From andyb@marxists.org Sun Aug 2 17:17:54 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 10:17:54 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Philosophie des Geistes? In-Reply-To: References: <1f6648a0-1fe9-7f4a-965b-b4ac5c1fbfe1@marxists.org> <6874c92d-2955-180d-bfe0-fdc533678010@marxists.org> <1b9a4d04-9de0-8705-65f1-508a23b88971@marxists.org> Message-ID: <176fc713-c273-8038-79e8-18b56448dba1@marxists.org> Of course time and movement are essential moments of being, Mike, but that does not equal "including time in the unit of analysis." It is impossible to conceive of a unit of analysis, or anything real, which is not subject to all the natural conditions of existence, including movement and change. Some years ago I likened the idea of unit of analysis widespread among the older generation of CHAT scholars to a suitcase. When you go on a journey you ask yourself what you need to pack and put it in your suitcase. This was not the idea of Herder, Goethe, Hegel, Marx, Vygotsky or Leontyev. I have recently put together a comprehensive article on units and germs for the purpose of a series of monthly zoom discussions organised by John Cripps Clark at Deakin University. It will be discussed in September: "The Unit of Analysis and Germ Cell in Hegel, Marx and Vygotsky" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/unit_and_cell.pdf__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_tKn0JaA$ This paper includes 48 examples of "unit of analysis" used by various writers. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 3/08/2020 4:26 am, mike cole wrote: > We are talking about a living process.? No time, no way to > know if there is a contradiction/discoordination with > no time.. Just timeless logic. > > mike > > > > On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 6:59 PM Andy Blunden > > wrote: > > Mike: "ergo, there needs to be time in the unit of > analysis..." > > I see it differently. As I see it, "Ergo, there needs > to be a contradiction in the unit of analysis." > Hegel calls this a "concrete individuality." > (/conkrete Einzelheit/) Grasping a process entails > also grasping it as a "simple something" (/das > Einfache/). The very word "unit" suggests this. > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 29/07/2020 3:18 am, mike cole wrote: >> Hi Andy et al - >> I often start from your formula that? "Every >> *thing*?is, of course, also a *process*, in that >> every thing is in movement and change. >> >> ergo, there needs to be time in the unit of analysis.. >> >> Seems like you also need scale, or some such >> term......? This is illustrated by the powers of ten >> video that always?flashes?past >> my mind's eye when this discussion comes up. >> >> The big challenge, always, is to be able to use these >> concepts as lenses through?which to look at the >> processes of learning and development >> that people pay us to do something about. >> >> mike >> >> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 4:28 AM Andy Blunden >> > wrote: >> >> Having taken a moment to think about your >> question, Mike, for a change, I think I can >> clarify my response. >> >> The response cannot be an either-or answer. >> >> Do we judge an actor (movement, project, person, >> ...) by their means or by their end? by the >> journey or by the destination? by the means >> (tools, words, ...) used or by the object aimed >> at, by the process or the product. The answer has >> to be *both* for the same kind of reason that we >> see activity always in terms *dual stimulation*, >> not just immediate and not just mediated, but both. >> >> Every *thing* is, of course, also a *process*, in >> that every thing is in movement and change. Every >> process is also a product. >> >> Andy >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 25/07/2020 6:50 pm, Andy Blunden wrote: >>> >>> Oh, I see: "if you want to know the mind of a >>> cobbler, then study the boots he has made." >>> >>> The focus on the object of activity to which >>> Collingwood directs our attention, should not, I >>> think, be seen as excluding understanding of the >>> activity. He is saying: don't look inside his >>> head, look at what he is /doing/, his >>> object-oriented activity. True, there are >>> different ways of making boots of the same >>> quality, and the concept is includes /how/ the >>> boot is produced as well as /what/ was produced, >>> >>> Andy >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *Andy Blunden* >>> Hegel for Social Movements >>> >>> Home Page >>> >>> >>> On 25/07/2020 12:48 pm, mike cole wrote: >>>> Why restrict ourselves to observing?the boot, >>>> Andy? Why not study the process of the boot's >>>> coming?into being historically and in >>>> contemporary activities?that bring boots >>>> into being? In psychology?a focus on products >>>> not processes is a constant, justified >>>> complaint of critical scholars I have been reading. >>>> What am I missing? >>>> mike >>>> >>>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 2:05 AM Andy Blunden >>>> >>> > wrote: >>>> >>>> Collingwood is great. Hard to get hold of >>>> work I think. >>>> >>>> And yes, /Geist /is an activity. Many >>>> writers of our day agree with that. >>>> >>>> andy >>>> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>> *Andy Blunden* >>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>> >>>> Home Page >>>> >>>> >>>> On 24/07/2020 6:28 pm, WEBSTER, DAVID S. wrote: >>>>> Mind, Hegel and Collingwood >>>>> >>>>> The mind seems to be not so much that >>>>> which thinks as the thinking itself; it is >>>>> not an active thing so much? as an >>>>> activity (Religion & Philosophy 1916 >>>>> p.100) -? if you want to know the mind of >>>>> a cobbler, then study the boots he has made >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> on behalf of Andy Blunden >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *Sent:* 24 July 2020 05:04 >>>>> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Philosophie des >>>>> Geistes? >>>>> >>>>> There is nothing "crude" about Hegel's >>>>> Philosophy of Spirit. It has almost >>>>> innumerable grades of mind between the >>>>> indeterminate "feeling" which might cause >>>>> a new-born to cry without any kind of >>>>> awareness, up to political action to >>>>> resolve the social problem at the root of >>>>> the "disturbance." All these are states of >>>>> a whole body and its relation to its >>>>> environment. Hegel does talk about >>>>> "expulsion" where are person takes action >>>>> - shouting, sobbing, .. - to relieve the >>>>> feeling, a process which can be more or >>>>> less rational. But he does not have a >>>>> mental state over there and a body over >>>>> there, or one expressing itself in the >>>>> other. Probably my analogy of hand-waving >>>>> was inappropriate. That's obviously not >>>>> the same as your hair standing on end when >>>>> you get a creepy feeling or the stomach >>>>> ache which tells you it's dinner time. >>>>> >>>>> andy >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>> *Andy Blunden* >>>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>>> >>>>> Home Page >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 24/07/2020 7:01 am, David Kellogg wrote: >>>>>> Well, it's not me turning it around, of >>>>>> course. The James-Lange theory is what it >>>>>> is: you perceive something, your viscera >>>>>> or vasomotor muscles respond, and the >>>>>> emotion is the feeling of that happening >>>>>> to you. Lange, at any rate, seems to be >>>>>> thinking of the male sexual response. >>>>>> >>>>>> I think that's why Dewey says that >>>>>> Hegel's anticipation of the theory is >>>>>> crude. Vygotsky wouldn't (and doesn't) >>>>>> agree that an emotion is "expressed". An >>>>>> emotion is not a mental state >>>>>> of?affairs?expressed in physiological >>>>>> changes in the viscera/vasomotor muscles >>>>>> or contrariwise a change in the >>>>>> visceral/vascular state of >>>>>> affairs?expressed in a mental one. (For >>>>>> that very reason, I think that Vygotsky >>>>>> wouldn't agree with Andy's waving >>>>>> analogy....) >>>>>> >>>>>> Spinoza?uses the term "affect" or >>>>>> "affection"?instead. It means more or >>>>>> less what it sounds like: the way in >>>>>> which a body is affected by the >>>>>> environment and vice versa. This can >>>>>> either increase or decrease the potential >>>>>> for a body for?activity. The problem is >>>>>> that in order to make this a theory of >>>>>> specifically human emotions, this >>>>>> activity has to include the "activity" of >>>>>> making meanings, and Spinoza can't seem >>>>>> to address THAT issue without slipping >>>>>> into psycho-physical parallelism. >>>>>> (Halliday can, though....) >>>>>> : >>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>> >>>>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: >>>>>> A manual and a manifesto. >>>>>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_GHlfhKg$ >>>>>> >>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: >>>>>> /L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works/ >>>>>> /Volume One: Foundations of Pedology/" >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7-526CKow$ >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 8:19 PM Andy >>>>>> Blunden >>>>> > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> No, don't turn it around. The point >>>>>> is that organs are subordinate parts >>>>>> of the whole organism. The emotion >>>>>> /is/ the state of a whole organism, >>>>>> in particular, a mental state. Like a >>>>>> hand expresses a feeling when we wave >>>>>> to someone. >>>>>> >>>>>> andy >>>>>> >>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>>> *Andy Blunden* >>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>>>> >>>>>> Home Page >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On 23/07/2020 8:55 pm, David Kellogg >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> Thanks, Andy--this is it! >>>>>>> >>>>>>> "In physiology the viscera and the >>>>>>> organs are treated merely as parts >>>>>>> subservient to the animal organism; >>>>>>> but they form at the same time a >>>>>>> physical system for the expression >>>>>>> of mental states, and in this way >>>>>>> they get quite another interpretation." >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The only problem is the word >>>>>>> "expression".?In the James-Lange >>>>>>> theory, the mental states are the >>>>>>> expression of the viscera and the >>>>>>> organs.?But perhaps that's what >>>>>>> Hegel really means here: the viscera >>>>>>> and organs are a system that >>>>>>> expresses a state which we interpret >>>>>>> as an emotion. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> (I remember a dear?friend of mine >>>>>>> getting a messy divorce and >>>>>>> remarking, when I worried that he >>>>>>> was losing a lot of weight, that it >>>>>>> wasn't his heart that was broken but >>>>>>> his stomach....) >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>>> >>>>>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in >>>>>>> memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >>>>>>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_GHlfhKg$ >>>>>>> >>>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai >>>>>>> Veresov: /L.S. Vygotsky's >>>>>>> Pedological Works/ /Volume One: >>>>>>> Foundations of Pedology/" >>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7-526CKow$ >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 5:19 PM Andy >>>>>>> Blunden >>>>>> > wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> If you're interested in s. 401, >>>>>>> then you'll probably be >>>>>>> interested in 402 as well. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> One other possibility: The >>>>>>> "official" way of citing Hegel >>>>>>> nowadays is to cite the page no. >>>>>>> in the authoritative version of >>>>>>> /Hegel Werke/. The German word >>>>>>> for "page" is /Seite/, so you >>>>>>> would say "S. 401" of the /Enc/, >>>>>>> This turns out also to be an >>>>>>> interesting passage of the >>>>>>> Subjective Spirit, on >>>>>>> Self-consciousness, concerned >>>>>>> with the infamous Master-Slave >>>>>>> dialectic, though in a much >>>>>>> reduced form, not like in the >>>>>>> /Phenomenology of Spirit/. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> See p. 401 in the other >>>>>>> attachment, ENZYKl3.PDF, in >>>>>>> German. English translation is >>>>>>> here: >>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/suconsci.htm*SU428__;Iw!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ79I9FUElg$ >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Andy >>>>>>> >>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>>>> *Andy Blunden* >>>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Home Page >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On 23/07/2020 5:47 pm, Andy >>>>>>> Blunden wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The Philosophy of Spirit is the >>>>>>>> Third Part of the >>>>>>>> Encyclopaedia, itself composed >>>>>>>> of three parts: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> * Subjective Spirit, which is >>>>>>>> commonly taken as Psychology >>>>>>>> * Objective Spirit, which is >>>>>>>> commonly taken as Social >>>>>>>> Theory, and >>>>>>>> * Absolute Spirit, which >>>>>>>> covers Art, religion, >>>>>>>> Science and Philosophy. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The Encyclopaedia has numbered >>>>>>>> paragraphs. These do vary >>>>>>>> between 2 or? editions, but >>>>>>>> these will be limited probably >>>>>>>> by those translated into English, >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I would start with the 1930 >>>>>>>> version" >>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/susoul.htm*SU401__;Iw!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_IDVzvsg$ >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> - a very early stage in the >>>>>>>> development of mental life, or. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The 1817 version has >>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sp/sspirit.htm*SS399__;Iw!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_wKWQVDA$ >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> - this version puts s. 401 at >>>>>>>> the beginning of a version of >>>>>>>> Objective Spirit. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> The 1830 one, above, has a long >>>>>>>> Note to it written by his >>>>>>>> students on the basis of >>>>>>>> Hegel's lectures which is a >>>>>>>> long discourse on the >>>>>>>> development of thinking from >>>>>>>> sensation. I am thinking this >>>>>>>> is what you mean. I will >>>>>>>> photocopy it and send it on. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Andy >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>>>>> *Andy Blunden* >>>>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Home Page >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On 23/07/2020 5:09 pm, David >>>>>>>> Kellogg wrote: >>>>>>>>> We are trying to turn >>>>>>>>> Vygotsky's "Teaching on >>>>>>>>> Emotion" into one of those >>>>>>>>> cartoon books that are so >>>>>>>>> popular here in Korea (e.g. >>>>>>>>> the "Why?" series). It's not >>>>>>>>> Vygotsky for dummies, but it >>>>>>>>> will have a lot of pictures >>>>>>>>> with questions and answers >>>>>>>>> alongside Vygotsky's rather >>>>>>>>> difficult text. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> We've got to figure out the >>>>>>>>> text first. For example, what >>>>>>>>> does John Dewey mean when he says: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> "On the historical side, it >>>>>>>>> may be worth noting that a >>>>>>>>> crude anticipation of James' >>>>>>>>> theory is found in Hegel's >>>>>>>>> Philosophie des Geistes, 401."? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Did Hegel ever write a >>>>>>>>> Philosophie des Geistes? If >>>>>>>>> so, does the number refer to a >>>>>>>>> page number or a section or what? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1895.html__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ79nCESAiw$ >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in >>>>>>>>> memoriam: A manual and a >>>>>>>>> manifesto. >>>>>>>>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_GHlfhKg$ >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai >>>>>>>>> Veresov: /L.S. Vygotsky's >>>>>>>>> Pedological Works/ /Volume >>>>>>>>> One: Foundations of Pedology/" >>>>>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7-526CKow$ >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> >>>> >>>> IAngelus Novus >>>> >>>> >>>> The Angel's View of History is looking as >>>> plausible in 2020 as it did to Walter >>>> Benjamin & Klee in 1940 >>>> >>>> --------------------------------------------- >>>> >>>> Cultural Praxis Website: >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_GqAZTLA$ >>>> >>>> Re-generating CHAT Website: >>>> re-generatingchat.com >>>> >>>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >>>> . >>>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >>>> . >>>> >>>> >>>> >> >> >> -- >> >> >> IAngelus Novus >> >> >> The Angel's View of History is looking as plausible >> in 2020 as it did to Walter Benjamin & Klee in 1940 >> >> --------------------------------------------- >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_GqAZTLA$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> . >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> . >> >> >> > > > -- > > > IAngelus Novus > The Angel's > View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and > objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and > passivity cease to be antinonmes, and thus cease to > exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the > theoreticalcontradictions is possible only through > practical means, only through the practicalenergy of > humans. (Marx, 1844). > > --------------------------------------------- > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VKlkgxKAcjDhcgO3KJLyVT62zGt13Ta3x1Jaqf42Xgc-y20I1K20c4D61nsjQ7_GqAZTLA$ > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > . > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200803/2ebcf807/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Wed Aug 5 19:19:14 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 11:19:14 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Synoptic Gospel Message-ID: I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways according to their anagogic value. These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the same ones Andy cites: a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and speech, b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and finally, c.* perezhivanie*, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s relationship with the environment. I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of analysis itself has to be synoptic. Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating the studio all the time. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Xj2079oBIkc0uAuoCRaKX47Lnon3UBmjEm2JYY1ehkhi6rns2Sn661_1Rv1Jdtm_kdJzmA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xj2079oBIkc0uAuoCRaKX47Lnon3UBmjEm2JYY1ehkhi6rns2Sn661_1Rv1JdtlHIYe3Rw$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200806/66887f61/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Wed Aug 5 20:25:57 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2020 20:25:57 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: So time needs to be part of a unity for studying cultural/historical processes, David? Or am I making a category error? mike On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:26 PM David Kellogg wrote: > I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also > been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating > Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have > in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as > simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of > Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels > which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways > according to their anagogic value. > > These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, > are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is > not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological > process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously > marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates > Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in > the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the > same ones Andy cites: > > > a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and > speech, > > > b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and > finally, > > > c.* perezhivanie*, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s > relationship with the environment. > > > I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed > chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age > period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the > personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some > higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological > to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the > moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started > to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of > analysis itself has to be synoptic. > > > Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in > his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other > hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less > that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for > painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every > narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a > middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct > the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no > starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a > matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain > that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they > would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating > the studio all the time. > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Qius1oGsgiq2UA0kbUZyTjShVIB7BW9A3yU5dyRaH6U_I5nrsaFYbr5M9YEfyW2beH5ieQ$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Qius1oGsgiq2UA0kbUZyTjShVIB7BW9A3yU5dyRaH6U_I5nrsaFYbr5M9YEfyW0t9vt2-g$ > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). --------------------------------------------- Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Qius1oGsgiq2UA0kbUZyTjShVIB7BW9A3yU5dyRaH6U_I5nrsaFYbr5M9YEfyW3LROkyyA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200805/f0daa97c/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Wed Aug 5 20:59:29 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 12:59:29 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Oh, I think "category error" is another name for Hallidayan complementarity, Mike. Let me put it another way. Another name for the synoptic understanding of a crisis is "contradiction". Or, if you prefer, another name for the dynamic understanding of contradiction is "crisis". (Is that two other ways, or is a pair of ways?) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WyXxttLrB9FkaVlQnHN9A-lwTXyuPcjUoZ8OUhrmf3F9HCyxvuDh-i5A0ee74vClLe8-yg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WyXxttLrB9FkaVlQnHN9A-lwTXyuPcjUoZ8OUhrmf3F9HCyxvuDh-i5A0ee74vDENgCs7Q$ On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 12:28 PM mike cole wrote: > So time needs to be part of a unity for studying cultural/historical > processes, David? > Or am I making a category error? > > mike > > On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:26 PM David Kellogg wrote: > >> I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also >> been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating >> Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have >> in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as >> simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of >> Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels >> which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways >> according to their anagogic value. >> >> These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, >> are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is >> not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological >> process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously >> marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates >> Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in >> the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the >> same ones Andy cites: >> >> >> a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and >> speech, >> >> >> b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and >> finally, >> >> >> c.* perezhivanie*, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s >> relationship with the environment. >> >> >> I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed >> chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age >> period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the >> personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some >> higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological >> to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the >> moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started >> to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of >> analysis itself has to be synoptic. >> >> >> Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in >> his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other >> hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less >> that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for >> painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every >> narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a >> middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct >> the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no >> starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a >> matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain >> that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they >> would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating >> the studio all the time. >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >> Outlines, Spring 2020 >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WyXxttLrB9FkaVlQnHN9A-lwTXyuPcjUoZ8OUhrmf3F9HCyxvuDh-i5A0ee74vClLe8-yg$ >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume >> One: Foundations of Pedology*" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WyXxttLrB9FkaVlQnHN9A-lwTXyuPcjUoZ8OUhrmf3F9HCyxvuDh-i5A0ee74vDENgCs7Q$ >> >> >> > > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > --------------------------------------------- > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WyXxttLrB9FkaVlQnHN9A-lwTXyuPcjUoZ8OUhrmf3F9HCyxvuDh-i5A0ee74vCwh3tEOw$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200806/9124d168/attachment.html From lsmolucha@hotmail.com Thu Aug 6 14:09:48 2020 From: lsmolucha@hotmail.com (Larry Smolucha) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 21:09:48 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Prehistory of Written Language???? Message-ID: >From Francine: To Michael Cole, et. al Hoping that you might help me clarify the publication history of Vygotsky's manuscript "The Prehistory of Written Language." Did it originate in 1928/1929 as a lecture or unpublished paper or publication? Was it published as a chapter in The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions in 1931? Then was it published again in 1935 in The Mental Development of Children During Education. It was included as the last chapter in Mind in Society in 1978. Perhaps David Kellogg knows something about its history. Need to know for a publication - I have been asked to contribute the chapter on Vygotsky, as a Pioneer in Psychology. (I will be going down to my basement archives to look at xeroxes of the Russian texts.) Hope everyone stays in good health, we have been fortunate so far. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200806/8689e9b1/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Thu Aug 6 14:48:58 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 14:48:58 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Prehistory of Written Language???? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello Francine Smolucha- I can tell you with some certainty that the version that appeared in* Mind in Society* came from the 1935 collection of his essays. The 1928/29 date for origins is backed up by these notes ( attached) from an issue of Soviet Psychology/JREEP. I hope you are well and safe. By all means announce the public availability of your essay. mike mike On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 2:11 PM Larry Smolucha wrote: > >From Francine: > > To Michael Cole, et. al > > Hoping that you might help me clarify the publication history of > Vygotsky's manuscript "The Prehistory of Written Language." > > Did it originate in 1928/1929 as a lecture or unpublished paper or > publication? > > Was it published as a chapter in *The History of the Development of > Higher Mental Functions* in 1931? > > Then was it published again in 1935 in *The Mental Development of > Children During Education.* > > It was included as the last chapter in *Mind in Society* in 1978. > > Perhaps David Kellogg knows something about its history. > > Need to know for a publication - I have been asked to contribute the > chapter on Vygotsky, as a Pioneer in Psychology. (I will be going down > to my basement archives to look at xeroxes of the Russian texts.) > > Hope everyone stays in good health, we have been fortunate so far. > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). --------------------------------------------- Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QE1yo8Rl2aYMSSjgl3kMwtsxJGI7gRJCpwfNKUiLezOeEQQu2wev09eoBMCYNgK-9LL8QA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200806/c274798c/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: LSV.prehistory.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 5037990 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200806/c274798c/attachment-0001.pdf From dkellogg60@gmail.com Thu Aug 6 14:56:43 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 06:56:43 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Prehistory of Written Language???? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Francine: It's really the history of written SPEECH, isn't it? Kind of oxymoronic in English, but still a better way of setting out the problem of a prehistory than 'written language'. I had never heard that Vygotsky published it in 1928-1929. My copy of Vygotsky 1935 had a fottonote saying it was a chapter in "History of the Cultural Development of the Normal and Non-normal Child". But it also says this is an unpublished manuscript from 1928-1929. There is some controversy about the last ten chapters of HDHMF which includes the Prehistory of Written Speech as Chapter Seven. You know that the revisionists claim this is a different book, and the editors of the CW just pasted them together. That's why the first publication in 1960 announced that the last ten chapters--including the Prehistory--were never written or had been lost. I suppose they would say that "History of the Cultural Development of the Normal and Non-normal Child" is the book that the editors of the CW cannibalized to eke out the missing ten chapters, The problem with this claim is that there's a pretty clear reference to a whole book in the opening chapter (1997: 3) and also in the final chapter (where the chapter on written speech is explicitly mentioned), and they do seem to be talking about the same book. I don't think that the concluding reference (1997: 241-243) could be referring to a different book because it talks about reversing the order of the chapters (theoretical background emerging from the empirical studies rather than empirical studies framed by theoretical backgrounds as it actually appears). It seems to me that Vygotsky did what Marx did when he wrote Grundrisse--study first, theoretical background second. Then he reversed them, as Marx did when he wrote Capital. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UqSLgvqjyO1T4LZtv5FkPD7MHoLNpxGUAtC5QPnr2lTBl5SeMjk8KhZk-ktWTXcqDzPiTg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UqSLgvqjyO1T4LZtv5FkPD7MHoLNpxGUAtC5QPnr2lTBl5SeMjk8KhZk-ktWTXdqWHilkg$ On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 6:11 AM Larry Smolucha wrote: > >From Francine: > > To Michael Cole, et. al > > Hoping that you might help me clarify the publication history of > Vygotsky's manuscript "The Prehistory of Written Language." > > Did it originate in 1928/1929 as a lecture or unpublished paper or > publication? > > Was it published as a chapter in *The History of the Development of > Higher Mental Functions* in 1931? > > Then was it published again in 1935 in *The Mental Development of > Children During Education.* > > It was included as the last chapter in *Mind in Society* in 1978. > > Perhaps David Kellogg knows something about its history. > > Need to know for a publication - I have been asked to contribute the > chapter on Vygotsky, as a Pioneer in Psychology. (I will be going down > to my basement archives to look at xeroxes of the Russian texts.) > > Hope everyone stays in good health, we have been fortunate so far. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200807/ebb1ecca/attachment.html From lsmolucha@hotmail.com Thu Aug 6 17:45:31 2020 From: lsmolucha@hotmail.com (Larry Smolucha) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 00:45:31 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Prehistory of Written Language???? In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: >From Francine: A big Thank You to Michael Cole and to David Kellogg One of the things I will be addressing is the arbitrary designation of periods for Vygotsky's writings. Just because a paper was first published in 1935 doesn't mean that Vygotsky formulated those ideas in the last couple years of his life. Over a ten year span, it takes time to carry out research, formulate the theoretical argument, give a lecture, write a paper, and actually get a publication in press. So, I am working with the theoretical continuity between papers, while trying to get the dates right. ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Thursday, August 6, 2020 4:48 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Prehistory of Written Language???? Hello Francine Smolucha- I can tell you with some certainty that the version that appeared in Mind in Society came from the 1935 collection of his essays. The 1928/29 date for origins is backed up by these notes ( attached) from an issue of Soviet Psychology/JREEP. I hope you are well and safe. By all means announce the public availability of your essay. mike mike On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 2:11 PM Larry Smolucha > wrote: >From Francine: To Michael Cole, et. al Hoping that you might help me clarify the publication history of Vygotsky's manuscript "The Prehistory of Written Language." Did it originate in 1928/1929 as a lecture or unpublished paper or publication? Was it published as a chapter in The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions in 1931? Then was it published again in 1935 in The Mental Development of Children During Education. It was included as the last chapter in Mind in Society in 1978. Perhaps David Kellogg knows something about its history. Need to know for a publication - I have been asked to contribute the chapter on Vygotsky, as a Pioneer in Psychology. (I will be going down to my basement archives to look at xeroxes of the Russian texts.) Hope everyone stays in good health, we have been fortunate so far. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). --------------------------------------------- Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VGCjSDPvlqH_Aq0Fxb05Y1NtNSx1EeqOMKHIk1sYO7rYc33vn1brsLT-fFGwJ3_4wvHcww$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200807/38ce1add/attachment.html From annalisa@unm.edu Thu Aug 6 18:40:35 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 01:40:35 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: Hello, Of course if David is going to bring in the kitchen sink, christ and the nude I've got to be seeing what comes of this thread. Hopefully no one gets crucified in time! ?? I am wondering if it is *time* or *change* that is embedded? Chronology is more a linkage of "this event happens before that," and then "this one happened after that," it can be linear, but also multi-threaded. Sort of like a Rube Goldberg contraption. (See: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rubegoldberg.com/__;!!Mih3wA!RUYhim3dX3nAgYj-o-Vn-2ppCV16cud4hwN94Je3pBDuDFclU2s0tkDnuEsZs3FQ1fKf3g$ to invent a better mousetrap to water a plant!) On the other hand, change is the difference between one state and the next. Would time be the span of change as it transforms from one state to the next? What I recall of Piaget is that he considered development to be very stair-stepped: one plateau for a period until the next change abruptly lifted to the next step which then plateaus and so on. Is it fair to say that Vygotsky argued this way to measure cannot work given the complexity of variables at work, not just in the individual, but also in the environment. Does that mean that time starts to become un-measurable, because each individual is going to have a different way to mark time, a la zoped? The environment is not time-dependent, unless we are going to start marking time like astrologers and divide the globe into longitudes and latitudes to determine the force of energy (and change) for each globe's section. How do we mark time in the environment compared to time for the individual? Just seems very wacky enough to make my head hurt. Where is the reference point? you know, by which one measures the change one is seeking to measure? Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of David Kellogg Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 9:59 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel [EXTERNAL] Oh, I think "category error" is another name for Hallidayan complementarity, Mike. Let me put it another way. Another name for the synoptic understanding of a crisis is "contradiction". Or, if you prefer, another name for the dynamic understanding of contradiction is "crisis". (Is that two other ways, or is a pair of ways?) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RUYhim3dX3nAgYj-o-Vn-2ppCV16cud4hwN94Je3pBDuDFclU2s0tkDnuEsZs3H4gEohRw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RUYhim3dX3nAgYj-o-Vn-2ppCV16cud4hwN94Je3pBDuDFclU2s0tkDnuEsZs3Er0zuMAw$ On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 12:28 PM mike cole > wrote: So time needs to be part of a unity for studying cultural/historical processes, David? Or am I making a category error? mike On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:26 PM David Kellogg > wrote: I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways according to their anagogic value. These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the same ones Andy cites: a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and speech, b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and finally, c. perezhivanie, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s relationship with the environment. I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of analysis itself has to be synoptic. Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating the studio all the time. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RUYhim3dX3nAgYj-o-Vn-2ppCV16cud4hwN94Je3pBDuDFclU2s0tkDnuEsZs3H4gEohRw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RUYhim3dX3nAgYj-o-Vn-2ppCV16cud4hwN94Je3pBDuDFclU2s0tkDnuEsZs3Er0zuMAw$ -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). --------------------------------------------- Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RUYhim3dX3nAgYj-o-Vn-2ppCV16cud4hwN94Je3pBDuDFclU2s0tkDnuEsZs3GtbcJQ3w$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200807/c2df29bb/attachment.html From leahlee99999@gmail.com Fri Aug 7 06:07:32 2020 From: leahlee99999@gmail.com (Leah Lee) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2020 15:07:32 +0200 Subject: [Xmca-l] Labvanced.com New Eye-Tracking Cutting Edge Technology Message-ID: * Hello everyone, Labvanced has just released a cutting edgedeep learning based eye tracking algorithm,which uses the webcam to track the gaze of participants. We are highly confident that not only is this much better than webgazer.js or other algorithms doing webcam based eye tracking, but we actually believe that the accuracy is good enough for at least 80-90% of eye tracking research, which is normally done in the lab. We made several demos, so please try and give us feedback about this approach. You can use these studies also as templates for your own eye tracking research onLabvanced (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.labvanced.com__;!!Mih3wA!UpzqleXFRi_xUtWuWg3gQkBBGbszk7m3q3kCjHRdybKo3JVvZkGjx0_QVCxvgkBmLfgChg$ ).? Please note that this algorithm runs completely client side and no video data / face data will be stored on our system, so your privacy and your participants? privacy is guaranteed! 1. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.labvanced.com/page/library/11099This__;!!Mih3wA!UpzqleXFRi_xUtWuWg3gQkBBGbszk7m3q3kCjHRdybKo3JVvZkGjx0_QVCxvgkAdhIE_vg$ is a performance test where the predicted gaze position will be displayed onto the screen, so you can test how good the prediction really is. 2. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.labvanced.com/page/library/11327This__;!!Mih3wA!UpzqleXFRi_xUtWuWg3gQkBBGbszk7m3q3kCjHRdybKo3JVvZkGjx0_QVCxvgkAXm8JUmA$ is a little game where you have to fixate objects to "destroy" them before they reach the bottom of the screen. A few things to note: * Calibration will currently take 7-8 minutes. We will cut this down over time to about 4-5 minutes. * It requires a decent computer/laptop, we will soon provide an initial ?system check? to exclude people with too old equipment, or other reasons why it might not work. * Further improvements in accuracy will most likely be coming in the next months by leveraging larger training sets and improving drift correction. ?If you have any questions about our new Eye-Tracking technology, or if you are interested to use our platform, please email me, we will also be happy to provide a free demo via Google Meet at your convenience. Best regards, Leah Lee * -- Labvanced - The intuitive cloud solution for online experiments Grunigerstr. 19 33102 Paderborn Germany phone: (+49) 5251-5449385 website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.labvanced.com__;!!Mih3wA!UpzqleXFRi_xUtWuWg3gQkBBGbszk7m3q3kCjHRdybKo3JVvZkGjx0_QVCxvgkAqBav46g$ email: leah@labvanced.com Scicovery GmbH Amtsgericht Paderborn HRB 13448 Gesch?ftsf?hrer: Caspar Goeke, Holger Finger -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200807/36300385/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Sun Aug 9 00:43:23 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2020 16:43:23 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I certainly didn't intend to bring in the kitchen sink, Annalisa. For the most part, our models were clothed and male: the few times we had nude female models I couldn't bring myself to paint more than their mortified faces. And, yes, I did have to bring Christ in; I always worry when we try to understand terms like "syncretism" or "synoptic" without understanding whence they come: my own parents named me David without realizing that I was born on Saint David's Day. So Vygotsky is developing his critique of James and Lange into a critique of functionalism. Because James and Lange are functionalists, they take from Spinoza ONLY the idea that passions will increase or decrease your power to act. This is consistent with their emphasis on fear and rage, on lower emotions generally: these seem to be whole body sensations that come out of nowhere and seem to cover our whole being at once. But it's completely inconsistent with understanding the structure of a higher emotion because it simply treats the feeling as a black box of undifferentiable visceral or vasomotor sensations. One cannot tell the difference between emotion and edible cannibis; one cannot distinguish or disarticulate an intellectual curiosity, a chaste love, or the numbed feeling my sister puts into her dancing now that she has MS; one can neither part nor parse feelings without the temporality that composed them. Does this critique make Vygotsky a structuralist? I think it would--if we left time out of the equation. But I think that the whole notion of 'perezhivanie' is born precisely out of bringing time back in--it's the experience but ALSO the after thought, the moment of reflection on the experience achieved (in the French sense of acheve/). Intellectual curiosity is astonishment PLUS thinking about it afterwards, chaste love is attraction PLUS social distancing on second thought, and my sister's "danciness" is a combination of numbness, pain and ecstasy but also my own toe-curling response ex post facto. And that, Andy, is the problem I have with Hegel's Philosophy of History. How can there be any development at all without time? Isn't Spirit an afterthought? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4VywuAreA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4WlZoZqmQ$ On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 10:42 AM Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hello, > > Of course if David is going to bring in the kitchen sink, christ and the > nude I've got to be seeing what comes of this thread. > > Hopefully no one gets crucified in time! ? > > I am wondering if it is *time* or *change* that is embedded? > > Chronology is more a linkage of "this event happens before that," and then > "this one happened after that," it can be linear, but also multi-threaded. > Sort of like a Rube Goldberg contraption. (See: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rubegoldberg.com/__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4WHt36Law$ > > to invent a better mousetrap to water a plant!) > > On the other hand, change is the difference between one state and the > next. Would time be the span of change as it transforms from one state to > the next? > > What I recall of Piaget is that he considered development to be very > stair-stepped: one plateau for a period until the next change abruptly > lifted to the next step which then plateaus and so on. > > Is it fair to say that Vygotsky argued this way to measure cannot work > given the complexity of variables at work, not just in the individual, but > also in the environment. Does that mean that time starts to become > un-measurable, because each individual is going to have a different way to > mark time, ? la zoped? > > The environment is not time-dependent, unless we are going to start > marking time like astrologers and divide the globe into longitudes and > latitudes to determine the force of energy (and change) for each globe's > section. How do we mark time in the environment compared to time for the > individual? > > Just seems very wacky enough to make my head hurt. > > Where is the reference point? you know, by which one measures the change > one is seeking to measure? > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of David Kellogg > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2020 9:59 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > Oh, I think "category error" is another name for Hallidayan > complementarity, Mike. > > Let me put it another way. Another name for the synoptic understanding of > a crisis is "contradiction". Or, if you prefer, another name for the > dynamic understanding of contradiction is "crisis". > > (Is that two other ways, or is a pair of ways?) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4VywuAreA$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* * > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4WlZoZqmQ$ > > > > > On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 12:28 PM mike cole wrote: > > So time needs to be part of a unity for studying cultural/historical > processes, David? > Or am I making a category error? > > mike > > On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:26 PM David Kellogg wrote: > > I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also > been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating > Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have > in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as > simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of > Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels > which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways > according to their anagogic value. > > These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, > are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is > not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological > process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously > marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates > Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in > the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the > same ones Andy cites: > > > a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and > speech, > > > b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and > finally, > > > c.* perezhivanie*, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s > relationship with the environment. > > > I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed > chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age > period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the > personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some > higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological > to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the > moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started > to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of > analysis itself has to be synoptic. > > > Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in > his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other > hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less > that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for > painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every > narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a > middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct > the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no > starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a > matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain > that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they > would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating > the studio all the time. > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4VywuAreA$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* * > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4WlZoZqmQ$ > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > --------------------------------------------- > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!V1D_yy1lRRo2e2tYuyDgfBxh9bpuyWHVz51kBp_ODMwozzjNX4ove_dGUIt3t4VP49i3dw$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200809/af13d8e5/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Sun Aug 9 11:01:42 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2020 14:01:42 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] human etc Message-ID: Does human phylogenesis end? Like, is there a dividing line or stop-point between human development and whatever version or branch comes next? I was going to look this up but figured I'm better off just posing the question here. (A favor to anyone who answers: try to talk to me like I'm ignorant here -- because that would be correct!) Related: here's a fun and very interesting show that plays around with future (and not-so-future) possibilities of human development: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Million__;!!Mih3wA!S6RpUe7tKXHgEfQnhGveZQV1LbA1OhhVvxCcLctUKHrBssGuvvKrFmGHo0VrzlmuKZy1Ug$ Thank you, Anthony -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200809/2bf96d7f/attachment.html From annalisa@unm.edu Sun Aug 9 14:04:13 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2020 21:04:13 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: David and venerable O's: I consider the words David has dropped into the mix. Syncretic = blending of two categories into one. Synoptic = taking a general view, but in Christianity it is a reference to the synoptic gospels Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Most people who have done even a little research on the New Testament will know that there's a lot of bad reporting when it comes to Jesus. Still no one knows about those 10 years in the desert. (Though in India there are stories that Jesus came there to study Vedanta, and that he is really a Vedantin). Repeating the same story three times doesn't make it true. Especially when considering all the other gospels that were sidelined as heretical and forced into hiding. Like some of Vygotky's own writing under Stalinist Russia. I wonder if we are seeing our own Council of Nicea concerning the interpretations of what happened before? If you might recall, The Council of Nicea arose from a tiff in Alexandria between Arius and Athansius, the bishop of Alexandria. Arius maintained that "the Son is of a different substance from the Father, i.e. created." This was also to indicate that Jesus was just a regular guy, like all of us, which then indicates that anyone could become like Jesus, by living like him. Athansius won the controversy defining the existence of the Trinity, as "one God in three Divine persons". The three persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature". This *essential*-ly makes Jesus "special" and unattainable, that he was not of this world, and this distinction separates him from everyone else before, during, and after his lifetime, which basically reaffirms hierarchy within the early church. It also makes for Mary having highly fertile ears in proximity to itinerant angels. So along with other camps of debate, Arius and Athansius were considered Heteroosians and Homoosians respectively. Are there similarities in terms of defining our terms? History rhyming I suppose. In our case, we have those who have come after Vygotsky trying to decipher to truth of Vygotsky's work, and to define and extend the theories. I almost wonder if it is appropriate to think of Lantiov as creating his own trinity in the development Activity Theory, activity unites everything (I must ask though, how is AT different from Behaviorism?) On the other hand, different researchers who wish to hold closer to Vygotsky, pose perezhivanie arises at a particular time between the individual and the environment, which are different. (Is that fair to state?) In order to measure the change within the individual, one must choose the right unit for analysis, appropriate to what one wants to examine. This isn't relegated to activity, but can include it. I do not mean to spark a flame here. Please permit me to have a little artistic license in making comparisons. At the same time, please feel free to point out any limits in my comparisons or whether I am mistaken in my understandings. This kind of reminds me of LSV's The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffmi34VtIg$ ) Which now I am recognizing and remembering had to do with Vygotsky coming to terms with structuralism of the 19th century and the functionalism of the early 20th. I feel the need to reread that essay. As I'm reflecting...and framing... James based his theory upon Darwin's, that functions of mind are operational tendencies derived (arising from) from our biology, right? The structuralist camp (I presume starting with Freud) state that one understands mind by evaluating the contents of introspection and subjective experience. But getting back to David's discussion of emotion: One cannot divide Spinoza's ideas into parts out of convenience, is the issue I have, if James and Lange do as you say, David. Emotions come from somewhere. Emotion is the uniting key to mind and body, and didn't Vygotsky think so too and isn't that why he looked to Spinoza for guidance. Emotion is unification of mind and body, in terms of self-preservation and survival. Further, and I assert this philosophically, emotions can't be higher or lower, so I'm having a problem with that framing. They can be different, they can be more pronounced or subtle, but I don't see the justification of saying that negative emotions are lower while positive ones are higher (if that is the way in which higher and lower are defined concerning functional differences between emotions). In this sense this goes along with David's observation that one can't make distinctions between emotion arising from life events and emotion arising from medicinal substances. I don't think it makes Vygotsky a structuralist. I think it makes him a vygotskianist, or possibly a spinozanist. I'm not sure what "vygotsky" means in the Russian, but "spinoza" means "thorn" and this does seem to be a thorny debate. "Baruch" or "Benedict" meant "Blessed one." Thus Spinoza is a "good thorn" for all of us to pick out. Imagine what our own perezhivanie is for that! Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of David Kellogg Sent: Sunday, August 9, 2020 1:43 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel [EXTERNAL] I certainly didn't intend to bring in the kitchen sink, Annalisa. For the most part, our models were clothed and male: the few times we had nude female models I couldn't bring myself to paint more than their mortified faces. And, yes, I did have to bring Christ in; I always worry when we try to understand terms like "syncretism" or "synoptic" without understanding whence they come: my own parents named me David without realizing that I was born on Saint David's Day. So Vygotsky is developing his critique of James and Lange into a critique of functionalism. Because James and Lange are functionalists, they take from Spinoza ONLY the idea that passions will increase or decrease your power to act. This is consistent with their emphasis on fear and rage, on lower emotions generally: these seem to be whole body sensations that come out of nowhere and seem to cover our whole being at once. But it's completely inconsistent with understanding the structure of a higher emotion because it simply treats the feeling as a black box of undifferentiable visceral or vasomotor sensations. One cannot tell the difference between emotion and edible cannibis; one cannot distinguish or disarticulate an intellectual curiosity, a chaste love, or the numbed feeling my sister puts into her dancing now that she has MS; one can neither part nor parse feelings without the temporality that composed them. Does this critique make Vygotsky a structuralist? I think it would--if we left time out of the equation. But I think that the whole notion of 'perezhivanie' is born precisely out of bringing time back in--it's the experience but ALSO the after thought, the moment of reflection on the experience achieved (in the French sense of acheve/). Intellectual curiosity is astonishment PLUS thinking about it afterwards, chaste love is attraction PLUS social distancing on second thought, and my sister's "danciness" is a combination of numbness, pain and ecstasy but also my own toe-curling response ex post facto. And that, Andy, is the problem I have with Hegel's Philosophy of History. How can there be any development at all without time? Isn't Spirit an afterthought? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffltU8tU1w$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffkgZ8pvhQ$ On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 10:42 AM Annalisa Aguilar > wrote: Hello, Of course if David is going to bring in the kitchen sink, christ and the nude I've got to be seeing what comes of this thread. Hopefully no one gets crucified in time! ? I am wondering if it is *time* or *change* that is embedded? Chronology is more a linkage of "this event happens before that," and then "this one happened after that," it can be linear, but also multi-threaded. Sort of like a Rube Goldberg contraption. (See: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rubegoldberg.com/__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffl5IlrnNA$ to invent a better mousetrap to water a plant!) On the other hand, change is the difference between one state and the next. Would time be the span of change as it transforms from one state to the next? What I recall of Piaget is that he considered development to be very stair-stepped: one plateau for a period until the next change abruptly lifted to the next step which then plateaus and so on. Is it fair to say that Vygotsky argued this way to measure cannot work given the complexity of variables at work, not just in the individual, but also in the environment. Does that mean that time starts to become un-measurable, because each individual is going to have a different way to mark time, ? la zoped? The environment is not time-dependent, unless we are going to start marking time like astrologers and divide the globe into longitudes and latitudes to determine the force of energy (and change) for each globe's section. How do we mark time in the environment compared to time for the individual? Just seems very wacky enough to make my head hurt. Where is the reference point? you know, by which one measures the change one is seeking to measure? Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of David Kellogg > Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 9:59 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel [EXTERNAL] Oh, I think "category error" is another name for Hallidayan complementarity, Mike. Let me put it another way. Another name for the synoptic understanding of a crisis is "contradiction". Or, if you prefer, another name for the dynamic understanding of contradiction is "crisis". (Is that two other ways, or is a pair of ways?) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffltU8tU1w$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffkgZ8pvhQ$ On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 12:28 PM mike cole > wrote: So time needs to be part of a unity for studying cultural/historical processes, David? Or am I making a category error? mike On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:26 PM David Kellogg > wrote: I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways according to their anagogic value. These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the same ones Andy cites: a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and speech, b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and finally, c. perezhivanie, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s relationship with the environment. I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of analysis itself has to be synoptic. Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating the studio all the time. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffltU8tU1w$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLffkgZ8pvhQ$ -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). --------------------------------------------- Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VRmqIdBHdE28Ro3v8ezyT6nj9Wr21p58CGwwKnD2JxdiNagIy3sB65jFU9SLfflCQ6yNyA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200809/00120b3c/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Sun Aug 9 14:03:58 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2020 06:03:58 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: human etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mike Cole has criticized Vygotsky on exactly this point: in "The Socialist Alteration of Man" (and in other texts), he seems to think that phylogenesis doesn't exactly stop but it is carried on by artificial means, as if development were kind of shunted from a slow track to a much faster one, e.g. by socialist eugenics. It's certainly true that the Soviets believed in a phylogenesis by intelligent design, although they attributed that design to the socialist future and not to the Creationist past. It is also true that their distinction between phylogenetic development and sociogenetic development is a little too sharp for anything but rhetorical accuracy (it is partly developed in opposition to Social Darwinism). But I think that the main theatre for intelligent design was supposed to be political economy, and not biology. In that field, the Soviets were over-optimistic, or perhaps they simply didn't or couldn't understand the part of Capital where Marx reminds us of the difference between a sloppy architect and a really talented honeybee: the former, but not the latter, has mastered language and can raise his structure in imagination and in words before blundering on into steel and concrete. One of the things you learn drawing the human figure in art school is that the medievals didn't know how to draw children: Giotto's pictures of Christ show him as a shrunken adult. It really isn't until the Renaissance that painters figure out that an adult is about seven heads tall and a child is only about four heads tall. We sometimes think of the Renaissance as being a "return to the Greeks", but in fact it was Giotto and his colleagues who were slavishly following Aristotle. The Greeks had apparently written that the ideal height of a person was seven times the distance from the bottom of the chin to the top of skull and fashioned their gods accordingly. But if you dig up skeletons from that time, particularly those of the slave class, you find that they are only five or six heads tall. So the gods that people had in mind back then were actually idealized versions of the slave-owning class--putting flesh on the skeleton of your boss. Or, if you prefer, they were doing their own version of science fiction, because today we are on the average the stature of a Greek god (which is why we think that their fantastic versions of human height are actually 'realistic'). David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!TuLHcPCurn3Tt7a-dwWNUjD96PkWT_X-aGLLq2cVMX068SIKfKA88_DDQLgPFR4glb6neA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!TuLHcPCurn3Tt7a-dwWNUjD96PkWT_X-aGLLq2cVMX068SIKfKA88_DDQLgPFR43nyNT3w$ On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 3:04 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Does human phylogenesis end? Like, is there a dividing line or stop-point > between human development and whatever version or branch comes next? > > I was going to look this up but figured I'm better off just posing the > question here. (A favor to anyone who answers: try to talk to me like I'm > ignorant here -- because that would be correct!) > > Related: here's a fun and very interesting show that plays around with > future (and not-so-future) possibilities of human development: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Million__;!!Mih3wA!TuLHcPCurn3Tt7a-dwWNUjD96PkWT_X-aGLLq2cVMX068SIKfKA88_DDQLgPFR47dRt8TQ$ > > > > Thank you, > > Anthony > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200810/fa611a43/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Sun Aug 9 14:17:16 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2020 06:17:16 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Syncretic" is an exaptation from Piaget's teacher, Eduard Claparede. Before him the term was used in theology to mean the apparent mixture of paganism and Christianity that is found pretty much all over Europe (and specifically in the area of Geneva) after the fall of the Roman Empire. >From the point of view of a triumphant Christianity, it's a kind of adulteration, an impurity, or admixture (like Vygotsky's caricature of Piaget's theory of how concepts are formed by mixing a white liquid with a red one). But Claparede points out that it's really just an early stage of differentiation. When Korean children are born they sometimes get their names from the neighborhood ???, or "philosophical institute", which is actually a local 'philosophe', mixing Confucian, Christian, and Buddhist beliefs with much older shamanistic and animist ideas about gods. But if you ask the presiding philosophe, he might tell you that the later religious are artificial technicalizations and unnecessary specifications of his or her original insights and fundamental wisdom. The ??? in my own neighborhood was recently demolished for a new housing project (housing prices have more than doubled in the past decade here), and so local people are now left to their own devices. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJs09Nf6Iw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJtFuG_QOA$ On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 6:06 AM Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > David and venerable O's: > > I consider the words David has dropped into the mix. > > Syncretic = blending of two categories into one. > > Synoptic = taking a general view, but in Christianity it is a reference to > the synoptic gospels Mark, Matthew, and Luke. > > Most people who have done even a little research on the New Testament will > know that there's a lot of bad reporting when it comes to Jesus. Still no > one knows about those 10 years in the desert. (Though in India there are > stories that Jesus came there to study Vedanta, and that he is really a > Vedantin). > > Repeating the same story three times doesn't make it true. Especially when > considering all the other gospels that were sidelined as heretical and > forced into hiding. Like some of Vygotky's own writing under Stalinist > Russia. > > I wonder if we are seeing our own Council of Nicea concerning the > interpretations of what happened before? > > If you might recall, The Council of Nicea arose from a tiff in Alexandria > between Arius and Athansius, the bishop of Alexandria. > > Arius maintained that "the Son is of a different substance from the > Father, i.e. created." This was also to indicate that Jesus was just a > regular guy, like all of us, which then indicates that anyone could become > like Jesus, by living like him. > > Athansius won the controversy defining the existence of the Trinity, as > "one God in three Divine persons". The three persons are distinct, yet are > one "substance, essence or nature". This *essential*-ly makes Jesus > "special" and unattainable, that he was not of this world, and this > distinction separates him from everyone else before, during, and after his > lifetime, which basically reaffirms hierarchy within the early church. It > also makes for Mary having highly fertile ears in proximity to itinerant > angels. > > So along with other camps of debate, Arius and Athansius were considered > Heteroosians and Homoosians respectively. > > Are there similarities in terms of defining our terms? History rhyming I > suppose. > > In our case, we have those who have come after Vygotsky trying to decipher > to truth of Vygotsky's work, and to define and extend the theories. > > I almost wonder if it is appropriate to think of Lantiov as creating his > own trinity in the development Activity Theory, activity unites everything > > (I must ask though, how is AT different from Behaviorism?) > > On the other hand, different researchers who wish to hold closer to > Vygotsky, pose perezhivanie arises at a particular time between the > individual and the environment, which are different. (Is that fair to > state?) In order to measure the change within the individual, one must > choose the right unit for analysis, appropriate to what one wants to > examine. This isn't relegated to activity, but can include it. > > I do not mean to spark a flame here. Please permit me to have a little > artistic license in making comparisons. At the same time, please feel free > to point out any limits in my comparisons or whether I am mistaken in my > understandings. > > This kind of reminds me of LSV's The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in > Psychology ( > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJsZPwaFog$ > > ) > > Which now I am recognizing and remembering had to do with Vygotsky coming > to terms with structuralism of the 19th century and the functionalism of > the early 20th. I feel the need to reread that essay. > > As I'm reflecting...and framing... James based his theory upon Darwin's, > that functions of mind are operational tendencies derived (arising from) > from our biology, right? > > The structuralist camp (I presume starting with Freud) state that one > understands mind by evaluating the contents of introspection and subjective > experience. > > But getting back to David's discussion of emotion: One cannot divide > Spinoza's ideas into parts out of convenience, is the issue I have, if > James and Lange do as you say, David. > > Emotions come from somewhere. > > Emotion is the uniting key to mind and body, and didn't Vygotsky think so > too and isn't that why he looked to Spinoza for guidance. > > Emotion is unification of mind and body, in terms of self-preservation and > survival. > > Further, and I assert this philosophically, emotions can't be higher or > lower, so I'm having a problem with that framing. They can be different, > they can be more pronounced or subtle, but I don't see the justification of > saying that negative emotions are lower while positive ones are higher (if > that is the way in which higher and lower are defined concerning functional > differences between emotions). In this sense this goes along with David's > observation that one can't make distinctions between emotion arising from > life events and emotion arising from medicinal substances. > > I don't think it makes Vygotsky a structuralist. I think it makes him a > vygotskianist, or possibly a spinozanist. I'm not sure what "vygotsky" > means in the Russian, but "spinoza" means "thorn" and this does seem to be > a thorny debate. "Baruch" or "Benedict" meant "Blessed one." > > Thus Spinoza is a "good thorn" for all of us to pick out. > > Imagine what our own perezhivanie is for that! > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > ------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of David Kellogg > *Sent:* Sunday, August 9, 2020 1:43 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > I certainly didn't intend to bring in the kitchen sink, Annalisa. For the > most part, our models were clothed and male: the few times we had nude > female models I couldn't bring myself to paint more than their mortified > faces. And, yes, I did have to bring Christ in; I always worry when we try > to understand terms like "syncretism" or "synoptic" without understanding > whence they come: my own parents named me David without realizing that I > was born on Saint David's Day. > > So Vygotsky is developing his critique of James and Lange into a critique > of functionalism. Because James and Lange are functionalists, they take > from Spinoza ONLY the idea that passions will increase or decrease your > power to act. This is consistent with their emphasis on fear and rage, on > lower emotions generally: these seem to be whole body sensations that come > out of nowhere and seem to cover our whole being at once. But it's > completely inconsistent with understanding the structure of a higher > emotion because it simply treats the feeling as a black box > of undifferentiable visceral or vasomotor sensations. One cannot tell the > difference between emotion and edible cannibis; one cannot distinguish or > disarticulate an intellectual curiosity, a chaste love, or the numbed > feeling my sister puts into her dancing now that she has MS; one can > neither part nor parse feelings without the temporality that composed them. > > Does this critique make Vygotsky a structuralist? I think it would--if we > left time out of the equation. But I think that the whole notion of > 'perezhivanie' is born precisely out of bringing time back in--it's the > experience but ALSO the after thought, the moment of reflection on the > experience achieved (in the French sense of acheve/). Intellectual > curiosity is astonishment PLUS thinking about it afterwards, chaste love is > attraction PLUS social distancing on second thought, and my sister's > "danciness" is a combination of numbness, pain and ecstasy but also my own > toe-curling response ex post facto. And that, Andy, is the problem I have > with Hegel's Philosophy of History. How can there be any development at all > without time? Isn't Spirit an afterthought? > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJs09Nf6Iw$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* * > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJtFuG_QOA$ > > > > > On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 10:42 AM Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > > Hello, > > Of course if David is going to bring in the kitchen sink, christ and the > nude I've got to be seeing what comes of this thread. > > Hopefully no one gets crucified in time! ? > > I am wondering if it is *time* or *change* that is embedded? > > Chronology is more a linkage of "this event happens before that," and then > "this one happened after that," it can be linear, but also multi-threaded. > Sort of like a Rube Goldberg contraption. (See: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.rubegoldberg.com/__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJvQhU5vBw$ > > to invent a better mousetrap to water a plant!) > > On the other hand, change is the difference between one state and the > next. Would time be the span of change as it transforms from one state to > the next? > > What I recall of Piaget is that he considered development to be very > stair-stepped: one plateau for a period until the next change abruptly > lifted to the next step which then plateaus and so on. > > Is it fair to say that Vygotsky argued this way to measure cannot work > given the complexity of variables at work, not just in the individual, but > also in the environment. Does that mean that time starts to become > un-measurable, because each individual is going to have a different way to > mark time, ? la zoped? > > The environment is not time-dependent, unless we are going to start > marking time like astrologers and divide the globe into longitudes and > latitudes to determine the force of energy (and change) for each globe's > section. How do we mark time in the environment compared to time for the > individual? > > Just seems very wacky enough to make my head hurt. > > Where is the reference point? you know, by which one measures the change > one is seeking to measure? > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of David Kellogg > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 5, 2020 9:59 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Synoptic Gospel > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > Oh, I think "category error" is another name for Hallidayan > complementarity, Mike. > > Let me put it another way. Another name for the synoptic understanding of > a crisis is "contradiction". Or, if you prefer, another name for the > dynamic understanding of contradiction is "crisis". > > (Is that two other ways, or is a pair of ways?) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJs09Nf6Iw$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* * > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJtFuG_QOA$ > > > > > On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 12:28 PM mike cole wrote: > > So time needs to be part of a unity for studying cultural/historical > processes, David? > Or am I making a category error? > > mike > > On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:26 PM David Kellogg wrote: > > I have been reading Andy's article for the CHARR group, but I have also > been working on a new volume of the pedology, and, finally, retranslating > Vygotsky's unfinished "Teaching on the Emotions". What all these texts have > in common is that they require you to think about units of analysis as > simultaneously timeless and time-embedded: on the one hand, the life of > Christ ordered by chronologic time and on the other, the "synoptic" Gospels > which order the various events of the life of Christ in many different ways > according to their anagogic value. > > These two complementary perspectives, the chronological and the synoptic, > are ever present in Halliday: an expression like "the living of life" is > not redundant because the first nominal is implicitly chronological > process and the second implicitly synoptic product. They are less obviously > marked in Vygotsky, but they are there. In one chapter he excoriates > Busemann for mixing up the Crisis at Three with the Crisis at Seven, but in > the next chapter he offers three possible "units" of analysis. They are the > same ones Andy cites: > > > a. word value in in the explanation of the relation between thinking and > speech, > > > b. age periods in the study of psycho-physiological development, and > finally, > > > c.* perezhivanie*, or ???????????, in the study of the child?s > relationship with the environment. > > > I think you can see that ALL of these not only CAN but MUST be viewed > chronologically, else we cannot say how word value develops, how an age > period progresses (let alone how one differs from another) or how the > personality goes from functioning to dysfunctional to functioning on some > higher level. But at the same time, you can also see how it's teleological > to talk about the word value, or the age period, or the perezhivanie in the > moment before the word value, age period, or perezhivanie has even started > to exist. So the process itself is always chronological, but the process of > analysis itself has to be synoptic. > > > Mozart, they say, composed synoptically: with a single piece of music in > his head that he could scroll over, back and forth; Beethoven, on the other > hand, is all about getting from commencement to cataclysm, in more or less > that order. When I was at art school, we would hire the same model for > painting and for sculpture. We painters would do the model as a text: every > narrative painting and even every portrait has to have a beginning, a > middle, and an endpoint and the painter's eye directs the brush to direct > the viewer's eye to follow it. But the sculptors,infuriatingly,had no > starting point, no middle point, and no endpoint at all: it was just a > matter of more or less finishing at every point. The models would complain > that dozed off when the painters sat there reading them over, but they > would complain that they got dizzy when the sculptors were circumambulating > the studio all the time. > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJs09Nf6Iw$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* * > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJtFuG_QOA$ > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinonmes, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > --------------------------------------------- > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XtjWOf2tjno1oE-oj0p7Y7aU9JfgfDSdqw4UhARA4d3XO_qQYzOoKLLrQQG3qJs8LiWlyw$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200810/adbf0a56/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Tue Aug 11 12:50:35 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2020 15:50:35 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: human etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Very interesting, David - thanks. So is that a No or a Yes? I kind of can't tell. Anthony On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 5:11 PM David Kellogg wrote: > Mike Cole has criticized Vygotsky on exactly this point: in "The Socialist > Alteration of Man" (and in other texts), he seems to think that > phylogenesis doesn't exactly stop but it is carried on by artificial means, > as if development were kind of shunted from a slow track to a much faster > one, e.g. by socialist eugenics. It's certainly true that the Soviets > believed in a phylogenesis by intelligent design, although they attributed > that design to the socialist future and not to the Creationist past. It is > also true that their distinction between phylogenetic development and > sociogenetic development is a little too sharp for anything but rhetorical > accuracy (it is partly developed in opposition to Social Darwinism). But I > think that the main theatre for intelligent design was supposed to be > political economy, and not biology. In that field, the Soviets were > over-optimistic, or perhaps they simply didn't or couldn't understand the > part of Capital where Marx reminds us of the difference between a sloppy > architect and a really talented honeybee: the former, but not the latter, > has mastered language and can raise his structure in imagination and in > words before blundering on into steel and concrete. > > One of the things you learn drawing the human figure in art school is that > the medievals didn't know how to draw children: Giotto's pictures of Christ > show him as a shrunken adult. It really isn't until the Renaissance that > painters figure out that an adult is about seven heads tall and a child is > only about four heads tall. We sometimes think of the Renaissance as being > a "return to the Greeks", but in fact it was Giotto and his colleagues who > were slavishly following Aristotle. The Greeks had apparently written that > the ideal height of a person was seven times the distance from the bottom > of the chin to the top of skull and fashioned their gods accordingly. But > if you dig up skeletons from that time, particularly those of the slave > class, you find that they are only five or six heads tall. So the gods that > people had in mind back then were actually idealized versions of the > slave-owning class--putting flesh on the skeleton of your boss. Or, if you > prefer, they were doing their own version of science fiction, because today > we are on the average the stature of a Greek god (which is why we think > that their fantastic versions of human height are actually 'realistic'). > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > Outlines, Spring 2020 > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VJOSPAYKLOmIcfdq-6DpUH6Ccmsg-W8W-0RGaev2aG4d_lcIIRHMhpMIqWrxbkV9a_kQ6w$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VJOSPAYKLOmIcfdq-6DpUH6Ccmsg-W8W-0RGaev2aG4d_lcIIRHMhpMIqWrxbkVEwm9Mbg$ > > > > > On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 3:04 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Does human phylogenesis end? Like, is there a dividing line or >> stop-point between human development and whatever version or branch comes >> next? >> >> I was going to look this up but figured I'm better off just posing the >> question here. (A favor to anyone who answers: try to talk to me like I'm >> ignorant here -- because that would be correct!) >> >> Related: here's a fun and very interesting show that plays around with >> future (and not-so-future) possibilities of human development: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Million__;!!Mih3wA!VJOSPAYKLOmIcfdq-6DpUH6Ccmsg-W8W-0RGaev2aG4d_lcIIRHMhpMIqWrxbkVeg0Qx_w$ >> >> >> >> Thank you, >> >> Anthony >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200811/633aeaee/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Tue Aug 11 13:03:09 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2020 16:03:09 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean?* Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnYKHKx2jw$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RbTsEBrr1M-JQ2E0Cza-8aoA440vsBAtR7DQicuejOZvYN1AOyytgVid7plmKnayu3KfOQ$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200811/22a65b73/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Tue Aug 11 14:23:00 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2020 14:23:00 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra wrote: > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the > bottom of this email) to mean?* > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video > form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also > helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the > question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TggWICG1J2w02_x0SWKzYW-4ftmVOZbkZFfs4G9fjlQAO_5Rcb22DdO_08zpANkDSbGAAA$ > > ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit > from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With > permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TggWICG1J2w02_x0SWKzYW-4ftmVOZbkZFfs4G9fjlQAO_5Rcb22DdO_08zpANnKst0Spg$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism > here; it's mostly for fun. > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials >> for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to >> play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire >> the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if >> this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. >> I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the >> object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious >> awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> > > >> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate >> opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, > even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. > Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really > so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be > similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So > thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TggWICG1J2w02_x0SWKzYW-4ftmVOZbkZFfs4G9fjlQAO_5Rcb22DdO_08zpANlZapN6Hg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200811/a9d13273/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Tue Aug 11 14:39:54 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 06:39:54 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: human etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anthony-- It's a good question, and of course I am very flattered that you think my clear yes or no would be as more interesting than that of Vygotsky (clear yes) or Mike Cole (clear no). Actually, I had the same response when I looked at the Year Million stuff you posted--I couldn't tell if they were saying that human phylogenesis comes to an end or if it continues indefinitely, or somehow both happen simultaneously. Here's what I think. There are two answers because there are really two questions. a) Does HUMAN phylogenesis come to an end--because at some point humans are no longer really humans in the sense we use the word today? The answer here has to be yes: all phylogenesis at some point comes to an end, either through extinction (by far the most likely outcome) or through qualitative changes that make it impossible to call the descendents the con-specifics of the ancestors (homo sapiens are not conspecifics of homo habilis or homo erectus). b) Does human PHYLOgenesis come to an end--because at some point it is no longer relevant to the way we adapt to our environment? The answer here (for me) has to be no: phylogenetic adaptation is continued as sociogenesis, but human society is not an artificial kingdom within a natural kingdom, like the Jewish community that Spinoza belonged to in Amsterdam within the Christian one. Sociogenesis is just the specifically human way in which the human species has "turned the tables" on the environment by constructing its own environment (just as ant colonies are the way that ants carry out their adaptations). The latest proof that the laws of phylogenesis are still absolutely aplicable to that supposedly 'artificial' cultural environment is the challenge to it presented by Covid 19. How's that? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Uq9_VvUwhhrXbwSBUJrI5v-vnz-yxneh-6Ny4GqptktCPRa7Eb1zRJL8of8K2RXOFXHmmw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Uq9_VvUwhhrXbwSBUJrI5v-vnz-yxneh-6Ny4GqptktCPRa7Eb1zRJL8of8K2RWSDPIezg$ On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 4:52 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Very interesting, David - thanks. So is that a No or a Yes? I kind of > can't tell. > > Anthony > > On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 5:11 PM David Kellogg wrote: > >> Mike Cole has criticized Vygotsky on exactly this point: in "The >> Socialist Alteration of Man" (and in other texts), he seems to think that >> phylogenesis doesn't exactly stop but it is carried on by artificial means, >> as if development were kind of shunted from a slow track to a much faster >> one, e.g. by socialist eugenics. It's certainly true that the Soviets >> believed in a phylogenesis by intelligent design, although they attributed >> that design to the socialist future and not to the Creationist past. It is >> also true that their distinction between phylogenetic development and >> sociogenetic development is a little too sharp for anything but rhetorical >> accuracy (it is partly developed in opposition to Social Darwinism). But I >> think that the main theatre for intelligent design was supposed to be >> political economy, and not biology. In that field, the Soviets were >> over-optimistic, or perhaps they simply didn't or couldn't understand the >> part of Capital where Marx reminds us of the difference between a sloppy >> architect and a really talented honeybee: the former, but not the latter, >> has mastered language and can raise his structure in imagination and in >> words before blundering on into steel and concrete. >> >> One of the things you learn drawing the human figure in art school is >> that the medievals didn't know how to draw children: Giotto's pictures of >> Christ show him as a shrunken adult. It really isn't until the Renaissance >> that painters figure out that an adult is about seven heads tall and a >> child is only about four heads tall. We sometimes think of the Renaissance >> as being a "return to the Greeks", but in fact it was Giotto and his >> colleagues who were slavishly following Aristotle. The Greeks had >> apparently written that the ideal height of a person was seven times the >> distance from the bottom of the chin to the top of skull and fashioned >> their gods accordingly. But if you dig up skeletons from that time, >> particularly those of the slave class, you find that they are only five or >> six heads tall. So the gods that people had in mind back then were actually >> idealized versions of the slave-owning class--putting flesh on the skeleton >> of your boss. Or, if you prefer, they were doing their own version of >> science fiction, because today we are on the average the stature of a Greek >> god (which is why we think that their fantastic versions of human height >> are actually 'realistic'). >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >> Outlines, Spring 2020 >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Uq9_VvUwhhrXbwSBUJrI5v-vnz-yxneh-6Ny4GqptktCPRa7Eb1zRJL8of8K2RXOFXHmmw$ >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume >> One: Foundations of Pedology*" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Uq9_VvUwhhrXbwSBUJrI5v-vnz-yxneh-6Ny4GqptktCPRa7Eb1zRJL8of8K2RWSDPIezg$ >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 3:04 AM Anthony Barra >> wrote: >> >>> Does human phylogenesis end? Like, is there a dividing line or >>> stop-point between human development and whatever version or branch comes >>> next? >>> >>> I was going to look this up but figured I'm better off just posing the >>> question here. (A favor to anyone who answers: try to talk to me like I'm >>> ignorant here -- because that would be correct!) >>> >>> Related: here's a fun and very interesting show that plays around with >>> future (and not-so-future) possibilities of human development: >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Million__;!!Mih3wA!Uq9_VvUwhhrXbwSBUJrI5v-vnz-yxneh-6Ny4GqptktCPRa7Eb1zRJL8of8K2RVxL5eYCA$ >>> >>> >>> >>> Thank you, >>> >>> Anthony >>> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/23231f20/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Tue Aug 11 15:40:41 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 07:40:41 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm reading a lot of Spinoza, mostly because I want to know if it is true, as Zavershneva and van der Veer argue in their footnotes to the chapter on Spinoza in the selections from Vygotsky's notebooks, that no theory of higher emotions is possible on the basis of Spinoza's work, despite what Vygotsky thought and what Vygotsky manifestly proposed to do. So I'm going to read this quotation almost entirely from Spinoza's point of view, sentence by sentence. ? > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. Descartes argues that emotions are simply what the body does with sensations and perceptions. That gives him a structural taxonomy of emotions, but it doesn't tell him what emotions do, what they are for. It makes emotions into a kind of unwanted byproduct, a side-effect, an unintended consequence of perceiving. Spinoza, on the other hand, defines emotions very functionally: they are affections of the body and the ideas of those affections that serve to enhance or degrade a potential for activity. So this statement is thoroughly Spinozan, and we can predict on its basis that the next sentence will have nothing to do with sensation or perception, and approach the problem from the "top down" (from society to biology) rather than the "bottom up" (from biology to society). > At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. And such a prediction would be completely right--to see differently is to enhance or degrade the intellectual potential for play. One child sees a bunch of black pieces and has fun putting the black pieces on the black squares and the white pieces on the white ones. Another child sees a pair of horsies, black and white, and constructs an imaginary chariot for the king. But another child sees that the black knight threatens a white pawn, and, playing white, takes defensive action. > By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential > for new relationships with it. All three children are generalizing--the one generalizes the color, the other generalizes the shape, the third child generalizes the abstract relationship between pieces. Only the third acquires the potential for new abstract relations later in the game, .e.g. advancing and converting the white pawn to a queen and capturing the black knight. The first two children are responding to their perceptions. The third child is experiencing an emotion that is focused on changing the environment rather than responding to it. > To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the > general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I > remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An > isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or > abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? > understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. The process of activity has become a rule of activity. But in order to convert a process into a rule, the process is decontextualized and made into text (as when chess moves are notated and published in newspapers, as when cooking moves are written down and handed around as recipes). What is notated or written down is, ipso facto, an object of consciousness, just as the notation and writing is an act of isolation and of awareness. This is why Spinoza includes not only the affections of the body but also the ideas of affections. In isolation and in generalization, the idea becomes a surrogate for the affection. > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." Spinoza argues that the idea of the body is not the body, and the idea of the idea of the body is neither the body nor the idea of the body. All these ideas form a hierarchy that allows us to locate concepts when we need them, just as using folders on your computer allows you to locate documents when you need them more easily than just storing everything on "Desktop" and using the icons and shortcuts. Mastery of that hierarchy is conscious awareness--as Spinoza shows, it is not simply confined to scientific concepts, and it does have profound ethical implications (for example, it allows Spinoza to formulate Kant's categorical imperative more than a century before Kant did....) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbndTX3ijA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbls_gpIAw$ On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:25 AM mike cole wrote: > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the >> bottom of this email) to mean?* >> >> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video >> form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also >> helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the >> question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbk9gWfQsA$ >> >> ) >> >> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit >> from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With >> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list >> of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbna7qc0JA$ >> >> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism >> here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new >>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity >>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak >>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general >>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I >>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises >>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >>> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? >>> leads directly to mastery. >>> >> >> >>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >>> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the >>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> What do you understand this passage to mean? >> >> Thanks ? >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, >> even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. >> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a >> definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really >> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be >> similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So >> thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >> >> >> -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!ROrY1dRiZq4XbEEz0m_HFtMpCCU-76tXsJpYcWffZpJvKrA4WZjJqRZIh55-bbkSfTlkxA$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/d761a7a3/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Tue Aug 11 18:27:15 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 11:27:15 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job of editing and I think his collection of tiny videos make a real contribution to Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of voices help, so please! someone else stump up to join Anthony's crew. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote: > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage > below (at the bottom of this email) to mean?* > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts > in short video form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask > David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but > to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question > again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Spj7ybW_LUoFXDv2iVA1TKJKPAjhKyftAGi76oylQzObUE6aRnFXF53u2cffhj_yZYcw4w$ > ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- > would benefit from answers to this question, preferably > multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and > add your response to this growing list of > asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Spj7ybW_LUoFXDv2iVA1TKJKPAjhKyftAGi76oylQzObUE6aRnFXF53u2cffhj9suyMHeg$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care > about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. > > *Here is the passage in question*, from /Thinking and > Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to > acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. > At the chess board, to see differently is to play > differently. By generalizing the process of activity > itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships > with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process > has been isolated from the general activity of > consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I > remember. I make my own remembering the object of > consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain > sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its > object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood > as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the > generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, > which leads to their mastery/. Instruction has a > decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts > have a unique relationship to the object. This > relationship is mediated through other concepts that > themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of > the scientific concept that conscious awareness of > concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts > emerges for the first time. And once a new structure > of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, > it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without > training to all remaining domains of concepts and > thought. Thus, /conscious awareness enters through the > gate opened up by the scientific concept/." > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks?? > > Anthony Barra > P.S. My first encounter with /Thinking and Speech/?was > very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates > and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos > from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive?reading but as a general map of the book's > terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If > any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as > a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank > you again to anyone interested in participating. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/004e0676/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Wed Aug 12 05:51:09 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:51:09 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Here is a question I have for people who do a lot of direct reading of Vygotsky and I hope some on this list can help me. In his paper on the psychology of the actor he cite Liubov Gurevich. From what I can remember this is the only time he cited a female scholar (the period seems to be intensely misogynist). I think Vygotsky would have gotten blowback on this. My question is do people know of another time he cited a female scholar (other than Gurevich). I think this is consequential and I am trying to figure out how consequential. Thanks in advance for anybody who might be able to help. p.s: Gurevich was Stanislavski?s literary advisor, editor and confidante but she was also an incredibly influential figure in Russian/Soviet literature in her own right. Michael -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/87ef7ee0/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Wed Aug 12 05:59:21 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 08:59:21 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mike, thank you. That is short, sweet, and succinct. And helpful. And it also makes me want to rephrase my question -- especially after recently enjoying the two Fifth Dimension documentaries on the LCHC youtube page. How about this? *What are some useful implications for educators in the following passage?* from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." Thank you to anyone who would like to weigh in on either of these questions (or even a better question of your own). Thanks, Anthony Update: So far, I have received one video response, to be released soon, and am always happy to receive more! On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 5:25 PM mike cole wrote: > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the >> bottom of this email) to mean?* >> >> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video >> form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also >> helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the >> question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!R8SCY-D8ppsJLDBAVSG71nRTzQ0DluGGOVEzf4zj4egLZSgbQFGgBrvtIkeXLK_M2NyVGA$ >> >> ) >> >> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit >> from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With >> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list >> of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!R8SCY-D8ppsJLDBAVSG71nRTzQ0DluGGOVEzf4zj4egLZSgbQFGgBrvtIkeXLK-yFFVygQ$ >> >> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism >> here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new >>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity >>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak >>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general >>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I >>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises >>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >>> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? >>> leads directly to mastery. >>> >> >> >>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >>> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the >>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> What do you understand this passage to mean? >> >> Thanks ? >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, >> even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. >> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a >> definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really >> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be >> similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So >> thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >> >> >> -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!R8SCY-D8ppsJLDBAVSG71nRTzQ0DluGGOVEzf4zj4egLZSgbQFGgBrvtIkeXLK8cuvbDqg$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/809937d4/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Wed Aug 12 06:32:26 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 09:32:26 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks for the endorsement, Andy. And please, feel free to jump in again. (BTW, we now have an audio-only option, for easier downloading and on-the-go listening: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/7n3nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UpNDh2SuTGnq9M1EnvMT-VtliHnUd3ya7fk0uZkNlLzTzcyDRVWzHHRCIucmy20J_VnBCQ$ -- note that Seasons 3 and 4 feature the short snippets and "Answered Questions") Anthony On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:28 PM Andy Blunden wrote: > Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job of editing and > I think his collection of tiny videos make a real contribution to > Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of voices help, so please! someone else > stump up to join Anthony's crew. