[Xmca-l] Re: LSV on language as a model of development

[mike cole]

David and others who read Russian--

The attached article by Boris Meshcheryakov is a summary discussion of
the *Fundamentals
of Pedology* that you are translating. The focus is on Chapter 4 on the
environment.  I am seeking a way to get this paper translated, but not
having a lot of luck. Still, it may be of use to some. I found it very
interesting. Perhaps some will find it useful.
mike


On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 3:45 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> Andy:
>
> Well, to understand Vygotsky's purpose here, we really need a bit of
> context. This is the fourth in a lecture series on pedology, delivered at
> Herzen Pedagogical University (a teacher training college in Leningrad)
> during the last few months of Vygotsky's life. So it was probably written
> about the same time as Chapter One of Thinking and Speech. The students are
> mostly in-service teachers from all over the USSR. (The manuscript comes
> from Galina Korotaeva, the daughter of one of the in-service teachers who
> ended up in a remote autonomous republic without a degree because the man
> who took over after Vygotsky died, Katzenbogen, was shot for Trotskyism.
> Fortunately, Korotaeva's father kept the lectures, which Vygotsky had
> mimeoed and handed out to the teachers). It's an introductory course in
> pedology, a doctrine that has already been pretty much banned in Leningrad
> and Moscow, but which is still taught to people from the provinces (because
> the all-Union decree banning pedology didn't come out until 1936).
>
> The first lecture is about the topic of pedology, and it's for dead
> beginners. Vygotsky establishes the the subject of pedology is child
> development--not child psychology per se, or development per se.The second
> lecture is about research methods, and it's here that Vygotsky talks alot
> about the "unit of analysis". It is, as you say, a popular idea among
> pedologists, because of its holism. Then Vygotsky promises two lectures
> which apply the method of pedology--one to "heredity" and one to the
> environment.
>
> So the lecture I quoted, which can also be found in the Vygotsky Reader, is
> one of a pendant, like the Chinese couplets that people hang up at New
> Year's. The other lecture is Lecture Three (attached) which is about
> heredity. The lecture on the environment is part of an argument that
> Vygotsky is building which denies that development can be reduced to
> either--the "unit of analysis" has to include both heredity and the
> environment.
>
> And so it does! Lived experience includes heredity because it is, at first,
> based on lower level psychological functions: the senses, "feelings" rather
> than emotions, natural attention and natural memory. That's what allows you
> to experience. But it includes the environment--because that's what you
> have to experience.
>
> Anyway--here's my translation of Lecture Three. Sorry about the rather
> literal, awkward translation--we are really aiming at a Korean translation,
> so the closer I stick to the Russian the better. If anybody can find
> errors, I'd be much obliged for their help.
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
> PS: Actually, I did read Capital, Hegel's Logic (The Shorter One) and
> Vygotsky in the order you said. I suspect a lot of leftists do.
>
> dk
>
>
> On 5 July 2014 21:37, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Thank you for introducing this passage, David. What is Vygotsky's
> interest
> > here, do you think? If I were to say "Vygotsky is interested in
> > investigating the relation between doing and undergoing" I don't think
> we'd
> > be any the clearer, even though it it formally true and accords with the
> > title of the article. I suggest that Vygotsky's interest is continuing
> his
> > work on child development (where he used the concept of Social Situation
> of
> > Development) to find a foundation for a theory of *personal development*
> > which would be adequate beyond childhood. This would mean that if we ask
> > "What is an experience or a perezhivanie a unit of?" we would answer
> > "personality" or what is the same thing "personal development" - since to
> > understand the product of a process of development (a personality) is to
> > understand the process itself.
> >
> > Andy
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >
> >
> > David Kellogg wrote:
> >
> >> I don't see anything wrong with the idea that "felt experience" or
> >> "thought-over experience" or "contemplated experience" (i.e.
> perezhivanie,
> >> which develops in time) is always and everywhere a unit of doing and
> >> undergoing, just as Alfredo says. In fact, it seems to me to be exactly
> >> what Vygotsky says. Here is the nineteenth paragraph of Vygotsky's
> lecture
> >> "The Problem of the Environment".
> >>
> >> Я хотел сегодня на конкретном примере учения о среде показать вам
> >> несколько
> >> таких единиц, которыми оперирует психологическое исследование. Примером
> >> таких единиц может служить переживание. Переживание есть единица, в
> >> которой
> >> в неразложимом виде представлена с одной стороны среда, то, что
> >> переживается,
> >> - переживание всегда относится к чему-то, находящемуся вне человека, - с
> >> другой стороны представлено то, как я переживаю это, т.е. все
> особенности
> >> личности и все особенности среды представлены в переживании, то, что
> >> отобрано из среды, все те моменты, которые имеют отношение к данной
> >> личности и отобраны из личности, все те черты ее характера,
> >> конституциональные черты, которые имеют отношение к данному событию.
> Таким
> >> образом, в переживании мы всегда имеем дело с неразложимым единством
> >> особенностей личности и особенностей ситуации, которая представлена в
> >> переживании. Поэтому выгодным оказывается в методическом отношении вести
> >> анализ, когда мы изучаем роль среды в развитии ребенка, вести анализ с
> >> точки зрения переживаний ребенка, потому что в переживании ребенка, как
> я
> >> уже говорил, учитываются все личные особенности ребенка, которые
> >> участвовали в определении его отношения к данной ситуации. Например, все
> >> ли
> >> мои личные конституциональные особенности всякого рода участвуют
> целиком и
> >> на равных началах? Конечно, нет. В одной ситуации одни мои
> >> конституциональные особенности играют первую роль, в другой –другие
> играют
> >> первую роль, а в первом случае они могут и не проявляться вовсе. Нам
> важно
> >> знать не вообще сами по себе конституциональные особенности ребенка, а
> нам
> >> важно знать, какие из этих конституциональных особенностей сыграли
> >> решающую
> >> роль при определении отношения ребенка к данной ситуации, в другой
> >> ситуации
> >> уже другие конституциональные особенности сыграли роль.
> >>
> >>
> >> What this says (I think) is this:
> >>
> >>
> >> "I wish today as a concrete example of the teaching on the environment
> to
> >> show you a few of these units (единиц) with which psychological research
> >> operates. An example of such a unit which might serve is lived
> experience
> >> (
> >> переживание ). Lived experience is a unit whose form presents in an
> >> non-decomposable way, on the one side, the environment that is
> >> live-experienced—lived experience always refers to something that is
> >> external to the person—and on the other side represents the way that I
