Re: [xmca] Culture & Rationality

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Hi Larry,

Good questions - the first is one of the main motivations for me trying to figure out the details of LSV's argument. One starts to wonder, how specific is this to cultures in which there is schooling? Would some other kind of deliberate instruction be equally effective? What about cultural circumstances in which no deliberate instruction by adults take place (Peter F. brought this up)?

And then, what counts as a scientific concept? Can different cultures have different kinds of scientific concepts, equally adequate to grasping the necessities of reality? Could the Chinese - to go back to Nisbett's work for a moment - have concepts that are different from those in the West, but that are equally scientific? (It's odd, come to think of that, that LSV never wrote - to my knowledge - of Oriental culture, given that the Soviet Union stretched all the way to the East.)

And then your second question comes to mind. We tend to think of scientific inquiry as an unfinished process; perhaps as one that never finishes. But if so, in what sense do current scientific concepts grasp necessities? And could the process that LSV is describing continue, to achieve higher forms of consciousness and higher kinds of knowledge? Or does the history of ontogenesis have an endpoint?

But I think to be able to take a shot at answering these questions we need to get clearer on the details of the argument. I'm still not clear on how the 'intellectualizing' takes place in adolescence. Or how teaching writing contributes over and above teaching scientific concepts. And much more!

Martin

On Jun 30, 2012, at 5:59 PM, Larry Purss wrote:

> QUESTION:
> Is THIS hierarchical movement of developing  scientific concepts as
> conscious awareness a universal human potential or is this form of
> conscious awareness  a historically and culturally situated phenomena?
> QUESTION:
> If awareness is a reflective phenomena of making what was implicit more
> explicit and more volitional [and therefore higher] is there a
> universal human potential to *see through* or *unveil* [NOT reveal] the
> implicit historical formation of earlier forms of consciousness, including
> scientific consciousness? 

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