These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards.
If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site,
please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards.
If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site,
please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
Okay, now I'm intrigued, Andy. I've read through one of Peter F.'s posts, his post to clarify that he's not just focusing on verbal/non-verbal, but as his area of study is private speech, that's the angle he takes. I'm paraphrasing, Peter, apologies. And I knew this was probably the case when I wrote my post. I'm just mindful of how much easier this dialogue could be face to face, or even on Skype, the words on email gain so much strength from being words, in sentences, with punctuation, and we don't have the benefit of context and tone and gesture and all the things we learn from hearing and seeing each other. I think email is amazing for some things, but what is lost is the "benefit of the doubt" that we would likely extend to a conversation partner if we were talking over a coffee that results from all the quick references, half finished sentences, and gaps filled by others that provide a much bigger picture for the views presented than is ever available in a quick, short, in comparison, email.Still catching up, but looking forward to future conversations in person on this very set of topics.Best - jenThanks Jen. I will have to abstain from xmca for a while as the intolerance for my views (and those of Vygotsky as it happens) I find very depressing. But I'll get over it I am sure. Your message cheers me up no end.andy Jennifer Vadeboncoeur wrote:Got this, Andy, now even more reason to jump into your book, it's on the list!! Thanks - jenOh, and also, when Vygotsky uses "scientific concepts" as the archetype for a true concept, remember that he *does not* use the concepts of *natural* science, as Piaget did, but the concepts of Marxist social theory. So, when we are considering Vygotsky's ideas about "scientific concepts" it is probably useful to *not* have in mind concepts like those of physics which Piaget, not Vygotsky, took as ideal types.Andy Andy Blunden wrote:Stephen Toulmin, in "The Philosophy of Science. An Introduction" (1953) I thought definitively proved that the method of reasoning of science is not formal logic, or what Toulmin called "syllogistic" inference. For example, on p.33: "Certainly none of the substantial inferences that one comes across in the phsyical sciences is of a syllogistic type. This is because, in the physical sciences, we are not seriously interested in enumerating the common properties of sets of objects." In other words, the concepts of the physical sciences are not pseudoconcepts, therefore we can't use formal logic to makes inferences about them. Brandom uses the idea of "formal" and "material" inference to make the distinction.So scientific, and in fact all true, concepts imply going past formal logic, which only works with pseudoconcepts.Andy Jennifer Vadeboncoeur wrote:Yes, exactly Martin, this work is consistent. I do think Vygotsky privileges dialectical logic over formal logic; by definition, it subsumes formal logic and moves beyond it. From my cultural position, growing up comfortably with formal logic and having to practice thinking dialectically, the above statement doesn't bother me. But I would take a different position relative to an Indigenous perspective, and be much more circumspect about saying that dialectical logic can or should be privileged there. The difference in the two positions is one of power. In the first, it seems that a marginalized position (Marx's in North America) works to challenge a privileged position (formal logic in North America). In the second, privileging a dialectical perspective seems like another act of colonization.If we look equally across these three positions, which is problematic because the is no single homogenous Indigenous perspective, but let's say for this one exercise, then it seems like we are comparing three different cultural, historical perspectives on reasoning, right and logical, or rational,behavior.The question remains to the effects of these different ways of thinking, but for the people thinking within these systems, what is the evidence to show that they cannot think at the adult level of their cultural form of rationality? Yikes, now that I've written this, I'm not even sure it's the question. Is the issue when we try to compare the standards of one cultural group to another?I'll jump to Peter's post, because I totally appreciate what he has written there as well. I appreciate the idea of separating dialogical thinking from scientific ... but I also think of Vera John-Steiner's cognitive pluralism, and want to reaffirm all the other ways of thinking and experiencing the world through image, sound, diagram. These are sometimes more obvious to draw on in some Indigenous cultures, but the move also shifts the discussion from speech to writing, whether we are writing lines, or diagrams, or words.I was looking back over my sad copy of Luria & Vygotsky (1992), the bottom of page 41 through pages 61 are interesting to this topic because they show how much Vygotsky struggled with the necessity of using the work of others and at the same time trying not to be bound by it. He relies on the work of Levy-Bruhl and takes up his language "so-called 'primitive peoples'" and then tries to problematize this a bit. "Primitive man, in the true sense of the term, does not exist anywhere at the present time," but then of course he continues to use this language. He argues against any biological type, discusses "objectively logical thinking" in relation to nature, and goes on to say .... hm, hm, okay, page 59, the focus is on the development of writing, and the