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Andy Steve Gabosch wrote:
Andy, I am curious what you are actually disagreeing with in David's comments, or in Vygotsky's analysis of tools and signs. In Vol 4 p 60-63 Vygotsky discusses both "points of contiguity" between the use of tools and signs, as well as "points of divergence." Except for leaving out the aspect of mastering nature along with mastering self and culture, as far as I can tell, Vygotsky would not disagree with your general point about artifacts - as far as it goes. Vygotsky touches on the psychological connections between the two kinds of activity, which, taken together, form what he labeled the higher mental functions, or higher behavior. However, and this is the point I see David elaborating, and which I am curious what you object to, according to Vygotsky, the use of tools and signs fulfill significantly different **functions** in human activity and development. To mention another thought-provoking statement in these passages, which I noticed the other day when rereading some of this material, while the use of tools and signs are both significant forms of mediational activity, Vygotsky points out that they do not exhaust "the *whole* range of the concept of mediating activities, since the activity of the mind is not exhausted by the use of tools and signs." p 62. Anyway, my question is, if we do not differentiate tools and signs as mediating devices with fundamentally different functions, and instead permit ourselves to "dissolve" them into "the general concept of artifacts or artificial devices" p 61, which LSV criticizes Dewey and others for doing, aren't we going to miss out on some key aspects of Vygotsky's emphasis on the specific role of signs and signification in human psychology?- Steve On Mar 10, 2011, at 11:24 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:Personally, David, I think Vygotsky was mistaken in making this dichotomous division between tools and signs. If instead, we take tool and sign to be archetypes of artefact, and understand that all artefacts are directed both towards mastery of the self and mastery of the culture, just two properties of any artefact, manifested when an artefact is mediated between a person and the existant culture, then I think it makes more sense.Andy David Kellogg wrote:In "Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child" that sign development is not at all the same as tool development because in the latter instance the object of mastery is the environment and in the former it is the self. I think that ontogenesis is only a special case of a much larger regularity: In tool development, the form of the tool follows the function of the tool quite closely. This is to a MUCH lesser extent true in the development of signs. In some ways, it's just the opposite: for example, functional words (articles, prepositions, modal verbs) change much more slowly than those associated with style (e.g. slang expressions, politeness forms) There's a very interesting article on the evolution of Polynesian by Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (yes, the Population Bomb fellow) in an old PNAS which uses a comparison of rates of change in functional modifications and stylistic modifications in Polynesian canoes. Rogers and Ehrlich argue that words that are related to to the "environment" change very slowly, while functors change much more quickly.http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+htmlDoesn't this ENTIRELY depend on whether we are talking about a material or a social environment?David Kellogg Seoul National University of EducationIn "Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child" that sign development is not at all the same as tool development because in the latter instance the object of mastery is the environment and in the former it is the self. I think that ontogenesis is only a special case of a much larger regularity: In tool development, the form of the tool follows the function of the tool quite closely. This is to a MUCH lesser extent true in the development of signs. In some ways, it's just the opposite: for example, functional words (articles, prepositions, modal verbs) change much more slowly than those associated with style (e.g. slang expressions, politeness forms) There's a very interesting article on the evolution of Polynesian by Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (yes, the Population Bomb fellow) in an old PNAS which uses a comparison of rates of change in functional modifications and stylistic modifications in Polynesian canoes. Rogers and Ehrlich argue that words that are related to to the "environment" change very slowly, while functors change much more quickly.http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+htmlDoesn't this ENTIRELY depend on whether we are talking about a material or a social environment?David Kellogg Seoul National University of Education __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden*Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857 MIA: http://www.marxists.org __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca__________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden*Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857 MIA: http://www.marxists.org __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca