Rose: Narrowing the Mind and Page PT 1 (Dani):
● Tendency to diminish cognitive complexity
○ Independent vs dependent
○ Literate vs oral
○ Verbal vs spatial
○ Concrete vs logical
● Cognitive style: “individual’s characteristic and consistent manner of processing and organizing what he/she sees and thinks about”
○ All previous discussions categorize in terms of a continuum between two opposites
■ Field dependent vs independent
● the extent to which the person perceives part of the field as discrete from the surrounding field as a whole, rather than embedded in the field
● High field independence -> impersonal, individualistic, insensitive
● Low field independence -> socially oriented, aware of social cues, EQ
○ Has to be different than general intelligence, verbal ability, visual acuity
■ Needs to be value-free
○ The tests are visual, perceptional-orientational, not rhetorical-linguistic
● Left hemisphere vs right hemisphere
○ Complex psychological processes are not 'localized' in any one hemisphere but are the result of integration between he
● Piaget
○ 4 stages of thinking in children
■ At each stage, approach problem similarly, regardless of problem
■ Concrete Operational (6-12)
● Freed from immediate perception, start to use logic
■ Formal Operational (11-15)
● Sophisticated logical thinkers
● Little scientists
■ College students supposedly stuck in Concrete Operational stage
>Inhelder and Piaget themselves said: "Reasoning is nothing more than the propositional calculus itself" LOL
>Mathematical logic is so privileged that we tend to forget that this assumption about logic being isomorphic with reasoning is highly controversial.
>Gardner, practically says that people are not all rational beings, which is true
>writing is deeply embedded in the particulars of the human situation
>only after the advent of literacy do humans possess the ability to engage in abstraction, generalization, systematic thinking, defining, logos rather than mythos...
>Writing transforms human cognition
>Havelock made the strong claim that pre-alphabetic Greeks, ingenious as they were, were barred from philosophical thought because oral discourse could not generate abstract, propositional language or self-conscious reflection on language as language...The greeks and babylonians however achieved a lot even in math before the dawn of great mathematicians in the greek world
>Havelock is racist towards non-alphabetic groups
>Human cognition, even at its most stymied, bungled moments, is rich and varied.
>Do our theories that we imploy force what we consider cognition, literacy, and advancement into a box?