transition from natural to cultural memory, and later the historical development of human memory. The ability of sign systems to enable an external form of memory, an external storage of memory.What is different about people with access to the accumulation of cultural knowledge of any particular culture and people of that same culture who do not have access to this accumulated knowledge? In some cultures this may be scientific concepts, as defined by Vygotsky, in other cultures it may be ....?But I keep returning to my post a bit ago, the quote there makes it clear that Vygotsky realizes that even after formal schooling, many people do not think with scientific concepts, and adults do not think with scientific concepts across all domains ... this has been supported by contemporary work, from Panofsky, John-Steiner, & Blackwell (1990) to Howard Gardner's work with Project Zero.Vygotsky's goal of thinking in scientific concepts is actually not accessible to many people within our own cultures ....Okay, have I completely gone overboard? :)Hi Jennifer,Yes, there has been interesting work recently proposing that indigenous cultures are using a distinct kind of reasoning. These guys:Berkes, F., & Berkes, M. K. (2009). Ecological complexity, fuzzy logic, and holism in indigenous knowledge. Futures, 41(1), 6-12. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2008.07.003...suggest that indigenous peoples have learned to deal with complexity, and to manage natural environments rather than master them; that what has been dismissed as animism is actually a sophisticated non-dualistic ontology; and that a holistic systems thinking is being used. I like several aspects of their analysis, not least that it explains the "simple number system" - one, two, many - that has been found in many indigenous cultures, as due to an approach in which people read and interpret signals from the environment rather than counting and measuring it.And I agree with you that judgments of rationality are often violent impositions; all the judgments of people as 'primitive' are presumably of this kind. Presumably what we need are non-violent ways to look at difference.As for dialectical logic, it take it that LSV believed that this was the form of rationality he was employing, and the ontogenesis of which he was describing. And that he considered it superior to formal logic, not an alternative.Martin On Jun 27, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Jennifer Vadeboncoeur wrote:Hi Martin, I am thinking about what you wrote,"On the contrary, it seems to me that much of LSV's writing can be read as pointing to the conclusion that *standards* of rationality will vary from one culture another. But I don't think he followed his own pointers, and, as I've said above, it is a pretty radical conclusion to come to."I was first thinking about different standards of rationality as noted in the quote below, between formal and dialectical logic. Both are tied to "Western" countries, through dialectical thinking can also be tied to "Eastern" countries, so maybe the issue is one of "industrialized" countries?"A child who has mastered the higher forms of thinking, a child who has mastered concepts, does not part with the more elementary forms of thinking. In quantitative terms, these more elementary forms continue to predominate in many domains of experience for a long time. As we noted earlier, even adults often fail to think in concepts. S When applied to the domain of life experience, even the concepts of the adult and adolescent frequently fail to rise higher than the level of the pseudoconcept. They may possess all the features of the concepts from the perspective of formal logic, but from the perspective of dialectical logic they are nothing more than general representations, nothing more than complexes." (emphasis added, Vygotsky, 1987, p. 160)>But the issue in your quote has surfaced several times as well in my work with Indigenous students and scholars, and we have ended in the place noted in your quote above. Particular examples include the complexity and unity of some Indigenous cosmological systems, their symbolic representation through the medicine wheel, for example, and the narratives, signs, gestures, practices, writings that accompany these cosmological systems.Can this be considered another cultural form of rationality (seems dialectical in a sense as well ...)?I know this is different from the question you posed in the follow up email, but isn't "demonstrably weaker" a matter of cultural, historical, political, economic positioning ... assessed by a particular dominant group at a particular time on the basis of their own potentially culturally irrelevant assessments?Is part of your question also asking for a standard that exists outside of culture?Just thoughts here ... jenHi Peter,I am glad to see you join in the discussion, since I know you've done interesting research on inner speech.I am certainly willing to grant that patterns of social interaction will become patterns of self-regulation and thereby parts of patterns of individual thinking. It also makes sense to me, and in my opinion LSV clearly states the view, that the higher psychological processes are cultural processes. I think he goes so far as to say that reasoning is cultural.>>But, importantly, that is not the same as saying that reasoning *varies* across cultures. We *all* live in culture, and one can say that reasoning is cultural and still maintain that reasoning is universal. Are we willing to take another step, and suggest that in specific cultures the ways that people reason will be different, because the specific conventions of each culture are involved? That is a big step to take, because the rules of logic, to pick what is usually taken to be one component of reasoning, are usually considered to hold regardless of local conventions.One way to take this step, of course, is to say that people in cultures reason in different ways but then to add an evaluative dimension. Those people in that culture reason differently from the way we do, but that is because their reasoning is less adequate than ours. They are more childlike, more primitive. *This* move has often been made, and I can find many passages in LSV's texts where he seems to be saying basically this. That's not a move I find interesting or appealing, and it's not what I am proposing.On the contrary, it seems to me that much of LSV's writing can be read as pointing to the conclusion that *standards* of rationality will vary from one culture another. But I don't think he followed his own pointers, and, as I've said above, it is a pretty radical conclusion to come to.Martin On Jun 27, 2012, at 9:33 AM, Peter Feigenbaum wrote:Martin--If you grant that interpersonal speech communication is essentially a cultural invention, and that private and inner speech--as derivatives of interpersonal speech communication--are also cultural inventions, then Vygotsky's assertions about inner speech as a tool that adults use voluntarily to conduct and direct such crucial psychological activities as analyzing, reflecting, conceptualizing, regulating, monitoring, simulating, rehearsing (actually, some of these activities were not specifically asserted by Vygotsky, but instead have been discovered in experiments with private speech) would imply that these "higher mental processes" are themselves cultural products. Even if the *contents* of inner speech thinking happen to bear no discernible cultural imprint, the process of production nonetheless does.Of course, you may not agree that interpersonal speech communication is a cultural invention. But if you do go along with the idea that every speech community follows (albeit implicitly) their own particular conventions or customs for: assigning specific speech sounds to specific meanings (i.e., inventing words); organizing words into sequences (i.e., inventing grammar--Chomsky's claims not withstanding); and sequencing utterances in conversation according to rules of appropriateness (i.e., inventing rules that regulate "what kinds of things to say, in what message forms, to what kinds of people, in what kinds of situations", according to the cross-cultural work of E. O. Frake), then reasoning based on the use of speech must be cultural as well.>>>My guess is that you are looking for evidence that cultures reason differently. While there may be evidence for such a claim, I only want to point out that the tools for reasoning are themselves manufactured by human culture.Peter Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D. Associate Director of Institutional Research Fordham University Thebaud Hall-202 Bronx, NY 10458 Phone: (718) 817-2243 Fax: (718) 817-3203 e-mail: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> Date: 06/26/2012 05:06 PM Subject: [xmca] Culture & Rationality Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.eduThank you for the suggestions that people have made about evidence that supports the claim that culture is constitutive of psychological functions. Keep sending them in, please! Now I want to introduce a new, but related, thread. A few days ago I gave Peter a hard time because he wrote that "higher mental processes are those specific to a culture, and thus those that embody cultural concepts so that they guide activity.">>>I responded that I don't think that LSV ever wrote this - his view seems to me to have been that it is scientific concepts that make possible the higher psychological functions (through at time he seems to suggest the opposite).My questions now are these:1. Am I wrong? Did LSV suggest that higher mental processes are specific to a culture and based on cultural concepts?2. If LSV didn't suggest this, who has? Not counting Peter! :)3. Do we have empirical evidence to support such a suggestion? It seems to me to boil down, or add up, to the claim that human rationality, human reasoning, varies culturally. (Except who knows what rationality is? - it turns out that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not have an entry for Rationality; apparently they are still making up their minds.)that's all, folks Martin __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca __________________________________________> _____xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca__________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ______________________________ Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur, Ph.D. Associate Professor The University of British Columbia Faculty of Education 2125 Main Mall Library Block 272B Vancouver BC V6T-1Z4 http://leap-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/ phone: 1.604.822.9099 fax: 1.604.822.3302 __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca__________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1 Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1 Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts-- ______________________________ Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur, Ph.D. Associate Professor The University of British Columbia Faculty of Education 2125 Main Mall Library Block 272B Vancouver BC V6T-1Z4 http://leap-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/ phone: 1.604.822.9099 fax: 1.604.822.3302
-- ______________________________ Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur, Ph.D. Associate Professor The University of British Columbia Faculty of Education 2125 Main Mall Library Block 272B Vancouver BC V6T-1Z4 http://leap-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/ phone: 1.604.822.9099 fax: 1.604.822.3302 __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca