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RE: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?

Andy said:

1. "Vygotsky does explicitly recognise that use of a tool modifies the mental processes and enlarges the child's sphere of activity, but he wants to focus on what he sees as *voluntary* control of the child's own behavior"

2. "A potential concept can be acquired as a system of actions organised around a tool, but it is still only potential. Once the same activity is organised even when the tool is not present, but by means of a true, semiotic representation of the tool, then you have a 'higher psychological function.'"

Why the focus on "*voluntary* control?" Is self-regulation not just an example of a higher psychological function, but really the foundation stone?

Also, putting 1 and 2 together, is the implication that "a true, semiotic representation" always is consciously deployed as part of an intentional process?

David


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:03 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?

Mike, in "Tool and Symbol in Child development," Vygotsky goes on at great length and detail in distinguishing between the changes in the child's functioning associated with the use of tools (e.g. a bicycle) and the use of a sign. (and he includes learning by rote under the heading of tool- not symbol-use) I hesitate to try to summarise this discussion. But he makes a distinction between acquiring the habit of using a tool, and adopting a symbol for use in controlling one's own and others' minds. I think this is the distinction which is /underlying /his elusive distinction between learning and development.

Vygotsky's "clear-cut dualism" has to be understood in terms of its basis and the use he is making of it, i.e., to explain a conceptual distinction in understanding tendencies of developmental processes. 
Ultimately, a dichotomy between tool and sign, or even between tool-use and symbol-use is unsustainable, least of all in our times - one and the same keyboard can be used to control a machine or send a message to the operator. Controlling one's own body has to be counted as tool-use in some circumstances, and symbol-use in others.

Vygotsky does explicitly recognise that use of a tool modifies the mental processes and enlarges the child's sphere of activity, but he wants to focus on what he sees as *voluntary* control of the child's own behaviour, and he does not see learning to use a tool as doing that: you have learnt to ride, but you still need to be on a bicycle to do it, I suppose. It is a bit like the distinction between a "potential concept" 
and a "true concept." A potential concept can be acquired as a system of actions organised around a tool, but it is still only potential. Once the same activity is organised even when the tool is not present, but by means of a true, semiotic representation of the tool, then you have a "higher psychological function."

I don't think there is any easy way of representing Vygotsky's thought here in English and I suspect not in Russian either. He is not saying that there are two types of psychological activities, higher and lower; there are two types of concept, potential and true; there are two types of artefact, semiotic and material, even though this is precisely what he says on numerous occasions. He is talking about opposite tendencies and sources in *processes*, and the language doesn't offer us many means of communicating this other than saying "there are two types of ..." And because the distinctions he is making are brand new and original, he has to really hammer the distinction to the point of a "clear-cut dualism" 
in order to make his point, which is, in my opinion, not really about dualisms at all. I think the same goes for learning and development.

