[Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL
Huw Lloyd
huw.softdesigns@gmail.com
Fri Oct 17 19:58:41 PDT 2014
Seems to me to be about locating psychology within social conditions.
Delineating how important social tensions manifest psychologically.
Best,
Huw
On 18 October 2014 03:31, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> Here's an excerpt from http://www.marxists.org/archive/leontev/works/1947/
> historical-development-consciousness.pdf in which social theory is taken
> up under the heading of the historical development of consciousness. He
> could not loudly proclaim a new social theory of course because the USSR
> already had a social theory, viz "historical materialism." This is a
> chapter from "The Development of Mind" which begins with amoeba and works
> it way up to Soviet Man.
>
> The same process that led to separation of the producers led on the
> other hand to a separation as well of the conditions themselves,
> which appeared as the property of capitalists in the form of
> capital. The capitalist now also personifies these conditions,
> which, as far as the worker is concerned, are opposed to him, the
> worker. But the capitalist’s capital also has its own existence
> separate from the capitalist, which takes possession of his own
> life and subordinates it to itself.
>
> These objective conditions, engendered by the development of private
> property, also determine the features of man’s consciousness in the
> conditions of class society.
>
> The traditional psychologist, of course, refuses to consider them,
> seeing in them only a relation of things. He demands that psychology
> should, come what may, remain within the context of the
> ‘psychological’, which he understands purely as subjective. He even
> reduces psychological study of man’s industrial activity to
> investigation of its ‘psychological components’, i.e. of those
> psychic features for which engineering presents a demand. He is
> unable to see that industrial activity itself is inseparable from
> people’s social relations, which are engendered by it and determine
> their consciousness.
>
> But let us return to our analysis of these relations.
>
> A consequence of the ‘alienation’ of human life that has occurred is
> the emergent disparity between the objective result of man’s
> activity on the one hand, and its motive on the other. In other
> words, the objective content of the activity is becoming discrepant
> with its subjective content, with what it is for man himself. That
> also imparts special psychological features to his consciousness.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 18 October 2014 02:56, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> He? ANL or LSV.
>> LSV states his aim to create a General Psychology in "Historical
>> Crisis"
>> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri13.htm
>>
>> ANL, I think the aim of a creating general theory of human
>> activity was always meant to be interdisciplinary. Although for
>> very good reasons it has only ever been taken up by Psychologists,
>> I think it is very obviously interdisciplinary.
>>
>>
>> Yes, ANL. Did he state an attempt to provide a social theory. Seems not?
>>
>> Best,
>> Huw
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 18 October 2014 02:20, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>> <mailto: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/
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 18 October 2014 01:48, Andy Blunden
>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>
>> <mailto: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/>
>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>> <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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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