From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2005 - 16:28:18 EST
Only one quick marking of partial disagreement to Ian's very excellent reply. > > >A collection of people is an amount of abstract labour-power that can >in principle be reallocated to other tasks in the division of labour. >This is possible due to equality of causal powers. Labour is >fungible, and in some sense universal. This was true in fedual times, >except not recognised and realised, that is put into practice. Too innatist for me, I think. This fungibility and universality may be a historico social result, not a given of human nature. In some sense the potential for such pre-existed its actualization, but in what sense? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the actualization of these causal powers. I think you are suggesting that all that was needed were removal of external barriers, e.g. feudal status structure, caste structure. Capitalism then appears to better fit human nature. But I am worried about the theory of human nature implicit in what you are saying. We are opening up the question of historical materialist views on human nature. And here a lot of ground has already been covered by Max Adler, Louis Althusser, Norman Geras, Sean Sayers, etc. Back to baby care. My sense of the importance of early care giving is predisposing me, by the way, towards a very thin concept of human nature! Haven't been reading much Marx lately but rather this Vygotsky inpired text Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker The First Idea. The First Idea: How Symbols, Language and Intelligence Evolve Stanley Greenspan, Stuart Shanker Format: Hardcover Pub. Date: August 2004 u ISBN: 0738206806 Format: Hardcover, 320pp Pub. Date: August 2004 Publisher: Da Capo Press The First Idea: How Symbols, Language and Intelligence Evolve FROM THE PUBLISHER "In the childhood of every human being, and at the dawn of human history, there is an amazing - and until now unexplained - leap from simple, genetically programmed behavior to symbolic thinking, language, and culture. In The First Idea, Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker explore this missing link and offer new insights into two longstanding questions: how human beings first created symbols and how these abilities initially evolved and were subsequently transmitted and transformed across generations over millions of years." Drawing on evidence - not only from their research and collaborations comparing the language and intelligence of human infants and apes, but also from the fossil record, neuroscience, and Greenspan's extensive work with children with autism - Greenspan and Shanker offer a radical new direction for evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and philosophy. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Noam Chomsky is the best-known advocate of the view that language skills are hardwired into our brains, and Steven Pinker made this argument in The Blank Slate. Authors Greenspan, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, and Shanker, an authority in child- and ape-language studies, completely reject this theory, claiming instead that our ability to reason is founded not on genetics but on emotional responses by infants to their environment, with emotional interactions forming the missing link in the development of symbols and language. In line with other recent research that ties cultural practices to areas of human development long held to be biologically determined, they maintain that symbolic thinking has been molded by cultural practices dating back to prehuman species. The authors trace the development of language skills and personality from birth to old age with a 16-stage hierarchy of what they call "functional emotional development capabilities" ranging from "Regulation and Interest in the Word" to "Wisdom of the Ages." In the last part of the book, they use these stages to examine major intellectual turning points and figures in history, such as the Greek philosophers, Descartes and Freud. This book should appeal most to readers working in psychology and child development, but its revolutionary ideas no doubt will lead to lively and well-publicized debates. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Library Journal Greenspan (psychiatry, George Washington Univ.; The Growth of the Mind) and Shanker (psychology, York Univ.; coauthor, Apes, Language, and the Human Mind) have written a significant book on the crucial role that emotions play in the social development of human intelligence. They reject Cartesian dualism, advocate the framework of primate evolution, and go beyond the ideas of Piaget, Chomsky, and Pinker (among others) in their claim that symbolic thinking is essentially the slow outcome of mental activity developing through six levels of emotional interactions rather than merely the sudden consequence of inherited genetic factors in the brain. The authors emphasize the dynamic relationship between caregivers and infants/toddlers in terms of emotional signaling through sounds, facial expressions, and body gestures. They even extend their theory in order to shed light on ape behavior, fossil hominids, early civilizations, the origin of language, and the emerging global society. In the ongoing nature vs. nurture debate, the authors have filled a gap in the research literature by stressing the need to take the value of emotions seriously. Recommended for all large academic and public libraries.-H. James Birx, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. Kirkus Reviews Two psychologists team up for a thorough, fairly readable study of cognitive development from earliest hominids to humans, placing strenuous emphasis on emotional interaction between infant and caregiver outlined in Greenspan's The Growth of the Mind (1997). Greenspan (Psychiatry and Pediatrics/George Washington Univ.) and Shanker (Philosophy and Psychology/York Univ., Canada) stress that the human capacity to think, which they define as the ability to regulate emotions in the use of logic and reflection, stems primarily from the acquirement of mother-infant signaling transmitted through cultural care-giving practices. After setting out the crucial stages of a child's functional/emotional growth, the authors venture back into evolutionary history to debunk some determinist theories of human cognitive development that stress the innate, universal necessities of human biology (natural selection) while ignoring the essential and, in humans, relatively long period of close nurturing between caregiver and infant. Shanker offers observations of language acquisition in chimps and bonobos, gained from his work with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (Apes, Language, and the Human Mind, not reviewed); there is also a fascinating chapter on emotional "derailment" in autistic children. The authors revisit problem-solving and early communication in archaic Homo sapiens and early moderns, comparing their stage of cognitive development to childhood in today's humans. With the relatively sudden ascent of the new species of humans during the Pleistocene era, technological advances took off; yet here the authors emphasize rather a "slow and almost orderly process" that involved an enrichment of emotionalsignaling accompanied by beneficial physical changes in the face and skull (loss of facial hair, for example, encouraged a vastly more subtle and complex repertory of expressions). Greenspan and Shanker duly note the work of numerous other authors and scientists, such as Piaget, Chomsky, and E.T. Hall. Along the way, the study grows unwieldy and repetitive as they take on shared values of societies and "global interdependency."Long-winded, but well-reasoned: a provocative, useful aid in understanding the ongoing debate on human development. Yours, Rakesh
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