That's my take,
Andy



mike cole wrote:
> Hi David-- Thanks for all the re-minding.
>
> Why does Vygotsky reject bicycle riding (learning a phonetic alphabet 
> to read for meaning too?) as an example of a developmental change? It 
> is a qualitative change in the organization of consituent functions, 
> it reorganizes not only the system of psychological/psychomotor 
> functions, it is mediated by culture, it brings about a simultaneous 
> change in the person's relationship to his/her environment.
>
> Seems to qualify. What's wrong here?
> mike
>
> On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:16 PM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:
>
>   
>>   Greg--
>>
>>
>>
>> The funny thing is that in Korean there is an identical expression: 
>> "halka malka". And in Chinese the yes/no question is essentially 
>> nothing but an elaboration of "willy-nilly".
>>
>>
>>
>> It's hard to imagine that there is NOTHING at the basis of the 
>> legal-juridical model of human action except contractualism, just as 
>> it's hard to imagine that Saussurean linguistics is ONLY based on an 
>> infinite number of curiously non-negotiable agreements about word meanings.
>>
>>
>>
>> It seems to me that there's just a kernel of truth here. In order to 
>> engage in any semiotic behavior at all, you have to recognize that 
>> something is a sign. And in order to recognize that something is a 
>> sign, you have to recognize that it was intended to stand for 
>> something else. And in order to recognize that sometime was intended 
>> to stand for something else, you have to recognize that there is 
>> intelligent life out there after all.
>>
>>
>>
>> I guess if I were looking for a single "a-ha!" moment, a moment where 
>> one can point to a hair and see a beard, that would be it!
>>
>>
>>
>> Mike--
>>
>>
>>
>> "Riding a bicycle" is a perfect example of where our bicycle built 
>> for two meets a fork in the road.
>>
>>
>>
>> Bike riding is actually one of the activities that Vygotsky 
>> explicitly rules out as instances of development (along with typing and playing golf).
>> It is an instance of learning, but not development. So I thought we 
>> ought to reserve the term "microgenesis" for only those types of 
>> learning which in a given social context (that of education) can be 
>> linked to the ontogenesis of mind. And that meant, after the age of 
>> one, those types of learning that are centrally about language.
>>
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately, I think that unreadable book review by me in MCA is 
>> the only written record of our conversation on whether microgenesis 
>> was a kind of learning or learning a kind of microgenesis. It was 
>> mostly over the telephone. I had just discovered Mescheryakov's 
>> brilliant article on Vygotskyan terminology (in the Cambridge 
>> Companion) and I was looking, in my usual little-boy-with-a-toy-hammer mode, for ways to over-extend it:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) Natural functions are acquired before cultural ones, but within 
>> cultural functions...
>>
>> 2) Social functions are acquired before individual ones, but within 
>> individual functions...
>>
>> 3) Extramental functions are acquired before intra-mental functions, 
>> but within intra-mental functions..
>>
>> 4) Spontaneous, everyday functions are acquired before 
>> nonspontaneous, academic ones
>>
>>
>>
>> I thought all of these could be seen as instances of a very general 
>> principle "Outside-in!" so long as we accept "outside" as referring 
>> to the environmental and "inside" as referring to the semiotic. It 
>> could then be differentiated according to:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) The phylogenetic zone of proximal devleopment (caves before 
>> houses, hair before clothes)
>>
>> 2) The sociogenetic zone of proximal development (discourse before 
>> grammar, speech before verbal thinking)
>>
>> 3) The ontogenetic zone of proximal development (egocentric speech 
>> beore inner, finger counting before mental math)
>>
>> 4) The microgenetic zone of proximal development (in 
>> English--Germanic vocabulary before Latinate and Greek, in Korean, 
>> pure Korean words before those of Chinese origin)
>>
>>
>>
>> You pointed out to me that this assumed that microgenesis was a 
>> rather special kind of microgenesis--the kind that linked learning to 
>> ontogenetic development. And you said, correctly, that this was not 
>> the way the term is normally used. You then recommended that I review 
>> this book, and I did. I also wrote an article on the subject (which 
>> was indignantly rejected by MCA but eventually published by the Modern Language Journal).
>>
>>
>>
>> *
>> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01236.x/a
>> bstract 
>> *<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01236.x
>> /abstract>
>>
>>
>>
>> The problem with the microgenesis book I reviewed was that I didn't 
>> really find the discussions of exactly when a person could be said to 
>> have perceived a dot as a man very enlightening, and I found that 
>> some of the studies in the book were of activities that were clearly 
>> not linked to mental development in any way (e.g. murder and suicide).
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course, people do tend to prefer their own inventions, and I found 
>> myself sticking to my own understanding of microgenesis, that is, 
>> that microgenesis should really be reserved for the kind of learning 
>> that leads to ontogenesis, just as iin Vygotsky the ontogenesis of 
>> mind is really reserved for the kind of growth that culminates in 
>> sociogenesis or socio-re-genesis rather than simply growth in general 
>> (and, of course, sociogenesis should be reserved for forms of culture 
>> which increase man's mastery of his environment as well as of that 
>> part of the environment which is his own behavior).
>>
>>
>>
>> Now, I know that this is the kind of selective and directed 
>> developmental view which many people on the list reject. I have been 
>> thinking a bit about why this is so, since it seems to be at the 
>> bottom of my inability to integrate my own thinking with that of 
>> people to whom I otherwise feel a very strong intellectual affinity 
>> (e.g. you and Martin). It seems to me that, since the 2008 collapse 
>> in particular, there has been a strong tendency amongst Western 
>> intellectuals to REVERSE the millenium old assumption that we had 
>> about nature and nurture, according to which if something is natural 
>> there is nothing to be done, but if something is "socially 
>> constructed" then it can be easily deconstructed and re-constructed. 
>> Since 2008, we have had almost the reverse prejudice: if something is 
>> natural, it may easily be altered; our tragedy is that we cannot seem to change our own behavior.
>>
>>
>>
>> Needless to say, there is a great deal of truth in this insight; I 
>> think it is one of the great insights of our time. The problem is 
>> that I seem to be stuck in an earlier time, when the semiotic 
>> behavior of Chinese people was very  far in advance of their ability 
>> to control the environment, and mass literacy simply meant that large 
>> quantities of materials which might otherwise have been usefully 
>> employed as toilet paper, could now only be read, simply because in order to shit you have to be able to eat.
>>
>>
>>
>> (My mother-in-law, who survived the famine, still thinks of food as 
>> the only real private property, and then only when it has actually 
>> been eaten.)
>>
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>>
>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> <kellogg59@hanmail.net>
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts

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