Re: [xmca] Culture & Rationality

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

The work of Douglas Medin and colleagues appears relevant here, as well as
work on ecological systems thinking by others.
One entry point is the following:

http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/medin/documents/MedinWaxmanetalHuman-centeredness.pdf


mike

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> 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. Š 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 ... jen
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> Hi 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.edu
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Thank 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
> >>>
> >>> __________________________________________
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> >
> > --
> > ______________________________
> >
> > 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
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