[Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL

[Huw Lloyd]

On 18 October 2014 02:20, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Which only means that Vygotsky did not attempt to create a Social Theory,
> only a Psychology.
> But in creating a General Psychology, he left us a paradigm for the human
> sciences. ANL attempted to carry that through to create a Psychology which
> was equally a Social Theory, but in my view he was largely unsuccessful.
> But to have created a Psychology rather than a Theory of Everything does
> not make one an Idealist, just a specialist.
>
>
Does he state this aim somewhere?  That might be interesting to look at.

Best,
Huw






> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 18 October 2014 01:48, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     No, LSV is quite right, Huw. You and I can go through the same
>>     sequence of events, but if, for example, the events really get
>>     under your skin, and perhaps due to past experiences, or to some
>>     sensitivity or another, it really shakes you up and causes you to
>>     dwell on the experience, work over it and reflect on it, then most
>>     likely you will make a personal development. If perhaps on other
>>     hand, maybe because of some prejudice I had, the same experience
>>     just went like water off a duck's back for me and I didn't care
>>     tuppence about the experience and just simply turned to next
>>     business, then I will not make a development.
>>
>>
>> But does ANL refute this?  He is simply asserting that experience is
>> derivative to activity, not that meaningful things don't follow from
>> experience.
>>
>>     It is *only* the "subjective" side of experience and the
>>     *reflection* of "objective" relations/events that forms personal
>>     development. Only. And that is LSV's point.
>>
>>
>> And it is ANL's point that these experiences arise in activity.  Note
>> that LSV doesn't provide a medium for their formation, he simply refers to
>> them as forms.
>>
>>
>>     And can I just echo Martin and David's observation that
>>     consciousness before language was well-known and foundational to
>>     Vygotsky, and consequently consciousness other than language. And
>>     Julian and Mike's observation that "the ideal" lies ultimately in
>>     social practices, the doing-side of which give content and meaning
>>     to speech which speech would lack outside its being part of those
>>     activities. Vygotsky knew this, and this was why he introduced a
>>     range artifacts derived from the wider culture, as mediating
>>     elements, into social interaction.
>>
>>     So ANL is going along with the still widely held prejudice that
>>     Vygotsky was *just* all about language. Not true.
>>
>>
>> I would read these in terms of the opening paragraph ("propositions that
>> have been connected to a unified system, but are far from equivalent") and
>> then there is the politics of survival.
>>
>> Best,
>> Huw
>>
>>
>>     Andy
>>     https://www.academia.edu/7511935/The_Problem_of_the_
>> Environment._A_Defence_of_Vygotsky
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>>     *Andy Blunden*
>>     http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>     <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>>     Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>         ....
>>
>>         Hence ANL is right to impute (metaphysical) idealistic
>>         tendencies to this
>>         paper of LSV's.  Because to base the development on subjective
>>         emotional
>>         experience is idealistic.  ANL, conversely, refers to the
>>         relativity of
>>         experience upon activity.  It does not help that LSV refers to
>>         his norms as
>>         ideals and that all of the examples he provides are about speech
>>         communication.  It is ripe for misinterpretation as an
>>         idealistic paper.
>>
>>         Best,
>>         Huw
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>