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Thanks for you summary of Ch 4, which is where I am especially puzzled about some things.
Some questions I am pondering: 1) .... What are the four moments you are referring to in Ch 2 ...2) .... When Vygotsky talks about "what is commonly called practical intellect" v1 p 115 as being included in the "large range of thinking that has no direct relationship to verbal thinking," what are your thoughts on how Vygotsky might have responded to the following question:
a) Is this the same kind of mental operation or "practical intellect" that humans share with the higher animals? If it is, then
b) doesn't human labor require more than just practical intellect, since human social production requires more than what Vygotsky considered animal social communication?
I may have my wires crossed somewhere in there.Vygotsky himself of course makes part of this point on p 48 when he says "Human speech ... [is] ... a system that emerged with the need to interact socially in the labor process."
So my question, asked a different way, is exactly what kind of thinking is Vygotsky referring to - and not referring to - when he says "There is a large range of thinking that has no direct relationship to verbal thinking. In this category, we could include the instrumental and technical thinking that has been described by Buhler and what is commonly called practical intellect." v1 p 115
3) .... Prior to those sentences is Vygotsky's description of the convergence of thinking and speech as two circles intersecting.
I have question about that diagram - do I have his scheme right - verbal thinking occupies the intersecting area, and pre-intellectual speech is represented by the remaining area of one of the circles, and pre-speech thought is represented by the remaining area of the other ... v1, page 115. Is that what Vygotsky meant?
4) .... If that is what Vygotsky intended, where do non-verbal sign- mediated forms of communication fit onto that diagram? I am referring to non-verbal, sign-mediated forms of communication such as music, diagrams, etc.
5) .... On the Capuchin monkeys and other marvelous examples of animal intellect and intra- and inter-species cultural exchange - there seems little room for doubt that Kohler and Vygotsky's explanations about the limitations of animal tool-use are way out of date and need serious revising. These aspects have actually been out of date for some decades now.
My fifth penny for your thoughts, Martin, and anyone's: while they certainly change what we know about animal **tool** use, including the use of planned operations, what reasons might these discoveries give Vygotsky, or someone following his line of reasoning, to dispute what LSV said about **sign** systems?
For example, when Vygotsky says:"... social interaction mediated by anything other than speech or another sign system -- social interaction of the kind that occurs frequently in non-human animals for example -- is extremely primitive and limited." v1 p 48
and, when discussing Kohler's research with chimps, LSV says:[Human] "Speech requires another type of intellectual operation, *not one of the type or degree* that is present in the chimpanzee. Nothing that we know of the chimpanzee's behavior indicates the presence of this type of operation." v1 p 107
.... is there now new information that indicates that any animals **in the wild** besides hominids have developed and use what Vygotsky would have called a "sign system?"
6) .... And related to that - oops, I'm up to six pennies now, will stop here - do you or anyone view our experiences with Washoe, and now Koko - (thanks to all for the recent video links, some of it was new to me) - not to mention swearing parrots and the millions and millions of pets, and trained and domesticated animals that have been highly integrated in human society for many years now - in your opinion, do these remarkable animals - and their amazing trainers and caregivers - give us **new reasons** to dispute (or agree) with Vygotsky's essential differentiation between animal and human communication?
- Steve On May 10, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
Steve,I'll throw in my 2 cents here... In chapter 4 LSV traces the phylogenetic roots of both thinking and speaking, albeit in the somewhat indirect way of turning to studies of primates and other animals. (The direct route would be the study of hominids, which is still not easy to do - though the recent work on the evolution of language from a single source in Africa around 60,000 years ago is a fascinating step in that direction.)His conclusion is that there is evidence in animals both of a practical, instrumental kind of problem solving that goes beyond mere trial-&-error, and a kind of communication using sounds and gestures. But chimps, for example, show no evidence of "ideation," which he defines as the capacity to operate on the basis of non- actual or absent stimuli. (Had he seen, though Richard Attenborough's videos of Capuchin moneys drying pine nuts for a week and then skillfully using huge stones which they transport considerable distance to crack them? I think not.) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3udzhDvsG-s >And animal communication, he argues, is primarily that of emotional reaction, and the sounds made do not function as signs. (There is considerable debate over this issue today, too.)Then, in the same chapter, he returns to ontogenesis and argues that in the young child too there is speech that is not yet intellectual, and thinking that is not yet verbal. Stern had claimed that child language has three roots, a tendency to express feelings, a tendency to communicate with others, and an "intentional" tendency, that is to say, an ability to represent objects on the world, which is unique to humans and cannot be found in any animal. LSV had rejected this explanation as empty, presuming what it needed to explain - the capacity for semiosis. His explanation of this capacity is that it is the consequence of the meeting and interaction of the two lines of development. He reviews his own research on inner speech, introduced in chapter 2, to describe the four moments of this meeting. It is still possible for an adult to have speech without thinking, or thought without speaking. But LSV's principle interest in T&S is the interaction of the two lines that leads to verbal thinking.Martin On May 9, 2011, at 5:10 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:David,Thanks for your always intriguing comments, such as the ones from a couple days ago, copied below.I've been needing some help understanding the last statement in the following paragraph from Vol 1, p 115, the Minick translation. It relates directly to your comments (and also a question Jay asked a couple weeks ago, if I remember), about practical activity and verbal thinking.The meaning of the final sentence puzzles me:"Moving now from the issue of the genesis of inner speech to the issue of how it functions in the adult, the first question we encounter is one that we have addressed earlier in connection with issues of phylogenesis and ontogenesis: Are thinking and speech necessarily connected in the adult's behavior" That is, can the two processes be identified with one another? All that we know that is relevant to this issue forces us to answer this question in the negative. The relationship of thinking and speech in this context can be schematically represented by two intersecting circles. Only a limited portion of the process of speech and thinking coincide in what is commonly called verbal thinking. Verbal thinking does not exhaust all the forms of thought nor does it exhaust all the forms of speech. There is a large range of thinking that has no direct relationship to verbal thinking. In this category, we could include the instrumental and technical thinking that has been described by Buhler and what is commonly called practical intellect."According to the last sentence, Vygotsky appears to have included "the instrumental and technical thinking that has been described by Buhler and what is commonly called practical intellect" into the category of non-verbal thinking.Could you or someone help me understand this statement? - Steve
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