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These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes, and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving. Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards. If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site, please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
- Steve PS I changed the subject line and snipped out other topics. On May 11, 2011, at 5:52 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
Steve:We need a distinction here, and I think it is equivalent to the omnirelevant distinction Vygotsky makes between higher, culturally mediated, and lower, biologically endowed, psychological functions.Martin says (and I agree) that SOME forms of practical thinking are purely sensorimotor: always have been and always will be. I think that is true, but that when we examine those functions we find that they are utterly uninteresting to historico-cultural psychology except insofar as they form the basis for higher, culturally mediated functions.I guess I would include the "jump" you create when you fire a gun next to somebody's ear (they jump before realizing that it is a gun), the sickly feeling you get when you look down from a very tall building or come around a trail bend and see a coiled snake, and eidetic memories (the "after vision" you see when you shut your eyes after looking at a bright light).I think that if these were all there were to psychology, historico- cultural pscyhology would be a bizarre branch of philosophy, or an obscure literary practice, and the reactologists would have been right after all. There is, however, a second kind of practical thinking which is functionally similar, looks structurally similar, but is genetically utterly different and therefore, in the final analysis (e.g. under conditions of pathological degeneration as in old people with Alzheimer's) it is also structurally different.These are the hand-to-eye "reflexes" we see in driving, in computer games, in piano playing, and in a wide range of societal practices that are manifestly symbolic manipulations. They are semiotically consequential for other people (not just for the biological organism).But they do appear for all the world like "automatic" reflexes (a term that I think Vygotsky would avoid, except for metaphorical usages), actions into which consciousness does not (any longer) appear to enter. These are the actions I would like to call "post- verbal" or "de-verbal" thinking rather than "pre-verbal" or "non- verbal" thinking.Vygotsky's example is tying a knot. It's not that this is unconscious (you are not asleep when you tie your shoes, and you are not even in a trance). It is that it is largely non-conscious, because your attention is focused on the result of the action and not on the activity itself. You can, if you wish, focus on the activity, and in this sense it is structurally quite different from what happens when I unexpectedly fire a gun next to your ear.You cannot, no matter how hard you try, focus on the jump that you involuntarily make when you hear an unexpected gunshot. The same is true of the other examples as long as they are unexpected, although of course people can and do culturally mediate their vertigo and deliberately train for eidetic memory, after which we can no longer call it a lower psychological function.I think that all kinds of history, including ontogeny, know instances of what in phylogenesis is called convergent evolution. The wings of birds, insects and airplanes are functionally and even structurally similar, but they are only externally related; that is, related because of their very different adaptation to the functional needs and to the environment. I think that pre-verbal and post- verbal "automatism" has the same type of resemblance: a phenotypical rather than a genotypical one.
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David Kellogg Seoul National University of Education . --- On Wed, 5/11/11, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote: From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> Date: Wednesday, May 11, 2011, 3:28 AM David,
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Question: is what you are referring to as "practical intellect" and "post-verbal" behavior equivalent to what Vygotsky refers to as automatic behavior or activity, such as in his discussion of Claparede's law, v1 p 183? "This law states that difficulties or impediments encountered in automatic activity lead to conscious reflection on that activity." p 70 (Vygotsky seems to accept this law, but only as a functional law - his criticism is that it only indicates whether the need for conscious awareness is present or absent in an individual, not how conscious awareness itself emerges. v1 p183)A classic example of automatic activity versus behavior guided by conscious awareness is of course comparing the driver who is used to changing gears with a stick shift to someone just learning how to do that. The coordination of the gear shift with the clutch eventually becomes habitual and only rises to consciousness when there is a problem for the first driver, but initially requires constant attention from the second one.- Steve On May 10, 2011, at 5:16 PM, David Kellogg wrote:Steve:One of the things we did when we translated T&S into Korean was to carefully compare every single paragraph with the Minick translation into English. We found quite a few differences. Here's the original Vygotsky:Отношение мышления и речи в этом случае можно было бы схематически обозначить двумя пересекающимися окружностями, которые показали бы, что известная часть процессов речи и мышления совпадает. Это . так называемая сфера ≪речевого мышления≫. Но это речевое мышление не исчерпывает ни всех форм мысли, ни всех форм речи. Есть большая область мышления, которая не будет иметь непосредственного отношения к речевому мышлению. Сюда следует отнести раньше всего, как уже указывал Бюлер, инструментальное и техническое мышление и вообще всю область так называемого практического интеллекта, который только в последнее время становится предметом усиленных исследований.Here's an English translation, with some of the differences with Minick in parentheses:"(It would be possible to) schematically designate the relation of thinking and speech (in this case) by two intersecting circles, (which would show that a certain part) of the processes of speech and thinking do coincide. (Here is the so-called sphere of “verbal thinking”. But) this verbal thinking exhausts neither all the forms of thought nor all the forms of speech. There is the large area of thinking, which will not have