latter that LSV
                                    found
                                    so important.

                                    Martin__________________________________________
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-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
            *Andy Blunden*
            Joint Editor MCA:
            http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
            <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
            Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
            <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
            Book:
            http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
            <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
            MIA: http://www.marxists.org


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-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    *Andy Blunden*
    Joint Editor MCA:
    http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
    <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
    Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
    Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
    <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
    MIA: http://www.marxists.org


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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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