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

[Andy Blunden]

Martin, I think the issue is that we have certain concepts which are 
intrinsically both subjective and objective (action, activity, meaning, 
experience for example) but we also have other concepts which are 
intrinsically either objective or subjective (behaviour, weight, 
thinking, consciousness, mood for example). Of course, because subject 
and object are mutually constituted, any of these domain-specific 
concepts also entails relations to the other domain. Otherwise we have 
nonsense. If I say "The Stock Market crashed in 1929" I am not talking 
about a state of mind, though obviously states of mind were entailed in 
this event. Likewise "I'm in a bad mood today" is not a statement about 
events in my life, even though these may be the cause.

What Vygotsky has done which allows him to develop a nondualistic 
psychology is that he took as his *most fundamental* concept "action". 
His other key concepts, his units of analysis for the various 
investigations, are also concepts which are intrinsically 
subjective/objective. E.g., word meaning, defect-compensation, 
perezhivanie. This is it: choose as your unit of analysis a concept 
which is a unity of objective and subjective.

ANL would agree with his, but in his critique he is trying to muddy the 
water by claiming that Vygosky takes as his fundamental concept, 
"consciousness".

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Martin John Packer wrote:
> Who says that emotional experience is "subjective," Huw? LSV writes throughout The Problem of the Environment that perezhivanie is the child's relationship to social reality. In my book that makes it personal, not subjective. The word "subjective" doesn't occur once in the text. It is certainly a common assumption in today's dualistic psychology that experience is subjective, a mental state.That would indeed be idealist.  But since LSV is avoiding dualism...
>
> Martin
>  
>   
>