direct relation to the vocal thinking. (Here one should relate first of all as already indicated Bühler, instrumental and technical thinking and generally the entire region of so-called the practical intellect, which only recently becomes the object of those intensified studies.)"Now, Minick dislikes Vygotsky's tendency to say the same thing three times, and like Hanfmann and Vakar he often prunes in the hope of producing a stronger and clearer image. Martin doesn't like Vygotsky's love of striking, and often spatial, images (and I certainly agree with Martin that they ARE dangerous sometimes, as in the idea of four "planes" that so struck you, Professor Mack, and Colin, which I think is a complete misunderstanding).I like both, and I think they are related. I think that we are supposed to take both with a block of salt, the way a cow does. I think that we take Vygotsky's slightly different redundancies and his not quite overlapping images not as Galton photographs (where similarities reinforce each other and differences obscure) but as frames in a moving picture, verbal approximations of something that is changing as we speak.So here we have the image of two intersecting circles. Vygotsky says it's only one of several ways to imagine this (and in fact he has already described it as the intersection of two lines, as a tangled skein, as two "currents" that flow into each other, etc. So it is right and proper to begin with "It might be possible" or "it may be possible" or "it would be possible" which is what Vygotsky really does.He's talking about speech functions in ADULTS, which is why he says "in this case". Think of an adult driving a car. This is an almost perfect example of practical, mechanical intellect. Vygotsky is surely right to suggest that it has no DIRECT relationship to verbal thinking; if you describe what you are doing while you are driving, you are probably going to have an accident.But it's not at all like PRE-verbal nonverbal thinking, is it? We can see this in a number of ways. First of all, we find conversation a little burdensome when we are driving unless it is actually connected with the driving task (e.g. a GPS). This suggests positive and negative interference, doesn't it? Secondly, we do LEARN to drive in a verbal way, from instructions, instructors, and ultimately verbal tests. So perhaps we should say that structurally, genetically, yea, even functionally, driving is POST-verbal or DE-verbal rather than PRE-verbal. And this DOES suggest an INDIRECT relationship to verbal thinking.Here's some other stuff, earlier in the chapter, worth looking at in this context:Так, Бюлер со всей справедливостью говорит: ≪Действия шимпанзе совершенно независимы от речи, и в позднейшей жизни человека техническое, инструментальное мышление (Werkzeugdenken) гораздо менее связано с речью и понятиями, чем другие формы мышления≫ (13, с. 100). Дальше мы должны будем еще возвратиться к этому указанию Бюлера. Мы увидим, что действительно все, чем мы располагаем по этому вопросу из области экспериментальных исследований и клинических наблюдений, говорит за то, что в мышлении взрослого человека отношениеинтеллектаи речи не является постоянным и одинаковым для всех функций, для всех форм интеллектуальной и речевой деятельности.So Bühler, (with entire validity), says “The (performances) of the chimpanzee are completely independent from speech, and (in the later life of man) technical, instrument thinking (Werkzeugdenken) is much less connected with speech and with concepts, than other forms of thnking” (13, p. 100). Further on we must again return to this indication of Bühler’s. (We will see), that actually everything that we now have available on this question from the areas of experimental studies and clinical observations (will confirm as a point of fact) that in the thinking of the adult person the relation of intellect and speech is neither constant nor identical (for all functions) and all forms of intellectual and verbal activity."Again, we can easily imagine that the practical, instantaneous problem solving behavior we see in an adult human repairing a car was originally learnt from a repair manual, or from another more expert repairman; in other words, at one point the adult human’s thinking was virtually identical with written or oral speech and proceeded step by step alongside it.Finally, take a look at "Tool and Sign in Child Development", Steve (Volume Six). In the first chapter, first section, paragraph 11-12, Vygotsky and Luria go over this same ground. But this time they make an invidious comparison between Kohler, who really tries to show how human the chimp is, and Buhler, who is trying to show how chimplike the human is. And they draw attention PRECISELY to the MISTAKE of assuming that practical intelligence in later life is language free. Here's what they've got.Эта тенденция остается неизменной и у всех дальнейших исследователей, за небольшими исключениями. В ней наиболее ярко выражена та упомянутая опасность зоологизирования детской психологии, которая, как уже сказано, является господствующей чертой всех исследований в этой области. Однако в исследовании Бюлера эта опасность представлена в наименее серьезном виде. Бюлер имеет дело с ребенком до развития речи, и в этом отношении основные условия, необходимые для оправдания психологической параллели между шимпанзе и ребенком, могут быть соблюдены. Правда, Бюлер сам недооценивает значение сходства основных условий, говоря, что действия шимпанзе совершенно независимы от речи и в позднейшей жизни человека техническое, инструментальное мышление в гораздо меньшей степени связано с речью и понятиями, чем другие формы мышления."This tendency, with a few exceptions, remains unchanged in the work of all following investigators. It is here that the danger of what might be called the ‘animalization’ of child psychology, mentioned earlier, finds its clearest expression as the prevalent feature of investigation in this field (see earlier reference). However, this danger is at its smallest in Bühler’s experiments. Bühler deals with the pre-speech period of the child, which makes it possible to fulfill the basic conditions necessary to justify the psychological parallel between chimpanzee and child. It is true that Bühler underestimates the importance of the similarities of these basic conditions when he states : ‘The chimpanzee’s activities are totally independent of speech, and in man’s later period of life technical, instrumental thinking is much less connected to speech and concepts than other forms of thought’,”David Kellogg Seoul National University of Education
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