[Xmca-l] Re: In defense of Vygotsky

[Andy Blunden]

On closer reading of your message, Annalisa, I see that in (3), you do 
write on the understanding that the difference in UoA relates to a 
difference in what is to be analysed.
As David pointed out, LSV's paper is a pair with one on heredity, 
tackling the problem of the development of the personality, is it 
environment or heredity. He says that perezhivanija are the units for 
this problem.
I think ANL says contrariwise that it is activity that is the appopriate 
unit, but honestly, he doesn't really confront the idea of unit here, I 
think.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Andy Blunden wrote:
> Annalisa, a "unit of analysis" is relative to what you are analysing. 
> So "word meaning" is a unit of verbal thought. Every problem you 
> tackle means discovering the appropriate unit of analysis for *that* 
> problem.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> Annalisa Aguilar wrote:
>> Granted, and I have not yet read your paper on Defense of Vygotsky, 
>> and so I will do that after I send this.
>>
>> But the questions in me that rise immediately are:
>>
>> 1. What exactly is the critique? (filtering out the political issues, 
>> if that is germane).
>>
>> 2. What is "good and useful" in the Activity Theory in relation to 
>> Sociocultural Theory? They seem to have different applications. Or is 
>> this the point? Or, was this a philosophical difference of what 
>> _should be_ THE unit of analysis? Arguing over UOA (in terms of which 
>> unit to pick, not the method) seems silly, unless I suppose, one is 
>> subject to Stalin's whims.
>> As they say in Monty Python, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition."
>>
>> 3. If the UOA is different, should that difference be controversial? 
>> The UOA depends upon what is to be analyzed as a whole. So if ANL has 
>> a different objective (of the whole) from LSV, which seems to be the 
>> case, the UOAs will of course differ.
>> Respectfully, I am ignorant about the nuanced politics of the time 
>> and only know a little, so I hope I am not inadvertently trivializing 
>> the matter.
>>
>> 4. I do understand UOA is difficult to conceive if one's method is to 
>> reduce things to the smallest parts (Thank you, Descartes). However I 
>> don't think ANL was attempting to do this by choosing activity as his 
>> UOA, so I'm a little lost when you say:
>>
>> "Leontyev's Activity Theory is in danger of collapsing to a 
>> reductionism that actually explains nothing."
>> 5. Further, I am interested in the way intellectual freedom (or 
>> rather, the lack of intellectual freedom) shaped these theories. It 
>> seems that if we can separate out the forces that encourage or 
>> restrict intellectual freedom, we can be left to see what value is 
>> there. Like David Kellogg described, the slender reed of Vygotsky's 
>> theories seem to be what we are attempting to retrieve. However, it 
>> seems you are saying ANL has his own slender reed, as well.
>>
>> (I can't help thinking about Spinoza right about now and the way he 
>> was marked an atheist. I wonder if it might be worthwhile to compare 
>> LSV and ANL with Spinoza and Leibniz. More thinking out loud...)
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Annalisa
>>
>>
>>  
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu 
>> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy Blunden 
>> <ablunden@mira.net>
>> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 10:11 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: In defense of Vygotsky
>>
>> Even though we all recognise that the motivation behind ANL's critique
>> is foul, we still have to deal with the critique. The more so because
>> many of the criticisms he makes are made by others at other times. And
>> also, like Haydi said earlier, we need to be able to rebut ANL's
>> critique, and still retain what is good and useful in the theory ANL
>> created.
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>
>>
>> Annalisa Aguilar wrote:
>>  
>>> Hello Andy (and esteemed society of XCMA)!
>>>
>>> This is my first post to the list. I hope the waves will be gentle 
>>> as I wade in. Over the past week or so I've been lurking and I've 
>>> witnessed some titanic exchanges and I'd prefer to steer around 
>>> iceburgs, if possible. As you will learn, I like to use metaphors in 
>>> my writing, so if that is problematic for anyone, I hope you will 
>>> try to enlist the poet within.
>>>
>>> About me: I am a former student of Vera's and a graduate of UNM's 
>>> OLIT MA program. I am interested in technology design, philosophy of 
>>> mind, distributed cognition, embodied thinking, ecological mind, JJ 
>>> Gibson's affordances, metaphorical reasoning (a lá Lakoff & 
>>> Johnson), Late Wittgenstein, and Advaita Vedanta, among many other 
>>> things!
>>>
>>> Vygotsky directly inspires me to consider how computer tools aid in 
>>> thinking tasks and how these tools reflect in our society and how, 
>>> in turn, our society is reflected in these tools and how they 
>>> influence our cognition (as a two-directional process). I am also 
>>> interested in patterns and how they might be used to transfer 
>>> knowledge between disciplines. My BFA is in Photography from the San 
>>> Francisco Art Institute, and so I am likely to be more artist than 
>>> scientist, and more likely to view Vygotsky through a lens of affect 
>>> AND cognition, combined (perezhivanie!!). It is this reason Vygotsky 
>>> is so important to me and why I believe his work is unique from 
>>> other experienced thinkers.
