class notes - can't discourse about thought without language --
Perner -referent representation in world
direction - how are we referring - represent something in mind/ text?
not using sign and tool simultaneously - depends on function in language
activity is a process - role of language fitting within activity - depends on function - can easily become switched - utterance can be tools or signs
cultural artifact - birthday cake
This example can help us understand Vygotsky's approach to human development. Like animals, we have lower mental functions tied closely to biological processes. In our birthday cake example, a toddler may well have reached out to take a handful of cream from the cake as soon as she saw it and the four-year-old may have been tempted to do the same. In humans, however, lower mental functions facilitate a new line of development qualitatively unique to humans. Vygotsky referred to this as the higher mental functions. The lower mental functions cannot be equated to those of an ape as they are interwoven with the line of higher mental functions and are essential to them.
However, it is this higher line of development that explains the birthday cake example with profound insight."The history of child behavior is born from the interweaving of these two lines. The history of the development of the higher mental functions is impossible without a study of their prehistory, their biological roots, and their organic disposition." (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 46)
From the perspective of an individual child's development, the higher psychological line of development is one guided by the development of tools and signs within the culture. In our example above, the birthday cake is much more than a source of nourishment, it is a sign with much deeper and broader meaning. The sign mediates between the immediate sensory input and the child's response, and in so doing allows for a moment of reflection and self-regulation that would not otherwise be possible. To the extent that these signs can be used to influence or change our physical or social environment they are tools. Even the birthday cake can be considered as a tool in that the parents use it to establish that their daughter is now older and has a new status in society.
The cake is a sophisticated example. Tools and signs can be much simpler, such as an infant pointing to an object she desires. At first she may simply be trying to reach the object, but the mother's response of passing the object helps the infant realize that the action of pointing is a tool to change the environment according to her needs. It is from these simple inter-subjective beginnings that the world of meaning in the child mediated by tools and signs, including language, develops.
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Pavlov - telephone -
special line - unconditioned response
conditioned response - social and physical (central station)
compares this to signs - tying a knot
"There is no doubt that in both cases a temporary conditioned connection
is formed, that is, a connection of Pavlov’s second type. But if we wish
to grasp the essentials of what is happening here, we are forced to take
into consideration not only the function of the telephone mechanism but
also of the operator who plugged in and thus connected the line. In our
example, the connection was established by the person who tied the
knot. This feature distinguishes the higher forms of behavior from the
lower."
Signs:
"The invention and use of signs as auxiliary means of solving a given
psychological problem (to remember, compare something, report,
choose, and so on) is analogous to the invention and use of tools in one
psychological respect."
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sign (activity) analogous to tool in labor. - cautious - essential differences
precision:
critiques the following:
" Leaning for support on
the term’s gurative meaning, some psychologists have used the word
“tool” when referring to the indirect function of an object as the means
for accomplishing some activity."
? "certain objects or operations play an auxiliary role in psychological
activity."
OR
"On the other hand, there have been many attempts to invest such
expressions with a literal meaning, to equate the sign with the tool. By
erasing the fundamental distinction between them, this approach loses
the specic characteristics of each type of activity and leaves us with
one general psychological form of determination. This is the position
adopted by Dewey, one of pragmatism’s representatives. He denes the
tongue as the tool of tools, transposing Aristotle’s denition of the human
hand to speech.
BUT - his approach is different:
"The
uncertain, indistinct meaning that is usually read into the gurative
use of the Word “tool” in no way eases the researcher’s task. His task is
to uncover the real relationship, not the gurative one, that exists between
behavior and its auxiliary means. Should we conceive of thought
or memory as being analogous to external activity?
literal expressions - fuzzy
" Concepts that have a psychological
aspect but do not actually belong to psychology—such as “technique”-
are psychologized without any grounds whatsoever."
"Equating psychological
and nonpsychological phenomena is possible only if one ignores
the essence of each form of activity, as well as the differences between
their historic roles and nature."
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"Distinctions between tools as a means of
labor of mastering nature, and language as a means of social intercourse become dissolved in the general concept of artifacts or articial adaptations."
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"We seek to understand the behavioral role of the sign in all its
uniqueness. This goal has motivated our empirical studies of how both
tool and sign use are mutually linked and yet separate in the child’s
cultural development."
"We have adopted three conditions as a starting
point for this work. The rst pertains to the analogy and common points
of the two types of activity, the second claries their basic differences,
and the third attempts to demonstrate the real psychological link existing
between the one and the other, or at least to hint at its existence."
mediated activity
sign tool
BUT: 55
neither can, under any circumstance, be considered iso morphic with respect to the functions they perform, nor can they be seen as fully exhausting the concept of mediated activity. A host of other mediated activities might be named; cognitive activity is not limited to the use of tools or signs.
Hegel "“Reason,” he wrote, “is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her
cunning consists principally in her mediating activity which, by causing
objects to act and react on each other in accordance with their own
nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries
out reasons’ intentions.”1 Marx cites that denition when speaking of
working tools, to show that man “uses the mechanical, physical, and
chemical properties of objects so as to make them act as forces that affect
other objects in order to fulll his personal goals.”2"
2.external and internal orientations:
"On the purely logical plane of the relation between the two con- cepts, our schema represents the two means of adaptation as diverging lines of mediated activity. This divergence is the basis for our second point. A most essential difference between sign and tool, and the basis for the real divergence of the two lines, is the different ways that they orient human behavior. The tool’s function is to serve as the conductor of human inuence on the object of activity; it is externally oriented; itmust lead to changes in objects. It is a means by which human extemal activity is aimed at mastering, and triumphing over, nature. The sign, on the other hand, changes nothing in the object of a psychological opera- tion. It is a means of intemal activity aimed at mastering oneself; the sign is internally oriented. These activities are so diiferent from each other that the nature of the means they use cannot be the same in both cases."
"Finally, the third point- pertains to the real tie between these activi- ties and, hence, to the real tie of their development in phylo- and onto- genesis. The mastering of nature and the mastering of behavior are mutually linked, just as man’s alteration of nature alters man’s own nature. In phylogenesis we can reconstruct this link through fragmentary but convincing documentary evidence, while in ontogenesis we can trace it experimentally."
" The use of articial means, the transition to mediated activity, funda- mentally changes all psychological operations just as the use of tools limitlessly broadens the range of activities within which the new psychological functions may operate. In this context, we can use the term higher psychological function, or higher behavior as referring to the combination of tool and sign in psychological activity."
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grasping changing to pointing
"As the above description of pointing illustrates, the process of
internalization consists of a series of transformations:
(a) An operation that initially represents an external activity is
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reconstructed and begins to occur internally. Of particular importance
to the development of higher mental processes is the transformation of
sign-using activity, the history and characteristics of which are illustrated
by the development of practical intelligence, voluntary attention,
and memory.
(b) An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal
one. Every function in the chi1d’s cultural development appears twice:
rst, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; rst, between
people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological).
This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and
to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual
relations between human individuals.
(c) The transformation of an interpersonal process into an intrapersonal
one is the result of a long series of developmental events. The
process being transformed continues to exist and to change as an external
form of activity for a long time before denitively turning inward. For
many functions, the stage of extemal signs lasts forever, that is, it is their
nal stage of development. Other functions develop further and gradually
become inner functions. However, they take on the character of
inner processes only as a result of a prolonged development. Their
transfer inward is linked with changes in the laws governing their activity;
they are incorporated into a new system with its own laws.
internalization
The intemalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities
is the distinguishing feature of human psychology, the basis of
the qualitative leap from animal to human psychology. As yet, the
barest outline of this process is known.
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