> >> live-experience it, i.e. all the features of the personality and all the
> >> features of the environment presented in the lived experience, what was
> >> selected from the environment, all the moments which are related to a
> >> given
> >> personality and selected in the personality, all of the features of its
> >> (i.e. the personality’s—DK) character, all its constituent features
> >> related
> >> to this event. Thus, in lived experience we are always dealing with the
> >> irreducible unity of features of personality and features of the
> >> situation,
> >> which is presented in lived experience. For this reason it is
> >> methodologically advantageous to carry out our analysis, when we study
> the
> >> role of the environment in the development of the child, from the point
> of
> >> view of the lived experience of the child, because the lived experience
> of
> >> the child, as I have already said, takes in all of the personality
> >> characteristics of the child which participate in the definition of his
> >> relationship to a given situation. Do, for example, all of the
> constituent
> >> features of my personality of every type participate fully and on an
> equal
> >> footing? Of course not. In one situation, one of my constituent features
> >> plays the first role, and in another, another plays the first role where
> >> in
> >> the first case it may not appear at all. To us it is not important to
> know
> >> the constituent features of the child in themselves, but to us it is
> >> important to know which of these constituent features plays the decisive
> >> role in determining the child’s relationship to a given situation where
> in
> >> other situations other constituent features have played a role."
> >>
> >>
> >> Of course, it's very hard (and not always necessary) to summarize all
> that
> >> in a single pithy expression. But it seems to me that when Andy uses the
> >> expression "radius of subjectivity" and Alfredo uses the expression "a
> >> unit
> >> of doing and undergoing" they are saying essentially the same thing.
> >>
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >>
> >> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
> >>
> >>
> >> On 4 July 2014 11:22, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> That is how I interpreted Alfredo, Andy.
> >>> (signed)
> >>>
> >>> an *in*-experienced oldtimer
> >>> mike
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> I am familiar with Dewey's work on this, Alfredo, and I too have found
> >>>> it
> >>>> very useful. That was not my problem. But thinking about it, I suspect
> >>>> it
> >>>> was just an English expression problem.
> >>>> You said "experience is a unit of doing and undergoing". But I think
> you
> >>>> meant to say "experience is a unity of doing and undergoing," which is
> >>>> certainly true. Just as activity is a unity of consciousness and
> >>>> behaviour, or identity is a unity of recognition and
> self-consciousness,
> >>>> etc.
> >>>> But a *unit* is something different from *unity*. "Experience" in this
> >>>> sense is not a unit at all; "an experience" can be a unit, but not a
> >>>> unit
> >>>> of doing and undergoing.
> >>>>
> >>>> Is that right, Alfredo?
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Dewey, most extensively in chapter 3 of "Art as experience", makes a
> >>>>> distinction between the general stream of experience, and an
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> experience,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> which, according to him, is the experience that "is a whole and
> carries
> >>>>> with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency". After
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> the
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> fact, an experience "has a unity that gives it its name, that meal,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> that
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> storm, that rupture of friendship", Dewey writes. He further says
> that,
> >>>>> within that unity, there is both an aspect of doing, of initiation,
> and
> >>>>> another of undergoing, "of suffering in its large sense". He further
> >>>>> articulates the relation between the doing and the undergoing in
> terms
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> of
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> "anticipation" and "consummation" "Anticipation" he writes "is the
> >>>>> connecting link between the next doing and its outcome for sense.
> What
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> is
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> done and what is undergone are thus reciprocally, cumulatively, and
> >>>>> continuously instrumental to each other"
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Although in most passages these notes have a rather individualistic
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> taste,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> he goes on to clarify that there is a prominent public character in
> >>>>> experience: "without external embodiment, an experience remains
> >>>>> incomplete" he says. In the same chapter, he also argues that "it is
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> not
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> possible to divide in a vital experience the practical, emotional, and
> >>>>> intellectual from one another." Both these conditions may make it
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> possible
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> to draw connections between Dewey's notion of experience and
> Vygotsky's
> >>>>> perezivanie.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In any case, I find interesting the dialectic Dewey proposes between
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> doing
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> and undergoing as aspects of a minimal unit of sense-full experience
> >>>>> because it allows for thinking of being immersed in a developmental
> >>>>> situation in which the final form already exists before the intellect
> >>>>> grasps it, so that we do not need to put individual knowledge
> >>>>> constructions as who puts the cart before the horse.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> But this is my reading, which may have obviated other aspects that
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> would
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> preclude this reading?
> >>>>> Hope this was of help.
> >>>>> Best,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Alfredo
> >>>>> ________________________________________
> >>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> on
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> behalf of Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> >>>>> Sent: 03 July 2014 17:17
> >>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: LSV on language as a model of development
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Alfredo, what did you mean by:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> ... as he argued, experience is a unit of doing and undergoing,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> Andy
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >
>
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