>>>
>>> So here goes:
>>>
>>> As I've explained to Andy in previous emails off-list, I like to 
>>> read papers at least twice to best understand rhetoric as well as 
>>> content. I am however feeling overwhelmed by the ANL paper mostly 
>>> because it is so harsh in its representations of LSV's work. It is 
>>> almost impossible for me to complete a second reading for this 
>>> reason! As a rule, I am very suspicious of intellectual bullying 
>>> because typically one who is an authentic seeker of truth does one's 
>>> best to communicate in simple, useful, and redolent language, which 
>>> is one reason LSV is appealing to me and Leontiev is not.
>>>
>>> Vygotsky succeeds most times this way, which I believe is what makes 
>>> him so engaging. Although he himself could wrestle with concepts and 
>>> puzzles and write about them cryptically, this isn't the same. When 
>>> he was first encountering a problem, a solution, or a description of 
>>> a phenomenon the writing is going to be rough, sketchy, and 
>>> incomplete. It's almost like attempting to read Vygotsky by radio 
>>> transmission with a faint signal that goes in and out of reception.
>>>
>>> But ANL, in form of the critique paper, doesn't seem to deal with 
>>> truth but with slander (I understand: the more violent he could do 
>>> it, the more he would be likely to save his own skin in Stalinist 
>>> Russia). It seems everyone is in agreement on this. Still, it's hard 
>>> to accept that this slight of hand inherent in the Activity Theory 
>>> itself is not detected by others who were not in danger to refute 
>>> Activity Theory. It seems so obvious to me. It seems so obvious to 
>>> me that I wonder if I should doubt my own thinking about it!
>>>
>>> Perhaps my grasp of the points here are tentative and sophomoric, 
>>> however what I do not like about Activity Theory is the idea of 
>>> activity being the unit of analysis. Activity as UOA might be 
>>> appropriate when dealing with how to divide labor on the shop floor 
>>> of an automobile plant, and the _meaning_ of that division to its 
>>> workers and managers, but I don't equate this in terms of 
>>> understanding how we as humans think from the formative stage of 
>>> childhood, and how we deliberate and develop our selves (as the 
>>> individual self) in society (many selves) to our fullest potentials.
>>>
>>> Are we incorrect to take a theory that discusses the formation of 
>>> children's minds in their formative environments and conflate that 
>>> with adult interactions in activity in the world? It seems that that 
>>> is a huge leap, because children, firstly, do not have to deal with 
>>> politics, jobs, and life-and-death situations as we must as adults. 
>>> (Children can, but it is an exception rather than a rule. Think: 
>>> Malala). Children are, if anything, professionals in _play_. Then, 
>>> the concept of THE WORLD is completely different from childhood to 
>>> adulthood. But perhaps this is too philosophical for the environment 
>>> of the list.
>>>
>>> As if I haven't emphasized this enough: I'm not sure in myself if I 
>>> have intuited this correctly, and whether what I have intuited from 
>>> my reading can line up with what the others on the list are 
>>> addressing. I believe perhaps I am thinking about this in a 
>>> different way, as a process, than the others. And that is fine. :)
>>>
>>>  As I considered it, I suppose I'm having trouble with the 
>>> *activity* of sterile analysis of the texts (Please don't misplace 
>>> my irony).
>>>
>>> Vygotsky was a person who wanted to liberate people to live fuller 
>>> lives. He cared about people, not ideas in themselves. He wasn't 
>>> motivated to win prizes or acquire world fame for making 
>>> discoveries. The theories were to support a larger cause, and this 
>>> cause seems to get lost in the noise. To my dismay, the affect of 
>>> the work has been completely removed from the discussion. It is hard 
>>> for me to separate the man and his wider motivations from the work, 
>>> which may not be wise on my part.
>>>
>>> What do you think? Am I wrong in this?
>>>
>>> Thinking out loud...
>>>
>>> Annalisa
>>>
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: xmca-l-bounces+annalisa=unm.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu 
>>> <xmca-l-bounces+annalisa=unm.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy 
>>> Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>>> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 6:08 PM
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>> Subject: [Xmca-l]  LSV versus ANL
>>>
>>> Returning to Leontyev's critique of Vygotsky, ANL claimed that
>>> perezhivanie, as a manifestation of the whole personality, cannot be 
>>> the
>>> determinant of personality, because that would be a logical circle. But
>>> it seems to me that ANL failed to understand how Vygotsky’s analysis by
>>> units allows him to avoid the reductionism into which ANL then 
>>> ventures.
>>> If a complex process is to be explained by something _else_, then its
>>> analysis is _reduced_  to the analysis of that something else. Analysis
>>> by units allows Vygotsky to avoid reductionism because the analysis
>>> begins from a concept of the whole complex process represented in a
>>> unit, not the whole, but a small fragment of the whole, such that the
>>> whole can be seen as being made up of very many such fragments only.
>>> Absent Vygotsky's method of analysis by units, and Leontyev's Activity
>>> Theory is in danger of collapsing to a reductionism that actually
>>> explains nothing.
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>>>
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>     
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