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the > bottom of this email) to mean?* > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video > form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also > helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the > question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UpNDh2SuTGnq9M1EnvMT-VtliHnUd3ya7fk0uZkNlLzTzcyDRVWzHHRCIucmy21Mmvxmyw$ > > ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit > from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With > permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UpNDh2SuTGnq9M1EnvMT-VtliHnUd3ya7fk0uZkNlLzTzcyDRVWzHHRCIucmy206Ednuqw$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism > here; it's mostly for fun. > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials >> for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to >> play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire >> the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if >> this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. >> I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the >> object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious >> awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> > > >> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate >> opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, > even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. > Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really > so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be > similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So > thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/e523d585/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Wed Aug 12 06:38:50 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 23:38:50 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I guess Anna Karenina doesn't count. andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 12/08/2020 10:51 pm, Glassman, Michael wrote: > > Here is a question I have for people who do a lot of > direct reading of Vygotsky and I hope some on this list > can help me. In his paper on the psychology of the actor > he cite Liubov Gurevich. From what I can remember this is > the only time he cited a female scholar (the period seems > to be intensely misogynist).? I think Vygotsky would have > gotten blowback on this. My question is do people know of > another time he cited a female scholar (other than > Gurevich). I think this is consequential and I am trying > to figure out how consequential. > > Thanks in advance for anybody who might be able to help. > > p.s: Gurevich was Stanislavski?s literary advisor, editor > and confidante but she was also an incredibly influential > figure in Russian/Soviet literature in her own right. > > Michael > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/57692eab/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Wed Aug 12 07:23:12 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 07:23:12 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Krupskaya On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:35 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Thanks for the endorsement, Andy. > > And please, feel free to jump in again. (BTW, we now have an audio-only > option, for easier downloading and on-the-go listening: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/7n3nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XGLW8kJeonuG9kaVIqzZGpd5gaHVQq5HJ_TJFfdiC5jOmNp0MgFKVkVPsJYFLYDL3fAVbQ$ > -- > note that Seasons 3 and 4 feature the short snippets and "Answered > Questions") > > Anthony > > > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:28 PM Andy Blunden wrote: > >> Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job of editing and >> I think his collection of tiny videos make a real contribution to >> Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of voices help, so please! someone else >> stump up to join Anthony's crew. >> >> Andy >> ------------------------------ >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote: >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the >> bottom of this email) to mean?* >> >> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video >> form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also >> helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the >> question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XGLW8kJeonuG9kaVIqzZGpd5gaHVQq5HJ_TJFfdiC5jOmNp0MgFKVkVPsJYFLYDRUWzR5g$ >> >> ) >> >> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit >> from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With >> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list >> of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XGLW8kJeonuG9kaVIqzZGpd5gaHVQq5HJ_TJFfdiC5jOmNp0MgFKVkVPsJYFLYCeXgXDOg$ >> >> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism >> here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new >>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity >>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak >>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general >>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I >>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises >>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >>> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? >>> leads directly to mastery. >>> >> >> >>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >>> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the >>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> What do you understand this passage to mean? >> >> Thanks ? >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, >> even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. >> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a >> definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really >> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be >> similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So >> thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >> >> >> -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XGLW8kJeonuG9kaVIqzZGpd5gaHVQq5HJ_TJFfdiC5jOmNp0MgFKVkVPsJYFLYAilqkt1g$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/4354554f/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Wed Aug 12 07:38:31 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 14:38:31 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Mike, Lennin?s wife? That would make sense. Do you know where he cited her work? Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of mike cole Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 10:23 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Krupskaya On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:35 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: Thanks for the endorsement, Andy. And please, feel free to jump in again. (BTW, we now have an audio-only option, for easier downloading and on-the-go listening: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/7n3nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TCnz66kxVtUY7IQm9RD0-DZkUzRtRjBpy9A9U7Qs3s7Iqe7AiuS_msiYFEpJKtpkAHH-5A$ -- note that Seasons 3 and 4 feature the short snippets and "Answered Questions") Anthony On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:28 PM Andy Blunden > wrote: Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job of editing and I think his collection of tiny videos make a real contribution to Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of voices help, so please! someone else stump up to join Anthony's crew. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TCnz66kxVtUY7IQm9RD0-DZkUzRtRjBpy9A9U7Qs3s7Iqe7AiuS_msiYFEpJKtoui6iamw$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TCnz66kxVtUY7IQm9RD0-DZkUzRtRjBpy9A9U7Qs3s7Iqe7AiuS_msiYFEpJKtqQ333pOg$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TCnz66kxVtUY7IQm9RD0-DZkUzRtRjBpy9A9U7Qs3s7Iqe7AiuS_msiYFEpJKtrQALvnnw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/2610932e/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ~WRD0000.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: ~WRD0000.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/2610932e/attachment.jpg From mcole@ucsd.edu Wed Aug 12 09:20:36 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 09:20:36 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *Soviet Alteration of Man* and probably elsewhere, Michael. mike On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 7:39 AM Glassman, Michael wrote: > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Lennin?s wife? That would make sense. Do you know where he cited her work? > > > > Michael > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *mike cole > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 12, 2020 10:23 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Krupskaya > > > > On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:35 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: > > Thanks for the endorsement, Andy. > > > > And please, feel free to jump in again. (BTW, we now have an audio-only > option, for easier downloading and on-the-go listening: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/7n3nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XEpmQVA-IXupkWisbxSXTm6v8TlZrpCdS_gEEYYwi4Pu29fX_W9g-_PNmmmNuh1YTZMo7Q$ > -- > note that Seasons 3 and 4 feature the short snippets and "Answered > Questions") > > > > Anthony > > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:28 PM Andy Blunden wrote: > > Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job of editing and > I think his collection of tiny videos make a real contribution to > Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of voices help, so please! someone else > stump up to join Anthony's crew. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the > bottom of this email) to mean?* > > > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video > form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also > helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the > question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XEpmQVA-IXupkWisbxSXTm6v8TlZrpCdS_gEEYYwi4Pu29fX_W9g-_PNmmmNuh3gDKivDA$ > > ) > > > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit > from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With > permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XEpmQVA-IXupkWisbxSXTm6v8TlZrpCdS_gEEYYwi4Pu29fX_W9g-_PNmmmNuh0MrJII-Q$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism > here; it's mostly for fun. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > > > Thanks ? > > > > Anthony Barra > > > > P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, > even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. > Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really > so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be > similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So > thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical > means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XEpmQVA-IXupkWisbxSXTm6v8TlZrpCdS_gEEYYwi4Pu29fX_W9g-_PNmmmNuh2SVhJ1rw$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XEpmQVA-IXupkWisbxSXTm6v8TlZrpCdS_gEEYYwi4Pu29fX_W9g-_PNmmmNuh2SVhJ1rw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/592e8abf/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ~WRD0000.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/592e8abf/attachment.jpg From glassman.13@osu.edu Wed Aug 12 09:42:47 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 16:42:47 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks Mike!! Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of mike cole Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 12:21 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Soviet Alteration of Man and probably elsewhere, Michael. mike On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 7:39 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi Mike, Lennin?s wife? That would make sense. Do you know where he cited her work? Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of mike cole Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 10:23 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Krupskaya On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 6:35 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: Thanks for the endorsement, Andy. And please, feel free to jump in again. (BTW, we now have an audio-only option, for easier downloading and on-the-go listening: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/7n3nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XN3gRiXeDLAlOhkJVEeRyeaz9ekO38Mw_HClrYHXo87ANha1YHl0AqGGvakuYEzRleR6yQ$ -- note that Seasons 3 and 4 feature the short snippets and "Answered Questions") Anthony On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 9:28 PM Andy Blunden > wrote: Can I just vouch for Anthony's project. He does a fine job of editing and I think his collection of tiny videos make a real contribution to Vygotsky's legacy. A diversity of voices help, so please! someone else stump up to join Anthony's crew. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 12/08/2020 6:03 am, Anthony Barra wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XN3gRiXeDLAlOhkJVEeRyeaz9ekO38Mw_HClrYHXo87ANha1YHl0AqGGvakuYEwxTqAIRA$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XN3gRiXeDLAlOhkJVEeRyeaz9ekO38Mw_HClrYHXo87ANha1YHl0AqGGvakuYEz3Xj_izQ$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XN3gRiXeDLAlOhkJVEeRyeaz9ekO38Mw_HClrYHXo87ANha1YHl0AqGGvakuYExv9dybGg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XN3gRiXeDLAlOhkJVEeRyeaz9ekO38Mw_HClrYHXo87ANha1YHl0AqGGvakuYExv9dybGg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/05298adb/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/05298adb/attachment.jpg From greg.a.thompson@gmail.com Wed Aug 12 11:11:39 2020 From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com (Greg Thompson) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:11:39 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mike, Seems like the way you put that could be interpreted in a rather nasty fashion. To wit, does what you said mean that the Vai or the Yanomami don't have consciousness bc they don't have scientific concepts? -greg On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 3:25 PM mike cole wrote: > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the >> bottom of this email) to mean?* >> >> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video >> form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also >> helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the >> question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Quf6qyGvNGvBoVtCkwSjtnSf6TooVJ1Vt86IFaloIYYetMJledD29V6mU9Lanc41jH9ZxA$ >> >> ) >> >> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit >> from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With >> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list >> of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Quf6qyGvNGvBoVtCkwSjtnSf6TooVJ1Vt86IFaloIYYetMJledD29V6mU9Lanc7ISk8niQ$ >> >> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism >> here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new >>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity >>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak >>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general >>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I >>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises >>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >>> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? >>> leads directly to mastery. >>> >> >> >>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >>> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the >>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> What do you understand this passage to mean? >> >> Thanks ? >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, >> even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. >> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a >> definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really >> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be >> similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So >> thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >> >> >> -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Quf6qyGvNGvBoVtCkwSjtnSf6TooVJ1Vt86IFaloIYYetMJledD29V6mU9Lanc4rp6FSXg$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -- Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 WEBSITE: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson__;!!Mih3wA!Quf6qyGvNGvBoVtCkwSjtnSf6TooVJ1Vt86IFaloIYYetMJledD29V6mU9Lanc6IkID2UQ$ https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson__;!!Mih3wA!Quf6qyGvNGvBoVtCkwSjtnSf6TooVJ1Vt86IFaloIYYetMJledD29V6mU9Lanc6EnB-wcg$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/04a1d6b3/attachment.html From mpacker@cantab.net Wed Aug 12 11:31:01 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:31:01 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <83EB840A-FD19-42CD-BEA6-82B3148FF614@cantab.net> I?ve always read this to be suggesting that instruction of a child in scientific concepts in school leads to conscious awareness (and deliberate control) by the child of their psychological processes, such as thinking, and of the concepts themselves. And I have assumed that in any culture, instruction in the concepts of that culture would lead to similar conscious awareness and deliberate control. My 2c. Martin > On Aug 11, 2020, at 3:03 PM, Anthony Barra wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? > > Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!W0lFezqAoWqRYVD58qhjnQsF2McT2YEFquQxTrkpO8CQc4EaDKDw4o0Z5c3aYftpmUigRA$ ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!W0lFezqAoWqRYVD58qhjnQsF2McT2YEFquQxTrkpO8CQc4EaDKDw4o0Z5c3aYfsUAEPtjQ$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/5dbbe205/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Wed Aug 12 11:38:32 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2020 11:38:32 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Don't ask me, Greg. I was asked for a conclusion from the text. LSV quite clearly states in several places that indigenous (primitive/non-literate) peoples develop the ability to think in complexes, not true concepts. These are super serious and important questions but I am having great difficulty keeping track of the different inter-twined threads and the many experiences that are brought to the discussion. mike On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 11:13 AM Greg Thompson wrote: > Mike, > Seems like the way you put that could be interpreted in a rather nasty > fashion. > To wit, does what you said mean that the Vai or the Yanomami don't have > consciousness bc they don't have scientific concepts? > -greg > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 3:25 PM mike cole wrote: > >> Hi Anthony >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved >> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> What am I missing? >> Mike >> >> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra >> wrote: >> >>> Good afternoon, >>> >>> This is a question -- and an invitation: >>> >>> First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the >>> bottom of this email) to mean?* >>> >>> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video >>> form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also >>> helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the >>> question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!QuhPo3bzAQk3OS1Zoy_U0nH9VLR4wbj7vqrpktUDajpR1lR-wyPFSb4O5l370Ityeoftnw$ >>> >>> ) >>> >>> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit >>> from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With >>> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list >>> of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!QuhPo3bzAQk3OS1Zoy_U0nH9VLR4wbj7vqrpktUDajpR1lR-wyPFSb4O5l370Iv893Ww1w$ >>> >>> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism >>> here; it's mostly for fun. >>> >>> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >>> pp. 190-1: >>> >>>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new >>>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity >>>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak >>>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general >>>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I >>>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises >>>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >>>> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? >>>> leads directly to mastery. >>>> >>> >>> >>>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >>>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >>>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >>>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >>>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >>>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >>>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >>>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >>>> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >>>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the >>>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*." >>> >>> >>> What do you understand this passage to mean? >>> >>> Thanks ? >>> >>> Anthony Barra >>> >>> P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, >>> even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. >>> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a >>> definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really >>> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be >>> similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So >>> thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >>> >>> >>> -- >> >> I[image: Angelus Novus] >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >> the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, >> only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QuhPo3bzAQk3OS1Zoy_U0nH9VLR4wbj7vqrpktUDajpR1lR-wyPFSb4O5l370ItnlYMMIw$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. >> >> >> >> > > -- > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D. > Assistant Professor > Department of Anthropology > 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower > Brigham Young University > Provo, UT 84602 > WEBSITE: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson__;!!Mih3wA!QuhPo3bzAQk3OS1Zoy_U0nH9VLR4wbj7vqrpktUDajpR1lR-wyPFSb4O5l370Iv3afyV-w$ > > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson__;!!Mih3wA!QuhPo3bzAQk3OS1Zoy_U0nH9VLR4wbj7vqrpktUDajpR1lR-wyPFSb4O5l370IunB1LPRQ$ > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QuhPo3bzAQk3OS1Zoy_U0nH9VLR4wbj7vqrpktUDajpR1lR-wyPFSb4O5l370ItnlYMMIw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200812/ff8f7e02/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Wed Aug 12 14:07:49 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 06:07:49 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Message-ID: Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie Moritz.... One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!ULHZwpD7IBfIJ45vPAPepqPYwgoxn79Bl9BW9DeUJVdAcFrhfwDHPdH81X6OsMXk6YCeSA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!ULHZwpD7IBfIJ45vPAPepqPYwgoxn79Bl9BW9DeUJVdAcFrhfwDHPdH81X6OsMWy9S0IbA$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/e273fcd3/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Wed Aug 12 16:17:01 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 08:17:01 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Michael--This does seem to be a separate topic, so I've replied separately. But there is one more name to add to the list. On p. 95 of the English CW, Vygotsky gives a reference to Clara Grunwald (1877-1943), who was a close friend and collaborator of Maria Montessori until the two fell out over Montessori?s support for fascism. Clara wrote articles and books about Montessori?s method in German and many of these give anecdotes and accounts of children?s concepts. Later, Clara set up a Montessori school and an experimental farm for children, organized resistance to Hitler with the Quakers, hid Jewish children in her own home, and eventually shared their fate in the gas chambers at Auschwitz There are schools named after Clara in Germany. It's a name we should never forget. Vygotsky didn't.. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UdETftSRnuvRXoSTTHhE9-dm7Qsaqod93kmGO050mChfEQ9W9OxEr_CZNI1PJWLfZoU79w$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UdETftSRnuvRXoSTTHhE9-dm7Qsaqod93kmGO050mChfEQ9W9OxEr_CZNI1PJWIPd0vycA$ On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 9:55 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > Here is a question I have for people who do a lot of direct reading of > Vygotsky and I hope some on this list can help me. In his paper on the > psychology of the actor he cite Liubov Gurevich. From what I can remember > this is the only time he cited a female scholar (the period seems to be > intensely misogynist). I think Vygotsky would have gotten blowback on > this. My question is do people know of another time he cited a female > scholar (other than Gurevich). I think this is consequential and I am > trying to figure out how consequential. > > > > Thanks in advance for anybody who might be able to help. > > > > p.s: Gurevich was Stanislavski?s literary advisor, editor and confidante > but she was also an incredibly influential figure in Russian/Soviet > literature in her own right. > > > > Michael > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/40c1dfa9/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Thu Aug 13 04:39:23 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:39:23 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello David, Thank you for all your effort. It is much appreciated. I think though maybe Slavina, Morozova, and Peshkovskaya are part of what Yasnitksy referred to as Vygotsky?s circle (student working with him). Did he actually formally cite their published work and use it to advance his argument or did he only mention them. Maybe, I can?t find it. I guess I should have been more explicit, this is what I meant by cite. His did this for Gurevich in Psychology of the actor and Krupskaya in Social Alteration of Man. The others, is it like Montersorri in Thinking and Speech (which I also see as an extended mention) or more direct. I looked on p. 95 for Grunwald but didn?t see it. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong volume. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:08 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie Moritz.... One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!T3QKROmffoyoxIzDW393ask5IcCWLNt6gf-ZipN9-wR4g-ixTpvnMAdMGfKqKsvYsk0eQA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!T3QKROmffoyoxIzDW393ask5IcCWLNt6gf-ZipN9-wR4g-ixTpvnMAdMGfKqKstnrRb0Lw$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/2b78a2a1/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Thu Aug 13 05:37:32 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:37:32 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Try Volume Five in English, Volume Four in Russian for Grunwald (it is misspelt in English), the short selections from Pedology of the Adolescent. I think it would help me to help you if I knew what significance you are trying to attribute to this putative lack of citations. Since you have Volume Six, you know that Vygotsky cites Charlotte Buhler (p. 5), Lia Geshelina (11), Julia Kotelova (12), Rosa Levina (15), E.I. Pashkovskaya (12), Natalya Menchinskaya (42), as well as N.G. Morozova (9), Liya Slavina (43) and Lydia Bozhovich (43). It would also help if I knew why you think that promoting the work of female colleagues doesn't count as promoting the work of female scholars. It seems to me that all of these colleagues and/or scholars are cited pretty much in the same way he cites Gurevich, that is, with a footnote, a reference to a study, a quotation, sometimes a whole paragraph or more, They are listed in the index and in the references, probably by the editors--Vygotsky was indiscriminately careless about citing chapter and verse, although not unusually so for his time and place. It is certainly interesting that there are more Soviet than non-Soviet female scholars, but there are also more German than non-German/non-Soviet female scholars, and more junior female researchers than non-female junior researchers, which is probably also true of our own time and place. So what exactly do you make of it? Perhaps you can help me as well, Michael. For our thirteenth volume, I am interested in the reference to Ekaterina Olimnievna Shumova-Simanovskaya in Volume Six (English and Russian). She is cited as "others" by Vygotsky (94) and by name in W.B. Cannon's work on the James Lange theory but I can find no citation of her work in the work of her professor, I.P. Pavlov, which I guess is Vygotsky's source. Did Cannon know her personally? We are proud to present the third volume of the Pedology of the Adolescent in Korean (see attached). For anyone in Seoul, we will have a promotional "Book Concert" for the whole eleven-volume series downtown next Saturday if there is no Covid spike in the interim. I'll be talking about Vygotsky and sex education (in Korean only). David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WStFjpRU0awvUPzigfny8xubUiXJgfOxGrvNi9MjSq6H1WAUrPuXRH5pNBjvSj3fXw2zpw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WStFjpRU0awvUPzigfny8xubUiXJgfOxGrvNi9MjSq6H1WAUrPuXRH5pNBjvSj2R3_S-Rg$ On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 8:43 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > Hello David, > > > > Thank you for all your effort. It is much appreciated. > > > > I think though maybe Slavina, Morozova, and Peshkovskaya are part of what > Yasnitksy referred to as Vygotsky?s circle (student working with him). Did > he actually formally cite their published work and use it to advance his > argument or did he only mention them. Maybe, I can?t find it. I guess I > should have been more explicit, this is what I meant by cite. His did this > for Gurevich in Psychology of the actor and Krupskaya in Social Alteration > of Man. > > > > The others, is it like Montersorri in Thinking and Speech (which I also > see as an extended mention) or more direct. I looked on p. 95 for Grunwald > but didn?t see it. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong volume. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:08 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky > > > > Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female > colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many > letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the > latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this > and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. > > > > Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, > Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of > these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. > > > > In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown > teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie > Moritz.... > > > > One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. > > > > These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WStFjpRU0awvUPzigfny8xubUiXJgfOxGrvNi9MjSq6H1WAUrPuXRH5pNBjvSj3fXw2zpw$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WStFjpRU0awvUPzigfny8xubUiXJgfOxGrvNi9MjSq6H1WAUrPuXRH5pNBjvSj2R3_S-Rg$ > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/1d89a810/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ??_?????_1.png Type: image/png Size: 1085920 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/1d89a810/attachment-0001.png From glassman.13@osu.edu Thu Aug 13 07:34:31 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 14:34:31 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi David, I am trying to figure out Gurevich?s relationship with Vygotsky (if there was one). I first start exploring Gurevich in terms of Stanislavski, but as I got deeper into it I realized Gurevich was a brilliant scholar on her own and a fascinating character in history. The evidence for a relationship was circumstantial. They were both theater critics around the same time in Moscow. Gurevich probably arranged salons that Vygotsky attended. Gurevich has a Jewish father (although she was raised Roman Catholic) and has a distinct sense of otherness because of her Jewish background. Her family in general seemed very similar, although perhaps more sophisticated as they were in St. Petersburg. When Vygotsky left Moscow the first time he seemed to be a dyed in the wool symbolist (at least from I have read). Gurevich was the leader of the symbolist movement. In psychology of the actor Vygotsky uses Gurevich to some extent to argue that Vaktanghov, who believe was one of Stanislavski?s first students at the second MAT Actor?s studio was not breaking away from Stanislavski with new ideas (I sometimes think that Vygotsky was speaking to his own students through this). This is highly speculative. I have always been dubious that Vygotsky left Moscow the first time to take care of his sick mother and brother. He was living his fantasy and it seems too much like a 19th century melodrama. I wonder if his family called him back because he was associating with people like Gurevich who it seems was quite scandalous. I think there are good reasons to think he took the concept perezhivanie from Gurevich. She had just written a short book on it and Diderot?s paradox in 1927. Anyway, I am trying to collect any evidence I can find that Gurevich had some type of relationship with Vygotsky in any way I can. All a work in progress. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 8:38 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Try Volume Five in English, Volume Four in Russian for Grunwald (it is misspelt in English), the short selections from Pedology of the Adolescent. I think it would help me to help you if I knew what significance you are trying to attribute to this putative lack of citations. Since you have Volume Six, you know that Vygotsky cites Charlotte Buhler (p. 5), Lia Geshelina (11), Julia Kotelova (12), Rosa Levina (15), E.I. Pashkovskaya (12), Natalya Menchinskaya (42), as well as N.G. Morozova (9), Liya Slavina (43) and Lydia Bozhovich (43). It would also help if I knew why you think that promoting the work of female colleagues doesn't count as promoting the work of female scholars. It seems to me that all of these colleagues and/or scholars are cited pretty much in the same way he cites Gurevich, that is, with a footnote, a reference to a study, a quotation, sometimes a whole paragraph or more, They are listed in the index and in the references, probably by the editors--Vygotsky was indiscriminately careless about citing chapter and verse, although not unusually so for his time and place. It is certainly interesting that there are more Soviet than non-Soviet female scholars, but there are also more German than non-German/non-Soviet female scholars, and more junior female researchers than non-female junior researchers, which is probably also true of our own time and place. So what exactly do you make of it? Perhaps you can help me as well, Michael. For our thirteenth volume, I am interested in the reference to Ekaterina Olimnievna Shumova-Simanovskaya in Volume Six (English and Russian). She is cited as "others" by Vygotsky (94) and by name in W.B. Cannon's work on the James Lange theory but I can find no citation of her work in the work of her professor, I.P. Pavlov, which I guess is Vygotsky's source. Did Cannon know her personally? We are proud to present the third volume of the Pedology of the Adolescent in Korean (see attached). For anyone in Seoul, we will have a promotional "Book Concert" for the whole eleven-volume series downtown next Saturday if there is no Covid spike in the interim. I'll be talking about Vygotsky and sex education (in Korean only). David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VPQR6M_KNtBrjZtNJkTGuUdsEjm_TUzCXwXWbcdJ79kfj1pnD2uJxHCi3Yo---hZBZfiRw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VPQR6M_KNtBrjZtNJkTGuUdsEjm_TUzCXwXWbcdJ79kfj1pnD2uJxHCi3Yo---hGY5gnwA$ On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 8:43 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hello David, Thank you for all your effort. It is much appreciated. I think though maybe Slavina, Morozova, and Peshkovskaya are part of what Yasnitksy referred to as Vygotsky?s circle (student working with him). Did he actually formally cite their published work and use it to advance his argument or did he only mention them. Maybe, I can?t find it. I guess I should have been more explicit, this is what I meant by cite. His did this for Gurevich in Psychology of the actor and Krupskaya in Social Alteration of Man. The others, is it like Montersorri in Thinking and Speech (which I also see as an extended mention) or more direct. I looked on p. 95 for Grunwald but didn?t see it. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong volume. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:08 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie Moritz.... One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VPQR6M_KNtBrjZtNJkTGuUdsEjm_TUzCXwXWbcdJ79kfj1pnD2uJxHCi3Yo---hZBZfiRw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VPQR6M_KNtBrjZtNJkTGuUdsEjm_TUzCXwXWbcdJ79kfj1pnD2uJxHCi3Yo---hGY5gnwA$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/599d4455/attachment.html From annalisa@unm.edu Thu Aug 13 11:13:29 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:13:29 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TFOVdJMqbDU7RBpAWu7OPKTkeKXa9sHDYdKgyFkPtovQVCN2S-WXyyWTPSf46YGVhrjj1g$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TFOVdJMqbDU7RBpAWu7OPKTkeKXa9sHDYdKgyFkPtovQVCN2S-WXyyWTPSf46YEPoafodQ$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TFOVdJMqbDU7RBpAWu7OPKTkeKXa9sHDYdKgyFkPtovQVCN2S-WXyyWTPSf46YF7VhsFlg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/9b510915/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Thu Aug 13 16:49:28 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 08:49:28 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, she was thirty years older than he was, wasn't he? At the time he left Moscow for Gomel, Vygotsky would have been twenty-one and she would have been well into her fifties. So it seems to me more likely that with the Germans about to attack Gomel, and the younger son ill, the elder son was really wanted at home. Remember too that the Psychology of the Actor's Art was probably written nearly ten years after this.... I initially found the Zavershneva-van der Veer notebooks rather embarrassing because of speculations like this. But we know from the notebooks that Roza Smekhova was not his first love (see their notes on "The Trip to London"); that he tried to write a book "About the New Jewry" with another woman, presumably Jewish, called R. Yu: (p. 44). and that he appears to have had a passionate relationship with her. None of this should surprise us, since "A was a man, take him for all in all/We shall not look upon his like again." Annalisa--the Spinoza connection is not explicit in Anthony's text. He invited me to freewheel on whatever it was I was smoking at the time, so I did. Here's what happened: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1W9XAGZaBU&t=159s__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwkMgwuuEQ$ David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwnNmNEz7w$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwmuJr8sQA$ On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 11:37 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > Hi David, > > > > > > I am trying to figure out Gurevich?s relationship with Vygotsky (if there > was one). I first start exploring Gurevich in terms of Stanislavski, but > as I got deeper into it I realized Gurevich was a brilliant scholar on her > own and a fascinating character in history. The evidence for a > relationship was circumstantial. They were both theater critics around the > same time in Moscow. Gurevich probably arranged salons that Vygotsky > attended. Gurevich has a Jewish father (although she was raised Roman > Catholic) and has a distinct sense of otherness because of her Jewish > background. Her family in general seemed very similar, although perhaps > more sophisticated as they were in St. Petersburg. When Vygotsky left > Moscow the first time he seemed to be a dyed in the wool symbolist (at > least from I have read). Gurevich was the leader of the symbolist movement. > > > > In psychology of the actor Vygotsky uses Gurevich to some extent to argue > that Vaktanghov, who believe was one of Stanislavski?s first students at > the second MAT Actor?s studio was not breaking away from Stanislavski with > new ideas (I sometimes think that Vygotsky was speaking to his own students > through this). > > > > This is highly speculative. I have always been dubious that Vygotsky left > Moscow the first time to take care of his sick mother and brother. He was > living his fantasy and it seems too much like a 19th century melodrama. I > wonder if his family called him back because he was associating with people > like Gurevich who it seems was quite scandalous. > > > > I think there are good reasons to think he took the concept perezhivanie > from Gurevich. She had just written a short book on it and Diderot?s > paradox in 1927. > > > > Anyway, I am trying to collect any evidence I can find that Gurevich had > some type of relationship with Vygotsky in any way I can. > > > > All a work in progress. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 8:38 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky > > > > Try Volume Five in English, Volume Four in Russian for Grunwald (it is > misspelt in English), the short selections from Pedology of the Adolescent. > > > > I think it would help me to help you if I knew what significance you are > trying to attribute to this putative lack of citations. Since you have > Volume Six, you know that Vygotsky cites Charlotte Buhler (p. 5), Lia > Geshelina (11), Julia Kotelova (12), Rosa Levina (15), E.I. Pashkovskaya > (12), Natalya Menchinskaya (42), as well as N.G. Morozova (9), Liya > Slavina (43) and Lydia Bozhovich (43). It would also help if I knew why you > think that promoting the work of female colleagues doesn't count as > promoting the work of female scholars. It seems to me that all of these > colleagues and/or scholars are cited pretty much in the same way he cites > Gurevich, that is, with a footnote, a reference to a study, a quotation, > sometimes a whole paragraph or more, They are listed in the index and in > the references, probably by the editors--Vygotsky was indiscriminately > careless about citing chapter and verse, although not unusually so for his > time and place. It is certainly interesting that there are more Soviet than > non-Soviet female scholars, but there are also more German than > non-German/non-Soviet female scholars, and more junior female researchers > than non-female junior researchers, which is probably also true of our own > time and place. So what exactly do you make of it? > > > > Perhaps you can help me as well, Michael. For our thirteenth volume, I am > interested in the reference to Ekaterina Olimnievna Shumova-Simanovskaya in > Volume Six (English and Russian). She is cited as "others" by Vygotsky (94) > and by name in W.B. Cannon's work on the James Lange theory but I can find > no citation of her work in the work of her professor, I.P. Pavlov, which I > guess is Vygotsky's source. Did Cannon know her personally? > > > > We are proud to present the third volume of the Pedology of the Adolescent > in Korean (see attached). For anyone in Seoul, we will have a promotional > "Book Concert" for the whole eleven-volume series downtown next Saturday if > there is no Covid spike in the interim. I'll be talking about Vygotsky and > sex education (in Korean only). > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwnNmNEz7w$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwmuJr8sQA$ > > > > > > > > On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 8:43 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hello David, > > > > Thank you for all your effort. It is much appreciated. > > > > I think though maybe Slavina, Morozova, and Peshkovskaya are part of what > Yasnitksy referred to as Vygotsky?s circle (student working with him). Did > he actually formally cite their published work and use it to advance his > argument or did he only mention them. Maybe, I can?t find it. I guess I > should have been more explicit, this is what I meant by cite. His did this > for Gurevich in Psychology of the actor and Krupskaya in Social Alteration > of Man. > > > > The others, is it like Montersorri in Thinking and Speech (which I also > see as an extended mention) or more direct. I looked on p. 95 for Grunwald > but didn?t see it. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong volume. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:08 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky > > > > Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female > colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many > letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the > latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this > and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. > > > > Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, > Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of > these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. > > > > In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown > teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie > Moritz.... > > > > One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. > > > > These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwnNmNEz7w$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SZ8iFJI9Hggu1-kXmR5SaSPIlLyPhVpRS-KoHtUXvJd_U54ZuNis4--gOeHuQwmuJr8sQA$ > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/5d91aa31/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Thu Aug 13 18:37:06 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:37:06 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ...? that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ...? grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > Mike points out a very important point that conscious > awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. > "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. > > I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that > Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught > Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? > > I am also curious what the Russian words used to create > the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can > someone illuminate that for my awareness? > > "Conscious awareness"? is sort of like saying "wet water," > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say > "unconscious awareness"? > > What does that look like? > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > I don't think so. > > Awareness is awareness. > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the > sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. > > It's just the sea, see? > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > If it were possible to take one awareness with another > awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of > awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. > > Awareness is not really something that can be divided into > parts or added to into something "larger." > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets > tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. > asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, > unconscious, etc. > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide > space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in > space, so the small room vs the big room is just an > illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a > perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, > if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just > space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up > with thinking processes. > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of > what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. > > That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this > mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the > meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think > about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not > precisely understand the intention the the words were used > by the speaker/writer. > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship between > perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything > without awareness. We also can't know anything without > awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references > as "substance." He is right about that. It's that > necessary white elephant. > > To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always > to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate > what is different about mastery compared to when mastery > isn't evident. > > If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set > awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship > between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be > measured in the individual based upon how well the > individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or > reality), while cognition on the other hand is the > manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We > know cognition is distributed, and that it includes > society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the > chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I > mean grey box. > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it > Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and > awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it > maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert > there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the > better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might > call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a > negative sense, "delusion." > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed > today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the > battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in > the news about the pandemic. > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of > thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual > developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We > might not recognize the value of that mastery because we > might not share those thought-organizations of the natural > environment that that culture possesses. Why would we > share them? > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to > one another and basing their intelligence on the way the > phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our > aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" > chauvanism. (who isn't?) > > I might ask, how much of this might have been > self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet > society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any > evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, > but would like to hear from others mor familier with his > texts and relationships with others) Might you help me > understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he > was of this chauvanism? > > Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's > relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political > about the anthropology study with Luria? > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to > ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and > other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* > create a better human?" using what we know about mind and > how it develops? > > Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about > the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who > decides what is "better"? > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of > analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the > individual have to know that it is scientific in order for > it to be scientific? > > I guess this is where the functional/structural argument > loops about. > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional > and structural. > > My take is that what is in common about functions and > structures are their patterns. > > A pattern is the differential between the function and the > structure. > > Consider the music score (structure) and the musician > playing the music (function). > > The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit > is that its translation can evolve in time into other > patterns (think Jazz). > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific > concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like > "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling > what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern > might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is > that my hair that has been singed??) > > When considering conceptual development the pattern is > effective because the it can translate between subjective > experience and objective experience (biological, social, > cultural, etc). > > On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a > feminist lens? > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he > cited because women were more likely to be school > teachers, as is the case today? > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > *? [EXTERNAL]* > > ** > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not > achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious > awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > > > wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: *What do you understand the > passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean?* > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your > thoughts in short video form?* It's quite enjoyable > (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, > not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. > (Here is the question again, in video form: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XZQXs1xzTdD7gK6xsdMBk-Ga55iwz6RrA67DSGtQSP4CCGUWy0fBCOAYvjslviQjBA4Byg$ > ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers > -- would benefit from answers to this question, > preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will > nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XZQXs1xzTdD7gK6xsdMBk-Ga55iwz6RrA67DSGtQSP4CCGUWy0fBCOAYvjslviSRpnmhuw$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care > about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. > > *Here is the passage in question*, from /Thinking and > Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to > acquire new potentials for acting with respect to > it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of > activity itself, I acquire the potential for new > relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as > if this process has been isolated from the general > activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the > fact that I remember. I make my own remembering > the object of consciousness. An isolation arises > here. In a certain sense, any generalization or > abstraction isolates its object. This is why > conscious awareness ? understood as generalization > ? leads directly to mastery. > > /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is > the generalization or abstraction of the mental > processes, which leads to their mastery/. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. > Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to > the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal > hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is > apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or > the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges > for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of > thought, it can ? like any structure ? be > transferred without training to all remaining > domains of concepts and thought. Thus, /conscious > awareness enters through the gate opened up by the > scientific concept/." > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks?? > > Anthony Barra > P.S. My first encounter with /Thinking and Speech/?was > very difficult, even with the help of talented > classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three > online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive?reading but as a general map of the book's > terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for > me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly > useful (as a number of people have told me), that's > great. So thank you again to anyone interested in > participating. > > > -- > > > IAngelus Novus > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and > objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and > passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to > exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the > theoretical?contradictions is possible only through > practical means, only through the practical?energy of > humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XZQXs1xzTdD7gK6xsdMBk-Ga55iwz6RrA67DSGtQSP4CCGUWy0fBCOAYvjslviTJFjFD1g$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > . > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/7fbbb64c/attachment.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Thu Aug 13 20:36:28 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:36:28 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> Message-ID: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry > On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden wrote: > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > OK? > Andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: >> Hello conscious and venerable others, >> >> Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. >> >> I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? >> >> It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? >> >> I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? >> >> "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," >> >> No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." >> >> If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? >> >> What does that look like? >> >> Can we say "conscious unawareness"? >> >> I don't think so. >> >> Awareness is awareness. >> >> I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. >> >> It's just the sea, see? >> >> However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. >> >> If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. >> >> Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." >> >> The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. >> >> "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. >> >> This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. >> >> Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. >> >> That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? >> >> Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. >> >> There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. >> >> To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. >> >> If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. >> >> Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. >> >> If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. >> >> When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." >> >> Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. >> >> In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? >> >> It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. >> >> Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) >> >> I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? >> >> Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? >> >> Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? >> >> Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? >> >> If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? >> >> I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. >> >> Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. >> >> My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. >> >> A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. >> >> Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). >> >> The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). >> >> I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. >> >> I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) >> >> When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). >> >> On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? >> >> Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? >> >> I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Annalisa >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole >> Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> [EXTERNAL] >> Hi Anthony >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> What am I missing? >> Mike >> >> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? >> >> Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TpHpkZLDBkkZoulsA_zFwzBrfVLi6KqavEE1udTsaRp7xDeGzTrSevRCCPMBLGMEC6q5hA$ ) >> >> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!TpHpkZLDBkkZoulsA_zFwzBrfVLi6KqavEE1udTsaRp7xDeGzTrSevRCCPMBLGMlL9jrRw$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." >> >> What do you understand this passage to mean? >> >> Thanks ? >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >> >> >> -- >> I The Angel's View of History >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TpHpkZLDBkkZoulsA_zFwzBrfVLi6KqavEE1udTsaRp7xDeGzTrSevRCCPMBLGMzP4F13A$ >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/4553fb08/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Thu Aug 13 20:51:07 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:51:07 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> Message-ID: <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > Andy, > I think of what you described as automatic and controlled > processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) > requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled > processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. > When you?re learning something, it can easily overload > attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or > scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right > combination of controlled and automatic processing. I > think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a > while back about mathematical thinking that captures this > distinction very well. > Henry > > > >> On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden >> > wrote: >> >> Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad >> term covering what mediates between physiology and >> behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an >> individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. >> >> "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing >> and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple >> of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking >> down the street you do not have conscious awareness of >> how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how >> your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your >> other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you >> bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step >> over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the >> step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking >> suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you >> look down at the ground, and take conscious control of >> your balance, etc. >> On the other hand, consider when a child is first >> learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they >> have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says >> to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ...? that >> one ... cross over ... put through the hole ...? grab it >> .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces >> with conscious awareness, according to how she was >> instructed, paying attention to every operation, using >> internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months >> later she now thinks about getting out the door in time >> to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and >> isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved >> mastery. >> >> OK? >> Andy >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: >>> Hello conscious and venerable others, >>> >>> Mike points out a very important point that conscious >>> awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. >>> "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. >>> >>> I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that >>> Spinoza or Vygotsky? >>> >>> It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that >>> caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to >>> cite it? >>> >>> I am also curious what the Russian words used to create >>> the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can >>> someone illuminate that for my awareness? >>> >>> "Conscious awareness"? is sort of like saying "wet water," >>> >>> No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." >>> >>> If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we >>> say "unconscious awareness"? >>> >>> What does that look like? >>> >>> Can we say "conscious unawareness"? >>> >>> I don't think so. >>> >>> Awareness is awareness. >>> >>> I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it >>> the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. >>> >>> It's just the sea, see? >>> >>> However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. >>> >>> If it were possible to take one awareness with another >>> awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of >>> awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. >>> >>> Awareness is not really something that can be divided >>> into parts or added to into something "larger." >>> >>> The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it >>> gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake >>> vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, >>> unconscious, etc. >>> >>> "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide >>> space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in >>> space, so the small room vs the big room is just an >>> illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a >>> perceptual relationship than something quantitative >>> (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is >>> just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. >>> >>> This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up >>> with thinking processes. >>> >>> Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of >>> what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. >>> >>> That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this >>> mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this >>> mistake? >>> >>> Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the >>> meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think >>> about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not >>> precisely understand the intention the the words were >>> used by the speaker/writer. >>> >>> There is a distinct (and special) relationship between >>> perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything >>> without awareness. We also can't know anything without >>> awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza >>> references as "substance." He is right about that. It's >>> that necessary white elephant. >>> >>> To master something is to know it. To know it isn't >>> always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to >>> isolate what is different about mastery compared to when >>> mastery isn't evident. >>> >>> If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set >>> awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship >>> between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can >>> be measured in the individual based upon how well the >>> individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or >>> reality), while cognition on the other hand is the >>> manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We >>> know cognition is distributed, and that it includes >>> society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the >>> chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, >>> I mean grey box. >>> >>> Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it >>> Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and >>> awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. >>> >>> If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it >>> maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert >>> there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the >>> better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. >>> >>> When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we >>> might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in >>> a negative sense, "delusion." >>> >>> Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be >>> witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to >>> see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific >>> concepts" in the news about the pandemic. >>> >>> In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization >>> of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" >>> conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us >>> long ago. We might not recognize the value of that >>> mastery because we might not share those >>> thought-organizations of the natural environment that >>> that culture possesses. Why would we share them? >>> >>> It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to >>> one another and basing their intelligence on the way the >>> phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our >>> aesthetic sensibilities for sound. >>> >>> Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" >>> chauvanism. (who isn't?) >>> >>> I might ask, how much of this might have been >>> self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet >>> society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there >>> any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to >>> say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier >>> with his texts and relationships with others) Might you >>> help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on >>> how aware he was of this chauvanism? >>> >>> Was there for example anything political about >>> Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there >>> anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? >>> >>> Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was >>> to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky >>> (and other learning scientists) it was "How to >>> *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we >>> know about mind and how it develops? >>> >>> Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish >>> about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not >>> arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? >>> >>> If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of >>> analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the >>> individual have to know that it is scientific in order >>> for it to be scientific? >>> >>> I guess this is where the functional/structural argument >>> loops about. >>> >>> Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional >>> and structural. >>> >>> My take is that what is in common about functions and >>> structures are their patterns. >>> >>> A pattern is the differential between the function and >>> the structure. >>> >>> Consider the music score (structure) and the musician >>> playing the music (function). >>> >>> The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit >>> is that its translation can evolve in time into other >>> patterns (think Jazz). >>> >>> I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific >>> concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like >>> "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling >>> what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. >>> >>> I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern >>> might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is >>> that my hair that has been singed??) >>> >>> When considering conceptual development the pattern is >>> effective because the it can translate between >>> subjective experience and objective experience >>> (biological, social, cultural, etc). >>> >>> On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through >>> a feminist lens? >>> >>> Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who >>> he cited because women were more likely to be school >>> teachers, as is the case today? >>> >>> I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. >>> >>> Kind regards, >>> >>> Annalisa >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.eduon >>> behalf of mike cole >>> *Sent:*Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM >>> *To:*eXtended Mind, Culture, >>> Activity >>> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters >>> through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>> *? [EXTERNAL]* >>> Hi Anthony >>> >>> I understand that to mean that humans who have not >>> achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >>> awareness. >>> >>> What am I missing? >>> Mike >>> >>> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra >>> >> > wrote: >>> >>> Good afternoon, >>> >>> This is a question -- and an invitation: >>> >>> First the question:*What do you understand the >>> passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean?* >>> >>> Second, the invitation:*How about sharing your >>> thoughts in short video form?*It's quite enjoyable >>> (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, >>> not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. >>> (Here is the question again, in video >>> form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Smhly0SjdcgGREcg-6xH-8n9H3YEj1J9lzNgh3sh3V04jFUm38R6Cc-p_IYblRmS2RgcNQ$ >>> ) >>> >>> I believe that many people -- including many >>> teachers -- would benefit from answers to this >>> question, preferably multiple answers. With >>> permission, I will nicely edit and add your response >>> to this growing list of asked-and-answered >>> questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Smhly0SjdcgGREcg-6xH-8n9H3YEj1J9lzNgh3sh3V04jFUm38R6Cc-p_IYblRnRlP2zgQ$ >>> >>> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't >>> care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. >>> >>> *Here is the passage in question*, from/Thinking and >>> Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >>> >>> "To perceive something in a different way means >>> to acquire new potentials for acting with >>> respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play differently. By >>> generalizing the process of activity itself, I >>> acquire the potential for new relationships with >>> it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process >>> has been isolated from the general activity of >>> consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I >>> remember. I make my own remembering the object >>> of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a >>> certain sense, any generalization or abstraction >>> isolates its object. This is why conscious >>> awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads >>> directly to mastery. >>> >>> /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is >>> the generalization or abstraction of the mental >>> processes, which leads to their mastery/. >>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. >>> Scientific concepts have a unique relationship >>> to the object. This relationship is mediated >>> through other concepts that themselves have an >>> internal hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this >>> domain of the scientific concept that conscious >>> awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. >>> And once a new structure of generalization has >>> arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like >>> any structure ? be transferred without training >>> to all remaining domains of concepts and >>> thought. Thus,/conscious awareness enters >>> through the gate opened up by the scientific >>> concept/." >>> >>> >>> What do you understand this passage to mean? >>> >>> Thanks?? >>> >>> Anthony Barra >>> P.S. My first encounter with /Thinking and >>> Speech/?was very difficult, even with the help of >>> talented classmates and a smart professor. >>> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai >>> Veresov, presented not as a definitive?reading but >>> as a general map of the book's terrain, were really >>> so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm >>> posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number >>> of people have told me), that's great. So thank you >>> again to anyone interested in participating. >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> >>> IAngelus Novus >>> The >>> Angel's View of History >>> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and >>> objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity >>> and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease >>> to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the >>> theoretical?contradictions is possible only through >>> practical means, only through the practical?energy of >>> humans. (Marx, 1844). >>> >>> Cultural Praxis Website:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Smhly0SjdcgGREcg-6xH-8n9H3YEj1J9lzNgh3sh3V04jFUm38R6Cc-p_IYblRlbqL2JMw$ >>> >>> Re-generating CHAT Website:re-generatingchat.com >>> >>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >>> . >>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >>> . >>> >>> >>> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/ac064039/attachment.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Thu Aug 13 21:13:54 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2020 22:13:54 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: <0D857CB8-D01D-438F-90AE-03E296E5D9CA@gmail.com> Thanks, Andy. I should add that ?ballistic? captures another aspect of well-learned processes: They are hard NOT to set in motion. As in bad habits. An issue about ?conscious awareness? is how it is wrapped up in the dichotomy of conscious and unconscious. On the other hand, attention and awareness allow for a sharply focused awareness, which ?bleeds? into no awareness at all, there being no precise boundary between the two. A metaphor might be a flashlight shown against a wall in a dark rooml, which is very bright at its center and gradually, imperceptibly fading into black. H > On Aug 13, 2020, at 9:51 PM, Andy Blunden wrote: > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > Andy > > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: >> Andy, >> I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. >> Henry >> >> >> >>> On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: >>> >>> Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. >>> >>> "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. >>> On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. >>> >>> OK? >>> Andy >>> Andy Blunden >>> Hegel for Social Movements >>> Home Page >>> On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: >>>> Hello conscious and venerable others, >>>> >>>> Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. >>>> >>>> I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? >>>> >>>> It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? >>>> >>>> I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? >>>> >>>> "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," >>>> >>>> No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." >>>> >>>> If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? >>>> >>>> What does that look like? >>>> >>>> Can we say "conscious unawareness"? >>>> >>>> I don't think so. >>>> >>>> Awareness is awareness. >>>> >>>> I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. >>>> >>>> It's just the sea, see? >>>> >>>> However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. >>>> >>>> If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. >>>> >>>> Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." >>>> >>>> The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. >>>> >>>> "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. >>>> >>>> This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. >>>> >>>> Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. >>>> >>>> That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? >>>> >>>> Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. >>>> >>>> There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. >>>> >>>> To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. >>>> >>>> If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. >>>> >>>> Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. >>>> >>>> If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. >>>> >>>> When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." >>>> >>>> Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. >>>> >>>> In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? >>>> >>>> It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. >>>> >>>> Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) >>>> >>>> I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? >>>> >>>> Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? >>>> >>>> Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? >>>> >>>> Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? >>>> >>>> If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? >>>> >>>> I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. >>>> >>>> Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. >>>> >>>> My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. >>>> >>>> A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. >>>> >>>> Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). >>>> >>>> The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). >>>> >>>> I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. >>>> >>>> I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) >>>> >>>> When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). >>>> >>>> On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? >>>> >>>> Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? >>>> >>>> I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. >>>> >>>> Kind regards, >>>> >>>> Annalisa >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole >>>> Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> [EXTERNAL] >>>> Hi Anthony >>>> >>>> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >>>> >>>> What am I missing? >>>> Mike >>>> >>>> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: >>>> Good afternoon, >>>> >>>> This is a question -- and an invitation: >>>> >>>> First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? >>>> >>>> Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!SdLXlRcWm28jSrKEKAALtkTj4LoL3OmC6JWWhAEmc-gvGwTfEZjjwxxQ6Q2R8V0DjiEt1w$ ) >>>> >>>> I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!SdLXlRcWm28jSrKEKAALtkTj4LoL3OmC6JWWhAEmc-gvGwTfEZjjwxxQ6Q2R8V38HCM0og$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. >>>> >>>> Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >>>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >>>> >>>> Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." >>>> >>>> What do you understand this passage to mean? >>>> >>>> Thanks ? >>>> >>>> Anthony Barra >>>> >>>> P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> I The Angel's View of History >>>> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >>>> >>>> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!SdLXlRcWm28jSrKEKAALtkTj4LoL3OmC6JWWhAEmc-gvGwTfEZjjwxxQ6Q2R8V1OcfhVlw$ >>>> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >>>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . >>>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200813/a649bb39/attachment.html From annalisa@unm.edu Thu Aug 13 22:21:32 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 05:21:32 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> References: , <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> Message-ID: Hi Andy, Henry and vo's Thank you for your reply Andy, but I think that what you are talking about is attention, not awareness. Like Henry explains, attention has a focus. That isn't "conscious awareness," for the very reason on cannot say "unconscious awareness" or "conscious unawareness" these states do not exist. The examples you bring to the table have to do with the autonomic nervous system which aids walking, balance, and so on, which are not outside of awareness, but can be outside of attention. The sympathetic system is the fight or flight response so there is not necessarily a "consciousness awareness" that propels the person to prevent a fall, but something that is automatic and reflexive; it is instinctual. I don't think that that is "conscious awareness." As you can see it is a problematic phrase. Also what is the consciousness of a whale, or a dolphin, that mediates between physiology and behavior? Sleeping or awake? I maintain that what you are describing is attentional, not "conscious awareness." This child directs her attention to steps that chunk the activity of tying shoes, (as you illustrated), that eventually becomes an automatic motorskill and becomes smooth, and with practice doesn't require attentional focus once it does become automatic. Tying my shoes I am not thinking about tying my shoes, but I could tomorrow have attentional focus about tying my shoes whether I know how to do it or not. But the stance of "conscious awareness" means that the child doesn't require it at some point, but the child also doesn't consider, "I am aware that I am learning to tie my shoes." Nor "I am aware that if I tie my shoes I will be proud of myself." These states of mind do not create mastery of tying of shoes. The glaring flaw in this conceptual construct of "conscious awareness" is that it "falls away" after mastery, but where does it go and when does it end? And how does it start when it starts? What is the genesis of "conscious awareness?" Learning about anything is about internalizing subjectively what maps to/reflects the external world faithfully. How you learned to tie your shoes may be different than how I did, than perhaps someone who suffered a brain injury and had to re-learn the task. In all cases there is no one way to master tying of shoes, but there does come a common goal of internalizing the knowledge required to tie ones shoes, and once it is known, it is known/ Actually it is the ignorance of shoe-tying that has been fully removed because no one learns to tie her shoes in a vacuum, but from someone else, a knowledgeable other, by sharing attention to the task. The problem of the phrase "conscious awareness" shows its glaring flaw were I to ask you to please tell me the exact time you fell asleep last night. No matter how many times you practice, you will never be able to do it. Does that mean you will never be able to master falling asleep because you didn't go out the gate with conscious awareness? If anything, such a task might keep you from sleeping. If you say, sleeping doesn't count. Well, you did say "consciousness" mediates between physiology and behavior, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, sleeping or awake. Kind egads! Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:37 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UkmxyLumaA3IH7w7A5i-MXIsC7jGXgirYVrv4N1ZFkB-Epwg97ND0sviDAB_ZAu0AWq9wA$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UkmxyLumaA3IH7w7A5i-MXIsC7jGXgirYVrv4N1ZFkB-Epwg97ND0sviDAB_ZAvt2Sz_NA$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UkmxyLumaA3IH7w7A5i-MXIsC7jGXgirYVrv4N1ZFkB-Epwg97ND0sviDAB_ZAvCZ2V7Eg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/569d8d57/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Thu Aug 13 22:45:39 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 15:45:39 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> Message-ID: The question arose from a quote from Lev Vygotsky's "Thinking and Speech." There is no point in interpreting this quote in terms of meanings circulating in general discourse in the 21st century. They have meaning only within the system of concepts which Vygotsky was constructing in the process of writing that? book. The first thing to do to understand what Vygotsky meant by "conscious awareness" is to read "Thinking and Speech." After that, we could compare and contrast Vygotsky's concepts with others perhaps. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 3:21 pm, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hi Andy, Henry and vo's > > Thank you for your reply Andy, but I think that what you > are talking about is attention, not awareness. Like Henry > explains, attention has a focus. That isn't "conscious > awareness," for the very reason on cannot say "unconscious > awareness" or "conscious unawareness" these states do not > exist. > > The examples you bring to the table have to do with the > autonomic nervous system which aids walking, balance, and > so on, which are not outside of awareness, but? can be > outside of attention. The sympathetic system is the fight > or flight response so there is not necessarily a > "consciousness awareness" that propels the person to > prevent a fall, but something that is automatic and > reflexive; it is instinctual. I don't think that that is > "conscious awareness." > > As you can see it is a problematic phrase. > > Also what is the consciousness of a whale, or a dolphin, > that mediates between physiology and behavior? Sleeping or > awake? > > I maintain that what you are describing is attentional, > not "conscious awareness." > > This child directs her attention to steps that chunk the > activity of tying shoes, (as you illustrated), that > eventually becomes an automatic motorskill and becomes > smooth, and with practice doesn't require attentional > focus once it does become automatic. > > Tying my shoes I am not thinking about tying my shoes, but > I could tomorrow have attentional focus about tying my > shoes whether I know how to do it or not. But the stance > of "conscious awareness" means that the child doesn't > require it at some point, but the child also doesn't > consider, "I am aware that I am learning to tie my shoes." > Nor "I am aware that if I tie my shoes I will be proud of > myself." These states of mind do not create mastery of > tying of shoes. > > The glaring flaw in this conceptual construct of > "conscious awareness" is that it "falls away" after > mastery, but where does it go and when does it end? And > how does it start when it starts? > > What is the genesis of "conscious awareness?" > > Learning about anything is about internalizing > subjectively what maps to/reflects the external world > faithfully. How you learned to tie your shoes may be > different than how I did, than perhaps someone who > suffered a brain injury and had to re-learn the task.? In > all cases there is no one way to master tying of shoes, > but there does come a common goal of internalizing the > knowledge required to tie ones shoes, and once it is > known, it is known/ > > Actually it is the ignorance of shoe-tying that has been > fully removed because no one learns to tie her shoes in a > vacuum, but from someone else, a knowledgeable other, by > sharing attention to the task. > > The problem of the phrase "conscious awareness" shows its > glaring flaw were I to ask you to please tell me the exact > time you fell asleep last night. No matter how many times > you practice, you will never be able to do it. Does that > mean you will never be able to master falling asleep > because you didn't go out the gate with conscious > awareness? If anything, such a task might keep you from > sleeping. > > If you say, sleeping doesn't count. Well, you did say > "consciousness" mediates between physiology and behavior, > the totality of mental processes in an individual > organism, sleeping or awake. > > Kind egads! > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of Andy > Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:37 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > *? [EXTERNAL]* > > ** > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad > term covering what mediates between physiology and > behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an > individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing > and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple > of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking > down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how > yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your > body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg > swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it > forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb > and having underestimated the depth of the step and > momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly > springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at > the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning > to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been > taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself > "make the rabbit ears ... this one ...? that one ... cross > over ... put through the hole ...? grab it .,. and PULL IT > TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious > awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying > attention to every operation, using internal speech (more > or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks > about getting out the door in time to meet her friends > while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at > what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > > OK? > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: >> Hello conscious and venerable others, >> >> Mike points out a very important point that conscious >> awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. >> "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. >> >> I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that >> Spinoza or Vygotsky? >> >> It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that >> caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite >> it? >> >> I am also curious what the Russian words used to create >> the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can >> someone illuminate that for my awareness? >> >> "Conscious awareness"? is sort of like saying "wet water," >> >> No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." >> >> If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say >> "unconscious awareness"? >> >> What does that look like? >> >> Can we say "conscious unawareness"? >> >> I don't think so. >> >> Awareness is awareness. >> >> I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the >> sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. >> >> It's just the sea, see? >> >> However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. >> >> If it were possible to take one awareness with another >> awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of >> awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. >> >> Awareness is not really something that can be divided >> into parts or added to into something "larger." >> >> The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets >> tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. >> asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, >> unconscious, etc. >> >> "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide >> space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in >> space, so the small room vs the big room is just an >> illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a >> perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, >> if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just >> space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. >> >> This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up >> with thinking processes. >> >> Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of >> what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. >> >> That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this >> mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this >> mistake? >> >> Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the >> meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think >> about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not >> precisely understand the intention the the words were >> used by the speaker/writer. >> >> There is a distinct (and special) relationship between >> perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything >> without awareness. We also can't know anything without >> awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza >> references as "substance." He is right about that. It's >> that necessary white elephant. >> >> To master something is to know it. To know it isn't >> always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to >> isolate what is different about mastery compared to when >> mastery isn't evident. >> >> If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set >> awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship >> between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be >> measured in the individual based upon how well the >> individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or >> reality), while cognition on the other hand is the >> manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We >> know cognition is distributed, and that it includes >> society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the >> chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I >> mean grey box. >> >> Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it >> Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and >> awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. >> >> If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it >> maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert >> there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the >> better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. >> >> When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might >> call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a >> negative sense, "delusion." >> >> Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be >> witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to >> see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific >> concepts" in the news about the pandemic. >> >> In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization >> of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" >> conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us >> long ago. We might not recognize the value of that >> mastery because we might not share those >> thought-organizations of the natural environment that >> that culture possesses. Why would we share them? >> >> It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to >> one another and basing their intelligence on the way the >> phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our >> aesthetic sensibilities for sound. >> >> Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" >> chauvanism. (who isn't?) >> >> I might ask, how much of this might have been >> self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet >> society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there >> any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say >> no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with >> his texts and relationships with others) Might you help >> me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how >> aware he was of this chauvanism? >> >> Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's >> relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political >> about the anthropology study with Luria? >> >> Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to >> ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and >> other learning scientists) it was "How to >> *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we >> know about mind and how it develops? >> >> Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about >> the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who >> decides what is "better"? >> >> If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of >> analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the >> individual have to know that it is scientific in order >> for it to be scientific? >> >> I guess this is where the functional/structural argument >> loops about. >> >> Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional >> and structural. >> >> My take is that what is in common about functions and >> structures are their patterns. >> >> A pattern is the differential between the function and >> the structure. >> >> Consider the music score (structure) and the musician >> playing the music (function). >> >> The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit >> is that its translation can evolve in time into other >> patterns (think Jazz). >> >> I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific >> concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like >> "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling >> what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. >> >> I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern >> might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is >> that my hair that has been singed??) >> >> When considering conceptual development the pattern is >> effective because the it can translate between subjective >> experience and objective experience (biological, social, >> cultural, etc). >> >> On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a >> feminist lens? >> >> Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he >> cited because women were more likely to be school >> teachers, as is the case today? >> >> I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Annalisa >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> >> on behalf of >> mike cole >> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters >> through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> *? [EXTERNAL]* >> >> Hi Anthony >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not >> achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >> awareness. >> >> What am I missing? >> Mike >> >> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra >> > > wrote: >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question: *What do you understand the >> passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean?* >> >> Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your >> thoughts in short video form?* It's quite enjoyable >> (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, >> not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. >> (Here is the question again, in video form: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XSguZra_BRq0bwNcLDBxJVqnp4KgjAnAQZpGXe0C83YVPBAVFKh2N0sQF5sUeKM4S1qCoQ$ >> ) >> >> I believe that many people -- including many teachers >> -- would benefit from answers to this question, >> preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will >> nicely edit and add your response to this growing >> list of asked-and-answered questions: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XSguZra_BRq0bwNcLDBxJVqnp4KgjAnAQZpGXe0C83YVPBAVFKh2N0sQF5sUeKPUTWhrxQ$ >> >> Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't >> care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from /Thinking and >> Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means >> to acquire new potentials for acting with respect >> to it. At the chess board, to see differently is >> to play differently. By generalizing the process >> of activity itself, I acquire the potential for >> new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it >> is as if this process has been isolated from the >> general activity of consciousness. I am conscious >> of the fact that I remember. I make my own >> remembering the object of consciousness. An >> isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its >> object. This is why conscious awareness ? >> understood as generalization ? leads directly to >> mastery. >> >> /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is >> the generalization or abstraction of the mental >> processes, which leads to their mastery/. