Concepts and Powers

What’s the difference between humans and other animals?

Note: A power is an ability to do something. If you have/possess a power, then you can do something. (In Spanish, the word for can/to be able is the same as the word for power - poder.)

Discussion 1

What can a stone do?

What can a potato do (that a stone can’t do)?

What can a dog do (that a potato can’t do)?

What can a human do (that a dog can’t do)?

Discussion 2

Look at this photograph of a baby. Can the baby see a rattle? Explain your answer.

–well the baby’s eyes work, so yes the baby can see the rattle.

–but does it see a rattle?

–well it doesn’t know what a rattle is, so it doesn’t know that it is a rattle, perhaps it just sees a shape.

–But the baby doesn’t know what a shape is either, or a colour, or a texture. So it can’t know that it sees those things either!

The baby can see the rattle in the sense that it’s eyes function, but it can’t see a rattle insofar as it cannot understand or comprehend the object as a rattle.

The word ‘rattle’ can refer to this particular rattle, or it can refer to a type or category of thing. The baby can see the particular thing, but it doesn’t understand what kind of thing it is.

Learning to see - an interesting case

In 1910, two French surgeons wrote about their successful operation on an 8-year-old boy who had been blind since birth because of cataracts. When the boy’s eyes were healed, they removed the bandages, eager to discover how well the child could see. Waving a hand in front of the boy’s physically perfect eyes, they asked him what he saw.

He replied weakly, “I don’t know."

“Don’t you see it moving?” they asked.

“I don’t know” was his only reply.

The boy’s eyes were clearly not following the slowly moving hand. What he saw was only a varying brightness in front of him. He was then allowed to touch the hand as it began to move; he cried out in a voice of triumph: “It’s moving!” He could feel it move, and even, as he said, “hear it move,” but he still needed laboriously to learn to see it move.

-from ‘Catching the light’, by Arthur Zajonc

A word is a tool

To know how to use a word, to possess a concept, is to have a particular power, an ability to do something. A word is like a tool that we can use to describe things, to pick things out, to understand things.

A word is like a piece of lego in a few ways:

Both words and Lego bricks are tools that can be used to do stuff.
When we learn to use a new word or Lego brick, what we learn is new behaviour. Language is an activity.
Words, like Lego bricks, fit together with other words and Lego bricks. Their role makes sense in a context (or language game).

Discussion 3

Look at these two paintings. Describe them briefly in words in your book and then make a quick copy of them.

Painting 1: La Giaconda (Mona Lisa) by Leonardo da Vinci

Painting 2: Convergence by Jackson Pollock

Notice how you've drawn what you have seen - if you've described Convergence as 'a scribble', you will have drawn a scribbe. If you've described the Mona Lisa as 'a woman', that's what you will have tried to draw.

What you see when you look at these paintings are described by concepts, types of things. (You probably won’t recognise the particular river behind the Mona Lisa, but you will recognise that it is a river.)

Discussion 4

Look again at the Jackson Pollock painting. Can you think of any way in which you can apply other concepts to it? Perhaps you could describe the different colours, or the thickness of the lines, or perhaps you can see little shapes in it, e.g. –there’s a triangle, there’s a square, that looks like a dog etc.

By applying concepts to things, we can get to know them better.

How do we learn concepts? How do we develop our linguistic powers?

Before we can learn to use words, we need to develop certain physical skills first. Our conceptual powers are extensions of our physical powers.

Before the baby learns to use the word ‘rattle’, the baby learns to follow the rattle with her eyes, then it will learn to reach for the rattle, then it will learn to point and so on.

Words are used in particular contexts

To begin with a baby might mimic their mother saying Ma-ma. What makes this a game is the fact that both the mother and the baby are following rules. The mother says it, then the baby says it etc.

Later, the word Mama will be as a replacement for a cry or a shout. Instead of crying because they want something, the child will learn to shout, or call for their mother.

Eventually, the child learns to use the word ‘Mama’ as a name, and then its use as a title or signifier of a particular kind of relationship. And once the child learns about reproduction, it will take on a whole new meaning again.

Think about the various layers and games involved with learning numbers:

Imagine a boy has just had his third birthday. When you ask him how old he is, he replies ‘3’.

He also holds up 3 fingers as he does so. It takes him a while, and sometimes he has to check and use his left hand to force the fingers into place.
He knows that when we go down in the lift, he shouldn’t press the button with the 3 on it because we never need to stop on that floor.
He knows he’s not going to get 3 biscuits, so he only asks for maximum of 2.
He recognises the 3 marked on the floor for hopscotch but doesn’t really understand why other than it has some relationship to hopping and jumping.
He can read off the number 3 from the number plates of the cars.
He knows that when there were 4 in a bed and they all ‘rolled-over and one fell out’ there were 3 in the bed after that… and so on.

So, his understanding of the number 3 is embedded in all of these little interactions and routines. We could display the concept of ‘3’ like in a diagram like this:

And of course, each word in that diagram has its own connections:

...and so on.

We can imagine that all of our concepts fit together in an enormous web of meaning… we call this web our conceptual scheme.

Tasks

What is a power?
Explain how children learn new words and concepts.
What do you think is the major difference between humans and other animals. Explain your answer.

#logic

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