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

Fri Oct 17 23:13:57 PDT 2014

Hello Holli,

You can find a discussion of them in my edited volume by Cambridge (1999).
 Best, ag

On Fri, October 17, 2014 11:41 pm, Tonyan, Holli A wrote:
> Can you explain more about "action" versus "activity"?  These two terms
> get used a lot in nuanced ways and I get confused.  If there is a place
> where this is already delineated, could you please point me in that
> direction?
>
> Also, I am not familiar with defect-compensation.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Oct 17, 2014, at 9:35 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>> <html>
>> 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*
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__home.pacific.net.au_-7Eandy_&d=AAICAw&c=Oo8bPJf7k7r_cPTz1JF7vEiFxvFRfQtp-j14fFwh71U&r=nc0IzcQ7AJuG1zNoaB3azX4jLwOThkgntuk4nvTAto4&m=gKMMa479BWWTMz0UJqBIkjS5I75PRZR54MHJbhn8NCY&s=lsnDPs27Ct58Y8MBNnCw3hdGxQkaKKMS-MEISlsP3JM&e=
>>
>> 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
>>
>
>

Artin Goncu, Ph.D
Co-editor, Mind, Culture, and Activity:An International Journal
Professor Emeritus,
University of Illinois at Chicago
College of Education M/C 147
1040 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60607