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. >> Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to >> the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal >> hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is >> apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or >> the generalization and mastery of concepts >> emerges for the first time. And once a new >> structure of generalization has arisen in one >> sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? >> be transferred without training to all remaining >> domains of concepts and thought. Thus, /conscious >> awareness enters through the gate opened up by >> the scientific concept/." >> >> >> What do you understand this passage to mean? >> >> Thanks?? >> >> Anthony Barra >> P.S. My first encounter with /Thinking and >> Speech/?was very difficult, even with the help of >> talented classmates and a smart professor. >> Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, >> presented not as a definitive?reading but as a >> general map of the book's terrain, were really so >> helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm >> posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number >> of people have told me), that's great. So thank you >> again to anyone interested in participating. >> >> >> -- >> >> >> IAngelus Novus >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and >> objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and >> passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to >> exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the >> theoretical?contradictions is possible only through >> practical means, only through the practical?energy of >> humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XSguZra_BRq0bwNcLDBxJVqnp4KgjAnAQZpGXe0C83YVPBAVFKh2N0sQF5sUeKPIIAAmGA$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> . >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> . >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/742804e8/attachment.html From hhdave15@gmail.com Fri Aug 14 00:34:17 2020 From: hhdave15@gmail.com (Harshad Dave) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:04:17 +0530 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> Message-ID: Hi, I think we may grasp it as follow. ** Conscious awareness: "To be aware" gives us a sense that the person who is aware... is with concerned information reagarding the subject matter. It seems logical that the word "awareness" has emerged from above concept of human characteristic to remain aware of information of the subject matter as shown above. He punctually and intentionally puts his efforts to remain aware about the latest status of the concerned subject matter. I think it is "conscious awareness". ** Conscious unawareness: I clarified the word awareness as above. The "unawareness" is antimony of "awareness". But, its emergence might be from......, His various negative characteristics that might have casted his mindset to remain negligent towards the felt necessity of the time... i. e. "to remain aware about the concerned subject matter". and due to his mind set he is unaware of the subject matter but he knows he should be aware of the same. This is "conscious unawareness". ** Unconscious awareness: Here is interesting point. I recall one event of my primary school time. We were playing cricket in our street. One gentleman (uncle) neighbor was reading news paper in his corridor. I was near to him and bats man gave a shot to the ball (it was a light tennis ball) that hit the uncle on the back side of his head as he was seating keeping back towards the batsman side. It was not at all a serious hit and he pleasantly returned our balk with a smile. But, I clearly remember.... When the ball was just near to his head in the trajectory.. say 4 to 5 inch away from his head back.... though he was not at all aware of this looming hit..... he bowed his head well before the moment of the hitting. I was/am the witness that though he had not seen the ball perhaps his sixth sense made him aware of the event to happen after a moment. We many times come across the events where our sixth sense makes us conscious about the looming happenings. I think it is.... "Unconscious awareness". with regards, Harshad Dave. On Fri, 14 Aug 2020, 10:53 Annalisa Aguilar, wrote: > Hi Andy, Henry and vo's > > Thank you for your reply Andy, but I think that what you are talking about > is attention, not awareness. Like Henry explains, attention has a focus. > That isn't "conscious awareness," for the very reason on cannot say > "unconscious awareness" or "conscious unawareness" these states do not > exist. > > The examples you bring to the table have to do with the autonomic nervous > system which aids walking, balance, and so on, which are not outside of > awareness, but can be outside of attention. The sympathetic system is the > fight or flight response so there is not necessarily a "consciousness > awareness" that propels the person to prevent a fall, but something that is > automatic and reflexive; it is instinctual. I don't think that that is > "conscious awareness." > > As you can see it is a problematic phrase. > > Also what is the consciousness of a whale, or a dolphin, that mediates > between physiology and behavior? Sleeping or awake? > > I maintain that what you are describing is attentional, not "conscious > awareness." > > This child directs her attention to steps that chunk the activity of tying > shoes, (as you illustrated), that eventually becomes an automatic > motorskill and becomes smooth, and with practice doesn't require > attentional focus once it does become automatic. > > Tying my shoes I am not thinking about tying my shoes, but I could > tomorrow have attentional focus about tying my shoes whether I know how to > do it or not. But the stance of "conscious awareness" means that the child > doesn't require it at some point, but the child also doesn't consider, "I > am aware that I am learning to tie my shoes." Nor "I am aware that if I tie > my shoes I will be proud of myself." These states of mind do not create > mastery of tying of shoes. > > The glaring flaw in this conceptual construct of "conscious awareness" is > that it "falls away" after mastery, but where does it go and when does it > end? And how does it start when it starts? > > What is the genesis of "conscious awareness?" > > Learning about anything is about internalizing subjectively what maps > to/reflects the external world faithfully. How you learned to tie your > shoes may be different than how I did, than perhaps someone who suffered a > brain injury and had to re-learn the task. In all cases there is no one > way to master tying of shoes, but there does come a common goal of > internalizing the knowledge required to tie ones shoes, and once it is > known, it is known/ > > Actually it is the ignorance of shoe-tying that has been fully removed > because no one learns to tie her shoes in a vacuum, but from someone else, > a knowledgeable other, by sharing attention to the task. > > The problem of the phrase "conscious awareness" shows its glaring flaw > were I to ask you to please tell me the exact time you fell asleep last > night. No matter how many times you practice, you will never be able to do > it. Does that mean you will never be able to master falling asleep because > you didn't go out the gate with conscious awareness? If anything, such a > task might keep you from sleeping. > > If you say, sleeping doesn't count. Well, you did say "consciousness" > mediates between physiology and behavior, the totality of mental processes > in an individual organism, sleeping or awake. > > Kind egads! > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:37 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what > mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes > in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to > what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will > illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious > awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your > body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging > slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for > example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the > step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back > into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take > conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their > own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. > The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one > ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! > Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to > how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal > speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about > getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her > laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > > OK? > > Andy > ------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be > a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. > > I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's > attention? David would you mind to cite it? > > I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English > translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my > awareness? > > "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious > awareness"? > > What does that look like? > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > I don't think so. > > Awareness is awareness. > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I > put it back it's not the sea + drop. > > It's just the sea, see? > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's > still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's > still awareness. > > Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added > to into something "larger." > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with > states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. > catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is > really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big > room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a > perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from > the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are > in space too. > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking > processes. > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed > here pertains to knowledge not awareness. > > That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the > translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words > do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, > especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words > were used by the speaker/writer. > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and > knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know > anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references > as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. > > To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. > We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery > compared to when mastery isn't evident. > > If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, > we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in > that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the > individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while > cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build > those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, > tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that > crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing > the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized > subjectively. > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to > the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the > environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is > evident. > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a > positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a > very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and > "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, > "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as > Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of > that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the > natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and > basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language > appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who > isn't?) > > I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or > circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas > better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say > no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and > relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I > suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? > > Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship > with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study > with Luria? > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to > create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it > was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know > about mind and how it develops? > > Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, > frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon > trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is > scientific in order for it to be scientific? > > I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. > > My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their > patterns. > > A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. > > Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music > (function). > > The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its > translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little > problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory > is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit > for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) > > When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because > the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience > (biological, social, cultural, etc). > > On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because > women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the > bottom of this email) to mean?* > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video > form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also > helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the > question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RZ2zxbK1nnT9KHPtKezS1QacRCh5tM9q_cjnw44fRY_mIkgVo-TPoqZlpuN31vzbS05y9A$ > > ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit > from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With > permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RZ2zxbK1nnT9KHPtKezS1QacRCh5tM9q_cjnw44fRY_mIkgVo-TPoqZlpuN31vy5uU3NMg$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism > here; it's mostly for fun. > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, > even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. > Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really > so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be > similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So > thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RZ2zxbK1nnT9KHPtKezS1QacRCh5tM9q_cjnw44fRY_mIkgVo-TPoqZlpuN31vwOmNgplw$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/fa0d82ce/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Fri Aug 14 04:33:18 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:33:18 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi David, I know the age difference. I did not say they had a physical relationship. If it existed it was probably more like mother son as she played that role for a number of intellectuals around the theater at the time, but who knows. Would you have even blinked if it was Vygotsky who was fifty and Gurevich was in her early twenties. Still Gurevich was a well known figure. It would be like a family of a conservative French family finding out their son was visiting the salons of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in Paris. They would have been scandalized. I have no idea if this happened, but the Moscow Art Theatre and the people around it, as well as the symbolist movement, were at the cutting edge of a lot of things in Moscow at the time (of course I am not an expert in Russian history). Let me ask you something David. You are twenty one years old living in one of the great cities of the world. You love the theater and you are a published theater critic, you are at least on the margins of some of the great innovators in theater not just at the time but in history. Do you really want to go back. What would it take to get you back? Let me ask you something else. You are scion of a family where two members have TB. You know it is contagious (I believe people knew that at the time). Would you have insisted your beloved son return to take care of them? No, I think there is more to the story which we may never know. I said all this is highly skeptical, but I think Lev Vygotsky was a highly complex individual. By the way I prefaced this aspect of the Gurevich Vygotsky history as highly speculative and it was very small. You asked to know why I was looking into Gurevich and I told you. I did not ask you to comment on it. And, I looked at many of the citations you mentioned. Maybe they are more. But none of them come close to matching his use of Gurevich or Krupskaya?s in Psychology of the Actor or Alteration of man. Take a look. I am sure I am missing something though, which is why I asked in the first place. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:49 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Well, she was thirty years older than he was, wasn't he? At the time he left Moscow for Gomel, Vygotsky would have been twenty-one and she would have been well into her fifties. So it seems to me more likely that with the Germans about to attack Gomel, and the younger son ill, the elder son was really wanted at home. Remember too that the Psychology of the Actor's Art was probably written nearly ten years after this.... I initially found the Zavershneva-van der Veer notebooks rather embarrassing because of speculations like this. But we know from the notebooks that Roza Smekhova was not his first love (see their notes on "The Trip to London"); that he tried to write a book "About the New Jewry" with another woman, presumably Jewish, called R. Yu: (p. 44). and that he appears to have had a passionate relationship with her. None of this should surprise us, since "A was a man, take him for all in all/We shall not look upon his like again." Annalisa--the Spinoza connection is not explicit in Anthony's text. He invited me to freewheel on whatever it was I was smoking at the time, so I did. Here's what happened: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1W9XAGZaBU&t=159s__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY9153W-Ywg$ David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY9357sQUOA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY93k3aC45A$ On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 11:37 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi David, I am trying to figure out Gurevich?s relationship with Vygotsky (if there was one). I first start exploring Gurevich in terms of Stanislavski, but as I got deeper into it I realized Gurevich was a brilliant scholar on her own and a fascinating character in history. The evidence for a relationship was circumstantial. They were both theater critics around the same time in Moscow. Gurevich probably arranged salons that Vygotsky attended. Gurevich has a Jewish father (although she was raised Roman Catholic) and has a distinct sense of otherness because of her Jewish background. Her family in general seemed very similar, although perhaps more sophisticated as they were in St. Petersburg. When Vygotsky left Moscow the first time he seemed to be a dyed in the wool symbolist (at least from I have read). Gurevich was the leader of the symbolist movement. In psychology of the actor Vygotsky uses Gurevich to some extent to argue that Vaktanghov, who believe was one of Stanislavski?s first students at the second MAT Actor?s studio was not breaking away from Stanislavski with new ideas (I sometimes think that Vygotsky was speaking to his own students through this). This is highly speculative. I have always been dubious that Vygotsky left Moscow the first time to take care of his sick mother and brother. He was living his fantasy and it seems too much like a 19th century melodrama. I wonder if his family called him back because he was associating with people like Gurevich who it seems was quite scandalous. I think there are good reasons to think he took the concept perezhivanie from Gurevich. She had just written a short book on it and Diderot?s paradox in 1927. Anyway, I am trying to collect any evidence I can find that Gurevich had some type of relationship with Vygotsky in any way I can. All a work in progress. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 8:38 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Try Volume Five in English, Volume Four in Russian for Grunwald (it is misspelt in English), the short selections from Pedology of the Adolescent. I think it would help me to help you if I knew what significance you are trying to attribute to this putative lack of citations. Since you have Volume Six, you know that Vygotsky cites Charlotte Buhler (p. 5), Lia Geshelina (11), Julia Kotelova (12), Rosa Levina (15), E.I. Pashkovskaya (12), Natalya Menchinskaya (42), as well as N.G. Morozova (9), Liya Slavina (43) and Lydia Bozhovich (43). It would also help if I knew why you think that promoting the work of female colleagues doesn't count as promoting the work of female scholars. It seems to me that all of these colleagues and/or scholars are cited pretty much in the same way he cites Gurevich, that is, with a footnote, a reference to a study, a quotation, sometimes a whole paragraph or more, They are listed in the index and in the references, probably by the editors--Vygotsky was indiscriminately careless about citing chapter and verse, although not unusually so for his time and place. It is certainly interesting that there are more Soviet than non-Soviet female scholars, but there are also more German than non-German/non-Soviet female scholars, and more junior female researchers than non-female junior researchers, which is probably also true of our own time and place. So what exactly do you make of it? Perhaps you can help me as well, Michael. For our thirteenth volume, I am interested in the reference to Ekaterina Olimnievna Shumova-Simanovskaya in Volume Six (English and Russian). She is cited as "others" by Vygotsky (94) and by name in W.B. Cannon's work on the James Lange theory but I can find no citation of her work in the work of her professor, I.P. Pavlov, which I guess is Vygotsky's source. Did Cannon know her personally? We are proud to present the third volume of the Pedology of the Adolescent in Korean (see attached). For anyone in Seoul, we will have a promotional "Book Concert" for the whole eleven-volume series downtown next Saturday if there is no Covid spike in the interim. I'll be talking about Vygotsky and sex education (in Korean only). David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY9357sQUOA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY93k3aC45A$ On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 8:43 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hello David, Thank you for all your effort. It is much appreciated. I think though maybe Slavina, Morozova, and Peshkovskaya are part of what Yasnitksy referred to as Vygotsky?s circle (student working with him). Did he actually formally cite their published work and use it to advance his argument or did he only mention them. Maybe, I can?t find it. I guess I should have been more explicit, this is what I meant by cite. His did this for Gurevich in Psychology of the actor and Krupskaya in Social Alteration of Man. The others, is it like Montersorri in Thinking and Speech (which I also see as an extended mention) or more direct. I looked on p. 95 for Grunwald but didn?t see it. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong volume. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:08 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie Moritz.... One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY9357sQUOA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Rx-cT1lx8kKYelR8mYtUQazs4KgAOlmas-L_z6v-MClsKFyihsK0AwVyFJeZY93k3aC45A$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/92ab4b40/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Fri Aug 14 05:02:48 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 12:02:48 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!V2vpC15WO1LHWcXqxvioyNPQFpjdl7Um3PpknPmI2TuWYKmF8WxBdHASUmmJ8Ellk5Ij4Q$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!V2vpC15WO1LHWcXqxvioyNPQFpjdl7Um3PpknPmI2TuWYKmF8WxBdHASUmmJ8EklfE3iiA$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!V2vpC15WO1LHWcXqxvioyNPQFpjdl7Um3PpknPmI2TuWYKmF8WxBdHASUmmJ8EnemT8Omg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/129aa90d/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ~WRD0002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: ~WRD0002.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/129aa90d/attachment.jpg From dkirsh@lsu.edu Fri Aug 14 08:14:53 2020 From: dkirsh@lsu.edu (David H Kirshner) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 15:14:53 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!SNLJ-8K5y_jTqIlalgeDUNMkwlK-gLQ-29qgKtRlf8Hm4RMr2UBcvgTsukMf7plct3dhdQ$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!SNLJ-8K5y_jTqIlalgeDUNMkwlK-gLQ-29qgKtRlf8Hm4RMr2UBcvgTsukMf7plGmnYCbw$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!SNLJ-8K5y_jTqIlalgeDUNMkwlK-gLQ-29qgKtRlf8Hm4RMr2UBcvgTsukMf7pnPMb4bIw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/f1b7fe65/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: image002.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/f1b7fe65/attachment.jpg From andyb@marxists.org Fri Aug 14 08:31:30 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 01:31:30 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, /developmental/, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between > types of concepts has always struck me as such an > unfortunate solution to the problem of differential > sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this > problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary > philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive > psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical > core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of > processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, > nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and > type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, > effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as > different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind > of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the > sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different > forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, > embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, > etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems > like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > David > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, > Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted > to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and > Speech. If it is use differently in other places this > perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso > that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To > differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with > non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based > initially in affective memory and they give energy and > motivation to many of our activities. However we are not > consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at > the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I > say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of > chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a > way to make a social connection between me and my friend. > It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how > much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed > me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s > gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it > and whether I want to use it. I must summon the > intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think > about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is > conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the > bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I > got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of > the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing > chess. Voila, development!!!! > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness > differently elsewhere. > > Michael > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > > *On Behalf Of > *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever > to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" > and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" > in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and > associated word meanings which have, if you like, > conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with > "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic > processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not > in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I > am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > > On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > > Andy, > > I think of what you described as automatic and > controlled processing. Automatic processing (also > called ballistic) requires little or no attentional > resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, > take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning > something, it can easily overload attentional > capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the > learning of another is to know the right combination > of controlled and automatic processing. I think this > relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while > back about mathematical thinking that captures this > distinction very well. > > Henry > > On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > > > wrote: > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very > broad term covering what mediates between > physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental > processes in an individual organism, whether > sleeping or awake. > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to > knowing and attending to what you are doing at the > time. A couple of classic examples will > illustrate. When you're walking down the street > you do not have conscious awareness of how yor > foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how > your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and > your other leg swinging slightly outward and > bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if > for example you step over a kerb and having > underestimated the depth of the step and > momentarily losing you balance, your walking > suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and > you look down at the ground, and take conscious > control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first > learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose > they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The > child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... > this one ...? that one ... cross over ... put > through the hole ...? grab it .,. and PULL IT > TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with > conscious awareness, according to how she was > instructed, paying attention to every operation, > using internal speech (more or less). But a couple > of months later she now thinks about getting out > the door in time to meet her friends while she is > tying her laces and isn't even looking at what > she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > OK? > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > Mike points out a very important point that > conscious awareness cannot be a product of > scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is > a gummy term. > > I am confused about the citation about chess. > Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text > that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would > you mind to cite it? > > I am also curious what the Russian words used > to create the English translation of > "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate > that for my awareness? > > "Conscious awareness"? is sort of like saying > "wet water," > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that > mean we say "unconscious awareness"? > > What does that look like? > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > I don't think so. > > Awareness is awareness. > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't > call it the sea, though if I put it back it's > not the sea + drop. > > It's just the sea, see? > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > If it were possible to take one awareness with > another awareness, it's still awareness. If I > take part of awareness from another awareness > it's still awareness. > > Awareness is not really something that can be > divided into parts or added to into something > "larger." > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is > that it gets tangled with states of brain > activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep > sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, > etc. > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can > divide space, but it is really an illusion. > Everything is in space, so the small room vs > the big room is just an illusion in terms of > conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual > relationship than something quantitative (say, > if looking from the standpoint of space, space > is just space). The walls of the rooms are in > space too. > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be > mixed up with thinking processes. > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the > content of what is discussed here pertains to > knowledge not awareness. > > That's why I'm suspicious about the > translation. Is this mistake in the > translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, > but the meaning of the words do substantially > alter how we think about the concepts they > convey, especially if we do not precisely > understand the intention the the words were > used by the speaker/writer. > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship > between perception and knowledge. We can't > perceive anything without awareness. We also > can't know anything without awareness. I > maintain that this is what Spinoza references > as "substance." He is right about that. It's > that necessary white elephant. > > To master something is to know it. To know it > isn't always to master it. We could say > Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different > about mastery compared to when mastery isn't > evident. > > If we could as-if parse awareness from > cognition and set awareness aside, we could > then look at the relationship between > knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can > be measured in the individual based upon how > well the individual's knowledge effectively > maps to the world (or reality), while > cognition on the other hand is the manifest > biological interaction to build those maps. We > know cognition is distributed, and that it > includes society, tools, etc. It's not just > happening in the chamber of the brain, that > crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I > take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in > which perceptions and awareness of perceptions > are organized subjectively. > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way > that it maps accurately to the environment, > then one can assert there is objective > knowledge of the environment, and the better > this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I > think we might call that in a positive sense > "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can > be witnessed today. It's a very interesting > experiment to see the battle of "everyday > concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the > news about the pandemic. > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective > organization of thinking, "primitive" people > can have "higher" conceptual developments, as > Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might > not recognize the value of that mastery > because we might not share those > thought-organizations of the natural > environment that that culture possesses. Why > would we share them? > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners > speaking to one another and basing their > intelligence on the way the phonetic profile > of the language appeals or repels our > aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of > "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) > > I might ask, how much of this might have been > self-censorship (or circumspection) within a > Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas > better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky > doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would > like to hear from others mor familier with his > texts and relationships with others) Might you > help me understand that part. I suppose it > depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? > > Was there for example anything political about > Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was > there anything political about the > anthropology study with Luria? > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the > time was to ask "How to create a better > human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning > scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* > create a better human?" using what we know > about mind and how it develops? > > Is it me or can there be something > Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly > (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what > is "better"? > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical > method of analysis, based upon trial and > error, OK, but does the individual have to > know that it is scientific in order for it to > be scientific? > > I guess this is where the > functional/structural argument loops about. > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both > functional and structural. > > My take is that what is in common about > functions and structures are their patterns. > > A pattern is the differential between the > function and the structure. > > Consider the music score (structure) and the > musician playing the music (function). > > The pattern is what is present in both. An > added benefit is that its translation can > evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase > "scientific concept" is a little problematic. > I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" > either. My memory is not recalling what she > thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the > pattern might a better unit for analysis than > activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been > singed??) > > When considering conceptual development the > pattern is effective because the it can > translate between subjective experience and > objective experience (biological, social, > cultural, etc). > > On another note: Has anyone considered > Vygotsky through a feminist lens? > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many > women who he cited because women were more > likely to be school teachers, as is the case > today? > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > on > behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:*Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > *To:*eXtended Mind, Culture, > Activity > > *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness > enters through the gate" (a Participation > Question) > > *[EXTERNAL]* > > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have > not achieved scientific/real concepts do not > have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > > wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question:*What do you understand > the passage below (at the bottom of this > email) to mean?* > > Second, the invitation:*How about sharing > your thoughts in short video form?*It's > quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) > -- and it's also helpful, not only to me > but to anyone watching or listening. (Here > is the question again, in video > form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XxSEPVIR0yRJgFaNSBm_i4WM3CddjlgSG_ngNcugdSCaXGC-tM-WRY9GIob6WVqwqgCipg$ > ) > > I believe that many people -- including > many teachers -- would benefit from > answers to this question, preferably > multiple answers. With permission, I will > nicely edit and add your response to this > growing list of asked-and-answered > questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XxSEPVIR0yRJgFaNSBm_i4WM3CddjlgSG_ngNcugdSCaXGC-tM-WRY9GIob6WVoS_o_P_Q$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that > we don't care about perfectionism here; > it's mostly for fun. > > *Here is the passage in question*, > from/Thinking and Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different > way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the > chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the > process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships > with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from > the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I > remember. I make my own remembering > the object of consciousness. An > isolation arises here. In a certain > sense, any generalization or > abstraction isolates its object. This > is why conscious awareness ? > understood as generalization ? leads > directly to mastery. > > /Thus, the foundation of conscious > awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, > which leads to their mastery/. > Instruction has a decisive role in > this process. Scientific concepts have > a unique relationship to the object. > This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an > internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently > in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of > concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the > first time. And once a new structure > of generalization has arisen in one > sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without > training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus,/conscious > awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept/." > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with /Thinking and > Speech/?was very difficult, even with the > help of talented classmates and a smart > professor. Thankfully, three online videos > from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive?reading but as a general map of > the book's terrain, were really so helpful > and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm > posting turn out to be similarly useful > (as a number of people have told me), > that's great. So thank you again to anyone > interested in participating. > > -- > > > IImage removed by sender. Angelus Novus > The > Angel's View of History > > > It is only in a social context that > subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism > and materialism, activity and passivity > cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to > exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical?contradictions is possible > only through practical means, only through > the?practical?energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis > Website:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XxSEPVIR0yRJgFaNSBm_i4WM3CddjlgSG_ngNcugdSCaXGC-tM-WRY9GIob6WVqxo2HlIA$ > > > Re-generating CHAT > Website:re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: > lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > . > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/16d25a28/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/16d25a28/attachment-0001.jpg From annalisa@unm.edu Fri Aug 14 09:37:54 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 16:37:54 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> , Message-ID: Hi Andy, and others, I don't think I am using meanings circulating in general discourse in the 21st century, not entirely. If you want to say that "conscious awareness" is a technical term for his attempt to describe mind, I could accept that. Just like "scientific concepts" and "everyday concepts" are problematic, so it is with "conscious awareness." It's sloppy terminology. I figure that this does coincide with a lot of his writing that was done quickly, or without much "conscious awareness" that other people would be struggling over his concepts 100 years later, on a listserv of which he would never be able to conceive. Thinking & Speech is a text I've read though not entirely and it's been a while. I did inquire what were the Russian words used and whether this was a bad translation into English. I asked some other questions too. I'm sorry, Andy, but did you read my post? Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:45 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] The question arose from a quote from Lev Vygotsky's "Thinking and Speech." There is no point in interpreting this quote in terms of meanings circulating in general discourse in the 21st century. They have meaning only within the system of concepts which Vygotsky was constructing in the process of writing that book. The first thing to do to understand what Vygotsky meant by "conscious awareness" is to read "Thinking and Speech." After that, we could compare and contrast Vygotsky's concepts with others perhaps. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 3:21 pm, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hi Andy, Henry and vo's Thank you for your reply Andy, but I think that what you are talking about is attention, not awareness. Like Henry explains, attention has a focus. That isn't "conscious awareness," for the very reason on cannot say "unconscious awareness" or "conscious unawareness" these states do not exist. The examples you bring to the table have to do with the autonomic nervous system which aids walking, balance, and so on, which are not outside of awareness, but can be outside of attention. The sympathetic system is the fight or flight response so there is not necessarily a "consciousness awareness" that propels the person to prevent a fall, but something that is automatic and reflexive; it is instinctual. I don't think that that is "conscious awareness." As you can see it is a problematic phrase. Also what is the consciousness of a whale, or a dolphin, that mediates between physiology and behavior? Sleeping or awake? I maintain that what you are describing is attentional, not "conscious awareness." This child directs her attention to steps that chunk the activity of tying shoes, (as you illustrated), that eventually becomes an automatic motorskill and becomes smooth, and with practice doesn't require attentional focus once it does become automatic. Tying my shoes I am not thinking about tying my shoes, but I could tomorrow have attentional focus about tying my shoes whether I know how to do it or not. But the stance of "conscious awareness" means that the child doesn't require it at some point, but the child also doesn't consider, "I am aware that I am learning to tie my shoes." Nor "I am aware that if I tie my shoes I will be proud of myself." These states of mind do not create mastery of tying of shoes. The glaring flaw in this conceptual construct of "conscious awareness" is that it "falls away" after mastery, but where does it go and when does it end? And how does it start when it starts? What is the genesis of "conscious awareness?" Learning about anything is about internalizing subjectively what maps to/reflects the external world faithfully. How you learned to tie your shoes may be different than how I did, than perhaps someone who suffered a brain injury and had to re-learn the task. In all cases there is no one way to master tying of shoes, but there does come a common goal of internalizing the knowledge required to tie ones shoes, and once it is known, it is known/ Actually it is the ignorance of shoe-tying that has been fully removed because no one learns to tie her shoes in a vacuum, but from someone else, a knowledgeable other, by sharing attention to the task. The problem of the phrase "conscious awareness" shows its glaring flaw were I to ask you to please tell me the exact time you fell asleep last night. No matter how many times you practice, you will never be able to do it. Does that mean you will never be able to master falling asleep because you didn't go out the gate with conscious awareness? If anything, such a task might keep you from sleeping. If you say, sleeping doesn't count. Well, you did say "consciousness" mediates between physiology and behavior, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, sleeping or awake. Kind egads! Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:37 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UseqCzBxke7uqEPYKfYYEqDt6NdyT_YoFE5mg63RxOM8-2EWNdl1bE8pHs-16AJe8kacdQ$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!UseqCzBxke7uqEPYKfYYEqDt6NdyT_YoFE5mg63RxOM8-2EWNdl1bE8pHs-16ALtgIr1IA$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UseqCzBxke7uqEPYKfYYEqDt6NdyT_YoFE5mg63RxOM8-2EWNdl1bE8pHs-16ALEvoSNYA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/df6a847a/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Fri Aug 14 10:15:56 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:15:56 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos Message-ID: Good afternoon, Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. - "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!T7mYyoD9AII7xMU65gcoOn64wrV7K5926cPprgBOUwW835YRfPOPE3zunnA7Wr47dNYsxg$ - "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!T7mYyoD9AII7xMU65gcoOn64wrV7K5926cPprgBOUwW835YRfPOPE3zunnA7Wr5BxHoQJQ$ - "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!T7mYyoD9AII7xMU65gcoOn64wrV7K5926cPprgBOUwW835YRfPOPE3zunnA7Wr4mP-KC9Q$ And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. - "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!T7mYyoD9AII7xMU65gcoOn64wrV7K5926cPprgBOUwW835YRfPOPE3zunnA7Wr5GDjwPBw$ Sincerely, Anthony Barra -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/6f2badfc/attachment.html From Peg.Griffin@att.net Fri Aug 14 10:18:24 2020 From: Peg.Griffin@att.net (Peg Griffin, Ph.D.) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:18:24 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: <004d01d6725e$ebab4250$c301c6f0$@att.net> And I have always thought, Andy, that the passage from ?inter? to ?intra? psychological calls attention to the crucial role of the everyday in development. ?Everyday? experience nurtures and flourishes the developing child?s (and doctor?s) conceptual growth. The child in everyday life is acting with others ? she may sometimes act ?as-if? she ?has? the scientific concept, but often it is other folks who are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Other folk keep the whole concept ?scientific and spontaneous-- in play in the socio-cultural environs so the child bumps into relevant bits and pieces, gets engaged, grows to ?intra? control and independence. Then many of those (former?) children start holding whole new conceptual systems in play so the rest of us can profit from that (former?) child?s adventures in concepts that we had little dreamed of before! What many of us slide past is the time of ?giving back? as we often call it in the US. (Actually, Markova does get into that a bit.) And I especially enjoy being on the taking end from those ?former? children. As the clich? goes, children are our future? Peg (Tears in eyes but resolve from heart to action for those children whose current everyday is so vicious in our country. Perhaps the time of giving back will be shunted into an epigenetic byway of ?payback? in our country. And, as Davydov once said about mis-education, ?And maybe in yours??) From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 11:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy _____ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy _____ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy _____ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa _____ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra < anthonymbarra@gmail.com> wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Q9-vgIyhCRTu6TOZZv-eEaIAevNBsZtelOYmaxc9UMDYP0uynNimHpp_MU9k7qJ56CsE-Q$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Q9-vgIyhCRTu6TOZZv-eEaIAevNBsZtelOYmaxc9UMDYP0uynNimHpp_MU9k7qKQq5aBww$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- IThe Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Q9-vgIyhCRTu6TOZZv-eEaIAevNBsZtelOYmaxc9UMDYP0uynNimHpp_MU9k7qI2yvHNPw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/707b12d6/attachment.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Fri Aug 14 11:02:15 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 12:02:15 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: David, et. al. I just got an email from a neighbor of mine, a retired professor of the University of New Mexico, that linked to his website, ?Solving the Problems of the World?. It couldn?t be more germaine to this subject line. Here?s an excerpt from his website: "I submit therefore, as theory to carry forward from this analysis, that someone who uses only spontaneous, intuitive thinking, as Trump proudly proclaims that he does, has lost the capability of holding complex representations in his mind while examining them. Intuitive thinking lives only in the present. It can?t stop to reflect or use rational analysis for evaluating truth because that is no longer the present. One must surge ahead without any of that kind of thinking. If you look at Trump from this perspective, the things he says are not so much lies as part of a flow of consciousness that just accepts whatever words feel right at the moment. To think about whether a statement is a lie or not a lie requires comparing it with alternative statements and referring to a standard that allows judging between them. Trump has no time for any of those things.? Here?s the link: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.boylerworks.com__;!!Mih3wA!VGh73b5PJaRtvdJSD_Tc_S2xIrnvcqJx6lA9O1SJxY_d_jj1a0cfI2EqgiKgiAB96SumTA$ Henry > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:14 AM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > Michael > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > Andy > > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > Andy, > I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. > Henry > > > > > On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > OK? > Andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. > > I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? > > I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? > > "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? > > What does that look like? > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > I don't think so. > > Awareness is awareness. > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. > > It's just the sea, see? > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. > > Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. > > That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. > > To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. > > If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) > > I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? > > Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? > > Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? > > I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. > > My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. > > A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. > > Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). > > The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) > > When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). > > On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole > Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > [EXTERNAL] > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? > > Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!VGh73b5PJaRtvdJSD_Tc_S2xIrnvcqJx6lA9O1SJxY_d_jj1a0cfI2EqgiKgiAAY5P3z9A$ ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!VGh73b5PJaRtvdJSD_Tc_S2xIrnvcqJx6lA9O1SJxY_d_jj1a0cfI2EqgiKgiABa39IptQ$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > -- > I The Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VGh73b5PJaRtvdJSD_Tc_S2xIrnvcqJx6lA9O1SJxY_d_jj1a0cfI2EqgiKgiAA5FbD5DA$ > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/2e52763f/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Fri Aug 14 11:22:06 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 18:22:06 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: Hi Henry, But isn?t the opposite also true. Scientific thinking without the energy and authenticity of spontaneous/everyday concepts is static and stultifying and incapable of creative problem solving. Of course Trump is also a very sick man but for instance economists who promote models of what?s best for society without their ideas being mediated by everyday experience have been and are pretty damn dangerous. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 2:02 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, et. al. I just got an email from a neighbor of mine, a retired professor of the University of New Mexico, that linked to his website, ?Solving the Problems of the World?. It couldn?t be more germaine to this subject line. Here?s an excerpt from his website: "I submit therefore, as theory to carry forward from this analysis, that someone who uses only spontaneous, intuitive thinking, as Trump proudly proclaims that he does, has lost the capability of holding complex representations in his mind while examining them. Intuitive thinking lives only in the present. It can?t stop to reflect or use rational analysis for evaluating truth because that is no longer the present. One must surge ahead without any of that kind of thinking. If you look at Trump from this perspective, the things he says are not so much lies as part of a flow of consciousness that just accepts whatever words feel right at the moment. To think about whether a statement is a lie or not a lie requires comparing it with alternative statements and referring to a standard that allows judging between them. Trump has no time for any of those things.? Here?s the link: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.boylerworks.com__;!!Mih3wA!RY-RS66NpCJptoPbGaaXmCXf7Yz2NEZ-WwlT6VuRQqHTcAVPeFTHsQtHer0ihPqgkA5ikQ$ Henry On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:14 AM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RY-RS66NpCJptoPbGaaXmCXf7Yz2NEZ-WwlT6VuRQqHTcAVPeFTHsQtHer0ihPqcTTXzcg$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RY-RS66NpCJptoPbGaaXmCXf7Yz2NEZ-WwlT6VuRQqHTcAVPeFTHsQtHer0ihPoLaQ-wfQ$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- IThe Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RY-RS66NpCJptoPbGaaXmCXf7Yz2NEZ-WwlT6VuRQqHTcAVPeFTHsQtHer0ihPr-r3gL6g$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/86111059/attachment.html From annalisa@unm.edu Fri Aug 14 11:30:19 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 18:30:19 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org>, Message-ID: Hi Michael, David, Andy, and others, Thank you Michael for your helpful reply. I appreciate the humility expressed which is always the sign of a good thinker, if that is OK for me to express without sounding arrogant myself. I am beginning to consider whether Vygotsky's model is flawed. I'm sensing this more than I have ever considered it before. I'm likely not the first to criticize it. But I also know that I'm looking at his writing with a lens of distortion of history, translations, and what Andy might call contextual ignorance. That's why I think I am trying to be very generous by asking questions such as "what are the actual Russian words he used?" Would it be eye-rollingly overbearing if I were to say that there is a model about thinking that already existed not of the 21st century? If you can bear with me I can relate this to Vygotsky farther down, but first I must relate a few concepts about mind that I believe are quite useful and even illuminating. In Vedic understanding of mind, there is the vritti. This translates to "thought modification." Kind of like molding-clay may be shaped into one form and then another, we can only have one thought at a time, just as we can only form one object of clay at a time with the same lump, even though there are transitional states, like we might witness on the potters wheel of a vase being formed into a wider mouthed bowl, and then perhaps into a plate. Thoughts transform similarly. The mind has four aspects. This is cit, manas, buddhi, and ahankara. These aspects work upon the vritti in specific ways which will become clear below. Cit is awareness or consciousness, and considered similar to light, in the way light will light up a room so that we can see what is in it. Manas is the ruminating mind, the one that free-associates, and this includes manifest emotions as well. Like when we might have "monkey mind." Or that asks the question, "Did I forget my keys on the counter?" Buddhi is the decisive mind. It is the one that reasons and picks out what is important, like the editor of a newspaper. It recognizes, it weighs this with that, and takes a decision to task. Ahankara is the notion of self, what I take myself to be. It is notional in the same way a person can consider self-worth based upon possessions, birth into a particular family, level of education, other ways of identification. But also when I take myself to be the condition of my mind at a given moment. (as in: My mind is sad, therefore I am sad). It is also the part of mind that believes that this mind-body-sense complex is me. The mind-body-sense complex is a limiting adjunct, and is referred to as an upadhi. Upadhi can be a difficult concept to grasp fully, but it is similar to the way a crystal is clear but if I hold a flower next to it, I will see a pink crystal not a transparent one, and I say "the crystal is pink." The crystal in reality is not pink, but is borrowing the color from the rose set next to it; nothing has changed in the structure of the crystal at all. It is by appearance only. Ahankara is functional, but some might mistake it as structural. Sometimes ahankara is translated as ego, but it's not exactly that, because it is not necessary to get rid of it, but more to understand its functional role in my life. Mind in this model is interactional between these four aspects, which are in their own way casting various forms upon the thought-modifications, or vrittis. If you are still with me, I would guess that the vritti might map to Vygotsky's concept of a concept. Manas is the affective mind, which I don't know if he discusses that much, and manas might map to a role of forming "everyday concepts." Perhaps this is what is impacted by perezhivanie, which seems to be something that comes from the outside alone. (Can there be inner perezhivanie??) Buddhi might have the role of forming the scientific concepts, because it is decisive and reasons, and that would be certainly be required to form a scientific concept. However as I'm writing this, manas can also be involved, because it would be the more intuitive part of thinking, say when a scientist as a hunch. Likewise, the buddhi can be involved in the spontaneous concept formation as well, because that would be the moment of identifying my brother from everyone else's brother. Cit is an aspect of awareness that is present in the person that when absent means the person is no longer alive. Because there is no separation between mind and body in this model, cit would also be seen as penetrating the body, not just the mind, and is why I can be aware of my hand as equally as my thoughts. It's a life force on the subtlest plane, it is simply awareness that permeates all, like light permeates space. Or like the way the pink of the flower penetrates the crystal making it seem that the crystal is pink, which is why it is so easy to believe that thought is happening in the brain, behind the eyes. It is illusory, or "mithya" which is a dependent reality that reveals itself and emerges like a wave on the surface of the sea. Because I maintain the Vedic model conceptually frames reality more faithfully, I'm having a hard time with the phrase "conscious awareness," because it would be mingling the pink into the crystal, when the pink is only apparent to the crystal. Now if what he was actually describing is analogous to buddhi, I could abide in the naming being wrong but the meaning being the same. One reason that Vygotsky is compelling to me is that he breaks from a model of mind that is internal to the individual and from the environment having no part to play in the mind's evolution in the individual. That is basically crossing the Rubicon in terms of making the self an air-tight ready-made with a mind-body split that is determined by genetics or by happenstance. Because it is both nature and nurture. Vygotsky seeks the order by which the person develops, and the "quantum-physics" of self manifesting as a mind-person in the world with others in time and space. It's really cool, right? The tricky part of all this is the work was done in the midst of an evolution, it is incomplete, he suffered illness, political isolation and so on. It's a wonder that we can even be here to know that he existed at all. What is particularly compelling for me is his occupation with emotions, specifically how he was drawn to how Spinoza wrote about emotion. It was his Rosetta Stone he attempted to crack. Here's another question: Did Vygotsky read Latin? It's a nice perezhivanie moment that Michael, that you can share your shining moment of using the Bishop's gambit in your chess game by the pool, and how that must have brought more light to your relationship with your brother. Thanks for sharing it. In any case I can accept that "conscious awareness" is an attempt to name a phenomenon that Vygotsky recognized in the development of mind. It is perhaps a phrase too crude to serve with the precision required for the task at hand. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 6:02 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XTstH0R_TRa3P-k8ebIATVFmCG-Dq4ZNWEum-uYyawweKXJ-4ua1aPA_1dmz3ZI9KH6dnQ$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XTstH0R_TRa3P-k8ebIATVFmCG-Dq4ZNWEum-uYyawweKXJ-4ua1aPA_1dmz3ZILAwyeRw$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ?? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XTstH0R_TRa3P-k8ebIATVFmCG-Dq4ZNWEum-uYyawweKXJ-4ua1aPA_1dmz3ZJiDrEL6w$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/5dd0e092/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ~WRD0002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: ~WRD0002.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/5dd0e092/attachment.jpg From glassman.13@osu.edu Fri Aug 14 12:47:37 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 19:47:37 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org>, Message-ID: Hi Annalisa, I am reading Vygotsky seriously right now for the second time, maybe twenty years later (by reading I mean I keep going back to his writing and mulling over it and discussing it with students and colleagues ? I don?t know how many times I?ve screamed, ?No, no don?t say scaffolding to me? over the last year. I am reading Vygotsky in a very different way this time. One of the things that is helping me is that I have a student who was a Russian linguist who likes the way Vygotsky writes but does not have any agenda (her interests run to game design). I would ask her what words really mean and every time she would smile and tell me but with some variation of, ?You don?t really read Russian that way.? Here is what I get from this teacher/student ? if German is the language you use to train your horse and French is the language you use to make love and English is the language you use to do business ? Russian is the language you use to write poetry. No accident Tolstoy and Dusteovsky and Chekhov and Gogol (she would kill me if I forgot Gogol) were Russian. I am not good enough at language I think it truly understand this (I learned two words living six months in Mexico) but it has a pretty big effect on me. I see Vygotsky much more as an artist and much less as an artist, that he was pushing back against psychologists rather than attempting to become part of the club. This for instance is why I am interested in his relationship with Gurivich. It is not about the experiments, it is about the literature. When he talks about tool and symbol it is because it is symbols which make us human. I think he may be closer to the humanities than most psychologist, because indeed it is the humanities that makes us human. As psychologists who have given ourselves over to positivist models I wonder if we have a hard time accepting this. All this to say, I don?t think he took affect from Spinoza (I never did, Spinoza strikes me as very cryptic) and I think he was more immersed in affect than we recognized. I think he took it from the theater and the realist revolution that was going on around him and which for a very short time he was a very small part of. I think it is deep in his later writings, chapter six and seven of Thinking and Speech for instance. Your ideas on the Vedic tradition and Upadhi. I studied a year in India when young and my yoga teacher tried so hard to get me to understand it and I never could, and eventually got thrown out of class (ah dear Pushpatti you knew me too well). Of course Vygotsky almost certainly had no background in Vedic thinking. What I do think is that like the writer he wanted to be he used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward. They played a role for him. He was a good writer it seems but not a great writer. I think he uses conscious awareness in this manner. He is using the idea to push his narrative forward (I definitely don?t want to go into what I think his narrative was as it would too long and convoluted to be of use). But I think it is important to see conscious awareness in that way, not as a stand alone concept but as a way to push his narrative of human thinking and development forward. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Annalisa Aguilar Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 2:30 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Michael, David, Andy, and others, Thank you Michael for your helpful reply. I appreciate the humility expressed which is always the sign of a good thinker, if that is OK for me to express without sounding arrogant myself. I am beginning to consider whether Vygotsky's model is flawed. I'm sensing this more than I have ever considered it before. I'm likely not the first to criticize it. But I also know that I'm looking at his writing with a lens of distortion of history, translations, and what Andy might call contextual ignorance. That's why I think I am trying to be very generous by asking questions such as "what are the actual Russian words he used?" Would it be eye-rollingly overbearing if I were to say that there is a model about thinking that already existed not of the 21st century? If you can bear with me I can relate this to Vygotsky farther down, but first I must relate a few concepts about mind that I believe are quite useful and even illuminating. In Vedic understanding of mind, there is the vritti. This translates to "thought modification." Kind of like molding-clay may be shaped into one form and then another, we can only have one thought at a time, just as we can only form one object of clay at a time with the same lump, even though there are transitional states, like we might witness on the potters wheel of a vase being formed into a wider mouthed bowl, and then perhaps into a plate. Thoughts transform similarly. The mind has four aspects. This is cit, manas, buddhi, and ahankara. These aspects work upon the vritti in specific ways which will become clear below. Cit is awareness or consciousness, and considered similar to light, in the way light will light up a room so that we can see what is in it. Manas is the ruminating mind, the one that free-associates, and this includes manifest emotions as well. Like when we might have "monkey mind." Or that asks the question, "Did I forget my keys on the counter?" Buddhi is the decisive mind. It is the one that reasons and picks out what is important, like the editor of a newspaper. It recognizes, it weighs this with that, and takes a decision to task. Ahankara is the notion of self, what I take myself to be. It is notional in the same way a person can consider self-worth based upon possessions, birth into a particular family, level of education, other ways of identification. But also when I take myself to be the condition of my mind at a given moment. (as in: My mind is sad, therefore I am sad). It is also the part of mind that believes that this mind-body-sense complex is me. The mind-body-sense complex is a limiting adjunct, and is referred to as an upadhi. Upadhi can be a difficult concept to grasp fully, but it is similar to the way a crystal is clear but if I hold a flower next to it, I will see a pink crystal not a transparent one, and I say "the crystal is pink." The crystal in reality is not pink, but is borrowing the color from the rose set next to it; nothing has changed in the structure of the crystal at all. It is by appearance only. Ahankara is functional, but some might mistake it as structural. Sometimes ahankara is translated as ego, but it's not exactly that, because it is not necessary to get rid of it, but more to understand its functional role in my life. Mind in this model is interactional between these four aspects, which are in their own way casting various forms upon the thought-modifications, or vrittis. If you are still with me, I would guess that the vritti might map to Vygotsky's concept of a concept. Manas is the affective mind, which I don't know if he discusses that much, and manas might map to a role of forming "everyday concepts." Perhaps this is what is impacted by perezhivanie, which seems to be something that comes from the outside alone. (Can there be inner perezhivanie??) Buddhi might have the role of forming the scientific concepts, because it is decisive and reasons, and that would be certainly be required to form a scientific concept. However as I'm writing this, manas can also be involved, because it would be the more intuitive part of thinking, say when a scientist as a hunch. Likewise, the buddhi can be involved in the spontaneous concept formation as well, because that would be the moment of identifying my brother from everyone else's brother. Cit is an aspect of awareness that is present in the person that when absent means the person is no longer alive. Because there is no separation between mind and body in this model, cit would also be seen as penetrating the body, not just the mind, and is why I can be aware of my hand as equally as my thoughts. It's a life force on the subtlest plane, it is simply awareness that permeates all, like light permeates space. Or like the way the pink of the flower penetrates the crystal making it seem that the crystal is pink, which is why it is so easy to believe that thought is happening in the brain, behind the eyes. It is illusory, or "mithya" which is a dependent reality that reveals itself and emerges like a wave on the surface of the sea. Because I maintain the Vedic model conceptually frames reality more faithfully, I'm having a hard time with the phrase "conscious awareness," because it would be mingling the pink into the crystal, when the pink is only apparent to the crystal. Now if what he was actually describing is analogous to buddhi, I could abide in the naming being wrong but the meaning being the same. One reason that Vygotsky is compelling to me is that he breaks from a model of mind that is internal to the individual and from the environment having no part to play in the mind's evolution in the individual. That is basically crossing the Rubicon in terms of making the self an air-tight ready-made with a mind-body split that is determined by genetics or by happenstance. Because it is both nature and nurture. Vygotsky seeks the order by which the person develops, and the "quantum-physics" of self manifesting as a mind-person in the world with others in time and space. It's really cool, right? The tricky part of all this is the work was done in the midst of an evolution, it is incomplete, he suffered illness, political isolation and so on. It's a wonder that we can even be here to know that he existed at all. What is particularly compelling for me is his occupation with emotions, specifically how he was drawn to how Spinoza wrote about emotion. It was his Rosetta Stone he attempted to crack. Here's another question: Did Vygotsky read Latin? It's a nice perezhivanie moment that Michael, that you can share your shining moment of using the Bishop's gambit in your chess game by the pool, and how that must have brought more light to your relationship with your brother. Thanks for sharing it. In any case I can accept that "conscious awareness" is an attempt to name a phenomenon that Vygotsky recognized in the development of mind. It is perhaps a phrase too crude to serve with the precision required for the task at hand. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 6:02 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!WDdpPe9Gvx5J-t2WyuB3zfQwLHIxG-tcyE8Pd393I5LrzUlI_M6QLnmgE9ySKQMklskDVQ$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!WDdpPe9Gvx5J-t2WyuB3zfQwLHIxG-tcyE8Pd393I5LrzUlI_M6QLnmgE9ySKQOkaIIw1Q$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WDdpPe9Gvx5J-t2WyuB3zfQwLHIxG-tcyE8Pd393I5LrzUlI_M6QLnmgE9ySKQNdVQYUAg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/15621350/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/15621350/attachment.jpg From hshonerd@gmail.com Fri Aug 14 13:14:00 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 14:14:00 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> Message-ID: <27380D1A-8A01-4146-BFE0-7BB059D4422E@gmail.com> Hi Michael, I agree with you, and with the inadequacy of fast and slow thinking to capture cognition, especially its sociogenetic nature and the importance of affect as per Spinoza. I think my post was fast thinking in a sociogenetic context, amazed that my neighbor connected so readily to the international CHAT. I think that the website of my neighbor , ?Solving the Problems of the World?, also related well to the popular defintion of the Zone of Proximal Development as scaffolded problem solving. In these times, I think of my mentor, Vera John-Steiner and her work in Creativity and Creative Collaboration. I imagine her now as a teenager in a concentration camp, teaching dance to other internees. Spinoza?Vygotsky?Vera?They define consciousness through living. Consciousness is as much narrative as concept. As much gesture as sign. I hope this makes sense. Henry > On Aug 14, 2020, at 12:22 PM, Glassman, Michael wrote: > > Hi Henry, > But isn?t the opposite also true. Scientific thinking without the energy and authenticity of spontaneous/everyday concepts is static and stultifying and incapable of creative problem solving. Of course Trump is also a very sick man but for instance economists who promote models of what?s best for society without their ideas being mediated by everyday experience have been and are pretty damn dangerous. > > Michael > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 2:02 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > David, et. al. > I just got an email from a neighbor of mine, a retired professor of the University of New Mexico, that linked to his website, ?Solving the Problems of the World?. It couldn?t be more germaine to this subject line. Here?s an excerpt from his website: > > > "I submit therefore, as theory to carry forward from this analysis, that someone who uses only spontaneous, intuitive thinking, as Trump proudly proclaims that he does, has lost the capability of holding complex representations in his mind while examining them. Intuitive thinking lives only in the present. It can?t stop to reflect or use rational analysis for evaluating truth because that is no longer the present. One must surge ahead without any of that kind of thinking. If you look at Trump from this perspective, the things he says are not so much lies as part of a flow of consciousness that just accepts whatever words feel right at the moment. To think about whether a statement is a lie or not a lie requires comparing it with alternative statements and referring to a standard that allows judging between them. Trump has no time for any of those things.? > > > Here?s the link: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.boylerworks.com__;!!Mih3wA!VGRMt3eFCsfVRc7T0d-6xhm6L0mLEhW5G0VUF1b9HVF8ZPgjncCt0_aR5N37tEbL79AOpQ$ > > Henry > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:14 AM, David H Kirshner > wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > Michael > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > Andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > Andy, > I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. > Henry > > > > > On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > OK? > Andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. > > I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? > > I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? > > "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? > > What does that look like? > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > I don't think so. > > Awareness is awareness. > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. > > It's just the sea, see? > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. > > Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. > > That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. > > To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. > > If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) > > I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? > > Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? > > Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? > > I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. > > My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. > > A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. > > Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). > > The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) > > When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). > > On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole > Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > [EXTERNAL] > Hi Anthony > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > Good afternoon, > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? > > Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!VGRMt3eFCsfVRc7T0d-6xhm6L0mLEhW5G0VUF1b9HVF8ZPgjncCt0_aR5N37tEbOmH_z2g$ ) > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!VGRMt3eFCsfVRc7T0d-6xhm6L0mLEhW5G0VUF1b9HVF8ZPgjncCt0_aR5N37tEafAL2Geg$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > Thanks ? > > Anthony Barra > > P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > -- > I The Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VGRMt3eFCsfVRc7T0d-6xhm6L0mLEhW5G0VUF1b9HVF8ZPgjncCt0_aR5N37tEYpOne3Bg$ > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/148041c8/attachment.html From john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au Fri Aug 14 15:29:45 2020 From: john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au (John Cripps Clark) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 22:29:45 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Huw, David, and Andy videos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you, Anthony For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, have found them illuminating. John From: on behalf of Anthony Barra Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" Date: Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos Good afternoon, Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. * "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!S9_80tv5H7TxycWN-rGyJtMT0vB6diuF-RUgyd5WISWOvOiYxi1Pphu7nWvWZs8v_2OBMA$ * "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!S9_80tv5H7TxycWN-rGyJtMT0vB6diuF-RUgyd5WISWOvOiYxi1Pphu7nWvWZs8b31jWjg$ * "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!S9_80tv5H7TxycWN-rGyJtMT0vB6diuF-RUgyd5WISWOvOiYxi1Pphu7nWvWZs-pbLn8Pg$ And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. * "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!S9_80tv5H7TxycWN-rGyJtMT0vB6diuF-RUgyd5WISWOvOiYxi1Pphu7nWvWZs-JOQCRfA$ Sincerely, Anthony Barra Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/c3b05f4f/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Fri Aug 14 15:35:52 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 07:35:52 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On p. 44 of the Zavershneva-van der Veer selections from Vygotsky's notebooks, we have a letter Vygotsky sent from Samara on October 24 1917. It says he is too ill to attend a libel trial in Gomel where he was due to give testimony. So it appears that Vygotsky is already ill and is recuperating in Samara on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution. But why do you think Vygotsky was from a conservative family? His father led the Jewish self-defence corps during pogroms and his mother was steeped in the poetry of Heine. His big sister was already studying philosophy at Moscow University. Is that how conservative families raise their daughters? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c54eOJsg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c9Aqgeuw$ On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:36 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > Hi David, > > > > I know the age difference. I did not say they had a physical relationship. > If it existed it was probably more like mother son as she played that role > for a number of intellectuals around the theater at the time, but who > knows. Would you have even blinked if it was Vygotsky who was fifty and > Gurevich was in her early twenties. Still Gurevich was a well known figure. > It would be like a family of a conservative French family finding out their > son was visiting the salons of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in Paris. > They would have been scandalized. I have no idea if this happened, but the > Moscow Art Theatre and the people around it, as well as the symbolist > movement, were at the cutting edge of a lot of things in Moscow at the time > (of course I am not an expert in Russian history). > > > > Let me ask you something David. You are twenty one years old living in one > of the great cities of the world. You love the theater and you are a > published theater critic, you are at least on the margins of some of the > great innovators in theater not just at the time but in history. Do you > really want to go back. What would it take to get you back? > > > > Let me ask you something else. You are scion of a family where two members > have TB. You know it is contagious (I believe people knew that at the > time). Would you have insisted your beloved son return to take care of them? > > > > No, I think there is more to the story which we may never know. > > > > I said all this is highly skeptical, but I think Lev Vygotsky was a highly > complex individual. > > > > By the way I prefaced this aspect of the Gurevich Vygotsky history as > highly speculative and it was very small. You asked to know why I was > looking into Gurevich and I told you. I did not ask you to comment on it. > > > > And, I looked at many of the citations you mentioned. Maybe they are more. > But none of them come close to matching his use of Gurevich or Krupskaya?s > in Psychology of the Actor or Alteration of man. Take a look. I am sure I > am missing something though, which is why I asked in the first place. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 7:49 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky > > > > Well, she was thirty years older than he was, wasn't he? At the time he > left Moscow for Gomel, Vygotsky would have been twenty-one and she would > have been well into her fifties. So it seems to me more likely that with > the Germans about to attack Gomel, and the younger son ill, the elder son > was really wanted at home. Remember too that the Psychology of the Actor's > Art was probably written nearly ten years after this.... > > > > I initially found the Zavershneva-van der Veer notebooks rather > embarrassing because of speculations like this. But we know from the > notebooks that Roza Smekhova was not his first love (see their notes on > "The Trip to London"); that he tried to write a book "About the New Jewry" > with another woman, presumably Jewish, called R. Yu: (p. 44). and that he > appears to have had a passionate relationship with her. None of this should > surprise us, since "A was a man, take him for all in all/We shall not look > upon his like again." > > > > Annalisa--the Spinoza connection is not explicit in Anthony's text. He > invited me to freewheel on whatever it was I was smoking at the time, so I > did. Here's what happened: > > > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1W9XAGZaBU&t=159s__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702fFP1LseQ$ > > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c54eOJsg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c9Aqgeuw$ > > > > > > > > On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 11:37 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > > > I am trying to figure out Gurevich?s relationship with Vygotsky (if there > was one). I first start exploring Gurevich in terms of Stanislavski, but > as I got deeper into it I realized Gurevich was a brilliant scholar on her > own and a fascinating character in history. The evidence for a > relationship was circumstantial. They were both theater critics around the > same time in Moscow. Gurevich probably arranged salons that Vygotsky > attended. Gurevich has a Jewish father (although she was raised Roman > Catholic) and has a distinct sense of otherness because of her Jewish > background. Her family in general seemed very similar, although perhaps > more sophisticated as they were in St. Petersburg. When Vygotsky left > Moscow the first time he seemed to be a dyed in the wool symbolist (at > least from I have read). Gurevich was the leader of the symbolist movement. > > > > In psychology of the actor Vygotsky uses Gurevich to some extent to argue > that Vaktanghov, who believe was one of Stanislavski?s first students at > the second MAT Actor?s studio was not breaking away from Stanislavski with > new ideas (I sometimes think that Vygotsky was speaking to his own students > through this). > > > > This is highly speculative. I have always been dubious that Vygotsky left > Moscow the first time to take care of his sick mother and brother. He was > living his fantasy and it seems too much like a 19th century melodrama. I > wonder if his family called him back because he was associating with people > like Gurevich who it seems was quite scandalous. > > > > I think there are good reasons to think he took the concept perezhivanie > from Gurevich. She had just written a short book on it and Diderot?s > paradox in 1927. > > > > Anyway, I am trying to collect any evidence I can find that Gurevich had > some type of relationship with Vygotsky in any way I can. > > > > All a work in progress. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 8:38 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky > > > > Try Volume Five in English, Volume Four in Russian for Grunwald (it is > misspelt in English), the short selections from Pedology of the Adolescent. > > > > I think it would help me to help you if I knew what significance you are > trying to attribute to this putative lack of citations. Since you have > Volume Six, you know that Vygotsky cites Charlotte Buhler (p. 5), Lia > Geshelina (11), Julia Kotelova (12), Rosa Levina (15), E.I. Pashkovskaya > (12), Natalya Menchinskaya (42), as well as N.G. Morozova (9), Liya > Slavina (43) and Lydia Bozhovich (43). It would also help if I knew why you > think that promoting the work of female colleagues doesn't count as > promoting the work of female scholars. It seems to me that all of these > colleagues and/or scholars are cited pretty much in the same way he cites > Gurevich, that is, with a footnote, a reference to a study, a quotation, > sometimes a whole paragraph or more, They are listed in the index and in > the references, probably by the editors--Vygotsky was indiscriminately > careless about citing chapter and verse, although not unusually so for his > time and place. It is certainly interesting that there are more Soviet than > non-Soviet female scholars, but there are also more German than > non-German/non-Soviet female scholars, and more junior female researchers > than non-female junior researchers, which is probably also true of our own > time and place. So what exactly do you make of it? > > > > Perhaps you can help me as well, Michael. For our thirteenth volume, I am > interested in the reference to Ekaterina Olimnievna Shumova-Simanovskaya in > Volume Six (English and Russian). She is cited as "others" by Vygotsky (94) > and by name in W.B. Cannon's work on the James Lange theory but I can find > no citation of her work in the work of her professor, I.P. Pavlov, which I > guess is Vygotsky's source. Did Cannon know her personally? > > > > We are proud to present the third volume of the Pedology of the Adolescent > in Korean (see attached). For anyone in Seoul, we will have a promotional > "Book Concert" for the whole eleven-volume series downtown next Saturday if > there is no Covid spike in the interim. I'll be talking about Vygotsky and > sex education (in Korean only). > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c54eOJsg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c9Aqgeuw$ > > > > > > > > On Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 8:43 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hello David, > > > > Thank you for all your effort. It is much appreciated. > > > > I think though maybe Slavina, Morozova, and Peshkovskaya are part of what > Yasnitksy referred to as Vygotsky?s circle (student working with him). Did > he actually formally cite their published work and use it to advance his > argument or did he only mention them. Maybe, I can?t find it. I guess I > should have been more explicit, this is what I meant by cite. His did this > for Gurevich in Psychology of the actor and Krupskaya in Social Alteration > of Man. > > > > The others, is it like Montersorri in Thinking and Speech (which I also > see as an extended mention) or more direct. I looked on p. 95 for Grunwald > but didn?t see it. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong volume. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Wednesday, August 12, 2020 5:08 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Female Scholars in the Work of Vygotsky > > > > Vygotsky was scruplulous about citing and promoting his own female > colleagues, including Slavina, Morozova, Peshkovskaya. There are many > letters between Vygotsky and Morozova in particular which suggest that the > latter suffered from imposter syndrome and that Vygotsky recognized this > and successfully made her into a scholar of national stature. > > > > Vygotsky widely cited foreign scholars like Charlotte Buhler, Clara Stern, > Hildegard Hetzer, Beatrix Tudor-Hart, Maria Montessori, Helga Eng. All of > these and more can be looked up in the index of the Collected Works. > > > > In the work I am doing now, Vygotsky uses the work of almost unknown > teachers: Sister Lucia Vecerka, Maria Ziller, Elizabeth Monchamp, Eugenie > Moritz.... > > > > One of the Saussurean linguists he often refers to is Rosalie Shor. > > > > These can be found in Pedology of the Adolescent. > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c54eOJsg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RMbPghlKSqXa_ZxoY1002kNiP7UlnKcQxKwahMAXZlZEq4PQJiN5DKBN88A702c9Aqgeuw$ > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/c388d5b3/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Fri Aug 14 17:20:48 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 17:20:48 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: Andy et al... This link http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF is to an early, short, article by Ed Hutchins that may be relevant to the discussion. There is a book laying out the full case. mike On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:34 AM Andy Blunden wrote: > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > > Andy, > > I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. > Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no > attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a > lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload > attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of > another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic > processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a > while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very > well. > > Henry > > > > > > > > On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden wrote: > > > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what > mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes > in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to > what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will > illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious > awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your > body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging > slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for > example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the > step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back > into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take > conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their > own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. > The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one > ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! > Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to > how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal > speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about > getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her > laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > > > OK? > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > > > Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be > a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. > > > > I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's > attention? David would you mind to cite it? > > > > I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English > translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my > awareness? > > > > "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," > > > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious > awareness"? > > > > What does that look like? > > > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > > > I don't think so. > > > > Awareness is awareness. > > > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I > put it back it's not the sea + drop. > > > > It's just the sea, see? > > > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > > > If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's > still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's > still awareness. > > > > Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added > to into something "larger." > > > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with > states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. > catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. > > > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is > really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big > room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a > perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from > the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are > in space too. > > > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking > processes. > > > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed > here pertains to knowledge not awareness. > > > > That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the > translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words > do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, > especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words > were used by the speaker/writer. > > > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and > knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know > anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references > as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. > > > > To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. > We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery > compared to when mastery isn't evident. > > > > If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, > we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in > that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the > individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while > cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build > those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, > tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that > crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. > > > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing > the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized > subjectively. > > > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to > the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the > environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is > evident. > > > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a > positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." > > > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a > very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and > "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. > > > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, > "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as > Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of > that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the > natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? > > > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and > basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language > appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who > isn't?) > > > > I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or > circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas > better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say > no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and > relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I > suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? > > > > Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship > with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study > with Luria? > > > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to > create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it > was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know > about mind and how it develops? > > > > Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, > frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? > > > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon > trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is > scientific in order for it to be scientific? > > > > I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. > > > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. > > > > My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their > patterns. > > > > A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. > > > > Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music > (function). > > > > The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its > translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). > > > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little > problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory > is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit > for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) > > > > When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because > the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience > (biological, social, cultural, etc). > > > > On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? > > > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because > women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? > > > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > > > Kind regards, > > > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > > Hi Anthony > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the > bottom of this email) to mean?* > > > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video > form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also > helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the > question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!S845m95vsINxt4s22zZiybOhe-tfIm039bqqUKtlI5EaTyNUbwqPDEoF5zY_1W4hWgWoiA$ > > ) > > > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit > from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With > permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!S845m95vsINxt4s22zZiybOhe-tfIm039bqqUKtlI5EaTyNUbwqPDEoF5zY_1W7ny2fJ3Q$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism > here; it's mostly for fun. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > > > Thanks ? > > > > Anthony Barra > > > > P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, > even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. > Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really > so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be > similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So > thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > > > > -- > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S845m95vsINxt4s22zZiybOhe-tfIm039bqqUKtlI5EaTyNUbwqPDEoF5zY_1W5CHcfdSw$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > > > > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S845m95vsINxt4s22zZiybOhe-tfIm039bqqUKtlI5EaTyNUbwqPDEoF5zY_1W5CHcfdSw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/715cfb8b/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/715cfb8b/attachment-0001.jpg From dkirsh@lsu.edu Fri Aug 14 19:16:24 2020 From: dkirsh@lsu.edu (David H Kirshner) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 02:16:24 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Xj5wWxgfwuTDZiCehf_tnNDlXD6gP8BpwnjrYGS24qDQcMEd3gC6xhsU3N_JiNIV4wHOIQ$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!Xj5wWxgfwuTDZiCehf_tnNDlXD6gP8BpwnjrYGS24qDQcMEd3gC6xhsU3N_JiNLC3yShdw$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Xj5wWxgfwuTDZiCehf_tnNDlXD6gP8BpwnjrYGS24qDQcMEd3gC6xhsU3N_JiNIVLzr1Yg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/bd6023ab/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/bd6023ab/attachment.jpg From annalisa@unm.edu Fri Aug 14 20:16:42 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 03:16:42 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org>, Message-ID: Greetings Mike, The link you posted is broken. When I go to the page it says: --- Not Found The requested URL /Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF was not found on this server. --- I was on the LCHC website a little while ago and it seems to be broken. I know that Firefox has made security for HTTPS more strict, but I'm not sure how to fix it. (Nor how other browsers are making do). It may have to do with an updated webserver certificate. Brian should know, I guess. I'd been meanign to say something, but thought that maybe it was that the content was moving to somewhere else. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 6:20 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Andy et al... This link http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF is to an early, short, article by Ed Hutchins that may be relevant to the discussion. There is a book laying out the full case. mike On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:34 AM Andy Blunden > wrote: No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!WHJyuh92Y2egOYA8xDXXXmC6qwEj6DWGn2Wsqi8JY-nbd6_LBztRX6C9BvVRv841ZLx_ZA$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!WHJyuh92Y2egOYA8xDXXXmC6qwEj6DWGn2Wsqi8JY-nbd6_LBztRX6C9BvVRv84Ty4eIdA$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WHJyuh92Y2egOYA8xDXXXmC6qwEj6DWGn2Wsqi8JY-nbd6_LBztRX6C9BvVRv86kvRBzrg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WHJyuh92Y2egOYA8xDXXXmC6qwEj6DWGn2Wsqi8JY-nbd6_LBztRX6C9BvVRv86kvRBzrg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/88802160/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: image002.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/88802160/attachment.jpg From mcole@ucsd.edu Fri Aug 14 20:25:35 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2020 20:25:35 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: The link works from my account, Annalisa. Try googling ?reasoning in Trobriand Discourse?. Ed Hutchins. 1079 Mike On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:18 PM Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Greetings Mike, > > The link you posted is broken. When I go to the page it says: > > --- > Not Found > > The requested URL /Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF was not found on this server. > > --- > > > I was on the LCHC website a little while ago and it seems to be broken. I > know that Firefox has made security for HTTPS more strict, but I'm not sure > how to fix it. (Nor how other browsers are making do). It may have to do > with an updated webserver certificate. Brian should know, I guess. I'd been > meanign to say something, but thought that maybe it was that the content > was moving to somewhere else. > > > Kind regards, > > > Annalisa > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 6:20 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > Andy et al... > > This link http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF is to an early, > short, article by Ed Hutchins that may > be relevant to the discussion. There is a book laying out the full case. > > mike > > > On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:34 AM Andy Blunden wrote: > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > > Andy, > > I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. > Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no > attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a > lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload > attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of > another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic > processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a > while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very > well. > > Henry > > > > > > > > On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden wrote: > > > > Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what > mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes > in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. > > > > "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to > what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will > illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious > awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your > body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging > slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for > example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the > step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back > into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take > conscious control of your balance, etc. > On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their > own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. > The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one > ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! > Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to > how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal > speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about > getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her > laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. > > > > OK? > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > > Hello conscious and venerable others, > > > > Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be > a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. > > > > I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? > > > > It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's > attention? David would you mind to cite it? > > > > I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English > translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my > awareness? > > > > "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," > > > > No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." > > > > If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious > awareness"? > > > > What does that look like? > > > > Can we say "conscious unawareness"? > > > > I don't think so. > > > > Awareness is awareness. > > > > I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I > put it back it's not the sea + drop. > > > > It's just the sea, see? > > > > However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. > > > > If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's > still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's > still awareness. > > > > Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added > to into something "larger." > > > > The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with > states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. > catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. > > > > "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is > really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big > room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a > perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from > the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are > in space too. > > > > This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking > processes. > > > > Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed > here pertains to knowledge not awareness. > > > > That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the > translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? > > > > Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words > do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, > especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words > were used by the speaker/writer. > > > > There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and > knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know > anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references > as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. > > > > To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. > We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery > compared to when mastery isn't evident. > > > > If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, > we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in > that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the > individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while > cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build > those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, > tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that > crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. > > > > Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing > the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized > subjectively. > > > > If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to > the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the > environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is > evident. > > > > When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a > positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." > > > > Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a > very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and > "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. > > > > In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, > "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as > Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of > that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the > natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? > > > > It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and > basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language > appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. > > > > Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who > isn't?) > > > > I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or > circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas > better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say > no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and > relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I > suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? > > > > Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship > with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study > with Luria? > > > > Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to > create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it > was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know > about mind and how it develops? > > > > Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, > frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? > > > > If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon > trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is > scientific in order for it to be scientific? > > > > I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. > > > > Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. > > > > My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their > patterns. > > > > A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. > > > > Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music > (function). > > > > The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its > translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). > > > > I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little > problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory > is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. > > > > I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit > for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) > > > > When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because > the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience > (biological, social, cultural, etc). > > > > On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? > > > > Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because > women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? > > > > I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. > > > > Kind regards, > > > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > * [EXTERNAL]* > > Hi Anthony > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: > > Good afternoon, > > > > This is a question -- and an invitation: > > > > First the question: *What do you understand the passage below (at the > bottom of this email) to mean?