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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