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 ... 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/
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