* > > > > Second, the invitation: *How about sharing your thoughts in short video > form?* It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also > helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the > question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!WgI5u62zy5lP69wLdB47m-_hk-gj5VObyYZwb4AY3wRhQRDeeazM6N6rM6XlQogiRXah4g$ > > ) > > > > I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit > from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With > permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list > of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!WgI5u62zy5lP69wLdB47m-_hk-gj5VObyYZwb4AY3wRhQRDeeazM6N6rM6XlQog-fMkfHA$ > > Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism > here; it's mostly for fun. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > What do you understand this passage to mean? > > > > Thanks ? > > > > Anthony Barra > > > > P.S. My first encounter with *Thinking and Speech* was very difficult, > even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. > Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a > definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really > so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be > similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So > thank you again to anyone interested in participating. > > > > > > -- > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WgI5u62zy5lP69wLdB47m-_hk-gj5VObyYZwb4AY3wRhQRDeeazM6N6rM6XlQohNLfrFCg$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WgI5u62zy5lP69wLdB47m-_hk-gj5VObyYZwb4AY3wRhQRDeeazM6N6rM6XlQohNLfrFCg$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WgI5u62zy5lP69wLdB47m-_hk-gj5VObyYZwb4AY3wRhQRDeeazM6N6rM6XlQohNLfrFCg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/4baa70fd/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200814/4baa70fd/attachment.jpg From annalisa@unm.edu Fri Aug 14 20:57:13 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 03:57:13 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org>, Message-ID: Hello again, I searched the link online that is misisng at LCHC to see if I might find it elsewhere and see that Andy referenced this in an essay on his publication: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/trobriand-reasoning.htm__;!!Mih3wA!XDLSuZlualtCYppYXZBlvBAPo1DPvopbKbWDYmReFxLvdqiQl-MmJREYoUoDtzVGG_ScyA$ I finally was able to get the actual Russian word, which I had requested. I am presuming that the word/s we are using for "conscious awareness" is "osoznanie" or "?????????" Going to google translate (I'm very sorry I speak no Russian) and made this little screenshot for other related words to osoznanie: [cid:51644c35-0094-4646-a9eb-8012e6b4029e] Even google translate doesn't translate this to "conscious awareness" But I like that there is a lesser connection to the word "perception" as well as "knowing." This (to me) means that Vygotsky was on the trail to a model similar to the Vedic one. And this has been a translation snafu. "Realization" is also more potent than "conscious awareness." This is why it's important to understand the meaning of the words before moving forward. Watery water doesn't really say that much if I don't know what water is, or worse which watery water you mean. I would love to read the paper on the Trobriands. Though I'm not sure that Hutchins believes, as Andy states, "to be of the view that to understand a mental process is to be able to model it with a computer program. The mind is a cluster of nested subroutines which turn atomistic perceptions into compound thoughts via schemata somehow residing the brain." That doesn't sound right to me. I don't think Andy that you understand Hutchins properly. This metaphor of the computer as brain flies against the Hutchins I know and love from Cognition in the Wild. Hutchins certainly doesn't believe that thinking happens in the skull. Though It is possible I suppose that given this was an early paper of Hutchins he may have thought this, but I don't think so. it really doesn't ring true to what I know about his work. Hutchins used computers a lot for modeling, or perhaps "simulations" is a better way to say it. It may be that he was using computers to model syllogisms, but I'm not sure about concepts per se, certainly not that the computer was a stand-in for mind. I also know Hutchins very vocally disputes mental representation, when it was trendy to think everything in the mind is a representation. I used to know the reasons why it was not a useful model. Alas, not anymore, I reach and the answer isn't there!! Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 6:20 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Andy et al... This link http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF is to an early, short, article by Ed Hutchins that may be relevant to the discussion. There is a book laying out the full case. mike On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:34 AM Andy Blunden > wrote: No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XDLSuZlualtCYppYXZBlvBAPo1DPvopbKbWDYmReFxLvdqiQl-MmJREYoUoDtzVyKgejEA$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!XDLSuZlualtCYppYXZBlvBAPo1DPvopbKbWDYmReFxLvdqiQl-MmJREYoUoDtzVh3ueqXA$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XDLSuZlualtCYppYXZBlvBAPo1DPvopbKbWDYmReFxLvdqiQl-MmJREYoUoDtzVQ-9zwEA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XDLSuZlualtCYppYXZBlvBAPo1DPvopbKbWDYmReFxLvdqiQl-MmJREYoUoDtzVQ-9zwEA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/552f4710/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: image002.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/552f4710/attachment.jpg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: osoznanie.png Type: image/png Size: 39071 bytes Desc: osoznanie.png Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/552f4710/attachment.png From andyb@marxists.org Fri Aug 14 22:41:41 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 15:41:41 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: The link works for me too. I have attached the article. andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:57 pm, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hello again, > > I searched the link online that is misisng at LCHC to see > if I might find it elsewhere and see that Andy referenced > this in an essay on his publication: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/trobriand-reasoning.htm__;!!Mih3wA!RtDGgUfRnyhbmLtiqAHsxk7rk35ACL9VywkdFyTL8n5RrU_gOJOpvA1L7OfmeXuYWjTjTg$ > > > I finally was able to get the actual Russian word, which I > had requested. I am presuming that the word/s we are using > for "conscious awareness" is "osoznanie" or "?????????" > > Going to google translate (I'm very sorry I speak no > Russian) and made this little screenshot for other related > words to osoznanie: > > > Even google translate doesn't translate this to "conscious > awareness" > > But I like that there is a lesser connection to the word > "perception" as well as "knowing." This (to me) means that > Vygotsky was on the trail to a model similar to the Vedic > one. And this has been a translation snafu. "Realization" > is also more potent than "conscious awareness." > > This is why it's important to understand the meaning of > the words before moving forward. > > Watery water doesn't really say that much if I don't know > what water is, or worse which watery water you mean. > > I would love to read the paper on the Trobriands. Though > I'm not sure that Hutchins believes, as Andy states, > > "to be of the view that to understand a mental process > is to be able to model it with a computer program. The > mind is a cluster of nested subroutines which turn > atomistic perceptions into compound thoughts via > schemata somehow residing the brain." > > > That doesn't sound right to me. I don't think Andy that > you understand Hutchins properly. This metaphor of the > computer as brain flies against the Hutchins I know and > love from Cognition in the Wild. Hutchins certainly > doesn't believe that thinking happens in the skull. > > Though It is possible I suppose that given this was an > early paper of Hutchins he may have thought this, but I > don't think so. it really doesn't ring true to what I know > about his work. > > Hutchins used computers a lot for modeling, or perhaps > "simulations" is a better way to say it. It may be that he > was using computers to model syllogisms, but I'm not sure > about concepts per se, certainly not that the computer was > a stand-in for mind. > > I also know Hutchins very vocally disputes mental > representation, when it was trendy to think everything in > the mind is a representation. I used to know the reasons > why it was not a useful model. > > Alas, not anymore, I reach and the answer isn't there!! > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 6:20 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > *? [EXTERNAL]* > > ** > Andy et al... > > This link http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF is to > an early, short,? article by Ed Hutchins that may > be relevant to the discussion. There is a book laying out > the full case. > > mike > > > On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 8:34 AM Andy Blunden > > wrote: > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as > it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The > distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, > /developmental/, and it is not a categorisation either > (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do > with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to > the path of development that begins with an abstract > (decontextualised) concept acquired through > instruction in some more or less formal institution. > "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of > development which begins with everyday experience, > closely connected with immediate sensori-motor > interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the > concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from > the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of > both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example > (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their > source in institutions, but have made their way out of > the institutional context into everyday life. On the > other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept > worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom > and become connected with practice, like the > book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 > months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But > here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker > and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it > more generously, because there's probably a reason > this writer has gained the reputation of being a great > thinker. > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction >> between types of concepts has always struck me as >> such an unfortunate solution to the problem of >> differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. >> I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in >> classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is >> reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process >> Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a >> dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type >> 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, >> effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type >> 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, >> effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? >> (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this >> distinction as different kinds of cognitive products >> (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is >> distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of >> development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to >> interpret these different forms of reasoning as >> differential discursive practices, embedded in >> different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). >> But talking about different kinds of concepts seems >> like the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> >> *On Behalf >> Of *Glassman, Michael >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters >> through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> Let me start by saying that this is completely >> restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in >> Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in >> other places this perspective may be wrong. To my >> mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) >> Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for >> a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of >> spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. >> Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective >> memory and they give energy and motivation to many of >> our activities. However we are not consciously aware >> of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my >> friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I >> have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess >> in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a >> way to make a social connection between me and my >> friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t >> know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making >> this argument). We are playing chess and I remember >> that my brother showed me the >> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s >> gambit. As this point in my life I have to think >> about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon >> the intellectual functions of memory and attention as >> I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This >> then is conscious awareness of the scientific >> concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game >> and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, >> the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating >> the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my >> everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness >> differently elsewhere. >> >> Michael >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> > > *On Behalf >> Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters >> through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and >> whoever to the scientific way that the terms >> "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in >> CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we >> have a system of concepts and associated word >> meanings which have, if you like, conventional >> meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and >> controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but >> so far as I am aware these terms were not in >> Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and >> I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the >> case. >> >> Andy >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> >> On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: >> >> Andy, >> >> I think of what you described as automatic and >> controlled processing. Automatic processing (also >> called ballistic) requires little or no >> attentional resources. Controlled processes, on >> the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When >> you?re learning something, it can easily overload >> attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or >> scaffolding the learning of another is to know >> the right combination of controlled and automatic >> processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s >> Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about >> mathematical thinking that captures this >> distinction very well. >> >> Henry >> >> On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden >> > > wrote: >> >> Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a >> very broad term covering what mediates >> between physiology and behaviour, the >> totality of mental processes in an individual >> organism, whether sleeping or awake. >> >> "Conscious awareness" on the other hand >> refers to knowing and attending to what you >> are doing at the time. A couple of classic >> examples will illustrate. When you're walking >> down the street you do not have conscious >> awareness of how yor foot is laying itself >> flat on the footpath, how your body is >> overbalancing slightly forwards and your >> other leg swinging slightly outward and >> bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but >> if for example you step over a kerb and >> having underestimated the depth of the step >> and momentarily losing you balance, your >> walking suddenly springs back into conscious >> awareness and you look down at the ground, >> and take conscious control of your balance, etc. >> On the other hand, consider when a child is >> first learning to tie their own shoelaces; >> let's suppose they have been taught the >> rabbit ears method. The child says to herself >> "make the rabbit ears ... this one ...? that >> one ... cross over ... put through the hole >> ...? grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" >> That is, she tied her laces with conscious >> awareness, according to how she was >> instructed, paying attention to every >> operation, using internal speech (more or >> less). But a couple of months later she now >> thinks about getting out the door in time to >> meet her friends while she is tying her laces >> and isn't even looking at what she's doing. >> She has achieved mastery. >> >> OK? >> >> Andy >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: >> >> Hello conscious and venerable others, >> >> Mike points out a very important point >> that conscious awareness cannot be a >> product of scientific concepts. >> "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. >> >> I am confused about the citation about >> chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? >> >> It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza >> text that caught Vygotsky's attention? >> David would you mind to cite it? >> >> I am also curious what the Russian words >> used to create the English translation of >> "conscious awareness"? Can someone >> illuminate that for my awareness? >> >> "Conscious awareness"? is sort of like >> saying "wet water," >> >> No, actually? it is like saying "watery >> water." >> >> If we can say "conscious awareness" does >> that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? >> >> What does that look like? >> >> Can we say "conscious unawareness"? >> >> I don't think so. >> >> Awareness is awareness. >> >> I can take a drop out of the sea, but I >> can't call it the sea, though if I put it >> back it's not the sea + drop. >> >> It's just the sea, see? >> >> However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. >> >> If it were possible to take one awareness >> with another awareness, it's still >> awareness. If I take part of awareness >> from another awareness it's still awareness. >> >> Awareness is not really something that >> can be divided into parts or added to >> into something "larger." >> >> The trouble with the word "consiousness," >> is that it gets tangled with states of >> brain activity, being awake vs. asleep >> vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. >> comatose, unconscious, etc. >> >> "Consciousness" is a word like "space." >> We can divide space, but it is really an >> illusion. Everything is in space, so the >> small room vs the big room is just an >> illusion in terms of conceptual size. >> It's more of a perceptual relationship >> than something quantitative (say, if >> looking from the standpoint of space, >> space is just space). The walls of the >> rooms are in space too. >> >> This is why awareness/consciousness >> cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. >> >> Awareness is always present, but I sense >> the content of what is discussed here >> pertains to knowledge not awareness. >> >> That's why I'm suspicious about the >> translation. Is this mistake in the >> translation? or did Vygotsky make this >> mistake? >> >> Of course it seems a silly semantic >> argument, but the meaning of the words do >> substantially alter how we think about >> the concepts they convey, especially if >> we do not precisely understand the >> intention the the words were used by the >> speaker/writer. >> >> There is a distinct (and special) >> relationship between perception and >> knowledge. We can't perceive anything >> without awareness. We also can't know >> anything without awareness. I maintain >> that this is what Spinoza references as >> "substance." He is right about that. It's >> that necessary white elephant. >> >> To master something is to know it. To >> know it isn't always to master it. We >> could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate >> what is different about mastery compared >> to when mastery isn't evident. >> >> If we could as-if parse awareness from >> cognition and set awareness aside, we >> could then look at the relationship >> between knowledge and cognition, in that >> knowledge can be measured in the >> individual based upon how well the >> individual's knowledge effectively maps >> to the world (or reality), while >> cognition on the other hand is the >> manifest biological interaction to build >> those maps. We know cognition is >> distributed, and that it includes >> society, tools, etc. It's not just >> happening in the chamber of the brain, >> that crafty and mysterious black, I mean >> grey box. >> >> Like many philosophers and psychologists, >> I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways >> in which perceptions and awareness of >> perceptions are organized subjectively. >> >> If that "structure" is organized in such >> a way that it maps accurately to the >> environment, then one can assert there is >> objective knowledge of the environment, >> and the better this map "functions," the >> more mastery is evident. >> >> When it is not mapping that effectively, >> I think we might call that in a positive >> sense "imagination" or in a negative >> sense, "delusion." >> >> Humans do have a tendency for delusion as >> can be witnessed today. It's a very >> interesting experiment to see the battle >> of "everyday concepts" and "scientific >> concepts" in the news about the pandemic. >> >> In this sense, on the matter of >> subjective organization of thinking, >> "primitive" people can have "higher" >> conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss >> has shown us long ago. We might not >> recognize the value of that mastery >> because we might not share those >> thought-organizations of the natural >> environment that that culture possesses. >> Why would we share them? >> >> It's a little like witnessing two >> foreigners speaking to one another and >> basing their intelligence on the way the >> phonetic profile of the language appeals >> or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for >> sound. >> >> Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind >> of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) >> >> I might ask, how much of this might have >> been self-censorship (or circumspection) >> within a Soviet society? To possibly >> barter his ideas better? Is there any >> evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm >> inclined to say no, but would like to >> hear from others mor familier with his >> texts and relationships with others) >> Might you help me understand that part. I >> suppose it depends on how aware he was of >> this chauvanism? >> >> Was there for example anything political >> about Vygotsky's relationship with >> Krupskaya? Was there anything political >> about the anthropology study with Luria? >> >> Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at >> the time was to ask "How to create a >> better human?" But for Vygotsky (and >> other learning scientists) it was "How to >> *scientifically* create a better human?" >> using what we know about mind and how it >> develops? >> >> Is it me or can there be something >> Frankenstein-ish about the question, >> frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who >> decides what is "better"? >> >> If "scientific" is referencing an >> empirical method of analysis, based upon >> trial and error, OK, but does the >> individual have to know that it is >> scientific in order for it to be scientific? >> >> I guess this is where the >> functional/structural argument loops about. >> >> Why couldn't the reality of learning be >> both functional and structural. >> >> My take is that what is in common about >> functions and structures are their patterns. >> >> A pattern is the differential between the >> function and the structure. >> >> Consider the music score (structure) and >> the musician playing the music (function). >> >> The pattern is what is present in both. >> An added benefit is that its translation >> can evolve in time into other patterns >> (think Jazz). >> >> I remember Vera saying that the phrase >> "scientific concept" is a little >> problematic. I know she didn't like >> "everyday concepts" either. My memory is >> not recalling what she thought was more >> appropriate at the moment. >> >> I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that >> the pattern might a better unit for >> analysis than activity. (Gee is that my >> hair that has been singed??) >> >> When considering conceptual development >> the pattern is effective because the it >> can translate between subjective >> experience and objective experience >> (biological, social, cultural, etc). >> >> On another note: Has anyone considered >> Vygotsky through a feminist lens? >> >> Also: Is it possible that there were so >> many women who he cited because women >> were more likely to be school teachers, >> as is the case today? >> >> I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Annalisa >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> on >> behalf of mike cole >> >> *Sent:*Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM >> *To:*eXtended Mind, Culture, >> Activity >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >> awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> *? [EXTERNAL]* >> >> Hi Anthony >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who >> have not achieved scientific/real >> concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony >> Barra > > wrote: >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> This is a question -- and an invitation: >> >> First the question:*What do you >> understand the passage below (at the >> bottom of this email) to mean?* >> >> Second, the invitation:*How about >> sharing your thoughts in short video >> form?*It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; >> ask David; etc) -- and it's also >> helpful, not only to me but to anyone >> watching or listening. (Here is the >> question again, in video >> form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RtDGgUfRnyhbmLtiqAHsxk7rk35ACL9VywkdFyTL8n5RrU_gOJOpvA1L7OfmeXv6OXcywg$ >> ) >> >> I believe that many people -- >> including many teachers -- would >> benefit from answers to this >> question, preferably multiple >> answers. With permission, I will >> nicely edit and add your response to >> this growing list of >> asked-and-answered questions: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!RtDGgUfRnyhbmLtiqAHsxk7rk35ACL9VywkdFyTL8n5RrU_gOJOpvA1L7OfmeXtm73abVw$ >> ? >> Thanks for considering it, and note >> that we don't care about >> perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, >> from/Thinking and Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. >> 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a >> different way means to acquire >> new potentials for acting with >> respect to it. At the chess >> board, to see differently is to >> play differently. By generalizing >> the process of activity itself, I >> acquire the potential for new >> relationships with it. To speak >> crudely, it is as if this process >> has been isolated from the >> general activity of >> consciousness. I am conscious of >> the fact that I remember. I make >> my own remembering the object of >> consciousness. An isolation >> arises here. In a certain sense, >> any generalization or abstraction >> isolates its object. This is why >> conscious awareness ? understood >> as generalization ? leads >> directly to mastery. >> >> /Thus, the foundation of >> conscious awareness is the >> generalization or abstraction of >> the mental processes, which leads >> to their mastery/. Instruction >> has a decisive role in this >> process. Scientific concepts have >> a unique relationship to the >> object. This relationship is >> mediated through other concepts >> that themselves have an internal >> hierarchical system of >> interrelationships. It is >> apparently in this domain of the >> scientific concept that conscious >> awareness of concepts or the >> generalization and mastery of >> concepts emerges for the first >> time. And once a new structure of >> generalization has arisen in one >> sphere of thought, it can ? like >> any structure ? be transferred >> without training to all remaining >> domains of concepts and thought. >> Thus,/conscious awareness enters >> through the gate opened up by the >> scientific concept/." >> >> What do you understand this passage >> to mean? >> >> Thanks ? >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> P.S. My first encounter with >> /Thinking and Speech/?was very >> difficult, even with the help of >> talented classmates and a smart >> professor. Thankfully, three online >> videos from Nikolai Veresov, >> presented not as a definitive?reading >> but as a general map of the book's >> terrain, were really so helpful and >> encouraging for me. If any videos I'm >> posting turn out to be similarly >> useful (as a number of people have >> told me), that's great. So thank you >> again to anyone interested in >> participating. >> >> -- >> >> >> IImage removed by sender. Angelus Novus >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> >> It is only in a social context that >> subjectivism and objectivism, >> spiritualism and materialism, activity >> and passivity cease to be antinomies, >> and thus cease to exist as such >> antinomies. The resolution of the >> theoretical?contradictions is possible >> only through practical means, only >> through the?practical?energy of humans. >> (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis >> Website:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RtDGgUfRnyhbmLtiqAHsxk7rk35ACL9VywkdFyTL8n5RrU_gOJOpvA1L7OfmeXtEPch_mA$ >> >> >> Re-generating CHAT >> Website:re-generatingchat.com >> >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> . >> >> Narrative history of LCHC: >> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> . >> >> > > > -- > > > IAngelus Novus > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and > objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and > passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to > exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the > theoretical?contradictions is possible only through > practical means, only through the practical?energy of > humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RtDGgUfRnyhbmLtiqAHsxk7rk35ACL9VywkdFyTL8n5RrU_gOJOpvA1L7OfmeXtEPch_mA$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > . > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/4bb85cdb/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: osoznanie.png Type: image/png Size: 39071 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/4bb85cdb/attachment-0001.png -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/4bb85cdb/attachment-0001.jpg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: trobriand.PDF Type: application/pdf Size: 1394672 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/4bb85cdb/attachment-0001.pdf From glassman.13@osu.edu Sat Aug 15 05:10:06 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 12:10:06 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: Hi David, One of the interesting insights that Stanislavski had that I think Vygotsky might have adopted (though I am looking for evidence of it) is that one of the ways characters change is in relation to the historical moment. Hamlet in Elizabethan England is different than Hamlet in the roiled state of 19th century Italy is different than Hamlet in Russia on the eve of revolution. One of the things that motivated me to go back and start re-reading Vygotsky was an exercise we did in a class I was teaching. We got the Olivier version of Hamlet from 1947 and the Zeffirelli version from 1990. Same words, two completely different movies. You could see the times in the production. Olivier?s version was darker with dark ghosts of the recent war while Zeffirelli?s with its color and sunlight seemed to reflect Reagans delusional city on a hill. I wonder is the same thing true of Vygotsky himself. He came to the United States at the heart of neo-liberal domination of policy. Will our interpretations of Vygotsky change in the era of grass roots movements such as Black Lives Matter and defunding the police? Of course one interpretation is always latent in another ? Vygotsky?s idea that the ability to engage independently in an activity is always latent in previous activities. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David H Kirshner Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:16 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!S7B-TtGMmOkviMmdg8AW_XeSyf3X2nT3S3_JgXgKMbxAX42uDIKLmiiuWaOhQS2V2_2sFw$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!S7B-TtGMmOkviMmdg8AW_XeSyf3X2nT3S3_JgXgKMbxAX42uDIKLmiiuWaOhQS1NASe6kw$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S7B-TtGMmOkviMmdg8AW_XeSyf3X2nT3S3_JgXgKMbxAX42uDIKLmiiuWaOhQS1GYQUTGA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/1e66b87f/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/1e66b87f/attachment.jpg From huw.softdesigns@gmail.com Sat Aug 15 10:15:53 2020 From: huw.softdesigns@gmail.com (Huw Lloyd) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 18:15:53 +0100 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Huw, David, and Andy videos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!Ss8AcSP9UnjylQTTtRt6rr9aKGripriFVVrDLHe0eSpAXNrDAlXv5ou9ncX7Q_6AMpWquA$ Best, Huw On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark < john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au> wrote: > Thank you, Anthony > > > > For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, > and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, > have found them illuminating. > > > > John > > > > *From: * on behalf of Anthony Barra < > anthonymbarra@gmail.com> > *Reply-To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > *Date: *Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am > *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > *Subject: *[Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos > > > > Good afternoon, > > > > Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage > (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from > David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. > > - "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" > (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Ss8AcSP9UnjylQTTtRt6rr9aKGripriFVVrDLHe0eSpAXNrDAlXv5ou9ncX7Q_4DJGpenw$ > - "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Ss8AcSP9UnjylQTTtRt6rr9aKGripriFVVrDLHe0eSpAXNrDAlXv5ou9ncX7Q_6JTuvvfw$ > - "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Ss8AcSP9UnjylQTTtRt6rr9aKGripriFVVrDLHe0eSpAXNrDAlXv5ou9ncX7Q_47R4j8og$ > > And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of > Vygotsky and parenting. > > - "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!Ss8AcSP9UnjylQTTtRt6rr9aKGripriFVVrDLHe0eSpAXNrDAlXv5ou9ncX7Q_427L8FHg$ > > Sincerely, > > > > Anthony Barra > > > > > > > > * Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the > named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or > storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this > email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise > the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin University does not warrant > that this email and any attachments are error or virus free.* > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/9ff9cb49/attachment.html From dkirsh@lsu.edu Sat Aug 15 11:33:59 2020 From: dkirsh@lsu.edu (David H Kirshner) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 18:33:59 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: Thanks, Michael. Against the changing backdrop of the times, interpretive frames can change. But what if all those eras of those interpretation are contemporaneous? David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 7:10 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi David, One of the interesting insights that Stanislavski had that I think Vygotsky might have adopted (though I am looking for evidence of it) is that one of the ways characters change is in relation to the historical moment. Hamlet in Elizabethan England is different than Hamlet in the roiled state of 19th century Italy is different than Hamlet in Russia on the eve of revolution. One of the things that motivated me to go back and start re-reading Vygotsky was an exercise we did in a class I was teaching. We got the Olivier version of Hamlet from 1947 and the Zeffirelli version from 1990. Same words, two completely different movies. You could see the times in the production. Olivier?s version was darker with dark ghosts of the recent war while Zeffirelli?s with its color and sunlight seemed to reflect Reagans delusional city on a hill. I wonder is the same thing true of Vygotsky himself. He came to the United States at the heart of neo-liberal domination of policy. Will our interpretations of Vygotsky change in the era of grass roots movements such as Black Lives Matter and defunding the police? Of course one interpretation is always latent in another ? Vygotsky?s idea that the ability to engage independently in an activity is always latent in previous activities. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David H Kirshner Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:16 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 1:36 pm, HENRY SHONERD wrote: Andy, I think of what you described as automatic and controlled processing. Automatic processing (also called ballistic) requires little or no attentional resources. Controlled processes, on the other hand, take up a lot of attention. When you?re learning something, it can easily overload attentional capacity. One aspect of learning or scaffolding the learning of another is to know the right combination of controlled and automatic processing. I think this relates to Vygotsky?s Zoped. You quoted Hegel a while back about mathematical thinking that captures this distinction very well. Henry On Aug 13, 2020, at 7:37 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: Annalisa, for Marxists, "consciousness" is a very broad term covering what mediates between physiology and behaviour, the totality of mental processes in an individual organism, whether sleeping or awake. "Conscious awareness" on the other hand refers to knowing and attending to what you are doing at the time. A couple of classic examples will illustrate. When you're walking down the street you do not have conscious awareness of how yor foot is laying itself flat on the footpath, how your body is overbalancing slightly forwards and your other leg swinging slightly outward and bending as you bring it forward, etc. ... but if for example you step over a kerb and having underestimated the depth of the step and momentarily losing you balance, your walking suddenly springs back into conscious awareness and you look down at the ground, and take conscious control of your balance, etc. On the other hand, consider when a child is first learning to tie their own shoelaces; let's suppose they have been taught the rabbit ears method. The child says to herself "make the rabbit ears ... this one ... that one ... cross over ... put through the hole ... grab it .,. and PULL IT TIGHT! Yeh!" That is, she tied her laces with conscious awareness, according to how she was instructed, paying attention to every operation, using internal speech (more or less). But a couple of months later she now thinks about getting out the door in time to meet her friends while she is tying her laces and isn't even looking at what she's doing. She has achieved mastery. OK? Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 14/08/2020 4:13 am, Annalisa Aguilar wrote: Hello conscious and venerable others, Mike points out a very important point that conscious awareness cannot be a product of scientific concepts. "Conscious awareness" is a gummy term. I am confused about the citation about chess. Is that Spinoza or Vygotsky? It's V not S, right? What was the Spinoza text that caught Vygotsky's attention? David would you mind to cite it? I am also curious what the Russian words used to create the English translation of "conscious awareness"? Can someone illuminate that for my awareness? "Conscious awareness" is sort of like saying "wet water," No, actually? it is like saying "watery water." If we can say "conscious awareness" does that mean we say "unconscious awareness"? What does that look like? Can we say "conscious unawareness"? I don't think so. Awareness is awareness. I can take a drop out of the sea, but I can't call it the sea, though if I put it back it's not the sea + drop. It's just the sea, see? However, you can't parse a drop of awareness. If it were possible to take one awareness with another awareness, it's still awareness. If I take part of awareness from another awareness it's still awareness. Awareness is not really something that can be divided into parts or added to into something "larger." The trouble with the word "consiousness," is that it gets tangled with states of brain activity, being awake vs. asleep vs. deep sleep vs. catatonic vs. comatose, unconscious, etc. "Consciousness" is a word like "space." We can divide space, but it is really an illusion. Everything is in space, so the small room vs the big room is just an illusion in terms of conceptual size. It's more of a perceptual relationship than something quantitative (say, if looking from the standpoint of space, space is just space). The walls of the rooms are in space too. This is why awareness/consciousness cannot be mixed up with thinking processes. Awareness is always present, but I sense the content of what is discussed here pertains to knowledge not awareness. That's why I'm suspicious about the translation. Is this mistake in the translation? or did Vygotsky make this mistake? Of course it seems a silly semantic argument, but the meaning of the words do substantially alter how we think about the concepts they convey, especially if we do not precisely understand the intention the the words were used by the speaker/writer. There is a distinct (and special) relationship between perception and knowledge. We can't perceive anything without awareness. We also can't know anything without awareness. I maintain that this is what Spinoza references as "substance." He is right about that. It's that necessary white elephant. To master something is to know it. To know it isn't always to master it. We could say Vygotsky attempts to isolate what is different about mastery compared to when mastery isn't evident. If we could as-if parse awareness from cognition and set awareness aside, we could then look at the relationship between knowledge and cognition, in that knowledge can be measured in the individual based upon how well the individual's knowledge effectively maps to the world (or reality), while cognition on the other hand is the manifest biological interaction to build those maps. We know cognition is distributed, and that it includes society, tools, etc. It's not just happening in the chamber of the brain, that crafty and mysterious black, I mean grey box. Like many philosophers and psychologists, I take it Vygotsky is discussing the ways in which perceptions and awareness of perceptions are organized subjectively. If that "structure" is organized in such a way that it maps accurately to the environment, then one can assert there is objective knowledge of the environment, and the better this map "functions," the more mastery is evident. When it is not mapping that effectively, I think we might call that in a positive sense "imagination" or in a negative sense, "delusion." Humans do have a tendency for delusion as can be witnessed today. It's a very interesting experiment to see the battle of "everyday concepts" and "scientific concepts" in the news about the pandemic. In this sense, on the matter of subjective organization of thinking, "primitive" people can have "higher" conceptual developments, as Levi-Strauss has shown us long ago. We might not recognize the value of that mastery because we might not share those thought-organizations of the natural environment that that culture possesses. Why would we share them? It's a little like witnessing two foreigners speaking to one another and basing their intelligence on the way the phonetic profile of the language appeals or repels our aesthetic sensibilities for sound. Vygotsky was a little guilty of this kind of "modern" chauvanism. (who isn't?) I might ask, how much of this might have been self-censorship (or circumspection) within a Soviet society? To possibly barter his ideas better? Is there any evidence of Vygotsky doing that? (I'm inclined to say no, but would like to hear from others mor familier with his texts and relationships with others) Might you help me understand that part. I suppose it depends on how aware he was of this chauvanism? Was there for example anything political about Vygotsky's relationship with Krupskaya? Was there anything political about the anthropology study with Luria? Is it fair to say that Soviet thinking at the time was to ask "How to create a better human?" But for Vygotsky (and other learning scientists) it was "How to *scientifically* create a better human?" using what we know about mind and how it develops? Is it me or can there be something Frankenstein-ish about the question, frankly (pun ha ha), if not arrogant. Who decides what is "better"? If "scientific" is referencing an empirical method of analysis, based upon trial and error, OK, but does the individual have to know that it is scientific in order for it to be scientific? I guess this is where the functional/structural argument loops about. Why couldn't the reality of learning be both functional and structural. My take is that what is in common about functions and structures are their patterns. A pattern is the differential between the function and the structure. Consider the music score (structure) and the musician playing the music (function). The pattern is what is present in both. An added benefit is that its translation can evolve in time into other patterns (think Jazz). I remember Vera saying that the phrase "scientific concept" is a little problematic. I know she didn't like "everyday concepts" either. My memory is not recalling what she thought was more appropriate at the moment. I hope it isn't heretical to suggest that the pattern might a better unit for analysis than activity. (Gee is that my hair that has been singed??) When considering conceptual development the pattern is effective because the it can translate between subjective experience and objective experience (biological, social, cultural, etc). On another note: Has anyone considered Vygotsky through a feminist lens? Also: Is it possible that there were so many women who he cited because women were more likely to be school teachers, as is the case today? I am quite enjoying this thread. Thank you. Kind regards, Annalisa ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2020 3:23 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) [EXTERNAL] Hi Anthony I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 1:06 PM Anthony Barra > wrote: Good afternoon, This is a question -- and an invitation: First the question: What do you understand the passage below (at the bottom of this email) to mean? Second, the invitation: How about sharing your thoughts in short video form? It's quite enjoyable (ask Andy; ask David; etc) -- and it's also helpful, not only to me but to anyone watching or listening. (Here is the question again, in video form:https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/l41nsz__;!!Mih3wA!QPKxD5X9Z8soKeooTl-yTwLA9RPxeeqD20Z1n2T0FzHPy5cg3rQo9lACH2bc_5bs_BkXtA$ ) I believe that many people -- including many teachers -- would benefit from answers to this question, preferably multiple answers. With permission, I will nicely edit and add your response to this growing list of asked-and-answered questions: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/451nsz__;!!Mih3wA!QPKxD5X9Z8soKeooTl-yTwLA9RPxeeqD20Z1n2T0FzHPy5cg3rQo9lACH2bc_5ZxCx9JzA$ Thanks for considering it, and note that we don't care about perfectionism here; it's mostly for fun. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." What do you understand this passage to mean? Thanks ? Anthony Barra P.S. My first encounter with Thinking and Speech was very difficult, even with the help of talented classmates and a smart professor. Thankfully, three online videos from Nikolai Veresov, presented not as a definitive reading but as a general map of the book's terrain, were really so helpful and encouraging for me. If any videos I'm posting turn out to be similarly useful (as a number of people have told me), that's great. So thank you again to anyone interested in participating. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QPKxD5X9Z8soKeooTl-yTwLA9RPxeeqD20Z1n2T0FzHPy5cg3rQo9lACH2bc_5ZFrLdJ0Q$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/53885133/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 479 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/53885133/attachment.jpg From mpacker@cantab.net Sat Aug 15 14:35:34 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 16:35:34 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> Message-ID: <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: > > Andy, > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > Michael > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/8079612e/attachment.html From dkirsh@lsu.edu Sat Aug 15 15:29:25 2020 From: dkirsh@lsu.edu (David H Kirshner) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 22:29:25 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/e5d342e1/attachment.html From mpacker@cantab.net Sat Aug 15 15:59:41 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 17:59:41 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: <1D8FE72C-C8A9-4715-8692-26440847EAD2@cantab.net> I assume by Michael you mean Martin, David? I think this would be a good place to apply Andy?s advice: "when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker.? Nothing I have ever read by Vygotsky suggests to me that he failed to understand the obvious fact that a 5-year old child has conscious awareness of the world they live in. Your interpretation is otherwise? Martin > On Aug 15, 2020, at 5:29 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > Mike > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Martin Packer > Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > David, > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? > > Puzzled... > > Martin > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: > > Andy, > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > Andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > David > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > Michael > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/01055330/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Sat Aug 15 16:06:19 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 16:06:19 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony > asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and > Speech*. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are > claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of > the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the > scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making > them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s > interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans > who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious > awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence > of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael > observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] > used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative > forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the > issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our > conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution > illusory. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XaZ0ldsk3LvHtURqQPa9pqhSzqJcTkfT9WpcH9iXCnnFdDWAkGk2rg5ikc9GFglySosYvA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/f4e26394/attachment.html From mpacker@cantab.net Sat Aug 15 17:15:06 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 19:15:06 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: > > I was not being ironic, David > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > mike > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. > > > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer > Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > -- > I The Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XNvwRizi2y4FzmVY-Tolrcz_wIKMBoWxIxxDODahzjsSjo7q6sqGOqNoJqwc1M0sfDTUkg$ > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/35b31e30/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Sat Aug 15 18:01:15 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2020 18:01:15 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Thanks, Martin, for all the time and trouble putting together those clarifying passages. As is often the case, the texts take several readings for me to appreciate. I experienced this phenomenon all the time during 5thD sessions where kids shared computer screens and negotiated turns; the kids had a difficult time explaining how they had done something. The kids in this case were often 10-12 which could be observed in their arguments about strategies. I hadn't thought about it that way. thanks. (Many untrained undergrads, on the other hand, got really into the activities, but retained a phenomenal ability to describe the interpersonal dynamics of the interactions). I had not thought of them as failing to introspect. I fully endorse fully the idea that Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. I posted the Hutchins article (thanks Andy) because it raises exactly this issue with some relevant data . The work of Megan Bang, Doug Medin and colleagues highlights the possibility of "real concepts" developing along that are actively discouraged by schooling. Mike As you know,, Piaget came around to something like a "cultural context" interpretation of cultural differences in formal operations, suggesting that they would occur in areas of dense expertise. All reasons why we need a bio/social-cultural/historical,interdisciplinary of human development. :-)) On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 5:17 PM Martin Packer wrote: > Hi Mike, > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the > passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing > consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. > (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle > childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he > is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages > (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point > is made more clearly: > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you > exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention > is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness > is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying > the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that > I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be > just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act > of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of > consciousness? > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to > develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations > have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains > something similar to what occurs in the development of the external > perception and observation in the transition from infancy to > early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external > perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child > from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, > verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on > the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to > speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own > mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the > subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they > are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not > aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." > Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be > unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their > objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of > awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of > concepts]." > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at > each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world > and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room > but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive > everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures > against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in > early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, > just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There > is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. > In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. > Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, > a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that > non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree > with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in > systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect > as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > Stay safe, > > Martin > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: > > I was not being ironic, David > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified > in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to > formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved > conscious awareness. > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable > of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on > self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on > syllogisms, > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of > involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > mike > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: > >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony >> asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and >> Speech*. >> >> >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials >> for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to >> play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire >> the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if >> this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. >> I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the >> object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious >> awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> >> >> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate >> opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved >> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> David, >> >> >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are >> claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of >> the world they live in? >> >> >> >> Puzzled... >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> >> >> Andy, >> >> >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, >> making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >> >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s >> interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans >> who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >> awareness.? >> >> >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence >> of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael >> observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] >> used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative >> forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the >> issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our >> conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution >> illusory. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood >> nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as >> you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in >> putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." >> "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an >> abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some >> more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path >> of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected >> with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins >> from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of >> ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out >> of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for >> example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of >> the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of >> the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: >> when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, >> trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this >> writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> ------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts >> has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of >> differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem >> must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it >> is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its >> ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: >> type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, >> contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, >> cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & >> Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of >> cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is >> distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a >> sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning >> as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural >> contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of >> concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> >> >> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way >> conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use >> differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with >> the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of >> conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of >> spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts >> are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation >> to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To >> go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says >> ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess >> in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social >> connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory >> (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). >> We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the >> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in >> my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must >> summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about >> the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the >> scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I >> applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was >> great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit >> with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the >> scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are >> used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system >> of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, >> conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and >> controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware >> these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course >> and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VmZ0krlh0QfyuhwMsJyE-aiBoCi1ndjRzTpyPNrX8Gy6teUon9ROInGdGaVcwUBrBPYaqg$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VmZ0krlh0QfyuhwMsJyE-aiBoCi1ndjRzTpyPNrX8Gy6teUon9ROInGdGaVcwUBrBPYaqg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200815/c810ca63/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Sat Aug 15 18:34:50 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 11:34:50 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: <0c770d31-c8c9-479f-dec5-fc26442488bd@marxists.org> I fully agree with what Martin has said in this thread, but I can add a little about the seemingly outrageous conclusions drawn from the Uzbek experiments. As I understand it, the expedition to Uzbekistan was in 1929, but it was in 1930 that Vygotsky worked with colleagues of Deborin, who actually understood Hegel. From this point forward Vygotsky changed what he understood to be a "true concept" - i.e., "truly a concept." Hitherto, following mainstream analytical science he had taken a taxonomic category (i.e., like "large, green, wooden blocks") to be the archetype of true concept. In your own work, Mike, coming from the experience in Liberia, you have made a detailed study of this taxonomic type of thinking. Your discovered that (1) taxonomic thinking and perception is a powerful form of activity, (2) it is the type of thinking which is routinely inculcated in "western" schooling practices, (3) it is generally not taught in indigenous traditional communities, (4) it is not easily acquired spontaneously. As was remarked, indigenous communities in Uzbekistan or the Trobrian Island are rich in true concepts, but poor in taxonomic reasoning. I think of the reaction of the Uzbeks to Luria's questions something like how someone on this list would react to a man in a white coat asking us to look at four people, 3 of them white Anglo-Saxon, one of them African-American, and asking us to say which one of the people don't belong. Large, class-based, bureaucratic societies rely on taxonomic thinking to operate. I think that in indigenous communities it is regarded as morally repulsive to act that way. Just a little insight from Hegel, who says that subjection of one's own will to one's own will ("turn the will on to itself") is the path to free will. Equally, turning one's thinking on one's own thinking is the path to conscious control of one's own thinking, i.e., conscious awareness. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 16/08/2020 11:01 am, mike cole wrote: > Thanks, Martin, for all the time and trouble putting > together those clarifying passages. As is often the case, > the texts > take several readings for me to appreciate. I experienced > this phenomenon all the time during 5thD sessions > where?kids shared computer screens and negotiated turns;? > the kids had a difficult time explaining how they > had done something.? The kids in this case were often > 10-12 which could be observed in their arguments > about strategies. I hadn't thought about it that way. > thanks. (Many untrained undergrads, on the other hand, > got really into the activities, but retained a phenomenal > ability to describe the interpersonal dynamics of the > interactions). I had not thought of them as failing to > introspect. > > I fully endorse?fully the idea that > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might > suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of > their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such > cultures there may well be systematic instruction in > systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have > the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does > in the west. > > I posted the Hutchins article (thanks Andy) because it > raises exactly this issue with some relevant?data . > The work of Megan Bang, Doug Medin and colleagues > highlights the possibility of "real concepts" developing > along that are actively discouraged by schooling. > > ? Mike > As you know,,? Piaget came around to something like a > "cultural context" interpretation of cultural differences > in formal operations, suggesting that they would > occur in areas of dense expertise.? All reasons why we > need a bio/social-cultural/historical,interdisciplinary of > human development.? :-)) > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 5:17 PM Martin Packer > > wrote: > > Hi Mike, > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation > is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is > talking about the growing consciousness *of their own > thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In > Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this > happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that > needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing > about what he calls ?introspection." > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a > couple of other passages (these are from the excellent > Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made > more clearly: > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it?consciously. I cannot, > however, tell you exactly how I did it. My > conscious act is unconscious,?because my attention > is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how > I do it. Consciousness is?always some piece > of?reality. The object of my consciousness is > tying the knot, a knot, and what?was happening to > it but not those actions that I?make when tying, > not how I do it. But the object?of consciousness > can be just that - then it will be awareness. > Awareness?is an act of?consciousness, the object > of which is itself the very same activity of > consciousness? > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that > introspection does not begin to develop in > any?significant degree until school age.?Further > investigations have shown that the development > of?introspection in the school age contains > something similar to?what occurs in the > development of?the external perception and > observation in the transition from infancy to > early?childhood. As is?well known, the most > important change in external perception of this > period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a > child from a?wordless and, consequently, > meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and > objective?perception. The same can be?said of > introspection on the threshold of school age. The > child is?moving from mute introspection to speech > and words.?He develops an internal > semantic?perception of his own mental > processes?.?I realize that I can recall, i.e. I > do?recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > 104 "By their very nature,?spontaneous concepts > include the fact that they are unconscious. > Children know how they?operate?spontaneously but > are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the > children's concept?of "because." Obviously, > by?themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be > unconscious,?because consideration is always > directed to their objects,?rather than to the act > of thought which?is grasping it.? > > > 106 ?"only in a system [of concepts] can the > concept become the object of awareness and only in > a system can the?child acquire volitional?control > [of concepts]." > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, > in my view, that at each stage the child has > consciousness of different aspects of the world and of > their own psychological processes. For example: > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual > perception: he perceives a room but does not > separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will > perceive everything as an undivided whole in > contrast?to the adult, who sees figures against a > background. How?does a child perceive his own > movements in early?childhood? He is happy, > unhappy,?but does not know that he is happy, just > as an infant when he is hungry?does not?know that > he is hungry. There is a great difference between > feeling hunger and?knowing that I am?hungry. In > early childhood, the child does not know his > own?experiences?. Precisely?as a three-year-old > child discovers his relation to other people, a > seven-year-old?discovers the fact?of his own > experiences.? (p. 291) > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV > might suggest that non-literate peoples might be > unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, > in such cultures there may well be systematic > instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? > ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that > school instruction does in the west. > > Stay safe, > > Martin > > > > >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole >> > wrote: >> >> I was not being ironic, David >> If scientific concepts are required for conscious >> awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked >> to respond to) and people who >> have not been to school do not acquire?Piagetian >> concepts related to formal operations (for example) >> or other measure of "thinking in >> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they >> have not achieved conscious awareness. >> >> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples >> that they are capable of complexes, but not true >> concepts (I think the use of the term. >> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets >> his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the >> same monograph as his work on syllogisms, >> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced >> various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. >> Russian) forms of life as evidence for >> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I >> am not sure." >> >> mike >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner >> > wrote: >> >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but >> on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a >> couple of paragraphs from /Thinking and Speech/. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from/Thinking >> and Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means >> to acquire new potentials for acting with respect >> to it. At the chess board, to see differently is >> to play differently. By generalizing the process >> of activity itself, I acquire the potential for >> new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it >> is as if this process has been isolated from the >> general activity of consciousness. I am conscious >> of the fact that I remember. I make my own >> remembering the object of consciousness. An >> isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its >> object. This is why conscious awareness ? >> understood as generalization ? leads directly to >> mastery. >> >> /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is >> the generalization or abstraction of the mental >> processes, which leads to their mastery/. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. >> Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to >> the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal >> hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is >> apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or >> the generalization and mastery of concepts >> emerges for the first time. And once a new >> structure of generalization has arisen in one >> sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? >> be transferred without training to all remaining >> domains of concepts and thought. Thus,/conscious >> awareness enters through the gate opened up by >> the scientific concept/." >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have >> not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have >> conscious awareness. >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> > > *On >> Behalf Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> > > >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >> enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> David, >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev >> Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old >> children (for example) lack conscious awareness >> of the world they live in? >> >> Puzzled... >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner >> > wrote: >> >> Andy, >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the >> intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to >> their complementarity, making them akin to >> Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in >> my post. >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, >> since according to Mike?s interpretation of a >> Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few >> days ago, ?humans who have not achieved >> scientific/real concepts do not have >> conscious awareness.? >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I >> do question is the coherence of the >> interpretive frames that have evolved from >> his work. As Michael observed in a recent >> post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he >> [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as >> truths and more to move his narrative >> forward.? What I always wonder in >> eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues >> we discuss are resolvable, or is the >> theoretical backdrop to our conversation so >> heterogeneous as to make the possibility of >> resolution illusory. >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> > >*On >> Behalf Of*Andy Blunden >> *Sent:*Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> *To:*xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >> enters through the gate" (a Participation >> Question) >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific >> concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends >> to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is >> entirely, as you say,/developmental/, and it >> is not a categorisation either (as in putting >> things into boxes), and nothing to do with >> "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers >> to the path of development that begins with >> an abstract (decontextualised) concept >> acquired through instruction in some more or >> less formal institution. "Spontaneous >> concept" refers to the path of development >> which begins with everyday experience, >> closely connected with immediate >> sensori-motor interaction and perception, >> i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas >> the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or >> merging of both the scientific and >> spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday >> life is full of ideas which have their source >> in institutions, but have made their way out >> of the institutional context into everyday >> life. On the other hand, for example (2) any >> scientific concept worth its salt has made >> its way out of the classroom and become >> connected with practice, like the >> book-learning of the medical graduate who's >> spent 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's >> prose. But here's the thing: when you're >> reading a great thinker and what they're >> saying seems silly, trying reading it more >> generously, because there's probably a reason >> this writer has gained the reputation of >> being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous >> distinction between types of concepts has >> always struck me as such an unfortunate >> solution to the problem of differential >> sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m >> sure this problem must have deep roots in >> classical and contemporary philosophy, >> even as it is reflected in cognitive >> psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at >> its ?theoretical core amounts to a >> dichotomous view of two types of >> processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, >> automatic, nonconscious, effortless, >> contextualized, error-prone, and type >> 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, >> cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, >> normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, >> 2014). What externalizing this >> distinction as different kinds of >> cognitive products (this or that kind of >> concept) seems to do is distract/detract >> from the sociogenetic character of >> development. Surely, a sociogenetic >> approach seeks to interpret these >> different forms of reasoning as >> differential discursive practices, >> embedded in different cultural contexts >> (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about >> different kinds of concepts seems like >> the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *On >> Behalf Of*Glassman, Michael >> *Sent:*Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> *To:*eXtended Mind, Culture, >> Activity >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >> awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> Let me start by saying that this is >> completely restricted to the way >> conscious awareness is used in Thinking >> and Speech. If it is use differently in >> other places this perspective may be >> wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that >> my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using >> the idea of conscious awareness for a >> specific purpose. To differentiate the >> role of spontaneous concepts with >> non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous >> concepts are based initially in affective >> memory and they give energy and >> motivation to many of our activities. >> However we are not consciously aware of >> them. To go back to chess, I am at the >> pool and my friend comes up to me and >> says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no >> conscious awareness of the concept of >> chess in my life, why I say yes so easily >> why it may be a way to make a social >> connection between me and my friend. It >> is residue of my affective memory (I >> don?t know how much Vygotsky was using >> Ribot when making this argument). We are >> playing chess and I remember that my >> brother showed me the >> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the >> bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life >> I have to think about it and whether I >> want to use it. I must summon the >> intellectual functions of memory and >> attention as I think about the use of the >> bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious >> awareness of the scientific concept. I >> used the bishop?s gambit and win the game >> and I applaud myself. I got home and tell >> my brother, the bishop?s gambit was >> great, thanks. I am mediating the >> scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit >> with my everyday concept of playing >> chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious >> awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> Michael >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> > >*On >> Behalf Of*Andy Blunden >> *Sent:*Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> *To:*xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >> awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce >> Annalisa and whoever to the scientific >> way that the terms "conscious awareness" >> and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I >> say "scientific" in the sense that in >> CHAT we have a system of concepts and >> associated word meanings which have, if >> you like, conventional meanings. There is >> nothing wrong with "automatic and >> controlled processing" and "ballistic >> processing" but so far as I am aware >> these terms were not in Vygotsky's >> vocabulary. I could be wrong of course >> and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected >> if this is the case. >> >> >> >> -- >> >> >> IAngelus Novus >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism >> and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, >> activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and >> thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The >> resolution of the theoretical?contradictions is >> possible only through practical means, only through >> the practical?energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S7CeeTQ7C4hGYUAH0f2TIKxj_E2KCNa2tgKZNqFEYsisUyaDy1z2TXdR6Lbav_Bdts86Kw$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> . >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> . >> >> >> > > > > -- > > > IAngelus Novus > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and > objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and > passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to > exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the > theoretical?contradictions is possible only through > practical means, only through the practical?energy of > humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S7CeeTQ7C4hGYUAH0f2TIKxj_E2KCNa2tgKZNqFEYsisUyaDy1z2TXdR6Lbav_Bdts86Kw$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > . > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/9a851b6f/attachment.html From lsmolucha@hotmail.com Sat Aug 15 19:10:54 2020 From: lsmolucha@hotmail.com (Larry Smolucha) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 02:10:54 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> , Message-ID: >From Francine: I don't usually enter into these philosophical debates on XMCA - but we have crossed each other's paths. There is no concordance to Vygotsky's writings (as we have for Freud's). As I recall there was an XMCA project to create a dictionary of Vygotsky's terminology. Simply to have a dictionary of Freud's terminology, would be of limited use without a concordance to track his use of the terms as his theory evolved. The same with Vygotsky. And there is theoretical continuity throughout Vygotsky's writings despite claims to the contrary. To understand Vygotsky's use of the word consciousness, it is necessary to look at Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology of Behavior (1925). Reading only the very last passage in Thinking and Speech, you could come to the erroneous conclusion that for Vygotsky any living being without language is not conscious (i.e. is unconscious). The problem here is that the word conscious has multiple meanings (usages). We can rule out the medical determination of a patient being conscious versus unconscious. I would argue that Vygotsky used the word consciousness to mean consciously directed functions (behavior, perception, thought, emotion, will, imagination, and memory). The proof is in the very quote that he used from Marx's Das Kapital of how the spider constructs a web by instinct, but the "architect raises the structure in his imagination before he erects it in reality." There is also an interesting lineage between Ribot and Janet's concept of the unconscious, that carried over into Freud's use of the term, and over to Vygotsky's and Luria's theory of the prefrontal cortex's role in consciously directed functions. In 1925, Vygotsky was thinking along the same lines as Freud's concept of consciousness as a function of the Ego. He even cited Freud's example of the Ego as a rider on a horse (the Id). There are other papers between 1925 and 1934, where Vygotsky discussed the problem of consciousness - but enough said for now. In regard to scientific concepts, I didn't think that Piaget thought scientific concepts were necessarily learned in school. Didn't he think that concrete and formal operations develop from activities involving natural objects in the world? Either independently or with peers? In regard to The Development of Scientific Concepts in Childhood (1986, p. 167) Vygotsky stated "Elsewhere we have already discussed the role played by functional interactions in mental development. . . mental development does not coincide with the development of separate psychological functions, but rather depends on changing relations between them . . . the development of the interfunctional system." Hence Vygotsky didn't take a reductionist approach to development of conscious awareness, as the result of thinking in terms of scientific concepts. Conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by scientific concepts but that doesn't mean it is the only gate. ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 6:06 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!W0PbYqhWdrW9c7hC_hPybRUoQ9Q0pz84idYM3Rgwxgqjw4goylHvbRcg-S4IvNml-6QrCw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/5b6a6d2e/attachment.html From lsmolucha@hotmail.com Sat Aug 15 19:26:32 2020 From: lsmolucha@hotmail.com (Larry Smolucha) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 02:26:32 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <0c770d31-c8c9-479f-dec5-fc26442488bd@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> , <0c770d31-c8c9-479f-dec5-fc26442488bd@marxists.org> Message-ID: >From Francine: METACOGNITION ? Consciousness as a problem in the Psychology of Behavior Volume 3 Collected Works, p. 77 Speech is a "reversable reflex stimuli" (a reflex in Bekhterev's reflexology) i.e. a motor response that becomes internalized as stimuli that enables us to direct our own behavior, thought, etc. - as if we were directing someone else. We our conscious of ourselves because we are conscious of others . . . In principle there is no difference in mechanism whatsoever between the fact that I can repeat aloud a word spoken silently and the fact that I can repeat a word spoken by another. . . I interpret this to mean - that if I tell myself to "Stop" that is the same mechanism as repeating a verbal command formerly given to me by another person saying "Stop". ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:34 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) I fully agree with what Martin has said in this thread, but I can add a little about the seemingly outrageous conclusions drawn from the Uzbek experiments. As I understand it, the expedition to Uzbekistan was in 1929, but it was in 1930 that Vygotsky worked with colleagues of Deborin, who actually understood Hegel. From this point forward Vygotsky changed what he understood to be a "true concept" - i.e., "truly a concept." Hitherto, following mainstream analytical science he had taken a taxonomic category (i.e., like "large, green, wooden blocks") to be the archetype of true concept. In your own work, Mike, coming from the experience in Liberia, you have made a detailed study of this taxonomic type of thinking. Your discovered that (1) taxonomic thinking and perception is a powerful form of activity, (2) it is the type of thinking which is routinely inculcated in "western" schooling practices, (3) it is generally not taught in indigenous traditional communities, (4) it is not easily acquired spontaneously. As was remarked, indigenous communities in Uzbekistan or the Trobrian Island are rich in true concepts, but poor in taxonomic reasoning. I think of the reaction of the Uzbeks to Luria's questions something like how someone on this list would react to a man in a white coat asking us to look at four people, 3 of them white Anglo-Saxon, one of them African-American, and asking us to say which one of the people don't belong. Large, class-based, bureaucratic societies rely on taxonomic thinking to operate. I think that in indigenous communities it is regarded as morally repulsive to act that way. Just a little insight from Hegel, who says that subjection of one's own will to one's own will ("turn the will on to itself") is the path to free will. Equally, turning one's thinking on one's own thinking is the path to conscious control of one's own thinking, i.e., conscious awareness. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 16/08/2020 11:01 am, mike cole wrote: Thanks, Martin, for all the time and trouble putting together those clarifying passages. As is often the case, the texts take several readings for me to appreciate. I experienced this phenomenon all the time during 5thD sessions where kids shared computer screens and negotiated turns; the kids had a difficult time explaining how they had done something. The kids in this case were often 10-12 which could be observed in their arguments about strategies. I hadn't thought about it that way. thanks. (Many untrained undergrads, on the other hand, got really into the activities, but retained a phenomenal ability to describe the interpersonal dynamics of the interactions). I had not thought of them as failing to introspect. I fully endorse fully the idea that Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. I posted the Hutchins article (thanks Andy) because it raises exactly this issue with some relevant data . The work of Megan Bang, Doug Medin and colleagues highlights the possibility of "real concepts" developing along that are actively discouraged by schooling. Mike As you know,, Piaget came around to something like a "cultural context" interpretation of cultural differences in formal operations, suggesting that they would occur in areas of dense expertise. All reasons why we need a bio/social-cultural/historical,interdisciplinary of human development. :-)) On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 5:17 PM Martin Packer > wrote: Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VcOPyN4EBJmyH_BqIYMsDlpWXrjLVXUl_sxn0WcdM31eezTaFa0mmPeM5crtd_MsiPuY0Q$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VcOPyN4EBJmyH_BqIYMsDlpWXrjLVXUl_sxn0WcdM31eezTaFa0mmPeM5crtd_MsiPuY0Q$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/6e981173/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Sat Aug 15 20:10:19 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 13:10:19 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: <695dad89-0050-4c89-a8fb-2a580ffb9437@marxists.org> Francine, you are completely right that Vygotsky's use of words is inconsistent and evolves over time. How should we deal with this? I don't believe there is any way to definitively settle disputes over the meaning of the various passages. Interpretation is inescapable. But my approach is this: Vygotsky saw himself as a Marxist and although, as I have argued, he had little direct knowledge of Hegel, he aligned himself with that wing of Marxism which was "Hegelian." I see this as evidenced by his change of opinion c. 1930 on the meaning of "true concept," in his frequent citation of Lenin's /Philosophical Notebooks/, and his allusions to Hegel, his declaration about Psychology needing its own /Capital/ and in general I find this proves to be a satisfactory frame for interpretation of Vygotsky, inclusive of the fact that within the terms of this frame he sometimes makes mistakes. This approach is helped by having people like Ilyenkov who /are/ careful about their use of words, and /have/ read Hegel, etc., as assistants in reading Vygotsky. Plus you have to add what I have referred to as a "generous" reading of Vygotsky. Vygotsky is in the process of building the frame from which he can be read. But he is not building that frame alone. This approach obviously doesn't help everyone and will not definitively close any dispute about Vygotsky's meaning, but it /is/ a valid approach and it works for me. So it is in that context that I say that "consciousness" is a very broad term for Marxists, inclusive of the totality of mental processes in an organism. The verb "to be conscious /of/" is a different concept, as is the adjective in "/conscious/ awareness." These are distinctions which are far from being unique to Vygotsky. But I would generally look elsewhere in the same paradigm to get clues on their meaning, though sometimes it is necessary to look at contemporaneous usage among non-Marxist Psychologists. It's never simple. But not impossible. Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 16/08/2020 12:10 pm, Larry Smolucha wrote: > >From Francine: > > I don't usually enter into these philosophical debates on > XMCA - but we have crossed each other's paths. > > There is no concordance to Vygotsky's writings (as we have > for Freud's). > As I recall there was an XMCA project to create a > dictionary of Vygotsky's terminology. > Simply to have a dictionary of Freud's terminology, would > be of limited use without a concordance to track his use > of the terms as his theory evolved. > The same with Vygotsky. > > And*there is theoretical continuity throughout Vygotsky's > writings* despite claims to the contrary. To understand > Vygotsky's use of the word consciousness, it is necessary > to look at /Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology > of Behavior/ (1925). > Reading /only/ the very last passage in /Thinking and > Speech/, you could come to the */erroneous/* conclusion > that for Vygotsky any/living being /without language is > not conscious (i.e. is unconscious). > > The problem here is that the word /conscious/ has multiple > meanings (usages). > We can rule out the medical determination of a patient > being conscious versus unconscious. > > I would argue that Vygotsky used the word consciousness to > mean consciously directed > functions (behavior, perception, thought, emotion, will, > imagination, and memory). > > The proof is in the very quote that he used from Marx's > /Das Kapital/ of how the spider constructs a web by > instinct, but the "architect raises the structure in his > imagination before he erects it in reality." > > There is also an interesting lineage between Ribot and > Janet's concept of /the unconscious/, that carried over > into Freud's use of the term, and over to Vygotsky's and > Luria's theory of the prefrontal cortex's role in > consciously directed /functions/. In 1925, Vygotsky was > thinking along the same lines as Freud's concept of > /consciousness/ as a /function/ of the Ego. He even cited > Freud's example of the Ego as a rider on a horse (the Id). > > There are other papers between 1925 and 1934, where > Vygotsky discussed /the problem of consciousness/ - but > enough said for now. > > In regard to scientific concepts, I didn't think that > Piaget thought scientific concepts were necessarily > learned in school. Didn't he think that concrete and > formal operations develop from activities involving > /natural/ objects in the world? Either independently or > with peers? > > In regard to The Development of Scientific Concepts in > Childhood (1986, p. 167) Vygotsky stated "Elsewhere we > have already discussed the role played by functional > interactions in mental development. . . mental development > does not coincide with the development of separate > psychological functions, but rather depends on changing > relations between them ? .? . . the development of the > interfunctional system." > > Hence Vygotsky didn't take a reductionist approach to > development of conscious awareness, as the result of > thinking in terms of scientific concepts. Conscious > awareness enters through the gate opened up by scientific > concepts but /that doesn't mean it is the only/ /gate/. > > > __ > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of mike cole > > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 6:06 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > I was not being ironic, David > If scientific concepts are required for conscious > awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to > respond to) and people who > have not been to school do not acquire?Piagetian concepts > related to formal operations (for example) or other > measure of "thinking in > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not > achieved conscious awareness. > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that > they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I > think the use of the term. > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his > data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same > monograph as his work on syllogisms, > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced > various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) > forms of life as evidence for > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not > sure." > > mike > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > > wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on > August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple > of paragraphs from /Thinking and Speech/. > > *Here is the passage in question*, from/Thinking and > Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to > acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. > At the chess board, to see differently is to play > differently. By generalizing the process of activity > itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships > with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process > has been isolated from the general activity of > consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I > remember. I make my own remembering the object of > consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain > sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its > object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood > as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the > generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, > which leads to their mastery/. Instruction has a > decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts > have a unique relationship to the object. This > relationship is mediated through other concepts that > themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of > the scientific concept that conscious awareness of > concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts > emerges for the first time. And once a new structure > of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, > it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without > training to all remaining domains of concepts and > thought. Thus,/conscious awareness enters through the > gate opened up by the scientific concept/." > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not > achieved scientific/real concepts do not have > conscious awareness. > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > David > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > > *On Behalf > Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > David, > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, > or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for > example) lack conscious awareness of the world they > live in? > > Puzzled... > > Martin > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > > wrote: > > Andy, > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or > merging of both the scientific and spontaneous > path,? speaks to their complementarity, making > them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I > referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since > according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s > passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans > who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do > not have conscious awareness.? > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do > question is the coherence of the interpretive > frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael > observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he > wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas > less as truths and more to move his narrative > forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on > XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are > resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our > conversation so heterogeneous as to make the > possibility of resolution illusory. > > David > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > >*On > Behalf Of*Andy Blunden > *Sent:*Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > *To:*xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" > as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. > The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you > say,/developmental/, and it is not a > categorisation either (as in putting things into > boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of > development that begins with an abstract > (decontextualised) concept acquired through > instruction in some more or less formal > institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the > path of development which begins with everyday > experience, closely connected with immediate > sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it > begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" > is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or > merging of both the scientific and spontaneous > path. For example (1) everyday life is full of > ideas which have their source in institutions, but > have made their way out of the institutional > context into everyday life. On the other hand, for > example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt > has made its way out of the classroom and become > connected with practice, like the book-learning of > the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. > But here's the thing: when you're reading a great > thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's > probably a reason this writer has gained the > reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous > distinction between types of concepts has > always struck me as such an unfortunate > solution to the problem of differential > sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure > this problem must have deep roots in classical > and contemporary philosophy, even as it is > reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual > Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core > amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of > processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, > nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, > error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, > deliberate, cogitative, effortful, > decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga > & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this > distinction as different kinds of cognitive > products (this or that kind of concept) seems > to do is distract/detract from the > sociogenetic character of development. Surely, > a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret > these different forms of reasoning as > differential discursive practices, embedded in > different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, > etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point > for that journey. > > David > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *On > Behalf Of*Glassman, Michael > *Sent:*Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:*eXtended Mind, Culture, > Activity > > *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness > enters through the gate" (a Participation > Question) > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > Let me start by saying that this is completely > restricted to the way conscious awareness is > used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective > may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso > that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using > the idea of conscious awareness for a specific > purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous > concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based > initially in affective memory and they give > energy and motivation to many of our > activities. However we are not consciously > aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at > the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious > awareness of the concept of chess in my life, > why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to > make a social connection between me and my > friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using > Ribot when making this argument). We are > playing chess and I remember that my brother > showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific > concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point > in my life I have to think about it and > whether I want to use it. I must summon the > intellectual functions of memory and attention > as I think about the use of the bishop?s > gambit. This then is conscious awareness of > the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s > gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. > I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s > gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the > scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with > my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, > development!!!! > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious > awareness differently elsewhere. > > Michael > > *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > >*On > Behalf Of*Andy Blunden > *Sent:*Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:*xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness > enters through the gate" (a Participation > Question) > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa > and whoever to the scientific way that the > terms "conscious awareness" and > "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say > "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have > a system of concepts and associated word > meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with > "automatic and controlled processing" and > "ballistic processing" but so far as I am > aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's > vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I > am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is > the case. > > > > -- > > > IAngelus Novus > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and > objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and > passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to > exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the > theoretical?contradictions is possible only through > practical means, only through the practical?energy of > humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UDLXqNKChotxPqKt3KuFt7ZohSOuV45cbrng0blGdeR_zYamLIrW_l857v1oc1p2h-uuxg$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > . > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > . > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/e7817e8f/attachment-0001.html From lsmolucha@hotmail.com Sat Aug 15 23:41:28 2020 From: lsmolucha@hotmail.com (Larry Smolucha) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 06:41:28 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <695dad89-0050-4c89-a8fb-2a580ffb9437@marxists.org> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> , <695dad89-0050-4c89-a8fb-2a580ffb9437@marxists.org> Message-ID: >From Francine: Andy, Thank You for taking the time to explain your reading of Vygotsky from a Hegel/Marx perspective. Together with my husband Larry, I am just now completing a paper on Vygotsky for a volume on pioneers of psychology. I have come across sources that claim that Vygotsky's father was an admirer of Hegel and that Vygotsky would have been exposed to Hegel's ideas as he grew up. Now this doesn't mean that his understanding of Hegel was that of a Hegel scholar. However, it would suggest Vygotsky had taken an interest in dialectical thinking as it originated with Hegel prior to reading Marx. Also, while Vygotsky was sincere in using theoretical concepts from Marx, he also used concepts from non-Marxist sources. I would argue that to get a full understanding of Vygotsky's writings you cannot discount any of these sources whether Hegel, Marx, Freud, Ribot, Janet, Piaget, Buhler, Kohler, Lewin, oh and even Pavlov. Also at least for a time, Vygotsky felt the intellectual freedom to weave concepts from these different 'schools' of psychology into a unified theory. In The Mozart of Psychology, Stephen Toulmin quoted V. V. Ivanov as saying Vygotsky had opened the way to a unification of the biological and social sciences that had as great a significance as the deciphering of the genetic code (my paraphrasing). We can agree to disagree about this, but I think labeling Vygotsky as a Marxist, a Freudian, a Piagetian, a Gestaltist, is like putting a square peg into a round hole. ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 10:10 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Francine, you are completely right that Vygotsky's use of words is inconsistent and evolves over time. How should we deal with this? I don't believe there is any way to definitively settle disputes over the meaning of the various passages. Interpretation is inescapable. But my approach is this: Vygotsky saw himself as a Marxist and although, as I have argued, he had little direct knowledge of Hegel, he aligned himself with that wing of Marxism which was "Hegelian." I see this as evidenced by his change of opinion c. 1930 on the meaning of "true concept," in his frequent citation of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, and his allusions to Hegel, his declaration about Psychology needing its own Capital and in general I find this proves to be a satisfactory frame for interpretation of Vygotsky, inclusive of the fact that within the terms of this frame he sometimes makes mistakes. This approach is helped by having people like Ilyenkov who are careful about their use of words, and have read Hegel, etc., as assistants in reading Vygotsky. Plus you have to add what I have referred to as a "generous" reading of Vygotsky. Vygotsky is in the process of building the frame from which he can be read. But he is not building that frame alone. This approach obviously doesn't help everyone and will not definitively close any dispute about Vygotsky's meaning, but it is a valid approach and it works for me. So it is in that context that I say that "consciousness" is a very broad term for Marxists, inclusive of the totality of mental processes in an organism. The verb "to be conscious of" is a different concept, as is the adjective in "conscious awareness." These are distinctions which are far from being unique to Vygotsky. But I would generally look elsewhere in the same paradigm to get clues on their meaning, though sometimes it is necessary to look at contemporaneous usage among non-Marxist Psychologists. It's never simple. But not impossible. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 16/08/2020 12:10 pm, Larry Smolucha wrote: >From Francine: I don't usually enter into these philosophical debates on XMCA - but we have crossed each other's paths. There is no concordance to Vygotsky's writings (as we have for Freud's). As I recall there was an XMCA project to create a dictionary of Vygotsky's terminology. Simply to have a dictionary of Freud's terminology, would be of limited use without a concordance to track his use of the terms as his theory evolved. The same with Vygotsky. And there is theoretical continuity throughout Vygotsky's writings despite claims to the contrary. To understand Vygotsky's use of the word consciousness, it is necessary to look at Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology of Behavior (1925). Reading only the very last passage in Thinking and Speech, you could come to the erroneous conclusion that for Vygotsky any living being without language is not conscious (i.e. is unconscious). The problem here is that the word conscious has multiple meanings (usages). We can rule out the medical determination of a patient being conscious versus unconscious. I would argue that Vygotsky used the word consciousness to mean consciously directed functions (behavior, perception, thought, emotion, will, imagination, and memory). The proof is in the very quote that he used from Marx's Das Kapital of how the spider constructs a web by instinct, but the "architect raises the structure in his imagination before he erects it in reality." There is also an interesting lineage between Ribot and Janet's concept of the unconscious, that carried over into Freud's use of the term, and over to Vygotsky's and Luria's theory of the prefrontal cortex's role in consciously directed functions. In 1925, Vygotsky was thinking along the same lines as Freud's concept of consciousness as a function of the Ego. He even cited Freud's example of the Ego as a rider on a horse (the Id). There are other papers between 1925 and 1934, where Vygotsky discussed the problem of consciousness - but enough said for now. In regard to scientific concepts, I didn't think that Piaget thought scientific concepts were necessarily learned in school. Didn't he think that concrete and formal operations develop from activities involving natural objects in the world? Either independently or with peers? In regard to The Development of Scientific Concepts in Childhood (1986, p. 167) Vygotsky stated "Elsewhere we have already discussed the role played by functional interactions in mental development. . . mental development does not coincide with the development of separate psychological functions, but rather depends on changing relations between them . . . the development of the interfunctional system." Hence Vygotsky didn't take a reductionist approach to development of conscious awareness, as the result of thinking in terms of scientific concepts. Conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by scientific concepts but that doesn't mean it is the only gate. ________________________________ From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 6:06 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WjLzm7GVOGPsXSP-NNQHztSo0u10C1oeU0ws7g9YRgrPUV1NTTHHjGFC8oAkyVo52XV7Tw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/99e95f01/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Sun Aug 16 01:39:25 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 18:39:25 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> <695dad89-0050-4c89-a8fb-2a580ffb9437@marxists.org> Message-ID: <973a4e3f-a50f-49ab-50e1-c9bc5b22f35a@marxists.org> Thank you Francine. Vygotsky *did* read Plekhanov as a youth, and he also would have acquired good secondhand knowledge of Hegel from there, too. But whatever, Vygotsky was not like any other Marxist of his time, or hardly of any time. But still, a lens through which to read Vygotsky is of no use to you if that lens is as obscure as the object viewed. But the way Vygotsky *appropriated* the ideas of other people, non-Marxists, even Fascists, is by no means something unique to the omnivore Vygotsky. Critical Theory, a.k.a. the Frankfurt School, have always done this in a big way. It has been my beef with these people that they have ignored Vygotsky and instead used Freud and Piaget for their Psychology. But this is how I see Vygotsky working: he *appropriates* concepts from any source he can get his hands on, drawing them into his own conceptual frame. But I think he also has a kind of "home ground," which is informed by Marx. Engels, Lenin and Hegel, in roughly that order. He is not appropriating this conceptual frame but trying to build on it. But still. I am necessarily "relativist" on this question. Whatever makes sense for you. :) Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 16/08/2020 4:41 pm, Larry Smolucha wrote: > >From Francine: > > Andy, > > Thank You for taking the time to explain your reading of > Vygotsky from a Hegel/Marx perspective. > > Together with my husband Larry, I am just now completing a > paper on Vygotsky for a volume on pioneers of psychology. > > I have come across sources that claim that Vygotsky's > father was an admirer of Hegel and that Vygotsky would > have been exposed to Hegel's ideas as he grew up. Now this > doesn't > mean that his understanding of Hegel was that of a Hegel > scholar. However,? it would suggest Vygotsky had taken an > interest in dialectical thinking as it originated with > Hegel prior to reading Marx. > > Also, while Vygotsky was sincere in using theoretical > concepts from Marx, he also used concepts from non-Marxist > sources. I would argue that to get a full understanding of > Vygotsky's writings you cannot discount any of these > sources whether Hegel, Marx, Freud, > Ribot, Janet, Piaget, Buhler, Kohler, Lewin,? oh and even > Pavlov. Also at least for a time, Vygotsky felt the > intellectual freedom to weave concepts from these > different 'schools' of psychology into a unified theory. > > In/The Mozart of Psychology/, Stephen Toulmin quoted V. V. > Ivanov as saying Vygotsky had opened the way to a > unification of the biological and social sciences that had > as great a significance as the deciphering of the genetic > code (my paraphrasing). > > ?We can agree to disagree about this, but I think labeling > Vygotsky as a Marxist, a Freudian, a Piagetian, a > Gestaltist, is like putting a square peg into a round hole. > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > on behalf of Andy > Blunden > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 10:10 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters > through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > Francine, you are completely right that Vygotsky's use of > words is inconsistent and evolves over time. > > How should we deal with this? > > I don't believe there is any way to definitively settle > disputes over the meaning of the various passages. > Interpretation is inescapable. But my approach is this: > > Vygotsky saw himself as a Marxist and although, as I have > argued, he had little direct knowledge of Hegel, he > aligned himself with that wing of Marxism which was > "Hegelian." I see this as evidenced by his change of > opinion c. 1930 on the meaning of "true concept," in his > frequent citation of Lenin's /Philosophical Notebooks/, > and his allusions to Hegel, his declaration about > Psychology needing its own /Capital/ and in general I find > this proves to be a satisfactory frame for interpretation > of Vygotsky, inclusive of the fact that within the terms > of this frame he sometimes makes mistakes. > > This approach is helped by having people like Ilyenkov who > /are/ careful about their use of words, and /have/ read > Hegel, etc., as assistants in reading Vygotsky. Plus you > have to add what I have referred to as a "generous" > reading of Vygotsky. Vygotsky is in the process of > building the frame from which he can be read. But he is > not building that frame alone. > > This approach obviously doesn't help everyone and will not > definitively close any dispute about Vygotsky's meaning, > but it /is/ a valid approach and it works for me. > > So it is in that context that I say that "consciousness" > is a very broad term for Marxists, inclusive of the > totality of mental processes in an organism. The verb "to > be conscious /of/" is a different concept, as is the > adjective in "/conscious/ awareness." These are > distinctions which are far from being unique to Vygotsky. > But I would generally look elsewhere in the same paradigm > to get clues on their meaning, though sometimes it is > necessary to look at contemporaneous usage among > non-Marxist Psychologists. > > It's never simple. But not impossible. > > Andy > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 16/08/2020 12:10 pm, Larry Smolucha wrote: >> >From Francine: >> >> I don't usually enter into these philosophical debates on >> XMCA - but we have crossed each other's paths. >> >> There is no concordance to Vygotsky's writings (as we >> have for Freud's). >> As I recall there was an XMCA project to create a >> dictionary of Vygotsky's terminology. >> Simply to have a dictionary of Freud's terminology, would >> be of limited use without a concordance to track his use >> of the terms as his theory evolved. >> The same with Vygotsky. >> >> And*there is theoretical continuity throughout Vygotsky's >> writings* despite claims to the contrary. To understand >> Vygotsky's use of the word consciousness, it is necessary >> to look at /Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology >> of Behavior/ (1925). >> Reading /only/ the very last passage in /Thinking and >> Speech/, you could come to the */erroneous/* conclusion >> that for Vygotsky any/living being /without language is >> not conscious (i.e. is unconscious). >> >> The problem here is that the word /conscious/ has >> multiple meanings (usages). >> We can rule out the medical determination of a patient >> being conscious versus unconscious. >> >> I would argue that Vygotsky used the word consciousness >> to mean consciously directed >> functions (behavior, perception, thought, emotion, will, >> imagination, and memory). >> >> The proof is in the very quote that he used from Marx's >> /Das Kapital/ of how the spider constructs a web by >> instinct, but the "architect raises the structure in his >> imagination before he erects it in reality." >> >> There is also an interesting lineage between Ribot and >> Janet's concept of /the unconscious/, that carried over >> into Freud's use of the term, and over to Vygotsky's and >> Luria's theory of the prefrontal cortex's role in >> consciously directed /functions/. In 1925, Vygotsky was >> thinking along the same lines as Freud's concept of >> /consciousness/ as a /function/ of the Ego. He even cited >> Freud's example of the Ego as a rider on a horse (the Id). >> >> There are other papers between 1925 and 1934, where >> Vygotsky discussed /the problem of consciousness/ - but >> enough said for now. >> >> In regard to scientific concepts, I didn't think that >> Piaget thought scientific concepts were necessarily >> learned in school. Didn't he think that concrete and >> formal operations develop from activities involving >> /natural/ objects in the world? Either independently or >> with peers? >> >> In regard to The Development of Scientific Concepts in >> Childhood (1986, p. 167) Vygotsky stated "Elsewhere we >> have already discussed the role played by functional >> interactions in mental development. . . mental >> development does not coincide with the development of >> separate psychological functions, but rather depends on >> changing relations between them ? .? . . the development >> of the interfunctional system." >> >> Hence Vygotsky didn't take a reductionist approach to >> development of conscious awareness, as the result of >> thinking in terms of scientific concepts. Conscious >> awareness enters through the gate opened up by scientific >> concepts but /that doesn't mean it is the only/ /gate/. >> >> >> __ >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> >> on behalf of >> mike cole >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 6:06 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters >> through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> I was not being ironic, David >> If scientific concepts are required for conscious >> awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to >> respond to) and people who >> have not been to school do not acquire?Piagetian concepts >> related to formal operations (for example) or other >> measure of "thinking in >> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have >> not achieved conscious awareness. >> >> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that >> they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I >> think the use of the term. >> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his >> data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same >> monograph as his work on syllogisms, >> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced >> various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) >> forms of life as evidence for >> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am >> not sure." >> >> mike >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner >> > wrote: >> >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on >> August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple >> of paragraphs from /Thinking and Speech/. >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from/Thinking and >> Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means to >> acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. >> At the chess board, to see differently is to play >> differently. By generalizing the process of activity >> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships >> with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process >> has been isolated from the general activity of >> consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I >> remember. I make my own remembering the object of >> consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain >> sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood >> as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> /Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the >> generalization or abstraction of the mental >> processes, which leads to their mastery/. Instruction >> has a decisive role in this process. Scientific >> concepts have a unique relationship to the object. >> This relationship is mediated through other concepts >> that themselves have an internal hierarchical system >> of interrelationships. It is apparently in this >> domain of the scientific concept that conscious >> awareness of concepts or the generalization and >> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And >> once a new structure of generalization has arisen in >> one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? >> be transferred without training to all remaining >> domains of concepts and thought. Thus,/conscious >> awareness enters through the gate opened up by the >> scientific concept/." >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not >> achieved scientific/real concepts do not have >> conscious awareness. >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> > > *On Behalf >> Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> > > >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters >> through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> David, >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, >> or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for >> example) lack conscious awareness of the world they >> live in? >> >> Puzzled... >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner >> > wrote: >> >> Andy, >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or >> merging of both the scientific and spontaneous >> path,? speaks to their complementarity, making >> them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I >> referred to in my post. >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, since >> according to Mike?s interpretation of a >> Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days >> ago, ?humans who have not achieved >> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >> awareness.? >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do >> question is the coherence of the interpretive >> frames that have evolved from his work. As >> Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the >> writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases >> and ideas less as truths and more to move his >> narrative forward.? What I always wonder in >> eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we >> discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical >> backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as >> to make the possibility of resolution illusory. >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> > >*On >> Behalf Of*Andy Blunden >> *Sent:*Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> *To:*xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >> enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific >> concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to >> mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is >> entirely, as you say,/developmental/, and it is >> not a categorisation either (as in putting things >> into boxes), and nothing to do with >> "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to >> the path of development that begins with an >> abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired >> through instruction in some more or less formal >> institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the >> path of development which begins with everyday >> experience, closely connected with immediate >> sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., >> it begins from the concrete, whereas the >> "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or >> merging of both the scientific and spontaneous >> path. For example (1) everyday life is full of >> ideas which have their source in institutions, >> but have made their way out of the institutional >> context into everyday life. On the other hand, >> for example (2) any scientific concept worth its >> salt has made its way out of the classroom and >> become connected with practice, like the >> book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent >> 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. >> But here's the thing: when you're reading a great >> thinker and what they're saying seems silly, >> trying reading it more generously, because >> there's probably a reason this writer has gained >> the reputation of being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous >> distinction between types of concepts has >> always struck me as such an unfortunate >> solution to the problem of differential >> sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m >> sure this problem must have deep roots in >> classical and contemporary philosophy, even >> as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s >> Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical >> core amounts to a dichotomous view of two >> types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, >> automatic, nonconscious, effortless, >> contextualized, error-prone, and type >> 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, >> effortful, decontextualized, normatively >> correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What >> externalizing this distinction as different >> kinds of cognitive products (this or that >> kind of concept) seems to do is >> distract/detract from the sociogenetic >> character of development. Surely, a >> sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret >> these different forms of reasoning as >> differential discursive practices, embedded >> in different cultural contexts (Scribner, >> Cole, etc.). But talking about different >> kinds of concepts seems like the wrong >> departure point for that journey. >> >> David >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *On >> Behalf Of*Glassman, Michael >> *Sent:*Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> *To:*eXtended Mind, Culture, >> Activity >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >> enters through the gate" (a Participation >> Question) >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> Let me start by saying that this is >> completely restricted to the way conscious >> awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If >> it is use differently in other places this >> perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with >> the proviso that my mind if often wrong) >> Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious >> awareness for a specific purpose. To >> differentiate the role of spontaneous >> concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. >> Spontaneous concepts are based initially in >> affective memory and they give energy and >> motivation to many of our activities. However >> we are not consciously aware of them. To go >> back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend >> comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I >> have no conscious awareness of the concept of >> chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why >> it may be a way to make a social connection >> between me and my friend. It is residue of my >> affective memory (I don?t know how much >> Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this >> argument). We are playing chess and I >> remember that my brother showed me the >> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the >> bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I >> have to think about it and whether I want to >> use it. I must summon the intellectual >> functions of memory and attention as I think >> about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This >> then is conscious awareness of the scientific >> concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win >> the game and I applaud myself. I got home and >> tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was >> great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific >> concept of the bishop?s gambit with my >> everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, >> development!!!! >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious >> awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> Michael >> >> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> > >*On >> Behalf Of*Andy Blunden >> *Sent:*Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> *To:*xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> >> *Subject:*[Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >> enters through the gate" (a Participation >> Question) >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa >> and whoever to the scientific way that the >> terms "conscious awareness" and >> "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say >> "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we >> have a system of concepts and associated word >> meanings which have, if you like, >> conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong >> with "automatic and controlled processing" >> and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am >> aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's >> vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I >> am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this >> is the case. >> >> >> >> -- >> >> >> IAngelus Novus >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and >> objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and >> passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to >> exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the >> theoretical?contradictions is possible only through >> practical means, only through the practical?energy of >> humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TySJ-CxmgfFoj_mur5IhV-TSxy3upeeMPaBzab8eJQQQlD5JKyZLtn1wfzUbDDmvKNxdjQ$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> . >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> . >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/ce808853/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Sun Aug 16 02:10:59 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 09:10:59 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!T1B2dqo-0q9gningraUOlR41fKHhONREbdQGIcmQ9Q0SjaeiNjIqs32ouwV5oySN0Z3sCA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/d6b44b85/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ~WRD0000.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: ~WRD0000.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/d6b44b85/attachment.jpg From dkellogg60@gmail.com Sun Aug 16 03:00:21 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 19:00:21 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Michael-- Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WC2B2d3sHzBVQzHe3_Gk-N5cH4sDTZXudPEFrikW3AbMDxvPNWZML6XSytkIU2nP5psr4Q$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WC2B2d3sHzBVQzHe3_Gk-N5cH4sDTZXudPEFrikW3AbMDxvPNWZML6XSytkIU2mAEEqXaA$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have > alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater > during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple > times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not > a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really > are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better > actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems > the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural > revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both > Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that > promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to > Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship > to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking > about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. > > > > A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and > over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things > done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is > mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The > problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems > based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different > best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people > brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these > affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use > these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our > other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I > should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social > concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. > They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our > feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday > perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring > them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities > using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring > the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. > > > > Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I > would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You > have to read the texts and figure it out. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the > passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing > consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. > (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle > childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he > is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages > (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point > is made more clearly: > > > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you > exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention > is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness > is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying > the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that > I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be > just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act > of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of > consciousness? > > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to > develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations > have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains > something similar to what occurs in the development of the external > perception and observation in the transition from infancy to > early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external > perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child > from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, > verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on > the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to > speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own > mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the > subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they > are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not > aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." > Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be > unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their > objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of > awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of > concepts]." > > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at > each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world > and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room > but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive > everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures > against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in > early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, > just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There > is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. > In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. > Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, > a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that > non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree > with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in > systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect > as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > > > Stay safe, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: > > > > I was not being ironic, David > > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified > in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to > formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved > conscious awareness. > > > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable > of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on > self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on > syllogisms, > > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of > involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > > > mike > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony > asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and > Speech*. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are > claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of > the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the > scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making > them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s > interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans > who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious > awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence > of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael > observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] > used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative > forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the > issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our > conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution > illusory. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical > means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WC2B2d3sHzBVQzHe3_Gk-N5cH4sDTZXudPEFrikW3AbMDxvPNWZML6XSytkIU2nJWaw0LA$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/bcbc4d4c/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ~WRD0000.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/bcbc4d4c/attachment.jpg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Komsomalka.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 103822 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/bcbc4d4c/attachment-0001.jpg From glassman.13@osu.edu Sun Aug 16 05:08:15 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2020 12:08:15 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Hi David, Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RdVWuP9u9-3hWJSYMhhuB5owrAZFN_ZYXMcmSJVa0ftrCUqWGyESl4q6KOaqQY-VVB7XKQ$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RdVWuP9u9-3hWJSYMhhuB5owrAZFN_ZYXMcmSJVa0ftrCUqWGyESl4q6KOaqQY87B2F4EQ$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RdVWuP9u9-3hWJSYMhhuB5owrAZFN_ZYXMcmSJVa0ftrCUqWGyESl4q6KOaqQY8tT-JPEA$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/ddb15dcb/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200816/ddb15dcb/attachment.jpg From dkellogg60@gmail.com Mon Aug 17 01:44:35 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 17:44:35 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Michael-- There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints available. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!X-sPHj2yRj7CruRKtdoJzuSguNRxxRa07dqeIoZ9GHqxdbAkzGcN-Ue9sxFcWs3BnshQdA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!X-sPHj2yRj7CruRKtdoJzuSguNRxxRa07dqeIoZ9GHqxdbAkzGcN-Ue9sxFcWs0U-run5w$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > Hi David, > > > > Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might > think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig > came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they > were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great > opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a > great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to > that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian > playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small > production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he > was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a > symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other > words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the > actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be > portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. > Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions > in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as > most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young > age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an > international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for > Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and > Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings > on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down > distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no > way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if > there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at > theater. > > > > As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be > right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a > number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with > it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to > Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state > policy. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in > 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career > the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the > world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every > Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his > sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka > (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise > she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting > AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the > Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same > thing. > > > > In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, > there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences > us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage > and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat > Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was > the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to > turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. > He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, > but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) > was gritty and grimey. > > > > I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the > original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging > of the original 1912 production. Do you know? > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!X-sPHj2yRj7CruRKtdoJzuSguNRxxRa07dqeIoZ9GHqxdbAkzGcN-Ue9sxFcWs3_bByEMg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!X-sPHj2yRj7CruRKtdoJzuSguNRxxRa07dqeIoZ9GHqxdbAkzGcN-Ue9sxFcWs0U-run5w$ > > > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have > alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater > during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple > times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not > a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really > are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better > actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems > the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural > revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both > Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that > promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to > Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship > to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking > about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. > > > > A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and > over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things > done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is > mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The > problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems > based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different > best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people > brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these > affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use > these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our > other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I > should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social > concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. > They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our > feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday > perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring > them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities > using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring > the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. > > > > Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I > would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You > have to read the texts and figure it out. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the > passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing > consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. > (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle > childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he > is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages > (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point > is made more clearly: > > > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you > exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention > is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness > is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying > the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that > I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be > just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act > of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of > consciousness? > > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to > develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations > have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains > something similar to what occurs in the development of the external > perception and observation in the transition from infancy to > early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external > perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child > from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, > verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on > the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to > speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own > mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the > subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they > are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not > aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." > Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be > unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their > objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of > awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of > concepts]." > > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at > each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world > and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room > but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive > everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures > against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in > early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, > just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There > is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. > In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. > Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, > a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that > non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree > with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in > systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect > as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > > > Stay safe, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: > > > > I was not being ironic, David > > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified > in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to > formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved > conscious awareness. > > > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable > of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on > self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on > syllogisms, > > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of > involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > > > mike > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony > asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and > Speech*. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are > claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of > the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the > scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making > them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s > interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans > who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious > awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence > of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael > observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] > used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative > forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the > issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our > conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution > illusory. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical > means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!X-sPHj2yRj7CruRKtdoJzuSguNRxxRa07dqeIoZ9GHqxdbAkzGcN-Ue9sxFcWs39Jami4g$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/15d00362/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/15d00362/attachment.jpg From glassman.13@osu.edu Mon Aug 17 06:11:07 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 13:11:07 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: Hi David, I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints available. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!RHA4p6Fg-mL0SmLL6T2PGfLEirGPnFkQNrTuM-Grv1o3A8_xGtXc9pTRE1wCPSdutSPTcg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RHA4p6Fg-mL0SmLL6T2PGfLEirGPnFkQNrTuM-Grv1o3A8_xGtXc9pTRE1wCPSct4wRr4Q$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi David, Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RHA4p6Fg-mL0SmLL6T2PGfLEirGPnFkQNrTuM-Grv1o3A8_xGtXc9pTRE1wCPSd-Sgx0Gg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RHA4p6Fg-mL0SmLL6T2PGfLEirGPnFkQNrTuM-Grv1o3A8_xGtXc9pTRE1wCPSct4wRr4Q$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RHA4p6Fg-mL0SmLL6T2PGfLEirGPnFkQNrTuM-Grv1o3A8_xGtXc9pTRE1wCPSdaSn1-Qg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/24d83b4b/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/24d83b4b/attachment.jpg From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Mon Aug 17 09:54:07 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 12:54:07 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Huw, David, and Andy videos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: John, that is very nice to hear. Thank you. I had no specific intentions when I started sharing videos, and I'm happy that some of this material is useful to others. It's been very interesting on my end as well. Thanks again, Anthony On Friday, August 14, 2020, John Cripps Clark < john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au> wrote: > Thank you, Anthony > > > > For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, > and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, > have found them illuminating. > > > > John > > > > *From: * on behalf of Anthony Barra < > anthonymbarra@gmail.com> > *Reply-To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > *Date: *Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am > *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > *Subject: *[Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos > > > > Good afternoon, > > > > Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage > (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from > David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. > > - "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" > (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!XW68Alj60Kvc1CCW49r6W8pnLRCuJScvSUjDtHWtUkRudjeGhCBLV7wSUEW8wVhZQ3ILeQ$ > - "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!XW68Alj60Kvc1CCW49r6W8pnLRCuJScvSUjDtHWtUkRudjeGhCBLV7wSUEW8wVgSuDu5Hg$ > - "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!XW68Alj60Kvc1CCW49r6W8pnLRCuJScvSUjDtHWtUkRudjeGhCBLV7wSUEW8wVijFiXCZg$ > > And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of > Vygotsky and parenting. > > - "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!XW68Alj60Kvc1CCW49r6W8pnLRCuJScvSUjDtHWtUkRudjeGhCBLV7wSUEW8wViIJJWohg$ > > Sincerely, > > > > Anthony Barra > > > > > > > > * Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the > named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or > storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this > email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise > the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin University does not warrant > that this email and any attachments are error or virus free.* > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/7177af67/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Mon Aug 17 15:44:24 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 07:44:24 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4ukrPPgQg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4ut7JrDdw$ On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael wrote: > Hi David, > > > > I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It > just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I > have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from > Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an > interesting read. > > > > As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot > (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived > experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in > his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to > make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was > disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching > a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one > episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, > emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks > he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did > the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox > in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this > paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to > do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window > into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts > (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was > the same word). > > > > I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. > I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you > could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner > speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The > similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work > was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early > as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his > editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about > Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski > seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a > psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to > three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that > Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my > original query. But there are so many similarities between those early > chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of > Thinking and Speech. > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he > might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps > the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of > Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I > think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque > Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. > > > > Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). > > > > Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: > Greenwood. > > > > I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It > Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is > hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre > production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you > are talking about. > > > > Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families > were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs > were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite > displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew > was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? > > > > (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than > Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against > Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, > because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only > inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense > of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, > when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of > Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of > 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really > require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal > thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, > and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using > in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that > Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to > write about it and the other tries to write it.) > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > > Some free e-prints available. > > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4ukrPPgQg$ > > > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4ut7JrDdw$ > > > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might > think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig > came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they > were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great > opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a > great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to > that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian > playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small > production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he > was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a > symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other > words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the > actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be > portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. > Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions > in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as > most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young > age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an > international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for > Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and > Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings > on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down > distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no > way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if > there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at > theater. > > > > As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be > right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a > number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with > it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to > Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state > policy. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in > 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career > the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the > world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every > Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his > sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka > (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise > she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting > AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the > Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same > thing. > > > > In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, > there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences > us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage > and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat > Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was > the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to > turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. > He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, > but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) > was gritty and grimey. > > > > I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the > original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging > of the original 1912 production. Do you know? > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4t42CUSQA$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4ut7JrDdw$ > > > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have > alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater > during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple > times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not > a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really > are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better > actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems > the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural > revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both > Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that > promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to > Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship > to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking > about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. > > > > A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and > over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things > done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is > mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The > problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems > based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different > best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people > brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these > affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use > these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our > other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I > should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social > concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. > They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our > feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday > perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring > them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities > using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring > the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. > > > > Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I > would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You > have to read the texts and figure it out. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the > passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing > consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. > (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle > childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he > is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages > (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point > is made more clearly: > > > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you > exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention > is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness > is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying > the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that > I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be > just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act > of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of > consciousness? > > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to > develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations > have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains > something similar to what occurs in the development of the external > perception and observation in the transition from infancy to > early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external > perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child > from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, > verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on > the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to > speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own > mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the > subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they > are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not > aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." > Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be > unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their > objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of > awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of > concepts]." > > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at > each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world > and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room > but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive > everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures > against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in > early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, > just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There > is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. > In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. > Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, > a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that > non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree > with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in > systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect > as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > > > Stay safe, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: > > > > I was not being ironic, David > > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified > in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to > formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved > conscious awareness. > > > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable > of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on > self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on > syllogisms, > > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of > involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > > > mike > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony > asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and > Speech*. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are > claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of > the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the > scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making > them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s > interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans > who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious > awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence > of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael > observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] > used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative > forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the > issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our > conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution > illusory. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical > means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!W8PZ43eu4LC1xSAffVdIDqmaRIq4PDLOb-P4KTvfV_DUJXqxOtYGf2tEuR4oh4uUfUE_KQ$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/6d45b850/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/6d45b850/attachment-0001.jpg From hshonerd@gmail.com Mon Aug 17 16:16:44 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 17:16:44 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: <9818285E-48E8-4522-8EBA-9E0F3615EDDE@gmail.com> David, When I was about 13, I went to a Kabuki theater piece in Tokyo. My dad was in the Navy in Yokosuka (close to Tokyo) in 1956-57, and the family was with him. I didn?t have the slightest idea what was going on. It certainly wasn?t romantic to me, but I doubt it was anti-romantic to the Japanese. Maybe I could ?get it? now, but I doubt it. I wonder if most Japanese now would ?get it?. Is this an interesting question for cultural psychology and Vygotsky? Henry > On Aug 17, 2020, at 4:44 PM, David Kellogg wrote: > > I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. > > So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). > > Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). > > I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXLptBUCTg$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXK-7ZVk0w$ > > > On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > Hi David, > > > > I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. > > > > As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). > > > > I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. > > > > Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg > Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). > > > > Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. > > > > I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. > > > > Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? > > > > (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > Some free e-prints available. > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXLptBUCTg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXK-7ZVk0w$ > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. > > > > As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg > Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. > > > > In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. > > > > I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXIJFB91dQ$ > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXK-7ZVk0w$ > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. > > > > A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. > > > > Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer > Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: > > > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? > > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." > > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > > > Stay safe, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: > > > > I was not being ironic, David > > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. > > > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, > > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > > > mike > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. > > > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer > Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I The Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UoEVGPw-NlwGJ1uFJ4Fi-95Ax8XIgfPeP_rAxOQDskoq-IkE0tbzT7SagL-1mXLYHbOGmA$ > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/fe76f42f/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Mon Aug 17 16:24:06 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 23:24:06 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: David, You completely lost me. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLAiLcgWVg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLBzBHZlJw$ On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi David, I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints available. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLAiLcgWVg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLBzBHZlJw$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi David, Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLB3LAAuOQ$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLBzBHZlJw$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- I[Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus]The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!SlwHKoYinZqVrqmnC6dHuMUSCoYc_lOJvFahMwobICutfA300sF3iSb4uG4mXLDQdWLV0Q$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/c0884371/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: image001.jpg Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/c0884371/attachment.jpg From dkellogg60@gmail.com Mon Aug 17 16:51:36 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 08:51:36 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfrVE7ftQA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfo9s_ZqtA$ On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael wrote: > David, > > > > You completely lost me. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, > Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The > Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, > eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and > it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. > > > > So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It > belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where > he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) > and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent > with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by > the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he > means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and > imitation). > > > > Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of > psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your > comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a > propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the > actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have > to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that > emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific > character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was > convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that > eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in > Hollywood). > > > > I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing > ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But > I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we > don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate > what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained > to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It > is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our > current opinions with Vygotsky's. > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfrVE7ftQA$ > > > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfo9s_ZqtA$ > > > > > > > On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It > just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I > have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from > Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an > interesting read. > > > > As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot > (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived > experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in > his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to > make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was > disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching > a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one > episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, > emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks > he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did > the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox > in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this > paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to > do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window > into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts > (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was > the same word). > > > > I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. > I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you > could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner > speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The > similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work > was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early > as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his > editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about > Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski > seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a > psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to > three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that > Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my > original query. But there are so many similarities between those early > chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of > Thinking and Speech. > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he > might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps > the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of > Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I > think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque > Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. > > > > Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). > > > > Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: > Greenwood. > > > > I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It > Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is > hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre > production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you > are talking about. > > > > Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families > were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs > were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite > displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew > was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? > > > > (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than > Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against > Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, > because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only > inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense > of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, > when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of > Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of > 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really > require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal > thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, > and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using > in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that > Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to > write about it and the other tries to write it.) > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > > Some free e-prints available. > > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfrVE7ftQA$ > > > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfo9s_ZqtA$ > > > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might > think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig > came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they > were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great > opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a > great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to > that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian > playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small > production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he > was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a > symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other > words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the > actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be > portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. > Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions > in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as > most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young > age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an > international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for > Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and > Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings > on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down > distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no > way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if > there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at > theater. > > > > As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be > right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a > number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with > it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to > Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state > policy. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *David Kellogg > *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in > 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career > the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the > world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every > Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his > sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka > (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise > she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting > AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the > Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same > thing. > > > > In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, > there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences > us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage > and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat > Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was > the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to > turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. > He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, > but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) > was gritty and grimey. > > > > I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the > original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging > of the original 1912 production. Do you know? > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfpo1TeNZQ$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume > One: Foundations of Pedology*" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfo9s_ZqtA$ > > > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have > alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater > during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple > times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not > a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really > are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better > actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems > the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural > revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both > Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that > promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to > Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship > to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking > about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. > > > > A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and > over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things > done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is > mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The > problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems > based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different > best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people > brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these > affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use > these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our > other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I > should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social > concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. > They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our > feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday > perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring > them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities > using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring > the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. > > > > Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I > would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You > have to read the texts and figure it out. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the > passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing > consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. > (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle > childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he > is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages > (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point > is made more clearly: > > > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you > exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention > is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness > is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying > the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that > I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be > just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act > of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of > consciousness? > > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to > develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations > have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains > something similar to what occurs in the development of the external > perception and observation in the transition from infancy to > early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external > perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child > from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, > verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on > the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to > speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own > mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the > subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they > are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not > aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." > Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be > unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their > objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of > awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of > concepts]." > > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at > each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world > and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room > but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive > everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures > against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in > early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, > just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There > is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. > In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. > Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, > a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that > non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree > with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in > systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect > as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > > > Stay safe, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: > > > > I was not being ironic, David > > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified > in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to > formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved > conscious awareness. > > > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable > of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on > self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on > syllogisms, > > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of > involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > > > mike > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony > asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and > Speech*. > > > > *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, pp. > 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials > for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to > play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire > the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if > this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. > I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the > object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any > generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious > awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or > abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. > Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a > unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through > other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of > interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific > concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and > mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of > generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any > structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of > concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate > opened up by the scientific concept*." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved > scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Martin Packer > *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are > claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of > the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the > scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making > them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s > interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans > who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious > awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence > of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael > observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] > used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative > forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the > issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our > conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution > illusory. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood > nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as > you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in > putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." > "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an > abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some > more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path > of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected > with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins > from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific > and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which > have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the > institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example > (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the > classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the > medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: > when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, > trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this > writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > ------------------------------ > > *Andy Blunden* > Hegel for Social Movements > > Home Page > > > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts > has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of > differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem > must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it > is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its > ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: > type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, > contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, > cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & > Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of > cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is > distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a > sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning > as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural > contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of > concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael > *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way > conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use > differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with > the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of > conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of > spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts > are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation > to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To > go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says > ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess > in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social > connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory > (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). > We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the > non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in > my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must > summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about > the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the > scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I > applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was > great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit > with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu *On > Behalf Of *Andy Blunden > *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a > Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific > way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in > CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of > concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional > meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" > and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in > Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be > rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical > means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XgGKXuGHbf-4OH_o5GvbFeTXs47ccHePHKYFG8MHBzAxxDUiIJk2_bjxgY7zjfp9-6c9qQ$ > > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu > > . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu > > . > > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/eec19fd2/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/eec19fd2/attachment.jpg From hshonerd@gmail.com Mon Aug 17 18:18:29 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 19:18:29 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> David, I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a grammar, is a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture may have its own grammar. I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is in some sense staged. Henry > On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg wrote: > > There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." > > Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. > > Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). > > A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. > > If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. > > (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCr4jdJ_0g$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCpLBVVZ7w$ > > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > David, > > > > You completely lost me. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg > Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. > > > > So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). > > > > Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). > > > > I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > > > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCr4jdJ_0g$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCpLBVVZ7w$ > > > > > On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. > > > > As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). > > > > I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. > > > > Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg > Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). > > > > Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. > > > > I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. > > > > Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? > > > > (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > Some free e-prints available. > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCr4jdJ_0g$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCpLBVVZ7w$ > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. > > > > As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg > Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Michael-- > > > > Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. > > > > In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. > > > > I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? > > > > David Kellogg > > Sangmyung University > > > > New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. > > Outlines, Spring 2020 > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rColPCaSKQ$ > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCpLBVVZ7w$ > > > > > > On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > > A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. > > > > A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. > > > > Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer > Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Hi Mike, > > > > Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." > > > > As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: > > > > 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? > > > > 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." > > > > 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? > > > > 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." > > > > In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: > > > > "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) > > > > Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. > > > > Stay safe, > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: > > > > I was not being ironic, David > > If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who > > have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in > > scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. > > > > LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. > > "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, > > classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for > > what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." > > > > mike > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: > > Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. > > > > Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: > > "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. > > > > Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." > > > > Mike?s reply, in total was: > > > > I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. > > > > What am I missing? > > Mike > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer > Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > David, > > > > Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? > > > > Puzzled... > > > > Martin > > > > > > > > On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: > > > > Andy, > > > > That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. > > But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? > > > > I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. > > Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. > > I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. > > Andy > > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: > > Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. > > > > Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. > > > > David > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, > > > > Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! > > > > I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. > > > > Michael > > > > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden > Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) > > > > Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > I The Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!TZIC7RQSH9c3tTrVOjJn7Qamvwxjr-jo2oJBJP-VukNVyCHt1gl4fzc7Um0_rCrY50yewg$ > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . > > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200817/f46c7b93/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Tue Aug 18 15:46:42 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 07:46:42 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Henry: As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more often than not. We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic processes instead. b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative and cannot account for development. c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIMxdHi6w$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIh1AzN2g$ On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD wrote: > David, > I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do > with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls > Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a* grammar*, is a structured inventory > of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic > coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that > definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been > trying to explain to Michael G? > > And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be > honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents > told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have > remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first > paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical > grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw > massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture > may have its own grammar. > > I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use > and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the > user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the > analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have > had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about > improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, > though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of > common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in > the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? > that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this > paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units > > I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and > discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is > in some sense staged. > > Henry > > > On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg wrote: > > There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and > Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province > of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in > which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent > the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor > through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's > Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of > Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. > Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To > the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To > the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." > > Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment > rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long > as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both > communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what > you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and > Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply > feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn > from it and whether it will help or harm them. > > Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a > showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or > which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off > topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic > Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I > have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read > the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, > or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have > failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). > > A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me > once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only > report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at > that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can > actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that > divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, > I said it couldn't. > > If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional > subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their > external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner > subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely > predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. > > (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIMxdHi6w$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIh1AzN2g$ > > > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > >> David, >> >> >> >> You completely lost me. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, >> Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The >> Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, >> eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and >> it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >> >> >> >> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It >> belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where >> he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) >> and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent >> with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by >> the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he >> means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and >> imitation). >> >> >> >> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of >> psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your >> comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a >> propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the >> actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have >> to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that >> emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific >> character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was >> convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that >> eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in >> Hollywood). >> >> >> >> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing >> ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But >> I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we >> don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate >> what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained >> to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It >> is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our >> current opinions with Vygotsky's. >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIMxdHi6w$ >> >> >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIh1AzN2g$ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It >> just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I >> have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from >> Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an >> interesting read. >> >> >> >> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot >> (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived >> experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in >> his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to >> make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was >> disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching >> a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one >> episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, >> emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks >> he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did >> the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox >> in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this >> paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to >> do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window >> into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts >> (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was >> the same word). >> >> >> >> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner >> speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I >> think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of >> inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The >> similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work >> was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early >> as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his >> editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about >> Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski >> seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a >> psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to >> three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that >> Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my >> original query. But there are so many similarities between those early >> chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of >> Thinking and Speech. >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he >> might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps >> the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of >> Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I >> think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque >> Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >> >> >> >> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >> >> >> >> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: >> Greenwood. >> >> >> >> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It >> Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is >> hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre >> production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you >> are talking about. >> >> >> >> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families >> were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs >> were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite >> displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew >> was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >> >> >> >> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than >> Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against >> Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, >> because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only >> inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense >> of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, >> when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of >> Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of >> 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really >> require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal >> thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, >> and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using >> in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that >> Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to >> write about it and the other tries to write it.) >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints available. >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIMxdHi6w$ >> >> >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological >> Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIh1AzN2g$ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might >> think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig >> came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they >> were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great >> opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a >> great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to >> that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian >> playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small >> production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he >> was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a >> symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other >> words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the >> actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be >> portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. >> Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions >> in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as >> most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young >> age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an >> international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for >> Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and >> Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings >> on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down >> distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no >> way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if >> there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at >> theater. >> >> >> >> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be >> right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a >> number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with >> it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to >> Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state >> policy. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >> *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in >> 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career >> the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the >> world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every >> Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his >> sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka >> (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise >> she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting >> AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the >> Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same >> thing. >> >> >> >> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first >> time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still >> influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier >> production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. >> Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage >> director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually >> wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character >> except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly >> abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual >> production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >> >> >> >> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the >> original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging >> of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >> >> Outlines, Spring 2020 >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIhsmKiMQ$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume >> One: Foundations of Pedology*" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJIh1AzN2g$ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I >> have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on >> theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across >> multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is >> probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people >> as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can >> become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist >> system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the >> cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, >> who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions >> that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent >> to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in >> relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when >> thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >> >> >> >> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think >> and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get >> things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech >> is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. >> The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual >> systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five >> different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what >> people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these >> affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use >> these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our >> other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I >> should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social >> concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. >> They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our >> feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday >> perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring >> them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities >> using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring >> the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >> >> >> >> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I >> would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You >> have to read the texts and figure it out. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Mike, >> >> >> >> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the >> passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing >> consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. >> (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle >> childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he >> is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >> >> >> >> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other >> passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think >> the point is made more clearly: >> >> >> >> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you >> exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention >> is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness >> is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying >> the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that >> I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be >> just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act >> of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of >> consciousness? >> >> >> >> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to >> develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations >> have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains >> something similar to what occurs in the development of the external >> perception and observation in the transition from infancy to >> early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external >> perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child >> from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, >> verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on >> the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to >> speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own >> mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the >> subjectivity of my own consciousness." >> >> >> >> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that >> they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are >> not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of >> "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be >> unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their >> objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >> >> >> >> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of >> awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of >> concepts]." >> >> >> >> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that >> at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world >> and of their own psychological processes. For example: >> >> >> >> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room >> but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive >> everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures >> against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in >> early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, >> just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There >> is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. >> In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. >> Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, >> a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >> >> >> >> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that >> non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree >> with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in >> systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect >> as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >> >> >> >> Stay safe, >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: >> >> >> >> I was not being ironic, David >> >> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified >> in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >> >> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to >> formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >> >> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved >> conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable >> of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >> >> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on >> self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on >> syllogisms, >> >> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of >> involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >> >> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >> >> >> >> mike >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony >> asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and >> Speech*. >> >> >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials >> for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to >> play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire >> the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if >> this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. >> I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the >> object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious >> awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> >> >> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate >> opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved >> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> David, >> >> >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are >> claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of >> the world they live in? >> >> >> >> Puzzled... >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> >> >> Andy, >> >> >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, >> making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s >> interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans >> who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >> awareness.? >> >> >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence >> of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael >> observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] >> used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative >> forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the >> issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our >> conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution >> illusory. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood >> nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as >> you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in >> putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." >> "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an >> abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some >> more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path >> of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected >> with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins >> from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of >> ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out >> of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for >> example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of >> the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of >> the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: >> when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, >> trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this >> writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> ------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts >> has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of >> differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem >> must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it >> is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its >> ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: >> type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, >> contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, >> cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & >> Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of >> cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is >> distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a >> sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning >> as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural >> contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of >> concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> >> >> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way >> conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use >> differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with >> the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of >> conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of >> spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts >> are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation >> to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To >> go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says >> ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess >> in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social >> connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory >> (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). >> We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the >> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in >> my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must >> summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about >> the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the >> scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I >> applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was >> great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit >> with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the >> scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are >> used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system >> of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, >> conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and >> controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware >> these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course >> and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> I >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >> the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical >> means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!WzhE4UmkZC17BnEoGQS1fRQ5ws_X1EarH5Yqn8YDscsZhL7pAkoHazqpRwBbKJJIs_C9MQ$ >> >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> >> . >> >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> >> . >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/b0b55410/attachment.html From glassman.13@osu.edu Tue Aug 18 16:20:14 2020 From: glassman.13@osu.edu (Glassman, Michael) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 23:20:14 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hello David, You lost me because I do not recognize you interpretation of Stanislavski. To me it is not reflective of what he wrote in ?An Actor?s Work? or what I have read in various biographies or even from my reading of what Vygotsky wrote about Stanislavski?s work. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2020 6:47 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Dear Henry: As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more often than not. We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic processes instead. b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative and cannot account for development. c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn573xcdESw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn564hgI7vA$ On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD > wrote: David, I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a grammar, is a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture may have its own grammar. I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is in some sense staged. Henry On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn573xcdESw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn564hgI7vA$ On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: David, You completely lost me. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn573xcdESw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn564hgI7vA$ On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi David, I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints available. https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn573xcdESw$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn564hgI7vA$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: Hi David, Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Michael-- Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. Outlines, Spring 2020 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn54HF5rvFA$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn564hgI7vA$ On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Mike, Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. Stay safe, Martin On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: I was not being ironic, David If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." mike On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." Mike?s reply, in total was: I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. What am I missing? Mike David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) David, Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? Puzzled... Martin On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: Andy, That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. Andy ________________________________ Andy Blunden Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. David From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. Michael From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. -- IThe Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XRaddFMJEiHoqG8tSoWn_p0OQkBGsyebIeYJeAWyXmKbI8IVqKDY4EbdbSHpn55w-weHcg$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/5860f70d/attachment.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Tue Aug 18 18:03:26 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 19:03:26 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <3E63E6B1-126F-4CAE-AD56-EBE4DBA19E70@gmail.com> Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting response to my musings, David That?s an interesting anecdote about Langacker and Ruqaia in Singapore. A close friend of mine at the University of New Mexico uses Cognitive Grammar extensively in analyzing signed language, and not just American Sign Language. Thanks to that, UNM has become a bastion for CG, but Langacker has complained to my friend that it is largely ignored elsewhere. I find it useful in understanding how the same objective situation can be construed differently by different lexico-syntactic means. Also, how different languages have different ways of construing the world, what he calls linguistic relativity. (Think Whorf-Sapir.) As a translator, you have to deal with this all the time. Langacker also recognizes the way in which construals are contitioned by the context of language use. CG, when I was paying attention to it, was short on dicourse analysis. How would you situate systemic-functional grammar in terms of discourse analysis? Would it work for example in doing the work that Hutchins did with the Trobriand islanders that Mike Cole posted? That is, demonstrating the level of reasoning of the islanders in everyday language: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/fe79v1n2.PDF Henry > On Aug 18, 2020, at 4:46 PM, David Kellogg wrote: > > Dear Henry: > > As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). > > Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more often than not. > > We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). > > If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. > > a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic processes instead. > b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative and cannot account for development. > c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. > > I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChp715N9Ew$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChpEp5xPcQ$ > > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD > wrote: > David, > I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a grammar, is a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? > > And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture may have its own grammar. > > I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units > > I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is in some sense staged. > > Henry > > >> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: >> >> There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." >> >> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. >> >> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). >> >> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. >> >> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. >> >> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChp715N9Ew$ >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChpEp5xPcQ$ >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> David, >> >> >> >> You completely lost me. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >> >> >> >> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). >> >> >> >> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). >> >> >> >> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChp715N9Ew$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChpEp5xPcQ$ >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. >> >> >> >> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). >> >> >> >> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >> >> >> >> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >> >> >> >> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. >> >> >> >> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. >> >> >> >> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >> >> >> >> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> Some free e-prints available. >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChp715N9Ew$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChpEp5xPcQ$ >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. >> >> >> >> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. >> >> >> >> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >> >> >> >> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >> >> Outlines, Spring 2020 >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChok_hbCGw$ >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChpEp5xPcQ$ >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> >> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >> >> >> >> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >> >> >> >> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Mike, >> >> >> >> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >> >> >> >> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: >> >> >> >> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? >> >> >> >> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." >> >> >> >> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >> >> >> >> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." >> >> >> >> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: >> >> >> >> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >> >> >> >> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >> >> >> >> Stay safe, >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: >> >> >> >> I was not being ironic, David >> >> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >> >> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >> >> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >> >> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, >> >> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >> >> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >> >> >> >> mike >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: >> >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. >> >> >> >> Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> >> >> Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." >> >> >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> David, >> >> >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? >> >> >> >> Puzzled... >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: >> >> >> >> Andy, >> >> >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? >> >> >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> >> Andy Blunden >> Hegel for Social Movements >> Home Page >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael >> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> >> >> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> I The Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QN6tTDWLCL5Gltx2B4KCOKIP_eLcq7VvgDqvt7QNFlJUsd2O6hgFPczt2FRJChpQQADtTw$ >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . >> >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/d3f933e5/attachment-0001.html From mpacker@cantab.net Tue Aug 18 18:45:44 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 20:45:44 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> Message-ID: <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> Hi David, I can?t quite tell from your message whether "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself? comes from Vygotsky or from 17th century Dutch painting, but I love it! I?ve been working unsuccessfully for years trying to convince psychologists that trying to study ?mind? is a fruitless endeavor. But the statement must be Vygotsky's because it is so consistent with his metaphor in Crisis: to believe that mind exists and can be studied is like thinking the reflection of a candle in a mirror is a second real candle, and trying to study it while paying no attention to either the mirror or the real candle. Sorry not to have been paying attention: which text is this from? Martin > On Aug 18, 2020, at 5:46 PM, David Kellogg wrote: > > Dear Henry: > > As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). > > Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more often than not. > > We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). > > If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. > > a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic processes instead. > b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative and cannot account for development. > c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. > > I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HMgmrRCWA$ > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HOqAZAXAg$ > > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD > wrote: > David, > I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a grammar, is a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? > > And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture may have its own grammar. > > I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units > > I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is in some sense staged. > > Henry > > >> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: >> >> There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." >> >> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. >> >> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). >> >> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. >> >> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. >> >> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HMgmrRCWA$ >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HOqAZAXAg$ >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> David, >> >> >> >> You completely lost me. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >> >> >> >> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). >> >> >> >> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). >> >> >> >> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HMgmrRCWA$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HOqAZAXAg$ >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. >> >> >> >> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). >> >> >> >> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >> >> >> >> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >> >> >> >> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. >> >> >> >> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. >> >> >> >> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >> >> >> >> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> Some free e-prints available. >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HMgmrRCWA$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HOqAZAXAg$ >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. >> >> >> >> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. >> >> >> >> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >> >> >> >> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >> >> Outlines, Spring 2020 >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HOygT_GUA$ >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HOqAZAXAg$ >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >> >> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >> >> >> >> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >> >> >> >> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Mike, >> >> >> >> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >> >> >> >> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: >> >> >> >> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? >> >> >> >> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." >> >> >> >> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >> >> >> >> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." >> >> >> >> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: >> >> >> >> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >> >> >> >> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >> >> >> >> Stay safe, >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: >> >> >> >> I was not being ironic, David >> >> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >> >> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >> >> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >> >> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, >> >> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >> >> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >> >> >> >> mike >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: >> >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. >> >> >> >> Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> >> >> Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." >> >> >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> David, >> >> >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? >> >> >> >> Puzzled... >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: >> >> >> >> Andy, >> >> >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? >> >> >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> >> Andy Blunden >> Hegel for Social Movements >> Home Page >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael >> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> >> >> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> I The Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QgDqGvER0ZwZ1xJhUvZlc52s4ES4Ni0AuQbDkwSLzmMsxDKcNltADU5TDPjF2HN7fSPw9Q$ >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . >> >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200818/786bbe44/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Tue Aug 18 19:13:47 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 12:13:47 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> References: <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> Message-ID: Martin, how would you respond to a Behaviourist or a "brain scientist" who responded to what you have just said by saying: "At last you agree with me! Mind does not exist! It is an illusion!"? andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 19/08/2020 11:45 am, Martin Packer wrote: > Hi David, > > I can?t quite tell from your message whether?"Mind is the > Body's Idea of Itself? comes from Vygotsky or from 17th > century Dutch painting, but I love it! I?ve been working > unsuccessfully for years trying to convince psychologists > that trying to study ?mind? is a fruitless endeavor. > > But the statement must be Vygotsky's because it is so > consistent with his metaphor in Crisis: to believe that > mind exists and can be studied is like thinking the > reflection of a candle in a mirror is a second real > candle, and trying to study it while paying no attention > to either the mirror or the real candle. > > Sorry not to have been paying attention: which text is > this from? > > Martin > > > > >> On Aug 18, 2020, at 5:46 PM, David Kellogg >> > wrote: >> >> Dear Henry: >> >> As far as I know, there are many different schools of >> Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more >> stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them >> are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by >> deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, >> Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it >> involves holding character at a distance and trying to >> form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost >> in the details of a personality. There is a similar >> tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera >> (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized).?I'm not sure >> I?could call that a grammar; it looks more like >> granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of >> make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). >> >> Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. >> But when you are in a conversation and somebody says >> something like "You've completely lost me", there are >> three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not >> very interested?in what you are saying and I've got other >> things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I >> can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the >> lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas >> you have--and I need some other way of understanding >> it,?like a familiar example or a story. A third is >> textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize >> the?setting and the characters you are referring to, but >> I can't really get my arms around the interpretative >> frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of >> the textual type--not always, but more often than not. >> >> We're having a similar problem with our new book, which >> is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, >> and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough >> knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want >> to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth >> century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas >> that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive >> Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is >> an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That >> format in itself can create an interpretive frame that >> people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's >> a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in >> a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, >> but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are >> having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a >> religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former >> military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). >> >> If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional >> Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. >> >> a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. >> Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' >> as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic >> processes instead. >> b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form >> and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and >> allows for coupling all three in different ways, because >> a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes >> fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially >> replicative and cannot account for development. >> c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, >> speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a >> dialectic of research into empirical facts in many >> languages and theoretical generalizations,?all of which >> (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. >> >> I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and >> cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in >> Singapore together, Langacker complained that his >> cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what >> about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT >> ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and >> between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYxRvZeb0Q$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's >> Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYyJeyU36Q$ >> >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD >> > wrote: >> >> David, >> I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis >> has something to do with how languaging works. >> Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive >> Grammar,--asserts that a/grammar/, is a structured >> inventory of conventional linguistic units, a >> linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and >> meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that >> definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, >> to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? >> >> And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh >> theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been >> Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was >> Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would >> have remembered when they were living. So back to my >> question in the first paragraph: Do >> Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any >> theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar >> in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, >> in ways that written language would not. And gesture >> may have its own grammar. >> >> I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars >> are built through use and are as much in the context >> of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). >> Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is >> short on the analysis of real language in context. >> This is an old conversation I have had with you, but >> it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about >> improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of >> ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that >> much language use is based on the use of common >> phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my >> first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I >> am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the >> second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts >> this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic >> units >> >> I think what I am getting to is the distinction >> between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into >> one another and how every use of language is in some >> sense staged. >> >> Henry >> >> >>> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg >>> > >>> wrote: >>> >>> There is a completely apocryphal story in China >>> about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both >>> visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province >>> of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the >>> White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by >>> the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the >>> rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and >>> shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole >>> village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on >>> the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In >>> Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral >>> the next day. Stanislavskky?presents a wreath of >>> white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest >>> actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy >>> reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a >>> particularly bad night." >>> >>> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great >>> shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the >>> romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long >>> as you sincerely believe it (this is why German >>> romanticism produced both communists and fascists). >>> For the?romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you >>> feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The >>> anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an >>> anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you >>> deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that >>> matters is what people learn from it and whether it >>> will help or harm them. >>> >>> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican >>> who is merely a showman? Because a communication >>> that fails to communicate an idea, or which >>> communicates only the pulchritude of the >>> communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes >>> away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic >>> Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess >>> grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but >>> entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read >>> the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a >>> biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that >>> has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as >>> a communicator (Alas, I often do!). >>> >>> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in >>> the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist >>> because she learned that words can not only report >>> an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled >>> my nose at that, because we got off into a >>> discussion on whether inner speech can actually be >>> written down or not (which is essentially the point >>> that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she >>> said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. >>> >>> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts >>> literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to >>> Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their >>> external language is simply an editing or a >>> translation of the inner subtext. But that's not >>> what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely >>> predicative, and incomprehensible without its >>> internal context. >>> >>> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is >>> Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in >>> and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYxRvZeb0Q$ >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. >>> Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations >>> of Pedology" >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYyJeyU36Q$ >>> >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael >>> > >>> wrote: >>> >>> David, >>> >>> You completely lost me. >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> >> > *On >>> Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >>> enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>> >>> I think we all tend to read our current opinions >>> into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real >>> advantage I claim for my own reading of "The >>> Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that >>> it is unpopular, eccentric, >>> counter-conventional, or at least stridently >>> anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or >>> at least a foil for people on this list. >>> >>> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the >>> textological note. It belongs to the period >>> Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", >>> where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence >>> against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he >>> seems to be developing a theory of higher >>> emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction >>> between emotions that are passions (caused by >>> the environment) and those which are active >>> (self-caused), by which he means caused by >>> understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of >>> recall and imitation). >>> >>> Vygotsky?counterposes Stanislavsky's system to >>> the system of psychotechnical selection >>> ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your >>> comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky >>> himself makes, and it is very a propos). He >>> seems to wish a plague upon both, because both >>> conflate the actor's own emotions with the >>> shareable, social emotions that actors have to >>> build on stage. You are of course right that >>> this is what gives that emotion a conditional, >>> historically specific, and even class specific >>> character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, >>> but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if >>> Stanislavsky developed a technique that >>> eventually ran directly counter to it (the >>> excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). >>> >>> I prefer to think of art as a special social >>> technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic >>> discourse--and not a form of self-deception.?But >>> I'll admit that this is the direct result of my >>> own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce >>> what we see when we paint: we try to communicate >>> what we are thinking about it. I was an actor >>> once too,?and we were trained to be very careful >>> not to do?snuff porn on stage,?not even in our >>> heads.?It is basically the same mistake that we >>> all commit when we conflate our current opinions >>> with Vygotsky's. >>> >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> >>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships >>> in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYxRvZeb0Q$ >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. >>> Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: >>> Foundations of Pedology" >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYyJeyU36Q$ >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, >>> Michael >> > wrote: >>> >>> Hi David, >>> >>> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s >>> nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to >>> have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s >>> book. Everything I have read about the 1912 >>> production I have read has been from >>> Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily >>> Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. >>> >>> As for Diderot. Why would you say that >>> Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided >>> with directors who followed Diderot and >>> avoided lived experience). This seems almost >>> the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in >>> his later writings.? Diderot in an Actor?s >>> Paradox claimed the actor had to make the >>> choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was >>> genuine but it was disorganized and >>> performances became too volatile. I was >>> recently watching a movie about actor >>> auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). >>> There was one episode that speaks directly >>> to Diderot. An actress gives a great, >>> emotional reading. She gets called back and >>> reads again. The director asks he to do what >>> she did the first time. She screams, I don?t >>> know what I did the first time, I don?t know >>> why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox >>> in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the >>> first to try and solve this paradox. The >>> combine affective memory with text. I see >>> Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in >>> development, and I think it gives us a >>> window into the relationship between >>> spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts >>> (did you know Ribot called emotional memory >>> spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). >>> >>> I also disagree with your interpretation of >>> Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call >>> him anything from mentalese. As a matter of >>> fact I think you could make a really good >>> argument that Vygotsky took his idea of >>> inner speech directly from the first few >>> chapters of An Actor?s Work. The >>> similarities are uncanny. Now before you >>> write back that An Actor?s work was not >>> published until 1938, there were chapters in >>> circulation as early as 1928. What I find >>> important is that Gurevich, who was acting >>> as his editor (I begin to wonder how much >>> she actually wrote) was worried about >>> Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. >>> Even though Stanislavski seemed to be >>> allergic to read anything but plays he >>> thought of himself as a psychologist. >>> According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the >>> manuscript to three psychologists to look >>> over. Is it logical to make the argument >>> that Vygotsky might have been one of those >>> psychologists? The reason for my original >>> query.? But there are so many similarities >>> between those early chapters of an Actor?s >>> Work and especially chapters six and seven >>> of Thinking and Speech. >>> >>> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect >>> evolved. Again, I think he might have read >>> Stanislavski and found a way in to >>> discussing this. Perhaps the most >>> influential thing (for me) I have read in >>> this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s >>> introduction to the special issue of MCA on >>> Spinoza. I think it is right on point except >>> I would replace the cryptic and opaque >>> Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >>> >>> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to >>> salt mines. >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> >> > >>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >>> enters through the gate" (a Participation >>> Question) >>> >>> Michael-- >>> >>> There's a good book on the 1912 production >>> (you've probably read it). >>> >>> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow >>> Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. >>> >>> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The >>> Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: >>> 2014). My impression is that the stage >>> version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of >>> Art is actually the Second Moscow Art >>> Theatre production of 1924, which is one of >>> the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are >>> talking about. >>> >>> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, >>> and most wealthy families were active >>> counter-revolutionaries during the Civil >>> War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you >>> could call conservative, and they were all >>> quite displeased with Constantin's acting >>> career. Are you sure that the nephew was >>> sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >>> >>> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more >>> inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and >>> would have supported Brecht and Olivier >>> against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But >>> maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because >>> his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, >>> and he is only inclined to view higher >>> emotions as the product of reflection in the >>> sense of ideation than as reflection in the >>> sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he >>> writes the actor essay. I think the main >>> problem with his use of Stanislavsky's >>> method in Thinking and Speech is that it >>> assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only >>> a description of emotion. Vygotsky would >>> really require at least three >>> planes--volitional affective impulse, >>> non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. >>> Only the last one could be put into words, >>> and then the syntax would be very different >>> from what Stanislavsky is using in his >>> scripts. There is a similar problem in the >>> different ways that Virginial Woolf and >>> James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them >>> tries to write about it and the other tries >>> to write it.) >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> >>> Realizations: non-causal but real >>> relationships in and between Halliday, >>> Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> >>> Some free e-prints available. >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYxRvZeb0Q$ >>> >>> >>> ?New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: /L.S. >>> Vygotsky's Pedological Works/ /Volume One: >>> Foundations of Pedology/" >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYyJeyU36Q$ >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, >>> Michael >> > wrote: >>> >>> Hi David, >>> >>> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even >>> more consequential than you might think. >>> It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski >>> and Craig together. Craig came to Russia >>> but there were problems from the start, >>> and pretty soon they were actually >>> directing separately. Stanislavski saw >>> this as his great opportunity to bring >>> his ?system? (which I believe influenced >>> Vygotsky a great deal) to an >>> international production and a >>> Shakespeare play. Up to that point he >>> used his system mostly in workshop >>> productions with Russian playwright >>> working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was >>> doing another small production >>> simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was >>> upset about the money he was receiving >>> eventually took less of a hand in the >>> production. He was a symbolist but I >>> think not in the way Russians were >>> symbolists, in other words he saw >>> himself as the director creating the >>> symbols rather than the actors exploring >>> the sub-texts of the words. He also >>> wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the >>> traditional bombastic, over the top >>> Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted >>> the actor playing Hamlet to really >>> explore his emotions in the context of >>> his system. The production only ran for >>> a few weeks as most people do not like >>> change (which makes me think Vygotsky at >>> the young age did not see it) so it was >>> a financial flop for the MAT but an >>> international critical success and was >>> in many ways a springboard for >>> Stanislavski?s fame.? My reading on >>> Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and >>> Psychology of Art in general, was that >>> he read a great many of the writings on >>> the production, which continued for >>> years. I feel he came down distinctly on >>> the side of Stanislavski in his essay. >>> Of course there is no way to know this >>> for sure, except he could have never >>> written that essay if there had never >>> been the 1912 production. It changed the >>> way people look at theater. >>> >>> As for socialist realism becoming state >>> policy in 1932, that might be right. But >>> Stanislavski was already retired from >>> directing and he did a number of >>> productions promoting socialist realism >>> (he was not enamored with it, but it let >>> the MAT keep working). Also his nephew >>> had been exiled to Siberia. So it may >>> have been an important component before >>> it was state policy. >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> >> > >>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>> *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >>> awareness enters through the gate" (a >>> Participation Question) >>> >>> Michael-- >>> >>> Actually, socialist realism was only >>> declared official state policy in >>> 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight >>> years. During most of Vygotsky's career >>> the arts scene in the USSR was probably >>> the liveliest and freest in the world. >>> But slightly crazy too--see the attached >>> photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young >>> Communist League member) can and must >>> satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman >>> has to hold a sign that says ?Every >>> Komsomolka (female Young Communist >>> League member) should aid him in this, >>> otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is >>> the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting >>> AGAINST in his sex education work with >>> Zalkind. My wife grew up during the >>> Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you >>> that it was not at all the same thing. >>> >>> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and >>> visiting Moscow for the first time, >>> there was a famous production?of Hamlet >>> than in some ways still influences us >>> today: it was a little bit as if you had >>> the Olivier production on stage and >>> Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. >>> Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as >>> historical characters, but the stage >>> director and producer was the English >>> symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually >>> wanted, at one point, to turn it into a >>> one man show, wiith every character >>> except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way >>> with the props, which were highly >>> abstract and geometrical, but >>> Stanislavsky got his way with the actual >>> production, which (I gather) was gritty >>> and grimey. >>> >>> I would love to know if the Hamlet >>> Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the >>> original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or >>> if it was some toned down restaging of >>> the original 1912 production. Do you know? >>> >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: >>> A manual and a manifesto. >>> >>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYwlhg5e8A$ >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: >>> /L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works/ >>> /Volume One: Foundations of Pedology/" >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYyJeyU36Q$ >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM >>> Glassman, Michael >> > wrote: >>> >>> A couple of things, especially about >>> the Uzbekistan experiments. As I >>> have alluded to in some earlier >>> posts I have been doing some reading >>> on theater during the time Vygotsky >>> was writing. One thing I have come >>> across multiple times is the issue >>> of socialist realism. The idea (and >>> this is probably not a very good >>> definition) is that we have to >>> understand people as they really are >>> and think, but we also have to >>> accept that humans can become better >>> actors (broadly defined) and >>> thinkers under a socialist system. >>> It seems the people pushing this was >>> somewhat akin to cadres in the >>> cultural revolution. In other words >>> you better do it. Even Stanislavski, >>> who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was >>> forced to do a number of productions >>> that promoted socialist realism. If >>> you did not toe the line you were >>> sent to Siberia (or worse). I am >>> sure this is discussed somewhere in >>> relationship to Vygotsky but I >>> wonder if we she take that into >>> account when thinking about things >>> like the Uzbekistan experiment. >>> >>> A second thing. I wonder if >>> sometimes we have a tendency to over >>> think and over philosophize >>> Vygotsky. In some ways he was just >>> trying to get things done and a >>> concept like conscious awareness in >>> Thinking and Speech is mostly a >>> means to solving a problem, not any >>> philosophical statement. The problem >>> it seems to me is that we do not >>> have consistent conceptual systems >>> based solely on our experience. A >>> five year old can have five >>> different best friends on five days >>> on the playground depending on what >>> people brought for lunch or who got >>> to the swings first. Still, it is >>> these affective based concepts that >>> drive our activity. But we don?t >>> offer use these concepts with any >>> conscious use of attention or memory >>> or any of our other intellectual >>> functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought >>> salami today, maybe I should think >>> about making him my best friend.? On >>> the other hand social concepts are >>> developed separately from our >>> experiences and our emotions. They >>> are developed specifically to >>> organize and bring consistency to >>> our feelings. But they are >>> meaningless from an affective, >>> everyday ?perspective. Why would we >>> even want to think about them. In >>> order to bring them into our lives >>> we have to consciously engage in >>> volitional activities using them. So >>> we have to have conscious awareness. >>> How then do you bring the two >>> together, for which he takes the >>> remainder of chapter six. >>> >>> Dewey also was really, really >>> inconsistent in the way he used >>> words. I would argue he used words >>> as tools not as philosophical >>> statements. You have to read the >>> texts and figure it out. >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> *From:* >>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> >> > >>> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 >>> 8:15 PM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, >>> Activity >> > >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >>> awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> Hi Mike, >>> >>> Well you and I may differ on this. >>> My interpretation is that in the >>> passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is >>> talking about the growing >>> consciousness *of their own >>> thinking* on the part of school-age >>> children. (In Thought & Language he >>> shifts a bit on whether this happens >>> in middle childhood or adolescence, >>> but that needn't concern us.) That >>> is to say, he is writing about what >>> he calls ?introspection." >>> >>> As evidence for this interpretation >>> let me cite a couple of other >>> passages (these are from the >>> excellent Kellogg translation) where >>> I think the point is made more clearly: >>> >>> 100 "I make a knot. I do >>> it?consciously. I cannot, >>> however, tell you exactly how I >>> did it. My conscious act is >>> unconscious,?because my >>> attention is focused on the act >>> of the tying, but not on how I >>> do it. Consciousness is?always >>> some piece of?reality. The >>> object of my consciousness is >>> tying the knot, a knot, and >>> what?was happening to it but not >>> those actions that I?make when >>> tying, not how I do it. But the >>> object?of consciousness can be >>> just that - then it will be >>> awareness. Awareness?is an act >>> of?consciousness, the object of >>> which is itself the very same >>> activity of consciousness? >>> >>> 102 "Even Piaget's research >>> showed that introspection does >>> not begin to develop in >>> any?significant degree until >>> school age.?Further >>> investigations have shown that >>> the development of?introspection >>> in the school age contains >>> something similar to?what occurs >>> in the development of?the >>> external perception and >>> observation in the transition >>> from infancy to early?childhood. >>> As is?well known, the most >>> important change in external >>> perception of this period [i.e. >>> infancy to early childhood] is >>> that a child from a?wordless >>> and, consequently, meaningless >>> perception, to a semantic, >>> verbal and objective?perception. >>> The same can be?said of >>> introspection on the threshold >>> of school age. The child >>> is?moving from mute >>> introspection to speech and >>> words.?He develops an internal >>> semantic?perception of his own >>> mental processes?.?I realize >>> that I can recall, i.e. I >>> do?recall the subjectivity of my >>> own consciousness." >>> >>> 104 "By their very >>> nature,?spontaneous concepts >>> include the fact that they are >>> unconscious. Children know how >>> they?operate?spontaneously but >>> are not aware of them. This is >>> what we saw in the children's >>> concept?of "because." Obviously, >>> by?themselves, spontaneous >>> concepts need to be >>> unconscious,?because >>> consideration is always directed >>> to their objects,?rather than to >>> the act of thought which?is >>> grasping it.? >>> >>> 106 ?"only in a system [of >>> concepts] can the concept become >>> the object of awareness and only >>> in a system can the?child >>> acquire volitional?control [of >>> concepts]." >>> >>> In his Lectures on Child Psychology >>> LSV is very clear, in my view, that >>> at each stage the child has >>> consciousness of different aspects >>> of the world and of their own >>> psychological processes. For example: >>> >>> "In an infant, there is no >>> intellectual perception: he >>> perceives a room but does not >>> separately perceive chairs, a >>> table, etc.; he will perceive >>> everything as an undivided whole >>> in contrast?to the adult, who >>> sees figures against a >>> background. How?does a child >>> perceive his own movements in >>> early?childhood? He is happy, >>> unhappy,?but does not know that >>> he is happy, just as an infant >>> when he is hungry?does not?know >>> that he is hungry. There is a >>> great difference between feeling >>> hunger and?knowing that I >>> am?hungry. In early childhood, >>> the child does not know his >>> own?experiences?. Precisely?as a >>> three-year-old child discovers >>> his relation to other people, a >>> seven-year-old?discovers the >>> fact?of his own experiences.? >>> (p. 291) >>> >>> Of course, one might find it >>> objectionable that LSV might suggest >>> that non-literate peoples might be >>> unaware of their own thinking. But I >>> agree with Andy, in such cultures >>> there may well be systematic >>> instruction in systems of concepts ? >>> legal, religious? ? that would have >>> the same effect as LSV says that >>> school instruction does in the west. >>> >>> Stay safe, >>> >>> Martin >>> >>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, >>> mike cole >> > wrote: >>> >>> I was not being ironic, David >>> >>> If scientific concepts are >>> required for conscious awareness >>> (as specified in the quotation I >>> was asked to respond to) and >>> people who >>> >>> have not been to school do not >>> acquire?Piagetian concepts >>> related to formal operations >>> (for example) or other measure >>> of "thinking in >>> >>> scientific concepts) if seems to >>> follow that they have not >>> achieved conscious awareness. >>> >>> LSV writes about non-literate, >>> indigenous, peoples that they >>> are capable of complexes, but >>> not true concepts (I think the >>> use of the term. >>> >>> "scientific" is not helpful >>> here). Luria interprets his data >>> on self-consciousness that are a >>> part of the same monograph as >>> his work on syllogisms, >>> >>> classification, etc among >>> Uzbekis who had experienced >>> various degrees of involvement >>> in modern (e.g. Russian) forms >>> of life as evidence for >>> >>> what might be termed "lack of >>> conscious awareness I am not sure." >>> >>> mike >>> >>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM >>> David H Kirshner >> > wrote: >>> >>> Maybe I missed an ironic >>> intention, Michael, but on >>> August 11 Anthony asked >>> about the meaning of a >>> couple of paragraphs from >>> /Thinking and Speech/. >>> >>> *Here is the passage in >>> question*, from /Thinking >>> and Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >>> >>> "To perceive something in a >>> different way means to >>> acquire new potentials for >>> acting with respect to it. >>> At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play >>> differently. By generalizing >>> the process of activity >>> itself, I acquire the >>> potential for new >>> relationships with it. To >>> speak crudely, it is as if >>> this process has been >>> isolated from the general >>> activity of consciousness. I >>> am conscious of the fact >>> that I remember. I make my >>> own remembering the object >>> of consciousness. An >>> isolation arises here. In a >>> certain sense, any >>> generalization or >>> abstraction isolates its >>> object. This is why >>> conscious awareness ? >>> understood as generalization >>> ? leads directly to mastery. >>> >>> /Thus, the foundation of >>> conscious awareness is the >>> generalization or >>> abstraction of the mental >>> processes, which leads to >>> their mastery/. Instruction >>> has a decisive role in this >>> process. Scientific concepts >>> have a unique relationship >>> to the object. This >>> relationship is mediated >>> through other concepts that >>> themselves have an internal >>> hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is >>> apparently in this domain of >>> the scientific concept that >>> conscious awareness of >>> concepts or the >>> generalization and mastery >>> of concepts emerges for the >>> first time. And once a new >>> structure of generalization >>> has arisen in one sphere of >>> thought, it can ? like any >>> structure ? be transferred >>> without training to all >>> remaining domains of >>> concepts and thought. Thus, >>> /conscious awareness enters >>> through the gate opened up >>> by the scientific concept/." >>> >>> Mike?s reply, in total was: >>> >>> I understand that to mean >>> that humans who have not >>> achieved scientific/real >>> concepts do not have >>> conscious awareness. >>> >>> What am I missing? >>> >>> Mike >>> >>> David >>> >>> *From:* >>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> >> > >>> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, >>> 2020 4:36 PM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, >>> Culture, Activity >>> >> > >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: >>> "conscious awareness enters >>> through the gate" (a >>> Participation Question) >>> >>> David, >>> >>> Are you saying that either >>> Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, >>> or both, are claiming that >>> 5-year old children (for >>> example) lack conscious >>> awareness of the world they >>> live in? >>> >>> Puzzled... >>> >>> Martin >>> >>> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 >>> PM, David H Kirshner >>> >> > >>> wrote: >>> >>> Andy, >>> >>> That ?any ?actual? >>> concept is the >>> intersection or merging >>> of both the scientific >>> and spontaneous path,? >>> speaks to their >>> complementarity, making >>> them akin to Type 1 and >>> Type 2 processing I >>> referred to in my post. >>> >>> But they?re also >>> hierarchically related, >>> since according to >>> Mike?s interpretation of >>> a Vygotsky?s passage >>> cited by Anthony a few >>> days ago, ?humans who >>> have not achieved >>> scientific/real concepts >>> do not have conscious >>> awareness.? >>> >>> I do not question >>> Vygotsky?s genius. What >>> I do question is the >>> coherence of the >>> interpretive frames that >>> have evolved from his >>> work. As Michael >>> observed in a recent >>> post, ?like the writer >>> he wanted to be he >>> [Vygotsky] used phrases >>> and ideas less as truths >>> and more to move his >>> narrative forward.? What >>> I always wonder in >>> eavesdropping on XMCA is >>> whether the issues we >>> discuss are resolvable, >>> or is the theoretical >>> backdrop to our >>> conversation so >>> heterogeneous as to make >>> the possibility of >>> resolution illusory. >>> >>> David >>> >>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> ?>> > >>> *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >>> *Sent:*?Friday, August >>> 14, 2020 10:32 AM >>> *To:* >>> xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> *Subject:*?[Xmca-l] Re: >>> "conscious awareness >>> enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> No David, as I said, the >>> term "scientific >>> concept" as it is >>> understood nowadays, >>> tends to mislead. The >>> distinction for Vygotsky >>> is entirely, as you say, >>> /developmental/, and it >>> is not a categorisation >>> either (as in putting >>> things into boxes), and >>> nothing to do with >>> "sophistication." >>> "Scientific concept" >>> refers to the path of >>> development that begins >>> with an abstract >>> (decontextualised) >>> concept acquired through >>> instruction in some more >>> or less formal >>> institution. >>> "Spontaneous concept" >>> refers to the path of >>> development which begins >>> with everyday >>> experience, closely >>> connected with immediate >>> sensori-motor >>> interaction and >>> perception, i.e., it >>> begins from the >>> concrete, whereas the >>> "scientific" is >>> beginning from the >>> abstract. >>> >>> Any "actual" concept is >>> the intersection or >>> merging of both the >>> scientific and >>> spontaneous path. For >>> example (1) everyday >>> life is full of ideas >>> which have their source >>> in institutions, but >>> have made their way out >>> of the institutional >>> context into everyday >>> life. On the other hand, >>> for example (2) any >>> scientific concept worth >>> its salt has made its >>> way out of the classroom >>> and become connected >>> with practice, like the >>> book-learning of the >>> medical graduate who's >>> spent 6 months in A&E. >>> >>> I admit, this is not >>> clear from Vygotsky's >>> prose. But here's the >>> thing: when you're >>> reading a great thinker >>> and what they're saying >>> seems silly, trying >>> reading it more >>> generously, because >>> there's probably a >>> reason this writer has >>> gained the reputation of >>> being a great thinker. >>> >>> Andy >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>> >>> *Andy Blunden* >>> Hegel for Social >>> Movements >>> >>> Home Page >>> >>> >>> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, >>> David H Kirshner wrote: >>> >>> Thanks for your >>> accessible example, >>> Michael. >>> >>> Vygotsky?s >>> scientific / >>> spontaneous >>> distinction between >>> types of concepts >>> has always struck me >>> as such an >>> unfortunate solution >>> to the problem of >>> differential >>> sophistication in >>> modes of reasoning. >>> I?m sure this >>> problem must have >>> deep roots in >>> classical and >>> contemporary >>> philosophy, even as >>> it is reflected in >>> cognitive >>> psychology?s Dual >>> Process Theory that >>> at its ?theoretical >>> core amounts to a >>> dichotomous view of >>> two types of >>> processes?: type >>> 1?intuitive, fast, >>> automatic, >>> nonconscious, >>> effortless, >>> contextualized, >>> error-prone, and >>> type 2?reflective, >>> slow, deliberate, >>> cogitative, >>> effortful, >>> decontextualized, >>> normatively correct? >>> (Varga & Hamburger, >>> 2014). What >>> externalizing this >>> distinction as >>> different kinds of >>> cognitive products >>> (this or that kind >>> of concept) seems to >>> do is >>> distract/detract >>> from the >>> sociogenetic >>> character of >>> development. Surely, >>> a sociogenetic >>> approach seeks to >>> interpret these >>> different forms of >>> reasoning as >>> differential >>> discursive >>> practices, embedded >>> in different >>> cultural contexts >>> (Scribner, Cole, >>> etc.). But talking >>> about different >>> kinds of concepts >>> seems like the wrong >>> departure point for >>> that journey. >>> >>> David >>> >>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> >>> >>> *On Behalf Of >>> *Glassman, Michael >>> *Sent:*?Friday, >>> August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >>> *To:*?eXtended Mind, >>> Culture, Activity >>> >>> >>> *Subject:*?[Xmca-l] >>> Re: "conscious >>> awareness enters >>> through the gate" (a >>> Participation Question) >>> >>> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna >>> Lisa, >>> >>> Let me start by >>> saying that this is >>> completely >>> restricted to the >>> way conscious >>> awareness is used in >>> Thinking and Speech. >>> If it is use >>> differently in other >>> places this >>> perspective may be >>> wrong. To my mind >>> (with the proviso >>> that my mind if >>> often wrong) >>> Vygotsky is using >>> the idea of >>> conscious awareness >>> for a specific >>> purpose. To >>> differentiate the >>> role of spontaneous >>> concepts with >>> non-spontaneous >>> concepts. >>> Spontaneous concepts >>> are based initially >>> in affective memory >>> and they give energy >>> and motivation to >>> many of our >>> activities. However >>> we are not >>> consciously aware of >>> them. To go back to >>> chess, I am at the >>> pool and my friend >>> comes up to me and >>> says ?Chess?? I say >>> yes. I have no >>> conscious awareness >>> of the concept of >>> chess in my life, >>> why I say yes so >>> easily why it may be >>> a way to make a >>> social connection >>> between me and my >>> friend. It is >>> residue of my >>> affective memory (I >>> don?t know how much >>> Vygotsky was using >>> Ribot when making >>> this argument). We >>> are playing chess >>> and I remember that >>> my brother showed me >>> the >>> non-spontaneous/scientific >>> concept of the >>> bishop?s gambit. As >>> this point in my >>> life I have to think >>> about it and whether >>> I want to use it. I >>> must summon the >>> intellectual >>> functions of memory >>> and attention as I >>> think about the use >>> of the bishop?s >>> gambit. This then is >>> conscious awareness >>> of the scientific >>> concept. I used the >>> bishop?s gambit and >>> win the game and I >>> applaud myself. I >>> got home and tell my >>> brother, the >>> bishop?s gambit was >>> great, thanks. I am >>> mediating the >>> scientific concept >>> of the bishop?s >>> gambit with my >>> everyday concept of >>> playing chess. >>> Voila, development!!!! >>> >>> I don?t know if >>> Vygotsky uses >>> conscious awareness >>> differently elsewhere. >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> ?>> > >>> *On Behalf Of *Andy >>> Blunden >>> *Sent:*?Thursday, >>> August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >>> *To:* >>> xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> >>> *Subject:*?[Xmca-l] >>> Re: "conscious >>> awareness enters >>> through the gate" (a >>> Participation Question) >>> >>> Henry, my aim was >>> just to introduce >>> Annalisa and whoever >>> to the scientific >>> way that the terms >>> "conscious >>> awareness" and >>> "consciousness" are >>> used in CHAT. I say >>> "scientific" in the >>> sense that in CHAT >>> we have a system of >>> concepts and >>> associated word >>> meanings which have, >>> if you like, >>> conventional >>> meanings. There is >>> nothing wrong with >>> "automatic and >>> controlled >>> processing" and >>> "ballistic >>> processing" but so >>> far as I am aware >>> these terms were not >>> in Vygotsky's >>> vocabulary. I could >>> be wrong of course >>> and I am sure I will >>> be rapidly corrected >>> if this is the case. >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> I >>> The >>> Angel's View of History >>> >>> It is only in a social context >>> that subjectivism and >>> objectivism, spiritualism and >>> materialism, activity and >>> passivity cease to be >>> antinomies, and thus cease to >>> exist as such antinomies. The >>> resolution of the >>> *theoretical*?contradictions is >>> possible only through practical >>> means, only through >>> the?practical?energy of humans. >>> (Marx, 1844). >>> >>> Cultural Praxis Website: >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!R53F7Q9dcfsf21mBbSTgVC6YexgI8_72x0cMqLYMWUp85LCvtsnoQuEedW_4rYzgbqXpew$ >>> >>> >>> Re-generating CHAT Website: >>> re-generatingchat.com >>> >>> >>> Archival resources website: >>> lchc.ucsd.edu >>> . >>> >>> Narrative history of LCHC: >>> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >>> . >>> >>> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/8b1e79ed/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Tue Aug 18 19:16:36 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 11:16:36 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> Message-ID: Spinoza's Ethics, especially Chapter Two, Proposition 21: "This idea of the mind is united to the mind in the same way as the mind is united to the body." But see also Props 20~29. And just about everything that Vermeer painted. Or Rembrandt's dissection lessons. That's the glass-cutting diamond, I think. That is, that's the bit of Spinoza that Vygotsky thinks will "cut like a diamond through all kinds of psychological problems" (LSV CW, Volume 6, p. 105). David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDWHuCxggg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXTTDBgAA$ On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 10:48 AM Martin Packer wrote: > Hi David, > > I can?t quite tell from your message whether "Mind is the Body's Idea of > Itself? comes from Vygotsky or from 17th century Dutch painting, but I love > it! I?ve been working unsuccessfully for years trying to convince > psychologists that trying to study ?mind? is a fruitless endeavor. > > But the statement must be Vygotsky's because it is so consistent with his > metaphor in Crisis: to believe that mind exists and can be studied is like > thinking the reflection of a candle in a mirror is a second real candle, > and trying to study it while paying no attention to either the mirror or > the real candle. > > Sorry not to have been paying attention: which text is this from? > > Martin > > > > > On Aug 18, 2020, at 5:46 PM, David Kellogg wrote: > > Dear Henry: > > As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a > 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's > method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by > deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more > "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a > distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting > lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese > opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not > sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage > (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and > place of recitative). > > Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are > in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost > me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very > interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another > possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe > because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you > have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar > example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and > I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I > can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the > problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more > often than not. > > We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the > emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and > assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we > want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch > paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most > troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", > "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That > format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble > with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward > to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, > but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul > (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the > remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). > > If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll > notice three differences right away. > > a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional > Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible > social-semiotic processes instead. > b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. > Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in > different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that > emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative > and cannot account for development. > c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. > Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into > empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of > which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. > > I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She > told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained > that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about > Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See > link below!) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDWHuCxggg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXTTDBgAA$ > > > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD wrote: > >> David, >> I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do >> with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls >> Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a* grammar*, is a structured inventory >> of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic >> coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that >> definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been >> trying to explain to Michael G? >> >> And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be >> honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents >> told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have >> remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first >> paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical >> grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw >> massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture >> may have its own grammar. >> >> I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through >> use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of >> the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on >> the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I >> have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about >> improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, >> though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of >> common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in >> the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? >> that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this >> paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units >> >> I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and >> discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is >> in some sense staged. >> >> Henry >> >> >> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg wrote: >> >> There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and >> Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province >> of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in >> which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent >> the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor >> through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's >> Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of >> Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. >> Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To >> the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To >> the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." >> >> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from >> enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you >> believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism >> produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't >> matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The >> anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't >> matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that >> matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. >> >> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a >> showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or >> which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off >> topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic >> Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I >> have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read >> the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, >> or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have >> failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). >> >> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me >> once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only >> report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at >> that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can >> actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that >> divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, >> I said it couldn't. >> >> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional >> subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their >> external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner >> subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely >> predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. >> >> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDWHuCxggg$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXTTDBgAA$ >> >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >>> David, >>> >>> >>> >>> You completely lost me. >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, >>> Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The >>> Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, >>> eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and >>> it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >>> >>> >>> >>> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It >>> belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where >>> he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) >>> and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent >>> with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by >>> the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he >>> means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and >>> imitation). >>> >>> >>> >>> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of >>> psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your >>> comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a >>> propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the >>> actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have >>> to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that >>> emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific >>> character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was >>> convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that >>> eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in >>> Hollywood). >>> >>> >>> >>> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing >>> ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But >>> I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we >>> don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate >>> what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained >>> to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It >>> is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our >>> current opinions with Vygotsky's. >>> >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> >>> >>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> >>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >>> Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> >>> >>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>> >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDWHuCxggg$ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >>> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXTTDBgAA$ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael >>> wrote: >>> >>> Hi David, >>> >>> >>> >>> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It >>> just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I >>> have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from >>> Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an >>> interesting read. >>> >>> >>> >>> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot >>> (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived >>> experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in >>> his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to >>> make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was >>> disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching >>> a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one >>> episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, >>> emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks >>> he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did >>> the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox >>> in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this >>> paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to >>> do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window >>> into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts >>> (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was >>> the same word). >>> >>> >>> >>> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner >>> speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I >>> think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of >>> inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The >>> similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work >>> was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early >>> as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his >>> editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about >>> Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski >>> seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a >>> psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to >>> three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that >>> Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my >>> original query. But there are so many similarities between those early >>> chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of >>> Thinking and Speech. >>> >>> >>> >>> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he >>> might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps >>> the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of >>> Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I >>> think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque >>> Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >>> >>> >>> >>> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael-- >>> >>> >>> >>> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >>> >>> >>> >>> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and >>> London: Greenwood. >>> >>> >>> >>> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It >>> Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is >>> hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre >>> production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you >>> are talking about. >>> >>> >>> >>> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families >>> were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs >>> were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite >>> displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew >>> was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >>> >>> >>> >>> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than >>> Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against >>> Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, >>> because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only >>> inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense >>> of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, >>> when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of >>> Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of >>> 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really >>> require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal >>> thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, >>> and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using >>> in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that >>> Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to >>> write about it and the other tries to write it.) >>> >>> >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> >>> >>> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> >>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >>> Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> Some free e-prints available. >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDWHuCxggg$ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological >>> Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXTTDBgAA$ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael >>> wrote: >>> >>> Hi David, >>> >>> >>> >>> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might >>> think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig >>> came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they >>> were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great >>> opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a >>> great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to >>> that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian >>> playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small >>> production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he >>> was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a >>> symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other >>> words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the >>> actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be >>> portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. >>> Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions >>> in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as >>> most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young >>> age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an >>> international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for >>> Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and >>> Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings >>> on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down >>> distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no >>> way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if >>> there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at >>> theater. >>> >>> >>> >>> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be >>> right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a >>> number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with >>> it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to >>> Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state >>> policy. >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>> *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael-- >>> >>> >>> >>> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in >>> 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career >>> the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the >>> world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every >>> Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his >>> sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka >>> (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise >>> she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting >>> AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the >>> Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same >>> thing. >>> >>> >>> >>> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first >>> time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still >>> influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier >>> production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. >>> Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage >>> director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually >>> wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character >>> except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly >>> abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual >>> production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >>> >>> >>> >>> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the >>> original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging >>> of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >>> >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> >>> >>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >>> >>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXjG7-jEw$ >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological >>> Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDXTTDBgAA$ >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael >>> wrote: >>> >>> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I >>> have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on >>> theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across >>> multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is >>> probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people >>> as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can >>> become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist >>> system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the >>> cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, >>> who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions >>> that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent >>> to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in >>> relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when >>> thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >>> >>> >>> >>> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think >>> and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get >>> things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech >>> is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. >>> The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual >>> systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five >>> different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what >>> people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these >>> affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use >>> these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our >>> other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I >>> should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social >>> concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. >>> They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our >>> feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday >>> perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring >>> them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities >>> using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring >>> the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >>> >>> >>> >>> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I >>> would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You >>> have to read the texts and figure it out. >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> Hi Mike, >>> >>> >>> >>> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the >>> passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing >>> consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. >>> (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle >>> childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he >>> is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >>> >>> >>> >>> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other >>> passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think >>> the point is made more clearly: >>> >>> >>> >>> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you >>> exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention >>> is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness >>> is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying >>> the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that >>> I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be >>> just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act >>> of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of >>> consciousness? >>> >>> >>> >>> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to >>> develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations >>> have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains >>> something similar to what occurs in the development of the external >>> perception and observation in the transition from infancy to >>> early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external >>> perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child >>> from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, >>> verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on >>> the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to >>> speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own >>> mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the >>> subjectivity of my own consciousness." >>> >>> >>> >>> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that >>> they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are >>> not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of >>> "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be >>> unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their >>> objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >>> >>> >>> >>> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object >>> of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control >>> [of concepts]." >>> >>> >>> >>> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that >>> at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world >>> and of their own psychological processes. For example: >>> >>> >>> >>> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room >>> but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive >>> everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures >>> against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in >>> early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, >>> just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There >>> is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. >>> In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. >>> Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, >>> a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >>> >>> >>> >>> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that >>> non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree >>> with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in >>> systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect >>> as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >>> >>> >>> >>> Stay safe, >>> >>> >>> >>> Martin >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> I was not being ironic, David >>> >>> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as >>> specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >>> >>> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to >>> formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >>> >>> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved >>> conscious awareness. >>> >>> >>> >>> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable >>> of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >>> >>> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on >>> self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on >>> syllogisms, >>> >>> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of >>> involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >>> >>> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >>> >>> >>> >>> mike >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: >>> >>> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony >>> asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and >>> Speech*. >>> >>> >>> >>> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >>> pp. 190-1: >>> >>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new >>> potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see >>> differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity >>> itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak >>> crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general >>> activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I >>> make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises >>> here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its >>> object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? >>> leads directly to mastery. >>> >>> >>> >>> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >>> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >>> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >>> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >>> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >>> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >>> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >>> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >>> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >>> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >>> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the >>> gate opened up by the scientific concept*." >>> >>> >>> >>> Mike?s reply, in total was: >>> >>> >>> >>> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved >>> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >>> >>> >>> >>> What am I missing? >>> >>> Mike >>> >>> >>> >>> David >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> David, >>> >>> >>> >>> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are >>> claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of >>> the world they live in? >>> >>> >>> >>> Puzzled... >>> >>> >>> >>> Martin >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> Andy, >>> >>> >>> >>> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the >>> scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, >>> making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >>> >>> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s >>> interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans >>> who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >>> awareness.? >>> >>> >>> >>> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence >>> of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael >>> observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] >>> used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative >>> forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the >>> issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our >>> conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution >>> illusory. >>> >>> >>> >>> David >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> > *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >>> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >>> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood >>> nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as >>> you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in >>> putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." >>> "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an >>> abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some >>> more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path >>> of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected >>> with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins >>> from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >>> >>> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the >>> scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of >>> ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out >>> of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for >>> example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of >>> the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of >>> the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >>> >>> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: >>> when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, >>> trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this >>> writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >>> >>> Andy >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> *Andy Blunden* >>> Hegel for Social Movements >>> >>> Home Page >>> >>> >>> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >>> >>> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >>> >>> >>> >>> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of >>> concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the >>> problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this >>> problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even >>> as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at >>> its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of >>> processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, >>> contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, >>> cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & >>> Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of >>> cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is >>> distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a >>> sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning >>> as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural >>> contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of >>> concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >>> >>> >>> >>> David >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *On >>> Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael >>> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>> >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >>> >>> >>> >>> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way >>> conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use >>> differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with >>> the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of >>> conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of >>> spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts >>> are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation >>> to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To >>> go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says >>> ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess >>> in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social >>> connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory >>> (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). >>> We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the >>> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in >>> my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must >>> summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about >>> the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the >>> scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I >>> applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was >>> great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit >>> with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >>> >>> >>> >>> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >>> >>> >>> >>> Michael >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> > *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >>> *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >>> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" >>> (a Participation Question) >>> >>> >>> >>> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the >>> scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are >>> used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system >>> of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, >>> conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and >>> controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware >>> these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course >>> and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> I >>> The >>> Angel's View of History >>> >>> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >>> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >>> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >>> the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical >>> means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >>> >>> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S3qkLziG32wN2w6gHQrIgzK9L7r0ZtHpGTXve3TxSECRvi_9sZ_bl5IbbD-6bDVIOJnMLw$ >>> >>> >>> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >>> >>> >>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >>> >>> . >>> >>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >>> >>> . >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/c7ced2d5/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Wed Aug 19 05:28:36 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 08:28:36 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <48f7429d-c1cd-bb58-b330-17ba5cd6ff3c@marxists.org> <8bd60213-6d2a-9561-9b03-4c35f419908b@marxists.org> <592a4264-39d3-d246-ec72-4623234c92ea@marxists.org> <4589BE9B-F64E-4547-AD66-AB66DBBA0231@cantab.net> Message-ID: David, I can assure you that I took much more from your "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" video than a few enjoyable anecdotes. That said, the use of anecdotes to frame and ground the more abstract ideas was an effective (and appreciated) tethering device. And your particular way of distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudoconcepts ( https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/r3josz__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm3psdILlw$ ) was among the most helpful I've heard. So thank you again ~ Anthony On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 7:59 PM David Kellogg wrote: > There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and > Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province > of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in > which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent > the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor > through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's > Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of > Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. > Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To > the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To > the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." > > Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment > rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long > as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both > communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what > you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and > Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply > feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn > from it and whether it will help or harm them. > > Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a > showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or > which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off > topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic > Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I > have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read > the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, > or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have > failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). > > A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me > once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only > report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at > that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can > actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that > divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, > I said it couldn't. > > If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional > subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their > external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner > subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely > predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. > > (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm0rlQ2qkg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm1_gE5_nQ$ > > > > On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: > >> David, >> >> >> >> You completely lost me. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, >> Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The >> Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, >> eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and >> it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >> >> >> >> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It >> belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where >> he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) >> and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent >> with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by >> the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he >> means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and >> imitation). >> >> >> >> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of >> psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your >> comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a >> propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the >> actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have >> to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that >> emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific >> character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was >> convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that >> eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in >> Hollywood). >> >> >> >> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing >> ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But >> I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we >> don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate >> what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained >> to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It >> is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our >> current opinions with Vygotsky's. >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm0rlQ2qkg$ >> >> >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm1_gE5_nQ$ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It >> just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I >> have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from >> Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an >> interesting read. >> >> >> >> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot >> (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived >> experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in >> his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to >> make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was >> disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching >> a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one >> episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, >> emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks >> he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did >> the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox >> in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this >> paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to >> do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window >> into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts >> (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was >> the same word). >> >> >> >> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner >> speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I >> think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of >> inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The >> similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work >> was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early >> as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his >> editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about >> Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski >> seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a >> psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to >> three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that >> Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my >> original query. But there are so many similarities between those early >> chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of >> Thinking and Speech. >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he >> might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps >> the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of >> Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I >> think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque >> Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >> >> >> >> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >> >> >> >> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: >> Greenwood. >> >> >> >> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It >> Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is >> hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre >> production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you >> are talking about. >> >> >> >> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families >> were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs >> were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite >> displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew >> was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >> >> >> >> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than >> Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against >> Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, >> because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only >> inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense >> of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, >> when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of >> Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of >> 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really >> require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal >> thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, >> and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using >> in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that >> Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to >> write about it and the other tries to write it.) >> >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> >> Some free e-prints available. >> >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm0rlQ2qkg$ >> >> >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological >> Works* *Volume One: Foundations of Pedology*" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm1_gE5_nQ$ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >> Hi David, >> >> >> >> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might >> think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig >> came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they >> were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great >> opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a >> great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to >> that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian >> playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small >> production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he >> was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a >> symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other >> words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the >> actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be >> portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. >> Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions >> in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as >> most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young >> age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an >> international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for >> Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and >> Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings >> on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down >> distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no >> way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if >> there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at >> theater. >> >> >> >> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be >> right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a >> number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with >> it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to >> Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state >> policy. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >> *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Michael-- >> >> >> >> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in >> 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career >> the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the >> world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every >> Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his >> sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka >> (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise >> she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting >> AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the >> Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same >> thing. >> >> >> >> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first >> time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still >> influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier >> production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. >> Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage >> director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually >> wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character >> except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly >> abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual >> production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >> >> >> >> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the >> original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging >> of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >> >> >> David Kellogg >> >> Sangmyung University >> >> >> >> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >> >> Outlines, Spring 2020 >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm1kMw81jw$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume >> One: Foundations of Pedology*" >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm1_gE5_nQ$ >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael >> wrote: >> >> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I >> have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on >> theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across >> multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is >> probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people >> as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can >> become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist >> system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the >> cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, >> who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions >> that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent >> to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in >> relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when >> thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >> >> >> >> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think >> and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get >> things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech >> is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. >> The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual >> systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five >> different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what >> people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these >> affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use >> these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our >> other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I >> should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social >> concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. >> They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our >> feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday >> perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring >> them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities >> using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring >> the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >> >> >> >> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I >> would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You >> have to read the texts and figure it out. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Mike, >> >> >> >> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the >> passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing >> consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. >> (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle >> childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he >> is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >> >> >> >> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other >> passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think >> the point is made more clearly: >> >> >> >> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you >> exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention >> is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness >> is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying >> the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that >> I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be >> just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act >> of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of >> consciousness? >> >> >> >> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to >> develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations >> have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains >> something similar to what occurs in the development of the external >> perception and observation in the transition from infancy to >> early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external >> perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child >> from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, >> verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on >> the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to >> speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own >> mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the >> subjectivity of my own consciousness." >> >> >> >> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that >> they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are >> not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of >> "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be >> unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their >> objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >> >> >> >> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of >> awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of >> concepts]." >> >> >> >> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that >> at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world >> and of their own psychological processes. For example: >> >> >> >> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room >> but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive >> everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures >> against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in >> early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, >> just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There >> is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. >> In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. >> Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, >> a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >> >> >> >> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that >> non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree >> with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in >> systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect >> as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >> >> >> >> Stay safe, >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole wrote: >> >> >> >> I was not being ironic, David >> >> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified >> in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >> >> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to >> formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >> >> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved >> conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable >> of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >> >> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on >> self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on >> syllogisms, >> >> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of >> involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >> >> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >> >> >> >> mike >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony >> asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from *Thinking and >> Speech*. >> >> >> >> *Here is the passage in question*, from *Thinking and Speech*, Ch. 6, >> pp. 190-1: >> >> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials >> for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to >> play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire >> the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if >> this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. >> I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the >> object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any >> generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious >> awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >> >> >> >> *Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or >> abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery*. >> Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a >> unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through >> other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of >> interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific >> concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and >> mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of >> generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any >> structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of >> concepts and thought. Thus, *conscious awareness enters through the gate >> opened up by the scientific concept*." >> >> >> >> Mike?s reply, in total was: >> >> >> >> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved >> scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >> >> >> >> What am I missing? >> >> Mike >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> David, >> >> >> >> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are >> claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of >> the world they live in? >> >> >> >> Puzzled... >> >> >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> >> >> Andy, >> >> >> >> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, >> making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >> >> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s >> interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans >> who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious >> awareness.? >> >> >> >> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence >> of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael >> observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] >> used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative >> forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the >> issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our >> conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution >> illusory. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood >> nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as >> you say, *developmental*, and it is not a categorisation either (as in >> putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." >> "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an >> abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some >> more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path >> of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected >> with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins >> from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >> >> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the >> scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of >> ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out >> of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for >> example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of >> the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of >> the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >> >> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: >> when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, >> trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this >> writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >> >> Andy >> ------------------------------ >> >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >> >> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >> >> >> >> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts >> has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of >> differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem >> must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it >> is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its >> ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: >> type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, >> contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, >> cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & >> Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of >> cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is >> distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a >> sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning >> as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural >> contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of >> concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >> >> >> >> David >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *On Behalf Of *Glassman, Michael >> *Sent:* Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >> >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >> >> >> >> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way >> conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use >> differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with >> the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of >> conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of >> spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts >> are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation >> to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To >> go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says >> ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess >> in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social >> connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory >> (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). >> We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the >> non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in >> my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must >> summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about >> the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the >> scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I >> applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was >> great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit >> with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >> >> >> >> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >> >> >> >> Michael >> >> >> >> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > > *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden >> *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a >> Participation Question) >> >> >> >> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the >> scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are >> used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system >> of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, >> conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and >> controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware >> these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course >> and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> I[image: Image removed by sender. Angelus Novus] >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >> the *theoretical* contradictions is possible only through practical >> means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UQyDL6HbvvynrL3CYkFJUwJMomPnVT4CbLdD2EKyMavdYMT-sDA5pCl1cmTdOm3wS3MTkg$ >> >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu >> >> . >> >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >> >> . >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/fa5a11bf/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 823 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/fa5a11bf/attachment.jpg From rslguzzo@gmail.com Wed Aug 19 05:50:23 2020 From: rslguzzo@gmail.com (Raquel Guzzo) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 09:50:23 -0300 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Huw, David, and Andy videos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you for sharing *Dra. Raquel S. L. Guzzo;P?s-gradua??o em Psicologia;Centro de Ci?ncias da Vida;Pontif?cia Universidade Cat?lica de Campinas;* * * *rguzzo@puc-campinas.edu.br rguzzo@pq.cnpq.br rslguzzo@gmail.com * * https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://lattes.cnpq.br/8863163152848405*__;Kg!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_MIi2wyog$ *https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://gep-inpsi.org__;!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_NBGVu7CA$ https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7029-2913__;!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_O7GWq_NQ$ * Em sex., 14 de ago. de 2020 ?s 14:18, Anthony Barra escreveu: > Good afternoon, > > Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage > (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from > David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. > > - "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" > (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_OKcuR8Bg$ > > - "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_Mr7F-Ilg$ > > - "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_P-p-Zt0A$ > > > And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of > Vygotsky and parenting. > > - "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!RagkohXLmD_CwiJ-ykosyJXtOTxp7v-oEzApTzfnZuXnCRObGBv87ppNJ5Jys_NHppJH0Q$ > > > Sincerely, > > Anthony Barra > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/fb0dd760/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Wed Aug 19 08:47:06 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 11:47:06 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) Message-ID: Good afternoon, In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy re-reading: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html Thank you, Anthony P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie Izdatel?stvo. And the reference, in context: > "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor readily > available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which > children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a > large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in > the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it > appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more > predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal > development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had > comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children > with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual > development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the > zone of proximal development gave a better indication for > predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of > independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number > of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from > school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der > Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/c7d68295/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Wed Aug 19 09:50:36 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 09:50:36 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Is this what you are looking for, Anthony? Here is a good translation. Seth's article is super helpful in untangling misunderstandings. The translation of obuchenie in* Mind in Society* as learning is misleading, for reasons explained in the attached article I wrote several years ago about the problem. (the problem is alive and well in a field called "learning sciences" where instruction is a cipher and development is not the primary category). Your set of videos is a great resource. And your use of the xlchc/xmca archives is just what was hoped for when we began the practices that have evolved into what one sees today. We have not heard from Steve for a long time, but he got his PH.D supported by participants in the discussion at this time. He is/was an assembly line work at Boeing at the time. Mike PS - Now if we could collectively move from pseudoconcepts to few concepts and have the wits to know the difference it would be great!! :-) On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 8:50 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Good afternoon, > > In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of > proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" > (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy > re-reading: > http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html > > Thank you, > > Anthony > > P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): > > - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika v > svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia > (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie > Izdatel?stvo. > > And the reference, in context: > >> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor readily >> available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >> > -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VtNGVx3ivSCG5Sa1V-AME3LCIno6YKalCaK_Diy-ZA1wJXcIqtlyTzc8E2nF0EGQSoBIVw$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/9f2b6536/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: lsv.obuchenie.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1089715 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/9f2b6536/attachment-0001.pdf From mpacker@cantab.net Wed Aug 19 12:55:34 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 14:55:34 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> Message-ID: <95E02B02-D7CA-498D-9957-30BD452BE499@cantab.net> Hi Andy, Going back to look at The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology I see that LVS?s example involves a table not a candle, so I?ll modify my reply to your question accordingly: The behaviorist studies the table, ignores the mirror, and insists that the study of reflections is unscientific. The neuroscientist studies the table and is aware of the mirror, but is unable to explain how the mirror exists. The typical cognitive psychologist studies the table's reflection and ignores both the mirror and the real table. LSV insists that we need to study the real table and the mirror and study too the reflection of the table, understanding that it is an appearance, not something that really exists. To put those statements in context, here is the passage... Let us compare consciousness, as is often done, with a mirror image. Let the object A be reflected in the mirror as a. Naturally, it would be false to say that a in itself is as real as A. It is real in another way. A table and its reflection in the mirror are not equally real, but real in a different way. The reflection as reflection, as an image of the table, as a second table in the mirror is not real, it is a phantom. But the reflection of the table as the refraction of light beams on the mirror sur- face-isn't that a thing which is equally material and real as the table? Everything else would be a miracle. Then we might say: there exist things (a table) and their phantoms (the reflection). But only things exist-(the table) and the reflection of light upon the surface. The phantoms are just apparent relations between the things. That is why no science of mirror phantoms is possible. But this does not mean that we will never be able to explain the reflection, the phantom. When we know the thing and the laws of reflection of light, we can always explain, predict, elicit, and change the phantom. And this is what persons with mirrors do. They study not mirror reflections but the movement of light beams, and explain. the reflection. A science about mirror phantoms is impossible, but the theory of light and the things which cast and reflect it fully explain these "phantoms." It is the same in psychology: the subjective itself, as a phantom, must be un- derstood as a consequence, as a result, as a godsend of two objective processes. Like the enigma of the'mirror, the enigma of the mind is not solved by studying phantoms, but by studying the two series of objective processes from the coopera- tion of which the phantoms as apparent reflections of one thing in tire otlrer arise. In itself the appearance does not exist. Let us return to the mirror. To identify A and a, the table and its mirror re- flection, would be idealism: a is nonmaterial, it is only A which is material and its material nature is a synonym for its existence independent of a. But it would be exactly the same idealism to identify a with X-with the processes that take place in the mirror. It would be wrong to say: being and thinking do not coincide outside the mirror, in nature (there A is not a, there A is a thing and a a phantom); being and thinking, however, do coincide inside the mirror (here a is X, a is a phantom and X is also a phantom). We cannot say: the reflection of a table is a table. But neither can we say: the reflection of a table is the refraction of light beams and a is neither A nor X. Both A and X are real processes and a is their apparent, i.e., unreal result. The reflection does not exist, but both the table and the light exist. The reflection of a table is identical neither with the real processes of the light in the mirror nor with the table itself. Not to mention the fact that otherwise we would have to accept the existence in the world of both things and phantoms. Let us remember that the mirror itself is, after all, part of the same nature as the thing outside the mirror, and subject to all of its laws. After aB, a cornerstone of materialism is the proposition that con? sciousness and the brain are a product, a part of nature, which reflect the rest of nature. And, therefore, the objective existence of X and A independent of a is a dogma of materialistic psychology. (pp. 327-328) Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology: A methodological investigation. In R. W. Reiber & J. Wollock (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 3. Problems of the theory and history of psychology (pp. 233-343). New York, NY: Plenum. Martin > On Aug 18, 2020, at 9:13 PM, Andy Blunden wrote: > > Martin, how would you respond to a Behaviourist or a "brain scientist" who responded to what you have just said by saying: "At last you agree with me! Mind does not exist! It is an illusion!"? > > andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 19/08/2020 11:45 am, Martin Packer wrote: >> Hi David, >> >> I can?t quite tell from your message whether "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself? comes from Vygotsky or from 17th century Dutch painting, but I love it! I?ve been working unsuccessfully for years trying to convince psychologists that trying to study ?mind? is a fruitless endeavor. >> >> But the statement must be Vygotsky's because it is so consistent with his metaphor in Crisis: to believe that mind exists and can be studied is like thinking the reflection of a candle in a mirror is a second real candle, and trying to study it while paying no attention to either the mirror or the real candle. >> >> Sorry not to have been paying attention: which text is this from? >> >> Martin >> >> >> >> >>> On Aug 18, 2020, at 5:46 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: >>> >>> Dear Henry: >>> >>> As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). >>> >>> Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more often than not. >>> >>> We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). >>> >>> If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. >>> >>> a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic processes instead. >>> b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative and cannot account for development. >>> c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. >>> >>> I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8V6pfy4mw$ >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8VHioNTkQ$ >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD > wrote: >>> David, >>> I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a grammar, is a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? >>> >>> And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture may have its own grammar. >>> >>> I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units >>> >>> I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is in some sense staged. >>> >>> Henry >>> >>> >>>> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: >>>> >>>> There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." >>>> >>>> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. >>>> >>>> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). >>>> >>>> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. >>>> >>>> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. >>>> >>>> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >>>> >>>> David Kellogg >>>> Sangmyung University >>>> >>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>> >>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8V6pfy4mw$ >>>> >>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8VHioNTkQ$ >>>> >>>> >>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>> David, >>>> >>>> >>>> You completely lost me. >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >>>> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >>>> >>>> >>>> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). >>>> >>>> >>>> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). >>>> >>>> >>>> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. >>>> >>>> >>>> David Kellogg >>>> >>>> Sangmyung University >>>> >>>> >>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>> >>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>> >>>> >>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>> >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8V6pfy4mw$ >>>> >>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>> >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8VHioNTkQ$ >>>> >>>> >>>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi David, >>>> >>>> >>>> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. >>>> >>>> >>>> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). >>>> >>>> >>>> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. >>>> >>>> >>>> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >>>> >>>> >>>> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >>>> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael-- >>>> >>>> >>>> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >>>> >>>> >>>> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. >>>> >>>> >>>> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. >>>> >>>> >>>> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >>>> >>>> >>>> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) >>>> >>>> >>>> David Kellogg >>>> >>>> Sangmyung University >>>> >>>> >>>> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>> >>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>> Some free e-prints available. >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8V6pfy4mw$ >>>> >>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>> >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8VHioNTkQ$ >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi David, >>>> >>>> >>>> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. >>>> >>>> >>>> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >>>> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael-- >>>> >>>> >>>> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. >>>> >>>> >>>> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >>>> >>>> >>>> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >>>> >>>> >>>> David Kellogg >>>> >>>> Sangmyung University >>>> >>>> >>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >>>> >>>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>>> >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8WhJoaBew$ >>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>> >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8VHioNTkQ$ >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>> >>>> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >>>> >>>> >>>> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >>>> >>>> >>>> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >>>> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> Hi Mike, >>>> >>>> >>>> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >>>> >>>> >>>> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: >>>> >>>> >>>> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? >>>> >>>> >>>> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." >>>> >>>> >>>> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >>>> >>>> >>>> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." >>>> >>>> >>>> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: >>>> >>>> >>>> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >>>> >>>> >>>> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >>>> >>>> >>>> Stay safe, >>>> >>>> >>>> Martin >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> I was not being ironic, David >>>> >>>> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >>>> >>>> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >>>> >>>> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. >>>> >>>> >>>> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >>>> >>>> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, >>>> >>>> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >>>> >>>> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >>>> >>>> >>>> mike >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: >>>> >>>> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. >>>> >>>> >>>> Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >>>> >>>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >>>> >>>> >>>> Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." >>>> >>>> >>>> Mike?s reply, in total was: >>>> >>>> >>>> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >>>> >>>> >>>> What am I missing? >>>> >>>> Mike >>>> >>>> >>>> David >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >>>> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> David, >>>> >>>> >>>> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? >>>> >>>> >>>> Puzzled... >>>> >>>> >>>> Martin >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> Andy, >>>> >>>> >>>> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >>>> >>>> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? >>>> >>>> >>>> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. >>>> >>>> >>>> David >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >>>> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >>>> >>>> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >>>> >>>> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >>>> >>>> Andy >>>> >>>> Andy Blunden >>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>> Home Page >>>> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >>>> >>>> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >>>> >>>> >>>> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >>>> >>>> >>>> David >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael >>>> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >>>> >>>> >>>> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >>>> >>>> >>>> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >>>> >>>> >>>> Michael >>>> >>>> >>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >>>> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>> >>>> >>>> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> >>>> I The Angel's View of History >>>> >>>> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >>>> >>>> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Tm_NKXttyq_Jjj4r0geb5u3Wdl8IRIZAU6KPpUfG3kUV5Lg9fKakxpY39Fx6i8UEy_CYnA$ >>>> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >>>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . >>>> >>>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/f5231c37/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Wed Aug 19 15:40:59 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 07:40:59 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anthony-- As far as I know, it's never been translated. But you can find it in Russian at the Electronic Library of Moscow State University--right here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://psychlib.ru/mgppu/VUR/VUR-0331.htm*$p33__;Iw!!Mih3wA!Rs_L1xTA4cK7ZLj1xktMYU2QoDLfV1QvnStvCyYqfiG4i8MJ26pTlc9y9e8EH9WCcJfqmQ$ If your Russian is anything like mine (i.e. limited to a very narrow register) you'll need a translation to make sense of it. But you'll find that if you right click on the text, it will bring to bear the power of Google Translate. Since Google Translate operates with established translations of Vygotsky, and since Vygotsky does tend to repeat his formulations when he's got one that he likes, you will find that the result is quite usable. (Of course you know that I didn't mean to imply that you only took away the framing anecdote, Anthony; I was just trying to think of a hypothetical example that didn't involve the theatre--theatrics are not always a bad thing when you are in a theatre. However, I really DID mean what I said about the pleasure of teaching-learning for the TEACHER: it IS underemphasized and it DOES explain a lot about how ideas do manage to outlive the bodies that have them. I guess we tend to explain this pleasure by talking about how much we ourselves have learned from the experience of teaching, and I suppose that does SOUND humble and modest, although when you think about it what I am really saying when I say that is that I am still the best teacher I have ever met. For me, the humility is keener and borders on humiliation--I learn the hard way how much I have to learn about cultivating an on-line teaching persona, modulating my intonation, not stroking my beard all the time and sticking to the point rather better than I am wont to do in class. If my students can survive all that, maybe the ideas will too....) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Rs_L1xTA4cK7ZLj1xktMYU2QoDLfV1QvnStvCyYqfiG4i8MJ26pTlc9y9e8EH9WXV3cPhQ$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Rs_L1xTA4cK7ZLj1xktMYU2QoDLfV1QvnStvCyYqfiG4i8MJ26pTlc9y9e8EH9UWNSuBKw$ On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 12:50 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Good afternoon, > > In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of > proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" > (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy > re-reading: > http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html > > Thank you, > > Anthony > > P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): > > - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika v > svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia > (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie > Izdatel?stvo. > > And the reference, in context: > >> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor readily >> available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/2baf848e/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Wed Aug 19 18:55:15 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 21:55:15 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Wow, Mike and David thank you very much - - for the reading material, for the hospitality, for the encouraging words. And also for that great factoid about Steve and Boeing. Anthony On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 12:53 PM mike cole wrote: > Is this what you are looking for, Anthony? > Here is a good translation. > Seth's article is super helpful in untangling misunderstandings. The > translation of obuchenie in* Mind in Society* > as learning is misleading, for reasons explained in the attached article I > wrote several years ago about the problem. > (the problem is alive and well in a field called "learning sciences" where > instruction is a cipher and development > is not the primary category). > > Your set of videos is a great resource. And your use of the > xlchc/xmca archives is just what was hoped for when > we began the practices that have evolved into what one sees today. We have > not heard from Steve for a long time, > but he got his PH.D supported by participants in the discussion at this > time. He is/was an assembly line work at > Boeing at the time. > > Mike > PS - Now if we could collectively move from pseudoconcepts to few concepts > and have the wits to know the difference > it would be great!! :-) > > > > On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 8:50 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Good afternoon, >> >> In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of >> proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" >> (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy >> re-reading: >> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html >> >> Thank you, >> >> Anthony >> >> P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): >> >> - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika >> v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia >> (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie >> Izdatel?stvo. >> >> And the reference, in context: >> >>> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor >>> readily available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >>> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >>> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >>> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >>> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >>> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >>> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >>> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >>> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >>> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >>> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >>> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >>> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >>> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >>> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >>> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >>> >> > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!RUasz42mOno7_37AW1M7bbZLszQm4pRyqJ0i4Cg7XbdqZsJbtmFn8nyvJfdgHJo2FMXdFQ$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200819/fe6c1a29/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Wed Aug 19 19:16:21 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 11:16:21 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anthony-- What Mike sent is an article by Myra Barrs introducing a re-translation of a Chapter Six of 'Mind in Society' by Stephen Mitchell. That is, as Barrs says, based on Chapter One of "The Mental Development of the Child in the Process of Obuchenie", which is called (in my copy of the original Russian book, "The problem of obuchenie in mental development at school age." The footnote just says it was a manuscript written some time in 1933/1934. But the text you asked for is actually Chapter Three, which is called (in my volume) "The dynamics of mental development at school age and its link to obucheniem". That was the link that I sent you. You will find it's quite a different text--the stenogramme of a lecture that Vygotsky gave at the Bubnov Pedagogical Institute on the 23 of December in 1933. It includes a lot of stuff about IQ testing, and Vygotsky is talking about how the lower IQ kids seem to have a much larger ZPD (because of a ceiling effect on the higher IQ kids). Mike is quite diffident about the translation in Mind in Society, because of the way in which "obuchenie" is translated. Of course, there are places where Vygotsky clearly means teaching and not learning, and other places where he means teaching-learning. (Vygotsky actually has the same problem translating German into Russian, because he translates Kurt Goldstein's "lehrnen" to mean teaching when Goldstein obviously means learning!). . -- David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Wi2DMuDsXyiWqge69T8kiZV5U3hHQF0orHDCZUZZzeGp2xTvMDwHirXk_Ab62pdXUPKDtg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Wi2DMuDsXyiWqge69T8kiZV5U3hHQF0orHDCZUZZzeGp2xTvMDwHirXk_Ab62pcBYFGBLg$ On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 10:56 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Wow, Mike and David thank you very much - > > - for the reading material, for the hospitality, for the encouraging words. > > And also for that great factoid about Steve and Boeing. > > Anthony > > > On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 12:53 PM mike cole wrote: > >> Is this what you are looking for, Anthony? >> Here is a good translation. >> Seth's article is super helpful in untangling misunderstandings. The >> translation of obuchenie in* Mind in Society* >> as learning is misleading, for reasons explained in the attached article >> I wrote several years ago about the problem. >> (the problem is alive and well in a field called "learning sciences" >> where instruction is a cipher and development >> is not the primary category). >> >> Your set of videos is a great resource. And your use of the >> xlchc/xmca archives is just what was hoped for when >> we began the practices that have evolved into what one sees today. We >> have not heard from Steve for a long time, >> but he got his PH.D supported by participants in the discussion at this >> time. He is/was an assembly line work at >> Boeing at the time. >> >> Mike >> PS - Now if we could collectively move from pseudoconcepts to few >> concepts and have the wits to know the difference >> it would be great!! :-) >> >> >> >> On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 8:50 AM Anthony Barra >> wrote: >> >>> Good afternoon, >>> >>> In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of >>> proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" >>> (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy >>> re-reading: >>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html >>> >>> Thank you, >>> >>> Anthony >>> >>> P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): >>> >>> - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika >>> v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia >>> (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie >>> Izdatel?stvo. >>> >>> And the reference, in context: >>> >>>> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor >>>> readily available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >>>> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >>>> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >>>> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >>>> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >>>> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >>>> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >>>> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >>>> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >>>> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >>>> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >>>> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >>>> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >>>> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >>>> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >>>> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >>>> >>> >> >> -- >> >> I[image: Angelus Novus] >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >> the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, >> only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!Wi2DMuDsXyiWqge69T8kiZV5U3hHQF0orHDCZUZZzeGp2xTvMDwHirXk_Ab62pfikXHGuw$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. >> >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/1c085f1e/attachment.html From andyb@marxists.org Wed Aug 19 19:35:51 2020 From: andyb@marxists.org (Andy Blunden) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 12:35:51 +1000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: <95E02B02-D7CA-498D-9957-30BD452BE499@cantab.net> References: <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> <95E02B02-D7CA-498D-9957-30BD452BE499@cantab.net> Message-ID: Ha, ha. Well done, Martin. That passage in "Crisis" is truly one of my favourite passages as well. And I had remembered it as being about a candle, too! Funny that. It's all in the expressions like "an appearance, not something that really exists," isn't it? As Lenin said: "There is no sharp line between the thing-in-itself and phenomena." The other bit which I like to join with that quote from "Crisis" is that bit at the end of his famous 1924 talk: "The historian and the geologist reconstruct the facts (which already do not exist) indirectly, and nevertheless in the end/they study the facts that have been,/not the traces or documents that remained and were preserved. Similarly, the psychologist is often in the position of the historian and the geologist. Then he acts like a detective who brings to light a crime he never witnessed." Andy ------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Hegel for Social Movements Home Page On 20/08/2020 5:55 am, Martin Packer wrote: > Hi Andy, > > Going back to look at /The historical meaning of the > crisis in psychology /I see that LVS?s example involves a > table not a candle, so I?ll modify my reply to your > question accordingly: > > The behaviorist studies the table, ignores the mirror, and > insists that the study of reflections is unscientific. > The neuroscientist studies the table and is aware of the > mirror, but is unable to explain how the mirror exists. > The typical cognitive psychologist studies the table's > reflection and ignores both the mirror and the real table. > LSV insists that we need to study the real table and the > mirror and study too the reflection of the table, > understanding that it is an appearance, not something that > really exists. > > To put those statements in context, here is the passage... > > Let us compare consciousness, as is often done, with a > mirror image. Let the object A be reflected in the mirror > as a. Naturally, it would be false to say that a in itself > is as real as A. It is real in another way. A table and > its reflection in the mirror are not equally real, but > real in a different way. The reflection as reflection, as > an image of the table, as a second table in the mirror is > not real, it is a phantom. But the reflection of the table > as the refraction of light beams on the mirror sur- > face-isn't that a thing which is equally material and real > as the table? Everything else would be a miracle. Then we > might say: there exist things (a table) and their phantoms > (the reflection). But only things exist-(the table) and > the reflection of light upon the surface. The phantoms are > just apparent relations between the things. That is why no > science of mirror phantoms is possible. But this does not > mean that we will never be able to explain the reflection, > the phantom. When we know the thing and the laws of > reflection of light, we can always explain, predict, > elicit, and change the phantom. And this is what persons > with mirrors do. They study not mirror reflections but the > movement of light beams, and explain. the reflection. A > science about mirror phantoms is impossible, but the > theory of light and the things which cast and reflect it > fully explain these "phantoms." > > It is the same in psychology: the subjective itself, as a > phantom, must be un- derstood as a consequence, as a > result, as a godsend of two objective processes. Like the > enigma of the'mirror, the enigma of the mind is not solved > by studying phantoms, but by studying the two series of > objective processes from the coopera- tion of which the > phantoms as apparent reflections of one thing in tire > otlrer arise. In itself the appearance does not exist. > > Let us return to the mirror. To identify A and a, the > table and its mirror re- flection, would be idealism: a is > nonmaterial, it is only A which is material and its > material nature is a synonym for its existence independent > of a. But it would be exactly the same idealism to > identify a with X-with the processes that take placein the > mirror. It would be wrong to say: being and thinking do > not coincide outside the mirror, in nature (there A is not > a, there A is a thing and a a phantom); being and > thinking, however, do coincide inside the mirror (here a > is X, a is a phantom and X is also a phantom). We cannot > say: the reflection of a table is a table. But neither can > we say: the reflection of a table is the refraction of > light beams and a is neither A nor X. Both A and X are > real processes and a is their apparent, i.e., unreal > result. The reflection does not exist, but both the table > and the light exist. The reflection of a table is > identical neither with the real processes of the light in > the mirror nor with the table itself. > > Not to mention the fact that otherwise we would have to > accept the existence in the world of both things and > phantoms. Let us remember that the mirror itself is, after > all, part of the same nature as the thing outside the > mirror, and subject to all of its laws. After aB, a > cornerstone of materialism is the proposition that con? > sciousness and the brain are a product, a part of nature, > which reflect the rest of nature. And, therefore, the > objective existence of X and A independent of a is a dogma > of materialistic psychology. (pp. 327-328) > > Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). The historical meaning of the > crisis in psychology: A methodological investigation. In > R. W. Reiber & J. Wollock (Eds.), /The collected works of > L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 3. Problems of the theory and history > of psychology/ (pp. 233-343). New York, NY: Plenum. > > Martin > > > >> On Aug 18, 2020, at 9:13 PM, Andy Blunden >> > wrote: >> >> Martin, how would you respond to a Behaviourist or a >> "brain scientist" who responded to what you have just >> said by saying: "At last you agree with me! Mind does not >> exist! It is an illusion!"? >> >> andy >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> *Andy Blunden* >> Hegel for Social Movements >> >> Home Page >> >> >> On 19/08/2020 11:45 am, Martin Packer wrote: >>> Hi David, >>> >>> I can?t quite tell from your message whether?"Mind is >>> the Body's Idea of Itself? comes from Vygotsky or from >>> 17th century Dutch painting, but I love it! I?ve been >>> working unsuccessfully for years trying to convince >>> psychologists that trying to study ?mind? is a fruitless >>> endeavor. >>> >>> But the statement must be Vygotsky's because it is so >>> consistent with his metaphor in Crisis: to believe that >>> mind exists and can be studied is like thinking the >>> reflection of a candle in a mirror is a second real >>> candle, and trying to study it while paying no attention >>> to either the mirror or the real candle. >>> >>> Sorry not to have been paying attention: which text is >>> this from? >>> >>> Martin >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Aug 18, 2020, at 5:46 PM, David Kellogg >>>> > wrote: >>>> >>>> Dear Henry: >>>> >>>> As far as I know, there are many different schools of >>>> Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much >>>> more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all >>>> of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner >>>> truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. >>>> For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like >>>> Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and >>>> trying to form overall judgements about it rather than >>>> getting lost in the details of a personality. There is >>>> a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai >>>> Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized).?I'm not >>>> sure I?could call that a grammar; it looks more like >>>> granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of >>>> make-up, the importance of costume, and place of >>>> recitative). >>>> >>>> Michael probably knows more than I do about >>>> Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and >>>> somebody says something like "You've completely lost >>>> me", there are three possibilities. One is just >>>> interpersonal--I'm not very interested?in what you are >>>> saying and I've got other things to do. Another >>>> possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you >>>> are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use >>>> or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need >>>> some other way of understanding it,?like a familiar >>>> example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested >>>> in what you say and I recognize the?setting and the >>>> characters you are referring to, but I can't really get >>>> my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the >>>> problems I have communicating are of the textual >>>> type--not always, but more often than not. >>>> >>>> We're having a similar problem with our new book, which >>>> is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, >>>> and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough >>>> knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want >>>> to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth >>>> century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the >>>> ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus >>>> Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", >>>> "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity >>>> is real"). That format in itself can create an >>>> interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I >>>> take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking >>>> forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with >>>> our readers this Saturday, but that's now been >>>> cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul >>>> (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect >>>> owing fealty to the remnants of the former military >>>> dictatorship and to Donald Trump). >>>> >>>> If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional >>>> Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. >>>> >>>> a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. >>>> Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive >>>> processes' as a black box and studies visible >>>> social-semiotic processes instead. >>>> b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form >>>> and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and >>>> allows for coupling all three in different ways, >>>> because a two stratal model, particularly one that >>>> emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is >>>> essentially replicative and cannot account for development. >>>> c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, >>>> speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a >>>> dialectic of research into empirical facts in many >>>> languages and theoretical generalizations,?all of which >>>> (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. >>>> >>>> I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and >>>> cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in >>>> Singapore together, Langacker complained that his >>>> cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what >>>> about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT >>>> ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) >>>> >>>> David Kellogg >>>> Sangmyung University >>>> >>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and >>>> between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>> >>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjzZNlQV6A$ >>>> >>>> >>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's >>>> Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwWT3VQoQ$ >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD >>>> > wrote: >>>> >>>> David, >>>> I am guessing that your apochyphal story and >>>> analysis has something to do with how languaging >>>> works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls >>>> Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a/grammar/, is a >>>> structured inventory of conventional linguistic >>>> units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling >>>> of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find >>>> that definition useful. How does that relate, if at >>>> all, to what you have been trying to explain to >>>> Michael G? >>>> >>>> And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about >>>> Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have >>>> been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me >>>> it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think >>>> they would have remembered when they were living. >>>> So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do >>>> Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any >>>> theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any >>>> grammar in theater would have to draw massively on >>>> gesture, in ways that written language would not. >>>> And gesture may have its own grammar. >>>> >>>> I should add that Langacker recognizes that >>>> grammars are built through use and are as much in >>>> the context of language usage as in the head(s) of >>>> the user(s). Though he also recognizes that >>>> Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real >>>> language in context. This is an old conversation I >>>> have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am >>>> thinking now about improvisation, which we assume >>>> is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though >>>> Langacker argues that much language use is based on >>>> the use of common phrases, rather than being very >>>> ?creative", like my first phrase in the first >>>> paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and >>>> ?believe it or not? that starts the second >>>> paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this >>>> paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units >>>> >>>> I think what I am getting to is the distinction >>>> between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into >>>> one another and how every use of language is in >>>> some sense staged. >>>> >>>> Henry >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg >>>>> >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> There is a completely apocryphal story in China >>>>> about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both >>>>> visiting a liberated area in my wife's home >>>>> province of Shaanxi. There is a village production >>>>> of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is >>>>> raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To >>>>> prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws >>>>> a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. >>>>> Since the whole village has been reading >>>>> Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding >>>>> funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman >>>>> Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. >>>>> Stanislavskky?presents a wreath of white >>>>> carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor >>>>> in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy >>>>> reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a >>>>> particularly bad night." >>>>> >>>>> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great >>>>> shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the >>>>> romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so >>>>> long as you sincerely believe it (this is why >>>>> German romanticism produced both communists and >>>>> fascists). For the?romantic actor, it doesn't >>>>> matter what you feel so long as the feeling is >>>>> deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht >>>>> was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter >>>>> whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the >>>>> only thing that matters is what people learn from >>>>> it and whether it will help or harm them. >>>>> >>>>> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican >>>>> who is merely a showman? Because a communication >>>>> that fails to communicate an idea, or which >>>>> communicates only the pulchritude of the >>>>> communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes >>>>> away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other >>>>> Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish >>>>> chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing >>>>> but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if >>>>> you read the little story about Brecht and >>>>> Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a >>>>> colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my >>>>> argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I >>>>> often do!). >>>>> >>>>> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in >>>>> the USA. She told me once that she became a >>>>> novelist because she learned that words can not >>>>> only report an experience but reproduce it. I must >>>>> have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off >>>>> into a discussion on whether inner speech can >>>>> actually be written down or not (which is >>>>> essentially the point that divides Woolf and >>>>> Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a >>>>> linguist, I said it couldn't. >>>>> >>>>> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts >>>>> literally, then the emotional subtext attributed >>>>> to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: >>>>> their external language is simply an editing or a >>>>> translation of the inner subtext. But that's not >>>>> what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely >>>>> predicative, and incomprehensible without its >>>>> internal context. >>>>> >>>>> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is >>>>> Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >>>>> >>>>> David Kellogg >>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>> >>>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in >>>>> and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>>> >>>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjzZNlQV6A$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. >>>>> Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: >>>>> Foundations of Pedology" >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwWT3VQoQ$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael >>>>> > >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> David, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> You completely lost me. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>> > *On >>>>> Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>>>> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >>>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness >>>>> enters through the gate" (a Participation >>>>> Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I think we all tend to read our current >>>>> opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only >>>>> real advantage I claim for my own reading of >>>>> "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" >>>>> is that it is unpopular, eccentric, >>>>> counter-conventional, or at least stridently >>>>> anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or >>>>> at least a foil for people on this list. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> So this is a late work, if we are to believe >>>>> the textological note. It belongs to the >>>>> period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the >>>>> Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox >>>>> as evidence against Lange and James (1999: >>>>> 117) and where he seems to be developing a >>>>> theory of higher emotions consistent with >>>>> Spinoza's distinction between emotions that >>>>> are passions (caused by the environment) and >>>>> those which are active (self-caused), by which >>>>> he means caused by understanding and knowledge >>>>> (and not by acts of recall and imitation). >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Vygotsky?counterposes Stanislavsky's system to >>>>> the system of psychotechnical selection >>>>> ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your >>>>> comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky >>>>> himself makes, and it is very a propos). He >>>>> seems to wish a plague upon both, because both >>>>> conflate the actor's own emotions with the >>>>> shareable, social emotions that actors have to >>>>> build on stage. You are of course right that >>>>> this is what gives that emotion a conditional, >>>>> historically specific, and even class specific >>>>> character--and you are right that >>>>> Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of >>>>> this, even if Stanislavsky developed a >>>>> technique that eventually ran directly counter >>>>> to it (the excesses of "method" acting in >>>>> Hollywood). >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I prefer to think of art as a special social >>>>> technique of sharing ideas--similar to >>>>> academic discourse--and not a form of >>>>> self-deception.?But I'll admit that this is >>>>> the direct result of my own artistic training: >>>>> we don't try to reproduce what we see when we >>>>> paint: we try to communicate what we are >>>>> thinking about it. I was an actor once >>>>> too,?and we were trained to be very careful >>>>> not to do?snuff porn on stage,?not even in our >>>>> heads.?It is basically the same mistake that >>>>> we all commit when we conflate our current >>>>> opinions with Vygotsky's. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David Kellogg >>>>> >>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>> >>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real >>>>> relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, >>>>> and Vygotsky >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>>> >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjzZNlQV6A$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. >>>>> Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: >>>>> Foundations of Pedology" >>>>> >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwWT3VQoQ$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, >>>>> Michael >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hi David, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s >>>>> nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems >>>>> to have spooked him. I never read >>>>> Selenick?s book. Everything I have read >>>>> about the 1912 production I have read has >>>>> been from Stanislavski?s perspective, >>>>> primarily Bennedetti so it would be an >>>>> interesting read. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> As for Diderot. Why would you say that >>>>> Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually >>>>> sided with directors who followed Diderot >>>>> and avoided lived experience). This seems >>>>> almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was >>>>> after in his later writings.? Diderot in >>>>> an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had >>>>> to make the choice to avoid >>>>> emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was >>>>> disorganized and performances became too >>>>> volatile. I was recently watching a movie >>>>> about actor auditions (Every Little Step >>>>> She Takes). There was one episode that >>>>> speaks directly to Diderot. An actress >>>>> gives a great, emotional reading. She gets >>>>> called back and reads again. The director >>>>> asks he to do what she did the first time. >>>>> She screams, I don?t know what I did the >>>>> first time, I don?t know why it was good. >>>>> That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. >>>>> Stanislavski was I think the first to try >>>>> and solve this paradox. The combine >>>>> affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky >>>>> trying to do much the same thing in >>>>> development, and I think it gives us a >>>>> window into the relationship between >>>>> spontaneous concepts and scientific >>>>> concepts (did you know Ribot called >>>>> emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if >>>>> it was the same word). >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I also disagree with your interpretation >>>>> of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would >>>>> call him anything from mentalese. As a >>>>> matter of fact I think you could make a >>>>> really good argument that Vygotsky took >>>>> his idea of inner speech directly from the >>>>> first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The >>>>> similarities are uncanny. Now before you >>>>> write back that An Actor?s work was not >>>>> published until 1938, there were chapters >>>>> in circulation as early as 1928. What I >>>>> find important is that Gurevich, who was >>>>> acting as his editor (I begin to wonder >>>>> how much she actually wrote) was worried >>>>> about Stanislavski?s use of psychological >>>>> phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed >>>>> to be allergic to read anything but plays >>>>> he thought of himself as a psychologist. >>>>> According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the >>>>> manuscript to three psychologists to look >>>>> over. Is it logical to make the argument >>>>> that Vygotsky might have been one of those >>>>> psychologists? The reason for my original >>>>> query. But there are so many similarities >>>>> between those early chapters of an Actor?s >>>>> Work and especially chapters six and seven >>>>> of Thinking and Speech. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect >>>>> evolved. Again, I think he might have read >>>>> Stanislavski and found a way in to >>>>> discussing this. Perhaps the most >>>>> influential thing (for me) I have read in >>>>> this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s >>>>> introduction to the special issue of MCA >>>>> on Spinoza. I think it is right on point >>>>> except I would replace the cryptic and >>>>> opaque Spinoza with the over the top >>>>> Stanislavski. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to >>>>> salt mines. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>>>> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >>>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >>>>> awareness enters through the gate" (a >>>>> Participation Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael-- >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> There's a good book on the 1912 production >>>>> (you've probably read it). >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow >>>>> Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I have a chapter on it in my own book, >>>>> 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" >>>>> (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the >>>>> stage version Vygotsky is hard on in >>>>> Psychology of Art is actually the Second >>>>> Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, >>>>> which is one of the revivals of >>>>> Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy >>>>> family, and most wealthy families were >>>>> active counter-revolutionaries during the >>>>> Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly >>>>> what you could call conservative, and they >>>>> were all quite displeased with >>>>> Constantin's acting career. Are you sure >>>>> that the nephew was sent to Siberia for >>>>> artistic reasons? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more >>>>> inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and >>>>> would have supported Brecht and Olivier >>>>> against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But >>>>> maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, >>>>> because his views on emotion certainly >>>>> evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to >>>>> view higher emotions as the product of >>>>> reflection in the sense of ideation than >>>>> as reflection in the sense of reproduction >>>>> in the 1930s, when he writes the actor >>>>> essay. I think the main problem with his >>>>> use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking >>>>> and Speech is that it assumes a kind of >>>>> 'mentalese' which is only a description of >>>>> emotion. Vygotsky would really require at >>>>> least three planes--volitional affective >>>>> impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal >>>>> thinking. Only the last one could be put >>>>> into words, and then the syntax would be >>>>> very different from what Stanislavsky is >>>>> using in his scripts. There is a similar >>>>> problem in the different ways that >>>>> Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat >>>>> inner speech--one of them tries to write >>>>> about it and the other tries to write it.) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David Kellogg >>>>> >>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>> >>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real >>>>> relationships in and between Halliday, >>>>> Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Some free e-prints available. >>>>> >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjzZNlQV6A$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ?New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: >>>>> /L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works/ >>>>> /Volume One: Foundations of Pedology/" >>>>> >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwWT3VQoQ$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, >>>>> Michael >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hi David, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even >>>>> more consequential than you might >>>>> think. It seems Isadora Duncan got >>>>> Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig >>>>> came to Russia but there were problems >>>>> from the start, and pretty soon they >>>>> were actually directing separately. >>>>> Stanislavski saw this as his great >>>>> opportunity to bring his ?system? >>>>> (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a >>>>> great deal) to an international >>>>> production and a Shakespeare play. Up >>>>> to that point he used his system >>>>> mostly in workshop productions with >>>>> Russian playwright working with the >>>>> MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another >>>>> small production simultaneously. >>>>> Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the >>>>> money he was receiving eventually took >>>>> less of a hand in the production. He >>>>> was a symbolist but I think not in the >>>>> way Russians were symbolists, in other >>>>> words he saw himself as the director >>>>> creating the symbols rather than the >>>>> actors exploring the sub-texts of the >>>>> words. He also wanted Hamlet to be >>>>> portrayed in the traditional >>>>> bombastic, over the top Elizabethan >>>>> fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor >>>>> playing Hamlet to really explore his >>>>> emotions in the context of his system. >>>>> The production only ran for a few >>>>> weeks as most people do not like >>>>> change (which makes me think Vygotsky >>>>> at the young age did not see it) so it >>>>> was a financial flop for the MAT but >>>>> an international critical success and >>>>> was in many ways a springboard for >>>>> Stanislavski?s fame.? My reading on >>>>> Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and >>>>> Psychology of Art in general, was that >>>>> he read a great many of the writings >>>>> on the production, which continued for >>>>> years. I feel he came down distinctly >>>>> on the side of Stanislavski in his >>>>> essay. Of course there is no way to >>>>> know this for sure, except he could >>>>> have never written that essay if there >>>>> had never been the 1912 production. It >>>>> changed the way people look at theater. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> As for socialist realism becoming >>>>> state policy in 1932, that might be >>>>> right. But Stanislavski was already >>>>> retired from directing and he did a >>>>> number of productions promoting >>>>> socialist realism (he was not enamored >>>>> with it, but it let the MAT keep >>>>> working). Also his nephew had been >>>>> exiled to Siberia. So it may have been >>>>> an important component before it was >>>>> state policy. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:* >>>>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *On Behalf Of *David Kellogg >>>>> *Sent:* Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >>>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >>>>> awareness enters through the gate" (a >>>>> Participation Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael-- >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Actually, socialist realism was only >>>>> declared official state policy in >>>>> 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight >>>>> years. During most of Vygotsky's >>>>> career the arts scene in the USSR was >>>>> probably the liveliest and freest in >>>>> the world. But slightly crazy too--see >>>>> the attached photograph ?Every >>>>> Komsomol (male Young Communist League >>>>> member) can and must satisfy his >>>>> sexual needs? and the woman has to >>>>> hold a sign that says ?Every >>>>> Komsomolka (female Young Communist >>>>> League member) should aid him in this, >>>>> otherwise she?s a philistine?). This >>>>> is the kind of thing Vygotsky was >>>>> fighting AGAINST in his sex education >>>>> work with Zalkind. My wife grew up >>>>> during the Cultural Revolution, and I >>>>> can tell you that it was not at all >>>>> the same thing. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and >>>>> visiting Moscow for the first time, >>>>> there was a famous production?of >>>>> Hamlet than in some ways still >>>>> influences us today: it was a little >>>>> bit as if you had the Olivier >>>>> production on stage and Zeffirelli >>>>> doing the lighting and props. >>>>> Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as >>>>> historical characters, but the stage >>>>> director and producer was the English >>>>> symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually >>>>> wanted, at one point, to turn it into >>>>> a one man show, wiith every character >>>>> except Hamlet in a mask. He got his >>>>> way with the props, which were highly >>>>> abstract and geometrical, but >>>>> Stanislavsky got his way with the >>>>> actual production, which (I gather) >>>>> was gritty and grimey. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I would love to know if the Hamlet >>>>> Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the >>>>> original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion >>>>> or if it was some toned down restaging >>>>> of the original 1912 production. Do >>>>> you know? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David Kellogg >>>>> >>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in >>>>> memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >>>>> >>>>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>>>> >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwFF_xQZg$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: >>>>> /L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works/ >>>>> /Volume One: Foundations of Pedology/" >>>>> >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwWT3VQoQ$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM >>>>> Glassman, Michael >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> A couple of things, especially >>>>> about the Uzbekistan experiments. >>>>> As I have alluded to in some >>>>> earlier posts I have been doing >>>>> some reading on theater during the >>>>> time Vygotsky was writing. One >>>>> thing I have come across multiple >>>>> times is the issue of socialist >>>>> realism. The idea (and this is >>>>> probably not a very good >>>>> definition) is that we have to >>>>> understand people as they really >>>>> are and think, but we also have to >>>>> accept that humans can become >>>>> better actors (broadly defined) >>>>> and thinkers under a socialist >>>>> system. It seems the people >>>>> pushing this was somewhat akin to >>>>> cadres in the cultural revolution. >>>>> In other words you better do it. >>>>> Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin >>>>> and Stalin loved, was forced to do >>>>> a number of productions that >>>>> promoted socialist realism. If you >>>>> did not toe the line you were sent >>>>> to Siberia (or worse). I am sure >>>>> this is discussed somewhere in >>>>> relationship to Vygotsky but I >>>>> wonder if we she take that into >>>>> account when thinking about things >>>>> like the Uzbekistan experiment. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> A second thing. I wonder if >>>>> sometimes we have a tendency to >>>>> over think and over philosophize >>>>> Vygotsky. In some ways he was just >>>>> trying to get things done and a >>>>> concept like conscious awareness >>>>> in Thinking and Speech is mostly a >>>>> means to solving a problem, not >>>>> any philosophical statement. The >>>>> problem it seems to me is that we >>>>> do not have consistent conceptual >>>>> systems based solely on our >>>>> experience. A five year old can >>>>> have five different best friends >>>>> on five days on the playground >>>>> depending on what people brought >>>>> for lunch or who got to the swings >>>>> first. Still, it is these >>>>> affective based concepts that >>>>> drive our activity. But we don?t >>>>> offer use these concepts with any >>>>> conscious use of attention or >>>>> memory or any of our other >>>>> intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, >>>>> Jerry brought salami today, maybe >>>>> I should think about making him my >>>>> best friend.? On the other hand >>>>> social concepts are developed >>>>> separately from our experiences >>>>> and our emotions. They are >>>>> developed specifically to organize >>>>> and bring consistency to our >>>>> feelings. But they are meaningless >>>>> from an affective, everyday >>>>> ?perspective. Why would we even >>>>> want to think about them. In order >>>>> to bring them into our lives we >>>>> have to consciously engage in >>>>> volitional activities using them. >>>>> So we have to have conscious >>>>> awareness. How then do you bring >>>>> the two together, for which he >>>>> takes the remainder of chapter six. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Dewey also was really, really >>>>> inconsistent in the way he used >>>>> words. I would argue he used words >>>>> as tools not as philosophical >>>>> statements. You have to read the >>>>> texts and figure it out. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:* >>>>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >>>>> *Sent:* Saturday, August 15, 2020 >>>>> 8:15 PM >>>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, >>>>> Activity >>>> > >>>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious >>>>> awareness enters through the gate" >>>>> (a Participation Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Hi Mike, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Well you and I may differ on this. >>>>> My interpretation is that in the >>>>> passage that Anthony gave us, LSV >>>>> is talking about the growing >>>>> consciousness *of their own >>>>> thinking* on the part of >>>>> school-age children. (In Thought & >>>>> Language he shifts a bit on >>>>> whether this happens in middle >>>>> childhood or adolescence, but that >>>>> needn't concern us.) That is to >>>>> say, he is writing about what he >>>>> calls ?introspection." >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> As evidence for this >>>>> interpretation let me cite a >>>>> couple of other passages (these >>>>> are from the excellent Kellogg >>>>> translation) where I think the >>>>> point is made more clearly: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> 100 "I make a knot. I do >>>>> it?consciously. I cannot, >>>>> however, tell you exactly how >>>>> I did it. My conscious act is >>>>> unconscious,?because my >>>>> attention is focused on the >>>>> act of the tying, but not on >>>>> how I do it. Consciousness >>>>> is?always some piece >>>>> of?reality. The object of my >>>>> consciousness is tying the >>>>> knot, a knot, and what?was >>>>> happening to it but not those >>>>> actions that I?make when >>>>> tying, not how I do it. But >>>>> the object?of consciousness >>>>> can be just that - then it >>>>> will be awareness. >>>>> Awareness?is an act >>>>> of?consciousness, the object >>>>> of which is itself the very >>>>> same activity of consciousness? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> 102 "Even Piaget's research >>>>> showed that introspection does >>>>> not begin to develop in >>>>> any?significant degree until >>>>> school age.?Further >>>>> investigations have shown that >>>>> the development >>>>> of?introspection in the school >>>>> age contains something similar >>>>> to?what occurs in the >>>>> development of?the external >>>>> perception and observation in >>>>> the transition from infancy to >>>>> early?childhood. As is?well >>>>> known, the most important >>>>> change in external perception >>>>> of this period [i.e. infancy >>>>> to early childhood] is that a >>>>> child from a?wordless and, >>>>> consequently, meaningless >>>>> perception, to a semantic, >>>>> verbal and >>>>> objective?perception. The same >>>>> can be?said of introspection >>>>> on the threshold of school >>>>> age. The child is?moving from >>>>> mute introspection to speech >>>>> and words.?He develops an >>>>> internal semantic?perception >>>>> of his own mental >>>>> processes?.?I realize that I >>>>> can recall, i.e. I do?recall >>>>> the subjectivity of my own >>>>> consciousness." >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> 104 "By their very >>>>> nature,?spontaneous concepts >>>>> include the fact that they are >>>>> unconscious. Children know how >>>>> they?operate?spontaneously but >>>>> are not aware of them. This is >>>>> what we saw in the children's >>>>> concept?of "because." >>>>> Obviously, by?themselves, >>>>> spontaneous concepts need to >>>>> be unconscious,?because >>>>> consideration is always >>>>> directed to their >>>>> objects,?rather than to the >>>>> act of thought which?is >>>>> grasping it.? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> 106 ?"only in a system [of >>>>> concepts] can the concept >>>>> become the object of awareness >>>>> and only in a system can >>>>> the?child acquire >>>>> volitional?control [of concepts]." >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> In his Lectures on Child >>>>> Psychology LSV is very clear, in >>>>> my view, that at each stage the >>>>> child has consciousness of >>>>> different aspects of the world and >>>>> of their own psychological >>>>> processes. For example: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> "In an infant, there is no >>>>> intellectual perception: he >>>>> perceives a room but does not >>>>> separately perceive chairs, a >>>>> table, etc.; he will perceive >>>>> everything as an undivided >>>>> whole in contrast?to the >>>>> adult, who sees figures >>>>> against a background. How?does >>>>> a child perceive his own >>>>> movements in early?childhood? >>>>> He is happy, unhappy,?but does >>>>> not know that he is happy, >>>>> just as an infant when he is >>>>> hungry?does not?know that he >>>>> is hungry. There is a great >>>>> difference between feeling >>>>> hunger and?knowing that I >>>>> am?hungry. In early childhood, >>>>> the child does not know his >>>>> own?experiences?. Precisely?as >>>>> a three-year-old child >>>>> discovers his relation to >>>>> other people, a >>>>> seven-year-old?discovers the >>>>> fact?of his own experiences.? >>>>> (p. 291) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Of course, one might find it >>>>> objectionable that LSV might >>>>> suggest that non-literate peoples >>>>> might be unaware of their own >>>>> thinking. But I agree with Andy, >>>>> in such cultures there may well be >>>>> systematic instruction in systems >>>>> of concepts ? legal, religious? ? >>>>> that would have the same effect as >>>>> LSV says that school instruction >>>>> does in the west. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Stay safe, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Martin >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, >>>>> mike cole >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I was not being ironic, David >>>>> >>>>> If scientific concepts are >>>>> required for conscious >>>>> awareness (as specified in the >>>>> quotation I was asked to >>>>> respond to) and people who >>>>> >>>>> have not been to school do not >>>>> acquire?Piagetian concepts >>>>> related to formal operations >>>>> (for example) or other measure >>>>> of "thinking in >>>>> >>>>> scientific concepts) if seems >>>>> to follow that they have not >>>>> achieved conscious awareness. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> LSV writes about non-literate, >>>>> indigenous, peoples that they >>>>> are capable of complexes, but >>>>> not true concepts (I think the >>>>> use of the term. >>>>> >>>>> "scientific" is not helpful >>>>> here). Luria interprets his >>>>> data on self-consciousness >>>>> that are a part of the same >>>>> monograph as his work on >>>>> syllogisms, >>>>> >>>>> classification, etc among >>>>> Uzbekis who had experienced >>>>> various degrees of involvement >>>>> in modern (e.g. Russian) forms >>>>> of life as evidence for >>>>> >>>>> what might be termed "lack of >>>>> conscious awareness I am not >>>>> sure." >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> mike >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 >>>>> PM David H Kirshner >>>>> >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Maybe I missed an ironic >>>>> intention, Michael, but on >>>>> August 11 Anthony asked >>>>> about the meaning of a >>>>> couple of paragraphs from >>>>> /Thinking and Speech/. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *Here is the passage in >>>>> question*, from /Thinking >>>>> and Speech/, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >>>>> >>>>> "To perceive something in >>>>> a different way means to >>>>> acquire new potentials for >>>>> acting with respect to it. >>>>> At the chess board, to see >>>>> differently is to play >>>>> differently. By >>>>> generalizing the process >>>>> of activity itself, I >>>>> acquire the potential for >>>>> new relationships with it. >>>>> To speak crudely, it is as >>>>> if this process has been >>>>> isolated from the general >>>>> activity of consciousness. >>>>> I am conscious of the fact >>>>> that I remember. I make my >>>>> own remembering the object >>>>> of consciousness. An >>>>> isolation arises here. In >>>>> a certain sense, any >>>>> generalization or >>>>> abstraction isolates its >>>>> object. This is why >>>>> conscious awareness ? >>>>> understood as >>>>> generalization ? leads >>>>> directly to mastery. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> /Thus, the foundation of >>>>> conscious awareness is the >>>>> generalization or >>>>> abstraction of the mental >>>>> processes, which leads to >>>>> their mastery/. >>>>> Instruction has a decisive >>>>> role in this process. >>>>> Scientific concepts have a >>>>> unique relationship to the >>>>> object. This relationship >>>>> is mediated through other >>>>> concepts that themselves >>>>> have an internal >>>>> hierarchical system of >>>>> interrelationships. It is >>>>> apparently in this domain >>>>> of the scientific concept >>>>> that conscious awareness >>>>> of concepts or the >>>>> generalization and mastery >>>>> of concepts emerges for >>>>> the first time. And once a >>>>> new structure of >>>>> generalization has arisen >>>>> in one sphere of thought, >>>>> it can ? like any >>>>> structure ? be transferred >>>>> without training to all >>>>> remaining domains of >>>>> concepts and thought. >>>>> Thus, /conscious awareness >>>>> enters through the gate >>>>> opened up by the >>>>> scientific concept/." >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Mike?s reply, in total was: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I understand that to mean >>>>> that humans who have not >>>>> achieved scientific/real >>>>> concepts do not have >>>>> conscious awareness. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> What am I missing? >>>>> >>>>> Mike >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:* >>>>> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *On Behalf Of *Martin Packer >>>>> *Sent:* Saturday, August >>>>> 15, 2020 4:36 PM >>>>> *To:* eXtended Mind, >>>>> Culture, Activity >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: >>>>> "conscious awareness >>>>> enters through the gate" >>>>> (a Participation Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Are you saying that either >>>>> Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, >>>>> or both, are claiming that >>>>> 5-year old children (for >>>>> example) lack conscious >>>>> awareness of the world >>>>> they live in? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Puzzled... >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Martin >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Aug 14, 2020, at >>>>> 9:16 PM, David H >>>>> Kirshner >>>>> >>>> > >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Andy, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> That ?any ?actual? >>>>> concept is the >>>>> intersection or >>>>> merging of both the >>>>> scientific and >>>>> spontaneous path,? >>>>> speaks to their >>>>> complementarity, >>>>> making them akin to >>>>> Type 1 and Type 2 >>>>> processing I referred >>>>> to in my post. >>>>> >>>>> But they?re also >>>>> hierarchically >>>>> related, since >>>>> according to Mike?s >>>>> interpretation of a >>>>> Vygotsky?s passage >>>>> cited by Anthony a few >>>>> days ago, ?humans who >>>>> have not achieved >>>>> scientific/real >>>>> concepts do not have >>>>> conscious awareness.? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I do not question >>>>> Vygotsky?s genius. >>>>> What I do question is >>>>> the coherence of the >>>>> interpretive frames >>>>> that have evolved from >>>>> his work. As Michael >>>>> observed in a recent >>>>> post, ?like the writer >>>>> he wanted to be he >>>>> [Vygotsky] used >>>>> phrases and ideas less >>>>> as truths and more to >>>>> move his narrative >>>>> forward.? What I >>>>> always wonder in >>>>> eavesdropping on XMCA >>>>> is whether the issues >>>>> we discuss are >>>>> resolvable, or is the >>>>> theoretical backdrop >>>>> to our conversation so >>>>> heterogeneous as to >>>>> make the possibility >>>>> of resolution illusory. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> ?>>>> > >>>>> *On Behalf Of *Andy >>>>> Blunden >>>>> *Sent:*?Friday, August >>>>> 14, 2020 10:32 AM >>>>> *To:* >>>>> xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> *Subject:*?[Xmca-l] >>>>> Re: "conscious >>>>> awareness enters >>>>> through the gate" (a >>>>> Participation Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> No David, as I said, >>>>> the term "scientific >>>>> concept" as it is >>>>> understood nowadays, >>>>> tends to mislead. The >>>>> distinction for >>>>> Vygotsky is entirely, >>>>> as you say, >>>>> /developmental/, and >>>>> it is not a >>>>> categorisation either >>>>> (as in putting things >>>>> into boxes), and >>>>> nothing to do with >>>>> "sophistication." >>>>> "Scientific concept" >>>>> refers to the path of >>>>> development that >>>>> begins with an >>>>> abstract >>>>> (decontextualised) >>>>> concept acquired >>>>> through instruction in >>>>> some more or less >>>>> formal institution. >>>>> "Spontaneous concept" >>>>> refers to the path of >>>>> development which >>>>> begins with everyday >>>>> experience, closely >>>>> connected with >>>>> immediate >>>>> sensori-motor >>>>> interaction and >>>>> perception, i.e., it >>>>> begins from the >>>>> concrete, whereas the >>>>> "scientific" is >>>>> beginning from the >>>>> abstract. >>>>> >>>>> Any "actual" concept >>>>> is the intersection or >>>>> merging of both the >>>>> scientific and >>>>> spontaneous path. For >>>>> example (1) everyday >>>>> life is full of ideas >>>>> which have their >>>>> source in >>>>> institutions, but have >>>>> made their way out of >>>>> the institutional >>>>> context into everyday >>>>> life. On the other >>>>> hand, for example (2) >>>>> any scientific concept >>>>> worth its salt has >>>>> made its way out of >>>>> the classroom and >>>>> become connected with >>>>> practice, like the >>>>> book-learning of the >>>>> medical graduate who's >>>>> spent 6 months in A&E. >>>>> >>>>> I admit, this is not >>>>> clear from Vygotsky's >>>>> prose. But here's the >>>>> thing: when you're >>>>> reading a great >>>>> thinker and what >>>>> they're saying seems >>>>> silly, trying reading >>>>> it more generously, >>>>> because there's >>>>> probably a reason this >>>>> writer has gained the >>>>> reputation of being a >>>>> great thinker. >>>>> >>>>> Andy >>>>> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>>>> >>>>> *Andy Blunden* >>>>> Hegel for Social >>>>> Movements >>>>> >>>>> Home Page >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, >>>>> David H Kirshner wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Thanks for your >>>>> accessible >>>>> example, Michael. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Vygotsky?s >>>>> scientific / >>>>> spontaneous >>>>> distinction >>>>> between types of >>>>> concepts has >>>>> always struck me >>>>> as such an >>>>> unfortunate >>>>> solution to the >>>>> problem of >>>>> differential >>>>> sophistication in >>>>> modes of >>>>> reasoning. I?m >>>>> sure this problem >>>>> must have deep >>>>> roots in classical >>>>> and contemporary >>>>> philosophy, even >>>>> as it is reflected >>>>> in cognitive >>>>> psychology?s Dual >>>>> Process Theory >>>>> that at its >>>>> ?theoretical core >>>>> amounts to a >>>>> dichotomous view >>>>> of two types of >>>>> processes?: type >>>>> 1?intuitive, fast, >>>>> automatic, >>>>> nonconscious, >>>>> effortless, >>>>> contextualized, >>>>> error-prone, and >>>>> type 2?reflective, >>>>> slow, deliberate, >>>>> cogitative, >>>>> effortful, >>>>> decontextualized, >>>>> normatively >>>>> correct? (Varga & >>>>> Hamburger, 2014). >>>>> What externalizing >>>>> this distinction >>>>> as different kinds >>>>> of cognitive >>>>> products (this or >>>>> that kind of >>>>> concept) seems to >>>>> do is >>>>> distract/detract >>>>> from the >>>>> sociogenetic >>>>> character of >>>>> development. >>>>> Surely, a >>>>> sociogenetic >>>>> approach seeks to >>>>> interpret these >>>>> different forms of >>>>> reasoning as >>>>> differential >>>>> discursive >>>>> practices, >>>>> embedded in >>>>> different cultural >>>>> contexts >>>>> (Scribner, Cole, >>>>> etc.). But talking >>>>> about different >>>>> kinds of concepts >>>>> seems like the >>>>> wrong departure >>>>> point for that >>>>> journey. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> David >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *On Behalf Of >>>>> *Glassman, Michael >>>>> *Sent:*?Friday, >>>>> August 14, 2020 >>>>> 7:03 AM >>>>> *To:*?eXtended >>>>> Mind, Culture, >>>>> Activity >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *Subject:*?[Xmca-l] >>>>> Re: "conscious >>>>> awareness enters >>>>> through the gate" >>>>> (a Participation >>>>> Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Hi Andy, Henry, >>>>> Anna Lisa, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Let me start by >>>>> saying that this >>>>> is completely >>>>> restricted to the >>>>> way conscious >>>>> awareness is used >>>>> in Thinking and >>>>> Speech. If it is >>>>> use differently in >>>>> other places this >>>>> perspective may be >>>>> wrong. To my mind >>>>> (with the proviso >>>>> that my mind if >>>>> often wrong) >>>>> Vygotsky is using >>>>> the idea of >>>>> conscious >>>>> awareness for a >>>>> specific purpose. >>>>> To differentiate >>>>> the role of >>>>> spontaneous >>>>> concepts with >>>>> non-spontaneous >>>>> concepts. >>>>> Spontaneous >>>>> concepts are based >>>>> initially in >>>>> affective memory >>>>> and they give >>>>> energy and >>>>> motivation to many >>>>> of our activities. >>>>> However we are not >>>>> consciously aware >>>>> of them. To go >>>>> back to chess, I >>>>> am at the pool and >>>>> my friend comes up >>>>> to me and says >>>>> ?Chess?? I say >>>>> yes. I have no >>>>> conscious >>>>> awareness of the >>>>> concept of chess >>>>> in my life, why I >>>>> say yes so easily >>>>> why it may be a >>>>> way to make a >>>>> social connection >>>>> between me and my >>>>> friend. It is >>>>> residue of my >>>>> affective memory >>>>> (I don?t know how >>>>> much Vygotsky was >>>>> using Ribot when >>>>> making this >>>>> argument). We are >>>>> playing chess and >>>>> I remember that my >>>>> brother showed me >>>>> the >>>>> non-spontaneous/scientific >>>>> concept of the >>>>> bishop?s gambit. >>>>> As this point in >>>>> my life I have to >>>>> think about it and >>>>> whether I want to >>>>> use it. I must >>>>> summon the >>>>> intellectual >>>>> functions of >>>>> memory and >>>>> attention as I >>>>> think about the >>>>> use of the >>>>> bishop?s gambit. >>>>> This then is >>>>> conscious >>>>> awareness of the >>>>> scientific >>>>> concept. I used >>>>> the bishop?s >>>>> gambit and win the >>>>> game and I applaud >>>>> myself. I got home >>>>> and tell my >>>>> brother, the >>>>> bishop?s gambit >>>>> was great, thanks. >>>>> I am mediating the >>>>> scientific concept >>>>> of the bishop?s >>>>> gambit with my >>>>> everyday concept >>>>> of playing chess. >>>>> Voila, development!!!! >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> I don?t know if >>>>> Vygotsky uses >>>>> conscious >>>>> awareness >>>>> differently elsewhere. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Michael >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> *From:*xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> ?>>>> > >>>>> *On Behalf Of >>>>> *Andy Blunden >>>>> *Sent:*?Thursday, >>>>> August 13, 2020 >>>>> 11:51 PM >>>>> *To:* >>>>> xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>> >>>>> *Subject:*?[Xmca-l] >>>>> Re: "conscious >>>>> awareness enters >>>>> through the gate" >>>>> (a Participation >>>>> Question) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Henry, my aim was >>>>> just to introduce >>>>> Annalisa and >>>>> whoever to the >>>>> scientific way >>>>> that the terms >>>>> "conscious >>>>> awareness" and >>>>> "consciousness" >>>>> are used in CHAT. >>>>> I say "scientific" >>>>> in the sense that >>>>> in CHAT we have a >>>>> system of concepts >>>>> and associated >>>>> word meanings >>>>> which have, if you >>>>> like, conventional >>>>> meanings. There is >>>>> nothing wrong with >>>>> "automatic and >>>>> controlled >>>>> processing" and >>>>> "ballistic >>>>> processing" but so >>>>> far as I am aware >>>>> these terms were >>>>> not in Vygotsky's >>>>> vocabulary. I >>>>> could be wrong of >>>>> course and I am >>>>> sure I will be >>>>> rapidly corrected >>>>> if this is the case. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> >>>>> I >>>>> The >>>>> Angel's View of History >>>>> >>>>> It is only in a social context >>>>> that subjectivism and >>>>> objectivism, spiritualism and >>>>> materialism, activity and >>>>> passivity cease to be >>>>> antinomies, and thus cease to >>>>> exist as such antinomies. The >>>>> resolution of the >>>>> *theoretical*?contradictions >>>>> is possible only through >>>>> practical means, only through >>>>> the?practical?energy of >>>>> humans. (Marx, 1844). >>>>> >>>>> Cultural Praxis Website: >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!VUrO8KHBiAD3F4WA25vN4AjLHzQRRdeDAQ4IbR_OdE8IBF8PBBN1OC2CRTN9KjwuFCrCJA$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Re-generating CHAT Website: >>>>> re-generatingchat.com >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Archival resources website: >>>>> lchc.ucsd.edu >>>>> . >>>>> >>>>> Narrative history of LCHC: >>>>> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu >>>>> . >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/b1114803/attachment.html From yrjo.engestrom@helsinki.fi Thu Aug 20 00:19:14 2020 From: yrjo.engestrom@helsinki.fi (=?Windows-1252?Q?Engestr=F6m=2C_Yrj=F6_H_M?=) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 07:19:14 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] =?windows-1252?q?_Fw=3A_Arja_Haapasaari=92s_public_examination_F?= =?windows-1252?q?ri_28=2E8=2E20_at_12?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ________________________________ From: owner-cradle-list@helsinki.fi on behalf of Paavola, Sami J Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2020 12:55 PM To: cradle-list@helsinki.fi ; cradle-news@helsinki.fi Cc: Haapasaari, Arja H Subject: [cradle-list] Arja Haapasaari?s public examination Fri 28.8.20 at 12 / Arja Haapasaaren v?it?s Dear Colleagues / Hyv?t kollegat! I am happy to announce the public defense of Arja Haapasaari?s PhD thesis in adult education: ?The Hunters of Lost Parcels. An activity-theoretical study of the emergence and sustainability of workers? transformative agency?. The Opponent of the dissertation is Professor Heila Lotz-Sisitka (Rhodes University, South Africa). Professor Emeritus Yrj? Engestr?m (University of Helsinki) and Senior Researcher, Docent Hannele Kerosuo (University of Helsinki / University of Tampere) have supervised the thesis. The defence takes place on Friday, 28th August 2020 at 12 o?clock (Finnish time). The place is: Aurora room 230, Siltavuorenpenger 10 (max 116 people with safe distances). The examination can be followed through a Zoom link: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/62234290812?pwd=SVRhTzRIczEyb0pNdVlLTnR6VFoxQT09__;!!Mih3wA!XH2MEJZjk4RYrGT0hRtUzQYtqzC2qIEIC-96DiUDft30nXkY3-6ubleoLPjlpRcMl93IJQ$ Or using: Meeting ID: 62 234 290 812, Password: 121212 The dissertation is published in Helsinki Studies in Education series and can be downloaded from (at them moment only the abstract): https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/317685__;!!Mih3wA!XH2MEJZjk4RYrGT0hRtUzQYtqzC2qIEIC-96DiUDft30nXkY3-6ubleoLPjlpRdF9T2ZoA$ You are warmly welcome to join! Associate Professor Sami Paavola, Custos and the Coordinating professor of the Faculty Mieluisa teht?v?ni on ilmoittaa, ett? KM Arja Haapasaaren aikuiskasvatustieteen alaan kuuluva v?it?skirja: "The Hunters of Lost Parcels. An activity-theoretical study of the emergence and sustainability of workers? transformative agency / Kadonneiden pakettien mets?st?j?t. Toiminnanteoreettinen tutkimus ty?ntekij?iden muutostoimijuuden syntymisest? ja kest?vyydest?? tarkastetaan perjantaina 28.8.2020 klo 12. Paikkana: Aurora, sali 230, Siltavuorenpenger 10 (max 116 ihmist? turvav?lein). V?it?stilaisuutta voi seurata Zoom-linkin kautta: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/62234290812?pwd=SVRhTzRIczEyb0pNdVlLTnR6VFoxQT09__;!!Mih3wA!XH2MEJZjk4RYrGT0hRtUzQYtqzC2qIEIC-96DiUDft30nXkY3-6ubleoLPjlpRcMl93IJQ$ Tai tiedoin: Meeting ID: 62 234 290 812, Salasana: 121212 Vastav?itt?j?n? toimii professori Heila Lotz-Sisitka (Rhodes University, South Africa). Professori emeritus Yrj? Engestr?m (University of Helsinki) ja vanhempi tutkija / dosentti Hannele Kerosuo (Helsingin yliopisto ja Tampereen yliopisto) ovat olleet ty?n ohjaajina. V?it?skirja julkaistaan Helsinki Studies in Education -sarjassa ja sen johdanto-osan voi ladata osoitteesta (t?ll? hetkell? vain tiivistelm?n): https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/317685__;!!Mih3wA!XH2MEJZjk4RYrGT0hRtUzQYtqzC2qIEIC-96DiUDft30nXkY3-6ubleoLPjlpRdF9T2ZoA$ L?mpim?sti tervetuloa! Apulaisprofessori Sami Paavola, Kustos ja tiedekunnan vastuuprofessori -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/4dd7c5b0/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Thu Aug 20 11:02:05 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 11:02:05 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] The perils of translation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Daived et al What I sent was a Kozulin translation which I consider superior to that in Mind in Society. The piece you found sounds interesting, David. Missed the link. The mistranslation of obuchenie contains an important lesson, over and above its misinterpretation. Its misinterpretation is deeply imbedded in the contrasting terms -- learning instead of instruction. Learning, at the time (remember the Pavlovian roots of American psychology were particularly strong in the 1950's-60's equaled development. Instruction (in-struct-(ure)tips the balance to emphasize teacher control. When in-struction is coupled with qualitative developmental shifts/phases/stages (LSV) one arrives at the idea that instruction can induce developmental change. And learning is assumed to depend upon instruction. Hence- Readers of the* Mind in Society* text are going to misinterpret ideas such as "The zone of proximal development" Hence- Seth could rightly criticized the translations and instruct readers about the key features of Vygotsky's actual theory. It is important, too, that key texts in Russian translated from English mis-translate learning as development! The problem is symmetrical . Another key term in *Mind and Society *that could have been better translated. If prefer Nick Veresov's way of translating the terms social level and individual level based on the dramatic metaphor, for example. Thanks to the work of many many others we all have way more adequate translations of way more materials than the manuscripts for Mind and Society that i smuggled out of the Moscow back when I didn't have much sense and Republicans were anti Russian. Mike On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 7:22 PM David Kellogg wrote: > Anthony-- > > What Mike sent is an article by Myra Barrs introducing a re-translation of > a Chapter Six of 'Mind in Society' by Stephen Mitchell. That is, as Barrs > says, based on Chapter One of "The Mental Development of the Child in the > Process of Obuchenie", which is called (in my copy of the original Russian > book, "The problem of obuchenie in mental development at school age." The > footnote just says it was a manuscript written some time in 1933/1934. > > But the text you asked for is actually Chapter Three, which is called (in > my volume) "The dynamics of mental development at school age and its link > to obucheniem". That was the link that I sent you. You will find it's quite > a different text--the stenogramme of a lecture that Vygotsky gave at the > Bubnov Pedagogical Institute on the 23 of December in 1933. It includes a > lot of stuff about IQ testing, and Vygotsky is talking about how the lower > IQ kids seem to have a much larger ZPD (because of a ceiling effect on the > higher IQ kids). > > Mike is quite diffident about the translation in Mind in Society, because > of the way in which "obuchenie" is translated. Of course, there are places > where Vygotsky clearly means teaching and not learning, and other places > where he means teaching-learning. (Vygotsky actually has the same problem > translating German into Russian, because he translates Kurt Goldstein's > "lehrnen" to mean teaching when Goldstein obviously means learning!). > . -- > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!QQD0OqJA9WGpGsoSuEebqWKzKX7c6-VHIu8EUMNaK0NrOzRR0PlmpAYUlAEj2k-Z8BhCSg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!QQD0OqJA9WGpGsoSuEebqWKzKX7c6-VHIu8EUMNaK0NrOzRR0PlmpAYUlAEj2k92sdeHZQ$ > > > > On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 10:56 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Wow, Mike and David thank you very much - >> >> - for the reading material, for the hospitality, for the encouraging >> words. >> >> And also for that great factoid about Steve and Boeing. >> >> Anthony >> >> >> On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 12:53 PM mike cole wrote: >> >>> Is this what you are looking for, Anthony? >>> Here is a good translation. >>> Seth's article is super helpful in untangling misunderstandings. The >>> translation of obuchenie in* Mind in Society* >>> as learning is misleading, for reasons explained in the attached article >>> I wrote several years ago about the problem. >>> (the problem is alive and well in a field called "learning sciences" >>> where instruction is a cipher and development >>> is not the primary category). >>> >>> Your set of videos is a great resource. And your use of the >>> xlchc/xmca archives is just what was hoped for when >>> we began the practices that have evolved into what one sees today. We >>> have not heard from Steve for a long time, >>> but he got his PH.D supported by participants in the discussion at this >>> time. He is/was an assembly line work at >>> Boeing at the time. >>> >>> Mike >>> PS - Now if we could collectively move from pseudoconcepts to few >>> concepts and have the wits to know the difference >>> it would be great!! :-) >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 8:50 AM Anthony Barra >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Good afternoon, >>>> >>>> In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of >>>> proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and >>>> >>>> instruction" (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here >>>> will enjoy re-reading: >>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html >>>> >>>> Thank you, >>>> >>>> Anthony >>>> >>>> P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): >>>> >>>> - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza >>>> shkol?nika v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse >>>> obuchenia (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie >>>> Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie Izdatel?stvo. >>>> >>>> And the reference, in context: >>>> >>>>> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor >>>>> readily >>>>> >>>>> available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >>>>> children are tested and >>>>> >>>>> identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a large or small zone >>>>> (as determined by the kind of >>>>> >>>>> procedure described in the previous paragraph). Subsequent school >>>>> success is determined, and it >>>>> >>>>> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >>>>> predictive than IQ. That is, >>>>> >>>>> children with a larger zone of proximal development (i.e., more >>>>> maturing functions are currently >>>>> >>>>> available) had comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. >>>>> Similarly, children with a >>>>> >>>>> smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >>>>> development, regardless of the >>>>> >>>>> initially measured IQ. In other words, the zone of proximal >>>>> development gave a better indication for predicting/understanding future >>>>> intellectual development than a measure of independent >>>>> >>>>> performance, where the explanation is that the greater number of >>>>> maturing functions gives a child >>>>> >>>>> better opportunities to benefit from school instruction. A detailed >>>>> summary of this article is found in >>>>> >>>>> van der Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. >>>>> 12-13). >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> I[image: Angelus Novus] >>> The >>> Angel's View of History >>> >>> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >>> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >>> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >>> the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical >>> means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >>> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!QQD0OqJA9WGpGsoSuEebqWKzKX7c6-VHIu8EUMNaK0NrOzRR0PlmpAYUlAEj2k_npKbtdg$ >>> >>> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >>> >>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. >>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/e4d73b57/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Thu Aug 20 11:40:15 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 11:40:15 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: David, Anthorny..... I went back and found this exchange with the article and the translation. Seems like a candidate for a good translation and a quick posting on C/P. I would be careful with google translation, although its a reasonable first pass. Speaking of mistranslations the English 6 volume translate of the term "vryashchivanie" is translated variously, from ingrowing to interiorization to revolution and google likes rotating. Its enough to make your head spin. I am for sure not the best instructor I ever met, but I have always learned a lot from teaching. I find what I believe to be a genuine feeling of humility when the teaching "works", e.g., is appropriated and built upon. Like David, I feel uncomfortable when in my excitement after a meeting I say this to people who consider me a teacher -- as if it is false humbleness. But it isn't. We all over attribute what happens to us positively if events go well. But when education is developmental education, obuchenie becomes a two way street. 2 kopeks of distraction mike My experiences with online teaching go a long way back to the beginnings of interactive TV and I really like the experiences I have had so far. The past couple of years have been particularly rich learning experiences for me. These learning experiences just might have been sufficient to induce a qualitative change in my intellectual development .... Whether it is a qualitative change up, or down, or just another lap around the track searching for the ladder has yet to become clear. I agree On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 3:48 PM David Kellogg wrote: > Anthony-- > > As far as I know, it's never been translated. But you can find it in > Russian at the Electronic Library of Moscow State University--right here: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://psychlib.ru/mgppu/VUR/VUR-0331.htm*$p33__;Iw!!Mih3wA!UmPtbsE6sb-K9IJHK-rD37j6s0q2xjWinNR4yhUTl0rTVs4cM88L3Fqz7B6mzvPDy3RV6g$ > > > If your Russian is anything like mine (i.e. limited to a very narrow > register) you'll need a translation to make sense of it. But you'll find > that if you right click on the text, it will bring to bear the power of > Google Translate. Since Google Translate operates with established > translations of Vygotsky, and since Vygotsky does tend to repeat his > formulations when he's got one that he likes, you will find that the result > is quite usable. > > (Of course you know that I didn't mean to imply that you only took away > the framing anecdote, Anthony; I was just trying to think of a hypothetical > example that didn't involve the theatre--theatrics are not always a bad > thing when you are in a theatre. However, I really DID mean what I said > about the pleasure of teaching-learning for the TEACHER: it IS > underemphasized and it DOES explain a lot about how ideas do manage to > outlive the bodies that have them. I guess we tend to explain this pleasure > by talking about how much we ourselves have learned from the experience of > teaching, and I suppose that does SOUND humble and modest, although when > you think about it what I am really saying when I say that is that I am > still the best teacher I have ever met. For me, the humility is keener and > borders on humiliation--I learn the hard way how much I have to learn about > cultivating an on-line teaching persona, modulating my intonation, not > stroking my beard all the time and sticking to the point rather better than > I am wont to do in class. If my students can survive all that, maybe the > ideas will too....) > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!UmPtbsE6sb-K9IJHK-rD37j6s0q2xjWinNR4yhUTl0rTVs4cM88L3Fqz7B6mzvODqhuA7w$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UmPtbsE6sb-K9IJHK-rD37j6s0q2xjWinNR4yhUTl0rTVs4cM88L3Fqz7B6mzvPwHvOqjw$ > > > > On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 12:50 AM Anthony Barra > wrote: > >> Good afternoon, >> >> In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of >> proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" >> (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy >> re-reading: >> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html >> >> Thank you, >> >> Anthony >> >> P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): >> >> - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika >> v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia >> (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie >> Izdatel?stvo. >> >> And the reference, in context: >> >>> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor >>> readily available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >>> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >>> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >>> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >>> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >>> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >>> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >>> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >>> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >>> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >>> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >>> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >>> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >>> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >>> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >>> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >>> >> -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!UmPtbsE6sb-K9IJHK-rD37j6s0q2xjWinNR4yhUTl0rTVs4cM88L3Fqz7B6mzvPwXT_R9g$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/40eb75e5/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Thu Aug 20 11:54:48 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:54:48 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks, Mike. Can you say just a tad more about *"when the teaching 'works' e.g., is appropriated and built upon"*? I have a sense of what you mean, and what it means in my own experience -- but if time and mood allow, could you spare a few more sentences from your own valuable POV? After all, "when the teaching works" is one of the main things many of us are going for : ) Thanks, Anthony On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 2:42 PM mike cole wrote: > David, Anthorny..... > > I went back and found this exchange with the article and the translation. > Seems like a candidate for a good translation > and a quick posting on C/P. > > I would be careful with google translation, although its a reasonable > first pass. Speaking of mistranslations > the English 6 volume translate of the term "vryashchivanie" is translated > variously, from ingrowing to interiorization > to revolution and google likes rotating. Its enough to make your head > spin. > > I am for sure not the best instructor I ever met, but I have always > learned a lot from teaching. I find what I believe to be > a genuine feeling of humility when the teaching "works", e.g., is > appropriated and built upon. Like David, I feel uncomfortable > when in my excitement after a meeting I say this to people who consider me > a teacher -- as if it is false humbleness. But it isn't. > We all over attribute what happens to us positively if events go well. But > when education is developmental education, obuchenie > becomes a two way street. > > 2 kopeks of distraction > mike > > > > > My experiences with online > teaching go a long way back to the beginnings of interactive TV and I > really like the experiences I have had so far. The > past couple of years have been particularly rich learning experiences for > me. These learning experiences just might have > been sufficient to induce a qualitative change in my intellectual > development .... Whether it is a qualitative change up, or > down, or just another lap around the track searching for the ladder has > yet to become clear. > > I agree > > On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 3:48 PM David Kellogg > wrote: > >> Anthony-- >> >> As far as I know, it's never been translated. But you can find it in >> Russian at the Electronic Library of Moscow State University--right here: >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://psychlib.ru/mgppu/VUR/VUR-0331.htm*$p33__;Iw!!Mih3wA!XTaeVUAONxrTV_Jh0_I2YFSJ34I6UNaAqekWj8Rn6sLWX6nONk4sJbR4mHxMFc_BluV_3g$ >> >> >> If your Russian is anything like mine (i.e. limited to a very narrow >> register) you'll need a translation to make sense of it. But you'll find >> that if you right click on the text, it will bring to bear the power of >> Google Translate. Since Google Translate operates with established >> translations of Vygotsky, and since Vygotsky does tend to repeat his >> formulations when he's got one that he likes, you will find that the result >> is quite usable. >> >> (Of course you know that I didn't mean to imply that you only took away >> the framing anecdote, Anthony; I was just trying to think of a hypothetical >> example that didn't involve the theatre--theatrics are not always a bad >> thing when you are in a theatre. However, I really DID mean what I said >> about the pleasure of teaching-learning for the TEACHER: it IS >> underemphasized and it DOES explain a lot about how ideas do manage to >> outlive the bodies that have them. I guess we tend to explain this pleasure >> by talking about how much we ourselves have learned from the experience of >> teaching, and I suppose that does SOUND humble and modest, although when >> you think about it what I am really saying when I say that is that I am >> still the best teacher I have ever met. For me, the humility is keener and >> borders on humiliation--I learn the hard way how much I have to learn about >> cultivating an on-line teaching persona, modulating my intonation, not >> stroking my beard all the time and sticking to the point rather better than >> I am wont to do in class. If my students can survive all that, maybe the >> ideas will too....) >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XTaeVUAONxrTV_Jh0_I2YFSJ34I6UNaAqekWj8Rn6sLWX6nONk4sJbR4mHxMFc_aCyhWqQ$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XTaeVUAONxrTV_Jh0_I2YFSJ34I6UNaAqekWj8Rn6sLWX6nONk4sJbR4mHxMFc9cSyI_HQ$ >> >> >> >> On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 12:50 AM Anthony Barra >> wrote: >> >>> Good afternoon, >>> >>> In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of >>> proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" >>> (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy >>> re-reading: >>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html >>> >>> Thank you, >>> >>> Anthony >>> >>> P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): >>> >>> - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza shkol?nika >>> v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse obuchenia >>> (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie >>> Izdatel?stvo. >>> >>> And the reference, in context: >>> >>>> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor >>>> readily available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >>>> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >>>> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >>>> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >>>> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >>>> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >>>> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >>>> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >>>> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >>>> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >>>> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >>>> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >>>> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >>>> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >>>> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >>>> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >>>> >>> > > -- > > I[image: Angelus Novus] > The > Angel's View of History > > It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, > spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be > antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of > the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, > only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). > Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XTaeVUAONxrTV_Jh0_I2YFSJ34I6UNaAqekWj8Rn6sLWX6nONk4sJbR4mHxMFc9Lxgwctw$ > > Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com > > Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. > Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/7987df36/attachment.html From mcole@ucsd.edu Thu Aug 20 15:32:41 2020 From: mcole@ucsd.edu (mike cole) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 15:32:41 -0700 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "this remarkable list" (Gabosch, 2002) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It would be great to gather answers to that question from everyone on XMCA, Anthony. Or coordinate a zoom session where everyone provides an example and there is adequate provision for later discussion/reflection. Can you say just a tad more about *"when the teaching 'works' e.g., is appropriated and built upon"*? When I work through the process of writing an academic essay with a student who is first struggling with, say, the study of culture in development. Their initial account has many interesting ideas in it, but the underlying story (aka logig) is unclear and the conclusion is confused. Transition points in the presumbed argument aren't clear. After working through the intro and the next couple of sections, the argument starts to become clearer. A session or two later the transitions come more easily. The final draft is a big improvement, perhaps it even has a solidly stated conclusion. THe first draft of the next piece of writing is qualitatively better than its predecessor. In discussion of other student papers the student introduces basic ideas from his/her own work in a way that is productive for other participants, including me. The student is predisposed to continue the process. I come away with new ideas about the content of the discussions and the process of obuchenie. By appropriated I mean taken up some manner and integrated into one's cultural tool kit. A handy thing about this term is that appropriate also means normative for the social circumstances. From this perspective, one is passing and managing all the time. (I recently met a younger scholar whose work I greatly admired who commented in a seminar that they felt like an imposter. Others nodded sympathetically. I was dumbfounded. The person had been acting totally appropriately academically, socially, a successful young scholar). Specifying the sufficient and necessary conditions to create the kinds of interactions where cognition is distributed in the process of also seems like an important part of the process. For now I would simply refer you to the next part of the slides I was showing in that clip about a "zoped" you showed. The notion of a zoped that arose in my work with Peg and lchcophiles speaks to that problem. I have broken my own injunction to avid taking up too much xmca discourse space. And not to continue discussions started by/with all white males. Back to the dungeon. mike tell you that s/he had gone to the movies on Saturday and seen, say On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 11:56 AM Anthony Barra wrote: > Thanks, Mike. > > Can you say just a tad more about *"when the teaching 'works' e.g., is > appropriated and built upon"*? > > I have a sense of what you mean, and what it means in my own experience -- > but if time and mood allow, could you spare a few more sentences from your > own valuable POV? > > After all, "when the teaching works" is one of the main things many of us > are going for : ) > > Thanks, > > Anthony > > On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 2:42 PM mike cole wrote: > >> David, Anthorny..... >> >> I went back and found this exchange with the article and the >> translation. Seems like a candidate for a good translation >> and a quick posting on C/P. >> >> I would be careful with google translation, although its a reasonable >> first pass. Speaking of mistranslations >> the English 6 volume translate of the term "vryashchivanie" is >> translated variously, from ingrowing to interiorization >> to revolution and google likes rotating. Its enough to make your head >> spin. >> >> I am for sure not the best instructor I ever met, but I have always >> learned a lot from teaching. I find what I believe to be >> a genuine feeling of humility when the teaching "works", e.g., is >> appropriated and built upon. Like David, I feel uncomfortable >> when in my excitement after a meeting I say this to people who consider >> me a teacher -- as if it is false humbleness. But it isn't. >> We all over attribute what happens to us positively if events go well. >> But when education is developmental education, obuchenie >> becomes a two way street. >> >> 2 kopeks of distraction >> mike >> >> >> >> >> My experiences with online >> teaching go a long way back to the beginnings of interactive TV and I >> really like the experiences I have had so far. The >> past couple of years have been particularly rich learning experiences for >> me. These learning experiences just might have >> been sufficient to induce a qualitative change in my intellectual >> development .... Whether it is a qualitative change up, or >> down, or just another lap around the track searching for the ladder has >> yet to become clear. >> >> I agree >> >> On Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 3:48 PM David Kellogg >> wrote: >> >>> Anthony-- >>> >>> As far as I know, it's never been translated. But you can find it in >>> Russian at the Electronic Library of Moscow State University--right here: >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://psychlib.ru/mgppu/VUR/VUR-0331.htm*$p33__;Iw!!Mih3wA!S0dyScAUWdtQ7BLVECUaOmGM6gOdJmyI8ygSB6Era0jDbf0xSb-4T5XTMyIvulM_ADSiRw$ >>> >>> >>> If your Russian is anything like mine (i.e. limited to a very narrow >>> register) you'll need a translation to make sense of it. But you'll find >>> that if you right click on the text, it will bring to bear the power of >>> Google Translate. Since Google Translate operates with established >>> translations of Vygotsky, and since Vygotsky does tend to repeat his >>> formulations when he's got one that he likes, you will find that the result >>> is quite usable. >>> >>> (Of course you know that I didn't mean to imply that you only took away >>> the framing anecdote, Anthony; I was just trying to think of a hypothetical >>> example that didn't involve the theatre--theatrics are not always a bad >>> thing when you are in a theatre. However, I really DID mean what I said >>> about the pleasure of teaching-learning for the TEACHER: it IS >>> underemphasized and it DOES explain a lot about how ideas do manage to >>> outlive the bodies that have them. I guess we tend to explain this pleasure >>> by talking about how much we ourselves have learned from the experience of >>> teaching, and I suppose that does SOUND humble and modest, although when >>> you think about it what I am really saying when I say that is that I am >>> still the best teacher I have ever met. For me, the humility is keener and >>> borders on humiliation--I learn the hard way how much I have to learn about >>> cultivating an on-line teaching persona, modulating my intonation, not >>> stroking my beard all the time and sticking to the point rather better than >>> I am wont to do in class. If my students can survive all that, maybe the >>> ideas will too....) >>> >>> David Kellogg >>> Sangmyung University >>> >>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >>> Hasan, and Vygotsky >>> >>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!S0dyScAUWdtQ7BLVECUaOmGM6gOdJmyI8ygSB6Era0jDbf0xSb-4T5XTMyIvulNQa5FADA$ >>> >>> >>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >>> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!S0dyScAUWdtQ7BLVECUaOmGM6gOdJmyI8ygSB6Era0jDbf0xSb-4T5XTMyIvulOyMoRYQQ$ >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 12:50 AM Anthony Barra >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Good afternoon, >>>> >>>> In a search for an article cited in S. Chaiklin's great "The zone of >>>> proximal development in Vygotsky?s analysis of learning and instruction" >>>> (2003), I stumbled upon a post that I believe many here will enjoy >>>> re-reading: >>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2002_11.dir/0156.html >>>> >>>> Thank you, >>>> >>>> Anthony >>>> >>>> P.S. Here is the article I was searching for (in case anyone can help): >>>> >>>> - Vygotsky, L. S. (1935a). Dinamika umstvennogo razvitiza >>>> shkol?nika v svjazi s obucheniem. In Umstvennoie razvitie detei v protsesse >>>> obuchenia (pp. 33-52). Moscow/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoie >>>> Uchebno-pedagogicheskoie Izdatel?stvo. >>>> >>>> And the reference, in context: >>>> >>>>> "In one article, which as far as I know is neither translated nor >>>>> readily available, Vygotsky (1935a) describes a set of experiments in which >>>>> children are tested and identified to have a high or low IQ as well as a >>>>> large or small zone (as determined by the kind of procedure described in >>>>> the previous paragraph). Subsequent school success is determined, and it >>>>> appears that the size of the zone of proximal development was more >>>>> predictive than IQ. That is, children with a larger zone of proximal >>>>> development (i.e., more maturing functions are currently available) had >>>>> comparable intellectual development, regardless of IQ. Similarly, children >>>>> with a smaller zone of proximal development had a comparable intellectual >>>>> development, regardless of the initially measured IQ. In other words, the >>>>> zone of proximal development gave a better indication for >>>>> predicting/understanding future intellectual development than a measure of >>>>> independent performance, where the explanation is that the greater number >>>>> of maturing functions gives a child better opportunities to benefit from >>>>> school instruction. A detailed summary of this article is found in van der >>>>> Veer and Valsiner (1991, pp. 336-341)." (Chaiklin, 2003, p. 12-13). >>>>> >>>> >> >> -- >> >> I[image: Angelus Novus] >> The >> Angel's View of History >> >> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, >> spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be >> antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of >> the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, >> only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S0dyScAUWdtQ7BLVECUaOmGM6gOdJmyI8ygSB6Era0jDbf0xSb-4T5XTMyIvulNVHqk7BQ$ >> >> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >> >> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. >> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. >> >> >> >> -- I[image: Angelus Novus] The Angel's View of History It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!S0dyScAUWdtQ7BLVECUaOmGM6gOdJmyI8ygSB6Era0jDbf0xSb-4T5XTMyIvulNVHqk7BQ$ Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu. Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/4ad376cd/attachment-0001.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Thu Aug 20 16:17:21 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2020 08:17:21 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] Shut Down STEM/Academia? Message-ID: (Anthony--are you sure you are really a white male? You seem rather Latinx to me.) I am curious about the call for papers currently up on MCA. Here's what it says: "The recent global pandemic lays bare the ongoing disparities in health and economic well-being amongst racialized communities in North America (Poteat et al., 2020). Amplified by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement brought to global awareness and provoked dialogue about ongoing antiblack racism in the United States and global colonial and settler-colonial contexts. In academia the hashtags #ShutDownSTEM and #ShutDownAcademia brought similar attention to racisms within academic and scientific communities. This movement corresponds to recent emphasis on the sociopolitical nature of teaching and learning in fields broadly construed as STEM, which continuously construct (sic) racialized assumptions based on deficit views about learners from nondominant communities (Adams, in press). Racialized and deficit-based discourses have been detrimental to Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities whose potential for flourishing has been stifled by the imposition of ?solutions? from ?experts? who claim to know what is ?best? for them (Kayumova et al., 2019). Studies rooted in deficit discourses determines (sic) the orientation a researcher may take towards communities of learners from BIPOC backgrounds which often fails to show the richness, variation, and ingenuities inherent in diverse communities." Here are my questions: a) What are the grammatical subjects of the verb "construct" and the verb "determines" (marked [sic] above)? b) Was the resurgence of Black Lives Matter "amplified" by police murders? How did that happen? c) Is the USA a settler-colonial context or not? If so, why single it out? If not, when and how did it stop being one? d) Is support for affirmative action, for hiring quotas, for busing and integration of schools, academia and STEM a "deficit" view? Isn't displaying the richness, variation, and ingenuity of racialized groups in an undiluted form what Jim Crow, Plessy vs. Ferguson, and the Bakke Decision of 1975 purported to do? (By the way, the Vygotsky presentation in Russian that Anthony is directing our attention to has some important points to make about systemic racism in the USA, written by a prominent intellectual from a viciously oppressed minority group whose access to STEM/academia was directly enabled by the revolutionary integrationism of the early Soviet Union. Vygotsky often uses American events to comment on developments that are closer to home....) David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VmhEdjjecAAspGG0cG_d-vMQShzhAxHh7KGJEMIC5XSxcNudrMHTOmObxW9PD8x0D-Bwqg$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VmhEdjjecAAspGG0cG_d-vMQShzhAxHh7KGJEMIC5XSxcNudrMHTOmObxW9PD8zkYMJYOQ$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200821/b77894dc/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Thu Aug 20 16:52:08 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 19:52:08 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Shut Down STEM/Academia? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Proud American white male of Italian decent. Since I've been asked, I am happy to call attention to one small point: not one Hispanic individual in my extended family, my wife most notably, likes or uses the term "Latinx," and most actively mock it. Around here, it is considered contrived, offensive, politically-motivated, and/or outright goofy. That said, everyone should feel free to offend; after all, "in order to be able to Think, one must risk being offensive." And, without question, few things are more precious than our precious tools for thinking. I love diversity, especially diversity of the mind and diversity of perspectives. Thanks, Anthony P.S. I'm curious to hear various opinions about your questions re: the current call for papers. Thanks for asking. On Thursday, August 20, 2020, David Kellogg wrote: > (Anthony--are you sure you are really a white male? You seem rather Latinx > to me.) > > I am curious about the call for papers currently up on MCA. Here's what it > says: > > "The recent global pandemic lays bare the ongoing disparities in health > and economic well-being amongst racialized communities in North America > (Poteat et al., 2020). Amplified by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna > Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter > movement brought to global awareness and provoked dialogue about ongoing > antiblack racism in the United States and global colonial and > settler-colonial contexts. In academia the hashtags #ShutDownSTEM and > #ShutDownAcademia brought similar attention to racisms within academic and > scientific communities. This movement corresponds to recent emphasis on the > sociopolitical nature of teaching and learning in fields broadly construed > as STEM, which continuously construct (sic) racialized assumptions based on > deficit views about learners from nondominant communities (Adams, in > press). Racialized and deficit-based discourses have been detrimental to > Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities whose potential > for flourishing has been stifled by the imposition of ?solutions? from > ?experts? who claim to know what is ?best? for them (Kayumova et al., > 2019). Studies rooted in deficit discourses determines (sic) the > orientation a researcher may take towards communities of learners from > BIPOC backgrounds which often fails to show the richness, variation, and > ingenuities inherent in diverse communities." > > > Here are my questions: > > > a) What are the grammatical subjects of the verb "construct" and the verb > "determines" (marked [sic] above)? > > > b) Was the resurgence of Black Lives Matter "amplified" by police murders? > How did that happen? > > > c) Is the USA a settler-colonial context or not? If so, why single it out? > If not, when and how did it stop being one? > > > d) Is support for affirmative action, for hiring quotas, for busing and > integration of schools, academia and STEM a "deficit" view? Isn't > displaying the richness, variation, and ingenuity of racialized groups in > an undiluted form what Jim Crow, Plessy vs. Ferguson, and the Bakke > Decision of 1975 purported to do? > > > (By the way, the Vygotsky presentation in Russian that Anthony is > directing our attention to has some important points to make about systemic > racism in the USA, written by a prominent intellectual from a viciously > oppressed minority group whose access to STEM/academia was directly enabled > by the revolutionary integrationism of the early Soviet Union. Vygotsky > often uses American events to comment on developments that are closer to > home....) > > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/__;!!Mih3wA!Xf_5TfkoXWfB6VY1tuyRuoU_Z-LUAH-XtI_0m4IGdbcSnRAVME3kK5g_BB3hvTivI8vdyA$ > full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1806329 > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xf_5TfkoXWfB6VY1tuyRuoU_Z-LUAH-XtI_0m4IGdbcSnRAVME3kK5g_BB3hvThhW4wf0A$ > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/01b95686/attachment.html From mpacker@cantab.net Thu Aug 20 18:54:19 2020 From: mpacker@cantab.net (Martin Packer) Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 20:54:19 -0500 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) In-Reply-To: References: <8688CD43-A5FC-4719-825F-F31D54CB20C7@gmail.com> <0622F462-F044-4B46-8660-463F6133C30C@cantab.net> <95E02B02-D7CA-498D-9957-30BD452BE499@cantab.net> Message-ID: <5BDCF5CD-621F-4A9D-9FC1-91861B749030@cantab.net> Yes, I suppose that one should always say that what is given in consciousness is an ?appearance.? But then one should follow Hegel instead of Kant, and presume that given the right conditions the appearance will become more adequate to the entity itself. Martin > On Aug 19, 2020, at 9:35 PM, Andy Blunden wrote: > > Ha, ha. Well done, Martin. That passage in "Crisis" is truly one of my favourite passages as well. And I had remembered it as being about a candle, too! Funny that. > > It's all in the expressions like "an appearance, not something that really exists," isn't it? As Lenin said: "There is no sharp line between the thing-in-itself and phenomena." > The other bit which I like to join with that quote from "Crisis" is that bit at the end of his famous 1924 talk: > > "The historian and the geologist reconstruct the facts (which already do not exist) indirectly, and nevertheless in the end they study the facts that have been, not the traces or documents that remained and were preserved. Similarly, the psychologist is often in the position of the historian and the geologist. Then he acts like a detective who brings to light a crime he never witnessed." > > Andy > Andy Blunden > Hegel for Social Movements > Home Page > On 20/08/2020 5:55 am, Martin Packer wrote: >> Hi Andy, >> >> Going back to look at The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology I see that LVS?s example involves a table not a candle, so I?ll modify my reply to your question accordingly: >> >> The behaviorist studies the table, ignores the mirror, and insists that the study of reflections is unscientific. >> The neuroscientist studies the table and is aware of the mirror, but is unable to explain how the mirror exists. >> The typical cognitive psychologist studies the table's reflection and ignores both the mirror and the real table. >> LSV insists that we need to study the real table and the mirror and study too the reflection of the table, understanding that it is an appearance, not something that really exists. >> >> To put those statements in context, here is the passage... >> Let us compare consciousness, as is often done, with a mirror image. Let the object A be reflected in the mirror as a. Naturally, it would be false to say that a in itself is as real as A. It is real in another way. A table and its reflection in the mirror are not equally real, but real in a different way. The reflection as reflection, as an image of the table, as a second table in the mirror is not real, it is a phantom. But the reflection of the table as the refraction of light beams on the mirror sur- face-isn't that a thing which is equally material and real as the table? Everything else would be a miracle. Then we might say: there exist things (a table) and their phantoms (the reflection). But only things exist-(the table) and the reflection of light upon the surface. The phantoms are just apparent relations between the things. That is why no science of mirror phantoms is possible. But this does not mean that we will never be able to explain the reflection, the phantom. When we know the thing and the laws of reflection of light, we can always explain, predict, elicit, and change the phantom. And this is what persons with mirrors do. They study not mirror reflections but the movement of light beams, and explain. the reflection. A science about mirror phantoms is impossible, but the theory of light and the things which cast and reflect it fully explain these "phantoms." >> >> It is the same in psychology: the subjective itself, as a phantom, must be un- derstood as a consequence, as a result, as a godsend of two objective processes. Like the enigma of the'mirror, the enigma of the mind is not solved by studying phantoms, but by studying the two series of objective processes from the coopera- tion of which the phantoms as apparent reflections of one thing in tire otlrer arise. In itself the appearance does not exist. >> >> Let us return to the mirror. To identify A and a, the table and its mirror re- flection, would be idealism: a is nonmaterial, it is only A which is material and its material nature is a synonym for its existence independent of a. But it would be exactly the same idealism to identify a with X-with the processes that take place in the mirror. It would be wrong to say: being and thinking do not coincide outside the mirror, in nature (there A is not a, there A is a thing and a a phantom); being and thinking, however, do coincide inside the mirror (here a is X, a is a phantom and X is also a phantom). We cannot say: the reflection of a table is a table. But neither can we say: the reflection of a table is the refraction of light beams and a is neither A nor X. Both A and X are real processes and a is their apparent, i.e., unreal result. The reflection does not exist, but both the table and the light exist. The reflection of a table is identical neither with the real processes of the light in the mirror nor with the table itself. >> >> Not to mention the fact that otherwise we would have to accept the existence in the world of both things and phantoms. Let us remember that the mirror itself is, after all, part of the same nature as the thing outside the mirror, and subject to all of its laws. After aB, a cornerstone of materialism is the proposition that con? sciousness and the brain are a product, a part of nature, which reflect the rest of nature. And, therefore, the objective existence of X and A independent of a is a dogma of materialistic psychology. (pp. 327-328) >> >> Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). The historical meaning of the crisis in psychology: A methodological investigation. In R. W. Reiber & J. Wollock (Eds.), The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 3. Problems of the theory and history of psychology (pp. 233-343). New York, NY: Plenum. >> >> Martin >> >> >> >>> On Aug 18, 2020, at 9:13 PM, Andy Blunden > wrote: >>> >>> Martin, how would you respond to a Behaviourist or a "brain scientist" who responded to what you have just said by saying: "At last you agree with me! Mind does not exist! It is an illusion!"? >>> >>> andy >>> Andy Blunden >>> Hegel for Social Movements >>> Home Page >>> On 19/08/2020 11:45 am, Martin Packer wrote: >>>> Hi David, >>>> >>>> I can?t quite tell from your message whether "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself? comes from Vygotsky or from 17th century Dutch painting, but I love it! I?ve been working unsuccessfully for years trying to convince psychologists that trying to study ?mind? is a fruitless endeavor. >>>> >>>> But the statement must be Vygotsky's because it is so consistent with his metaphor in Crisis: to believe that mind exists and can be studied is like thinking the reflection of a candle in a mirror is a second real candle, and trying to study it while paying no attention to either the mirror or the real candle. >>>> >>>> Sorry not to have been paying attention: which text is this from? >>>> >>>> Martin >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Aug 18, 2020, at 5:46 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Dear Henry: >>>>> >>>>> As far as I know, there are many different schools of Kabuki, including a 'social realist' one and a much more stylized one. But like Stanislavsky's method, all of them are "depth" approaches which seek out inner truth by deep-diving into something called 'character'. For me, Noh is a much more "heights" approach, and like Brecht it involves holding character at a distance and trying to form overall judgements about it rather than getting lost in the details of a personality. There is a similar tension in Chinese opera, between Shanghai Opera (deep-diving) and Beijing (stylized). I'm not sure I could call that a grammar; it looks more like granularity on stage (consider, for example, the use of make-up, the importance of costume, and place of recitative). >>>>> >>>>> Michael probably knows more than I do about Stanislavsky. But when you are in a conversation and somebody says something like "You've completely lost me", there are three possibilities. One is just interpersonal--I'm not very interested in what you are saying and I've got other things to do. Another possibility is more ideational--I can't follow what you are saying--maybe because of the lexicogrammar you use or because of the unfamiliar ideas you have--and I need some other way of understanding it, like a familiar example or a story. A third is textual: I am interested in what you say and I recognize the setting and the characters you are referring to, but I can't really get my arms around the interpretative frame. Usually the problems I have communicating are of the textual type--not always, but more often than not. >>>>> >>>>> We're having a similar problem with our new book, which is about the emotions: Vygotsky has left us a fragment, and it's long, circuitous and assumes a very thorough knowledge of seventeenth century philosophy. So we want to turn it into a kind of comic book, using seventeenth century Dutch paintings, which include a lot of the ideas that I think are most troublesome (e.g. "Deus Sive Natura", "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself", "Freedom is an illusion, but recognition of necessity is real"). That format in itself can create an interpretive frame that people have trouble with (can I take this seriously--it's a comic book!). I was looking forward to mansplaining in a face to face meeting with our readers this Saturday, but that's now been cancelled because of the spike we are having in Seoul (like our first one, incubated by a religious sect owing fealty to the remnants of the former military dictatorship and to Donald Trump). >>>>> >>>>> If you compare Cognitive Grammar to Systemic-Functional Grammar, you'll notice three differences right away. >>>>> >>>>> a) Cognitive Grammar assumes a COGNITIVE semantics. Systemic-Functional Grammar treats 'cognitive processes' as a black box and studies visible social-semiotic processes instead. >>>>> b) Cognitive Grammar has, as you say, TWO strata--form and meaning. Systemic-Functional grammar has three, and allows for coupling all three in different ways, because a two stratal model, particularly one that emphasizes fixed units of redounding elements, is essentially replicative and cannot account for development. >>>>> c) Cognitive Grammar is, as we have said before, speculative. Systemic-Functional Grammar depends on a dialectic of research into empirical facts in many languages and theoretical generalizations, all of which (to date, anyway) avoid universalization. >>>>> >>>>> I remember asking Ruqaiya Hasan about Langacker and cognitive grammar. She told me that when they were in Singapore together, Langacker complained that his cognitive grammar was being largely ignored. "And what about Halliday?" Ruqaiya asked. Fortunately, MCA is NOT ignoring Halliday! (See link below!) >>>>> >>>>> David Kellogg >>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>> >>>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>>> >>>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_iYb_5HhQ$ >>>>> >>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_g0zHaIxA$ >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 10:21 AM HENRY SHONERD > wrote: >>>>> David, >>>>> I am guessing that your apochyphal story and analysis has something to do with how languaging works. Langacker--a proponent of what he calls Cognitive Grammar,--asserts that a grammar, is a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units, a linguistic unit being a symbolic coupling of form and meaning for linguistic purposes. I find that definition useful. How does that relate, if at all, to what you have been trying to explain to Michael G? >>>>> >>>>> And yes, believe it or not,I was wondering about Noh theater. To be honest, what I saw could have been Noh, but I am pretty sure my parents told me it was Kabuki. I can?t ask them now, but I think they would have remembered when they were living. So back to my question in the first paragraph: Do Kabuki/Stanislavsky and/or Noh/Brecht draw on any theatrical grammar? Keeping in mind that any grammar in theater would have to draw massively on gesture, in ways that written language would not. And gesture may have its own grammar. >>>>> >>>>> I should add that Langacker recognizes that grammars are built through use and are as much in the context of language usage as in the head(s) of the user(s). Though he also recognizes that Cognitive Grammar is short on the analysis of real language in context. This is an old conversation I have had with you, but it seems relevant here. I am thinking now about improvisation, which we assume is mostly true of ?natural? language use, though Langacker argues that much language use is based on the use of common phrases, rather than being very ?creative", like my first phrase in the first paragraph of this post: ?I am guessing?? and ?believe it or not? that starts the second paragraph, and the ?I should add? that starts this paragraph. These are all over-learned linguistic units >>>>> >>>>> I think what I am getting to is the distinction between grammar and discourse, how they bleed into one another and how every use of language is in some sense staged. >>>>> >>>>> Henry >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Aug 17, 2020, at 5:51 PM, David Kellogg > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> There is a completely apocryphal story in China about Stanislavsky and Brecht. They are both visiting a liberated area in my wife's home province of Shaanxi. There is a village production of the White Haired Girl, in which the heroine is raped by the landlord's son, Huang Shiren. To prevent the rape, a peasant in the audience draws a pistol and shoots the actor through the heart. Since the whole village has been reading Chairman's Mao's essay on the necessity of holding funerals for martyrs, "In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune", there is a funeral the next day. Stanislavskky presents a wreath of white carnations with the legend, "To the greatest actor in China, a martyr to his art". Brecht's envoy reads "To the worst actor in the world, on a particularly bad night." >>>>>> >>>>>> Isaiah Berlin argued that romanticism was a great shift from enlightenment rationalism: for the romantic, it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you sincerely believe it (this is why German romanticism produced both communists and fascists). For the romantic actor, it doesn't matter what you feel so long as the feeling is deeply felt. The anti-romantic view--and Brecht was an anti-romantic--is that it doesn't matter whether you deeply feel the feeling or not; the only thing that matters is what people learn from it and whether it will help or harm them. >>>>>> >>>>>> Why do we despise or pity a teacher or a politican who is merely a showman? Because a communication that fails to communicate an idea, or which communicates only the pulchritude of the communcator, is simply off topic. If Anthony takes away from my video "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" only the story about the Danish chess grandmaster in Beijing, I have done nothing but entertain or enthrall him.So for example if you read the little story about Brecht and Stanislavsky as a biographical account, or a colorful anecdote that has nothing to do with my argument, I have failed as a communicator (Alas, I often do!). >>>>>> >>>>>> A good friend of mine is a well-known novelist in the USA. She told me once that she became a novelist because she learned that words can not only report an experience but reproduce it. I must have wrinkled my nose at that, because we got off into a discussion on whether inner speech can actually be written down or not (which is essentially the point that divides Woolf and Joyce). As a novelist, she said it could; as a linguist, I said it couldn't. >>>>>> >>>>>> If we take Stanislavsky's annotated scripts literally, then the emotional subtext attributed to Chatskii and Sophia are a kind of mentalese: their external language is simply an editing or a translation of the inner subtext. But that's not what verbal thinking is at all; it is entirely predicative, and incomprehensible without its internal context. >>>>>> >>>>>> (Henry--compare Kabuki with Noh. Kabuki is Stanislavsky. Noh is Brecht.) >>>>>> >>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>> >>>>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>>>> >>>>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_iYb_5HhQ$ >>>>>> >>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_g0zHaIxA$ >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 8:28 AM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>>>> David, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> You completely lost me. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >>>>>> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 6:44 PM >>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I think we all tend to read our current opinions into our Vygotsky, Michael. The only real advantage I claim for my own reading of "The Psychology of the Actor's Creative Work" is that it is unpopular, eccentric, counter-conventional, or at least stridently anti-romantic, and it will serve as a tonic or at least a foil for people on this list. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> So this is a late work, if we are to believe the textological note. It belongs to the period Vygotsky is writing "Teaching on the Emotions", where he uses the actor's paradox as evidence against Lange and James (1999: 117) and where he seems to be developing a theory of higher emotions consistent with Spinoza's distinction between emotions that are passions (caused by the environment) and those which are active (self-caused), by which he means caused by understanding and knowledge (and not by acts of recall and imitation). >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Vygotsky counterposes Stanislavsky's system to the system of psychotechnical selection ('talent-scouting, acting-aptitude tests, your comparison with Ribot is one that Vygotsky himself makes, and it is very a propos). He seems to wish a plague upon both, because both conflate the actor's own emotions with the shareable, social emotions that actors have to build on stage. You are of course right that this is what gives that emotion a conditional, historically specific, and even class specific character--and you are right that Stanislavsky, but not Craig, was convinced of this, even if Stanislavsky developed a technique that eventually ran directly counter to it (the excesses of "method" acting in Hollywood). >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I prefer to think of art as a special social technique of sharing ideas--similar to academic discourse--and not a form of self-deception. But I'll admit that this is the direct result of my own artistic training: we don't try to reproduce what we see when we paint: we try to communicate what we are thinking about it. I was an actor once too, and we were trained to be very careful not to do snuff porn on stage, not even in our heads. It is basically the same mistake that we all commit when we conflate our current opinions with Vygotsky's. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>> >>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>>> >>>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Some free e-prints today available at: >>>>>> >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_iYb_5HhQ$ >>>>>> >>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>>>> >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_g0zHaIxA$ >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 10:15 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi David, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I honestly don?t know why Stanislavski?s nephew was sent to Siberia. It just seems to have spooked him. I never read Selenick?s book. Everything I have read about the 1912 production I have read has been from Stanislavski?s perspective, primarily Bennedetti so it would be an interesting read. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> As for Diderot. Why would you say that Vygotsky sided with Diderot (actually sided with directors who followed Diderot and avoided lived experience). This seems almost the opposite of what Vygotsky was after in his later writings. Diderot in an Actor?s Paradox claimed the actor had to make the choice to avoid emotion/affect. It was genuine but it was disorganized and performances became too volatile. I was recently watching a movie about actor auditions (Every Little Step She Takes). There was one episode that speaks directly to Diderot. An actress gives a great, emotional reading. She gets called back and reads again. The director asks he to do what she did the first time. She screams, I don?t know what I did the first time, I don?t know why it was good. That is the Actor?s Paradox in a nutshell. Stanislavski was I think the first to try and solve this paradox. The combine affective memory with text. I see Vygotsky trying to do much the same thing in development, and I think it gives us a window into the relationship between spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts (did you know Ribot called emotional memory spontaneous. I wonder if it was the same word). >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I also disagree with your interpretation of Stanislavski and inner speech. I would call him anything from mentalese. As a matter of fact I think you could make a really good argument that Vygotsky took his idea of inner speech directly from the first few chapters of An Actor?s Work. The similarities are uncanny. Now before you write back that An Actor?s work was not published until 1938, there were chapters in circulation as early as 1928. What I find important is that Gurevich, who was acting as his editor (I begin to wonder how much she actually wrote) was worried about Stanislavski?s use of psychological phrases. Even though Stanislavski seemed to be allergic to read anything but plays he thought of himself as a psychologist. According to Bennedetti, Gurevich gave the manuscript to three psychologists to look over. Is it logical to make the argument that Vygotsky might have been one of those psychologists? The reason for my original query. But there are so many similarities between those early chapters of an Actor?s Work and especially chapters six and seven of Thinking and Speech. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I don?t know if Vygotsky?s ideas on affect evolved. Again, I think he might have read Stanislavski and found a way in to discussing this. Perhaps the most influential thing (for me) I have read in this second reading of Vygotsky is Mike?s introduction to the special issue of MCA on Spinoza. I think it is right on point except I would replace the cryptic and opaque Spinoza with the over the top Stanislavski. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Okay, enough for now. Got to get back to salt mines. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >>>>>> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 4:45 AM >>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael-- >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> There's a good book on the 1912 production (you've probably read it). >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Senelick, L (1982) Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I have a chapter on it in my own book, 'The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit" (Sense: 2014). My impression is that the stage version Vygotsky is hard on in Psychology of Art is actually the Second Moscow Art Theatre production of 1924, which is one of the revivals of Stanislavsky/Craig you are talking about. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Stanislavsky was from a very wealthy family, and most wealthy families were active counter-revolutionaries during the Civil War. The Alekseivs were certainly what you could call conservative, and they were all quite displeased with Constantin's acting career. Are you sure that the nephew was sent to Siberia for artistic reasons? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> (I have always felt that Vygotsky was more inclined to Diderot than Stanislavsky, and would have supported Brecht and Olivier against Stanislavsky and Mel Gibson. But maybe we need to ask WHICH Vygotsky, because his views on emotion certainly evolve a lot, and he is only inclined to view higher emotions as the product of reflection in the sense of ideation than as reflection in the sense of reproduction in the 1930s, when he writes the actor essay. I think the main problem with his use of Stanislavsky's method in Thinking and Speech is that it assumes a kind of 'mentalese' which is only a description of emotion. Vygotsky would really require at least three planes--volitional affective impulse, non-verbal thought, and verbal thinking. Only the last one could be put into words, and then the syntax would be very different from what Stanislavsky is using in his scripts. There is a similar problem in the different ways that Virginial Woolf and James Joyce treat inner speech--one of them tries to write about it and the other tries to write it.) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>> >>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> New Article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >>>>>> >>>>>> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky >>>>>> Some free e-prints available. >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_iYb_5HhQ$ >>>>>> >>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>>>> >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_g0zHaIxA$ >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 9:11 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi David, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Actually the Hamlet of 1912 was even more consequential than you might think. It seems Isadora Duncan got Stanislavski and Craig together. Craig came to Russia but there were problems from the start, and pretty soon they were actually directing separately. Stanislavski saw this as his great opportunity to bring his ?system? (which I believe influenced Vygotsky a great deal) to an international production and a Shakespeare play. Up to that point he used his system mostly in workshop productions with Russian playwright working with the MAT. Stanislavsky was doing another small production simultaneously. Anyway, Craig, who was upset about the money he was receiving eventually took less of a hand in the production. He was a symbolist but I think not in the way Russians were symbolists, in other words he saw himself as the director creating the symbols rather than the actors exploring the sub-texts of the words. He also wanted Hamlet to be portrayed in the traditional bombastic, over the top Elizabethan fashion. Stanislavski wanted the actor playing Hamlet to really explore his emotions in the context of his system. The production only ran for a few weeks as most people do not like change (which makes me think Vygotsky at the young age did not see it) so it was a financial flop for the MAT but an international critical success and was in many ways a springboard for Stanislavski?s fame. My reading on Vygotsky?s essay on Hamlet, and Psychology of Art in general, was that he read a great many of the writings on the production, which continued for years. I feel he came down distinctly on the side of Stanislavski in his essay. Of course there is no way to know this for sure, except he could have never written that essay if there had never been the 1912 production. It changed the way people look at theater. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> As for socialist realism becoming state policy in 1932, that might be right. But Stanislavski was already retired from directing and he did a number of productions promoting socialist realism (he was not enamored with it, but it let the MAT keep working). Also his nephew had been exiled to Siberia. So it may have been an important component before it was state policy. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of David Kellogg >>>>>> Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2020 6:00 AM >>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael-- >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Actually, socialist realism was only declared official state policy in 1932--Lenin had been dead for eight years. During most of Vygotsky's career the arts scene in the USSR was probably the liveliest and freest in the world. But slightly crazy too--see the attached photograph ?Every Komsomol (male Young Communist League member) can and must satisfy his sexual needs? and the woman has to hold a sign that says ?Every Komsomolka (female Young Communist League member) should aid him in this, otherwise she?s a philistine?). This is the kind of thing Vygotsky was fighting AGAINST in his sex education work with Zalkind. My wife grew up during the Cultural Revolution, and I can tell you that it was not at all the same thing. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> In 1912, when Vygotsky was sixteen and visiting Moscow for the first time, there was a famous production of Hamlet than in some ways still influences us today: it was a little bit as if you had the Olivier production on stage and Zeffirelli doing the lighting and props. Stanislavsky wanted to treat Hamlet as historical characters, but the stage director and producer was the English symbolist Gordon Craig, who actually wanted, at one point, to turn it into a one man show, wiith every character except Hamlet in a mask. He got his way with the props, which were highly abstract and geometrical, but Stanislavsky got his way with the actual production, which (I gather) was gritty and grimey. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I would love to know if the Hamlet Vygotsky saw and wrote about was the original Stanislavsky-Craig emulsion or if it was some toned down restaging of the original 1912 production. Do you know? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David Kellogg >>>>>> >>>>>> Sangmyung University >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto. >>>>>> >>>>>> Outlines, Spring 2020 >>>>>> >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_h_LCz-Yw$ >>>>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >>>>>> >>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_g0zHaIxA$ >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 6:12 PM Glassman, Michael > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> A couple of things, especially about the Uzbekistan experiments. As I have alluded to in some earlier posts I have been doing some reading on theater during the time Vygotsky was writing. One thing I have come across multiple times is the issue of socialist realism. The idea (and this is probably not a very good definition) is that we have to understand people as they really are and think, but we also have to accept that humans can become better actors (broadly defined) and thinkers under a socialist system. It seems the people pushing this was somewhat akin to cadres in the cultural revolution. In other words you better do it. Even Stanislavski, who both Lenin and Stalin loved, was forced to do a number of productions that promoted socialist realism. If you did not toe the line you were sent to Siberia (or worse). I am sure this is discussed somewhere in relationship to Vygotsky but I wonder if we she take that into account when thinking about things like the Uzbekistan experiment. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> A second thing. I wonder if sometimes we have a tendency to over think and over philosophize Vygotsky. In some ways he was just trying to get things done and a concept like conscious awareness in Thinking and Speech is mostly a means to solving a problem, not any philosophical statement. The problem it seems to me is that we do not have consistent conceptual systems based solely on our experience. A five year old can have five different best friends on five days on the playground depending on what people brought for lunch or who got to the swings first. Still, it is these affective based concepts that drive our activity. But we don?t offer use these concepts with any conscious use of attention or memory or any of our other intellectual functions. ?Hmmm, Jerry brought salami today, maybe I should think about making him my best friend.? On the other hand social concepts are developed separately from our experiences and our emotions. They are developed specifically to organize and bring consistency to our feelings. But they are meaningless from an affective, everyday perspective. Why would we even want to think about them. In order to bring them into our lives we have to consciously engage in volitional activities using them. So we have to have conscious awareness. How then do you bring the two together, for which he takes the remainder of chapter six. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Dewey also was really, really inconsistent in the way he used words. I would argue he used words as tools not as philosophical statements. You have to read the texts and figure it out. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >>>>>> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 8:15 PM >>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Mike, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Well you and I may differ on this. My interpretation is that in the passage that Anthony gave us, LSV is talking about the growing consciousness *of their own thinking* on the part of school-age children. (In Thought & Language he shifts a bit on whether this happens in middle childhood or adolescence, but that needn't concern us.) That is to say, he is writing about what he calls ?introspection." >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> As evidence for this interpretation let me cite a couple of other passages (these are from the excellent Kellogg translation) where I think the point is made more clearly: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 100 "I make a knot. I do it consciously. I cannot, however, tell you exactly how I did it. My conscious act is unconscious, because my attention is focused on the act of the tying, but not on how I do it. Consciousness is always some piece of reality. The object of my consciousness is tying the knot, a knot, and what was happening to it but not those actions that I make when tying, not how I do it. But the object of consciousness can be just that - then it will be awareness. Awareness is an act of consciousness, the object of which is itself the very same activity of consciousness? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 102 "Even Piaget's research showed that introspection does not begin to develop in any significant degree until school age. Further investigations have shown that the development of introspection in the school age contains something similar to what occurs in the development of the external perception and observation in the transition from infancy to early childhood. As is well known, the most important change in external perception of this period [i.e. infancy to early childhood] is that a child from a wordless and, consequently, meaningless perception, to a semantic, verbal and objective perception. The same can be said of introspection on the threshold of school age. The child is moving from mute introspection to speech and words. He develops an internal semantic perception of his own mental processes?. I realize that I can recall, i.e. I do recall the subjectivity of my own consciousness." >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 104 "By their very nature, spontaneous concepts include the fact that they are unconscious. Children know how they operate spontaneously but are not aware of them. This is what we saw in the children's concept of "because." Obviously, by themselves, spontaneous concepts need to be unconscious, because consideration is always directed to their objects, rather than to the act of thought which is grasping it.? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> 106 "only in a system [of concepts] can the concept become the object of awareness and only in a system can the child acquire volitional control [of concepts]." >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> In his Lectures on Child Psychology LSV is very clear, in my view, that at each stage the child has consciousness of different aspects of the world and of their own psychological processes. For example: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> "In an infant, there is no intellectual perception: he perceives a room but does not separately perceive chairs, a table, etc.; he will perceive everything as an undivided whole in contrast to the adult, who sees figures against a background. How does a child perceive his own movements in early childhood? He is happy, unhappy, but does not know that he is happy, just as an infant when he is hungry does not know that he is hungry. There is a great difference between feeling hunger and knowing that I am hungry. In early childhood, the child does not know his own experiences?. Precisely as a three-year-old child discovers his relation to other people, a seven-year-old discovers the fact of his own experiences.? (p. 291) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Of course, one might find it objectionable that LSV might suggest that non-literate peoples might be unaware of their own thinking. But I agree with Andy, in such cultures there may well be systematic instruction in systems of concepts ? legal, religious? ? that would have the same effect as LSV says that school instruction does in the west. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Stay safe, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Martin >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 6:06 PM, mike cole > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I was not being ironic, David >>>>>> >>>>>> If scientific concepts are required for conscious awareness (as specified in the quotation I was asked to respond to) and people who >>>>>> >>>>>> have not been to school do not acquire Piagetian concepts related to formal operations (for example) or other measure of "thinking in >>>>>> >>>>>> scientific concepts) if seems to follow that they have not achieved conscious awareness. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> LSV writes about non-literate, indigenous, peoples that they are capable of complexes, but not true concepts (I think the use of the term. >>>>>> >>>>>> "scientific" is not helpful here). Luria interprets his data on self-consciousness that are a part of the same monograph as his work on syllogisms, >>>>>> >>>>>> classification, etc among Uzbekis who had experienced various degrees of involvement in modern (e.g. Russian) forms of life as evidence for >>>>>> >>>>>> what might be termed "lack of conscious awareness I am not sure." >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> mike >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 3:31 PM David H Kirshner > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Maybe I missed an ironic intention, Michael, but on August 11 Anthony asked about the meaning of a couple of paragraphs from Thinking and Speech. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Here is the passage in question, from Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6, pp. 190-1: >>>>>> >>>>>> "To perceive something in a different way means to acquire new potentials for acting with respect to it. At the chess board, to see differently is to play differently. By generalizing the process of activity itself, I acquire the potential for new relationships with it. To speak crudely, it is as if this process has been isolated from the general activity of consciousness. I am conscious of the fact that I remember. I make my own remembering the object of consciousness. An isolation arises here. In a certain sense, any generalization or abstraction isolates its object. This is why conscious awareness ? understood as generalization ? leads directly to mastery. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Thus, the foundation of conscious awareness is the generalization or abstraction of the mental processes, which leads to their mastery. Instruction has a decisive role in this process. Scientific concepts have a unique relationship to the object. This relationship is mediated through other concepts that themselves have an internal hierarchical system of interrelationships. It is apparently in this domain of the scientific concept that conscious awareness of concepts or the generalization and mastery of concepts emerges for the first time. And once a new structure of generalization has arisen in one sphere of thought, it can ? like any structure ? be transferred without training to all remaining domains of concepts and thought. Thus, conscious awareness enters through the gate opened up by the scientific concept." >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Mike?s reply, in total was: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I understand that to mean that humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> What am I missing? >>>>>> >>>>>> Mike >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Martin Packer >>>>>> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2020 4:36 PM >>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity > >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Are you saying that either Mike Cole or Lev Vygotsky, or both, are claiming that 5-year old children (for example) lack conscious awareness of the world they live in? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Puzzled... >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Martin >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Aug 14, 2020, at 9:16 PM, David H Kirshner > wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Andy, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> That ?any ?actual? concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path,? speaks to their complementarity, making them akin to Type 1 and Type 2 processing I referred to in my post. >>>>>> >>>>>> But they?re also hierarchically related, since according to Mike?s interpretation of a Vygotsky?s passage cited by Anthony a few days ago, ?humans who have not achieved scientific/real concepts do not have conscious awareness.? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I do not question Vygotsky?s genius. What I do question is the coherence of the interpretive frames that have evolved from his work. As Michael observed in a recent post, ?like the writer he wanted to be he [Vygotsky] used phrases and ideas less as truths and more to move his narrative forward.? What I always wonder in eavesdropping on XMCA is whether the issues we discuss are resolvable, or is the theoretical backdrop to our conversation so heterogeneous as to make the possibility of resolution illusory. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >>>>>> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 10:32 AM >>>>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> No David, as I said, the term "scientific concept" as it is understood nowadays, tends to mislead. The distinction for Vygotsky is entirely, as you say, developmental, and it is not a categorisation either (as in putting things into boxes), and nothing to do with "sophistication." "Scientific concept" refers to the path of development that begins with an abstract (decontextualised) concept acquired through instruction in some more or less formal institution. "Spontaneous concept" refers to the path of development which begins with everyday experience, closely connected with immediate sensori-motor interaction and perception, i.e., it begins from the concrete, whereas the "scientific" is beginning from the abstract. >>>>>> >>>>>> Any "actual" concept is the intersection or merging of both the scientific and spontaneous path. For example (1) everyday life is full of ideas which have their source in institutions, but have made their way out of the institutional context into everyday life. On the other hand, for example (2) any scientific concept worth its salt has made its way out of the classroom and become connected with practice, like the book-learning of the medical graduate who's spent 6 months in A&E. >>>>>> >>>>>> I admit, this is not clear from Vygotsky's prose. But here's the thing: when you're reading a great thinker and what they're saying seems silly, trying reading it more generously, because there's probably a reason this writer has gained the reputation of being a great thinker. >>>>>> >>>>>> Andy >>>>>> >>>>>> Andy Blunden >>>>>> Hegel for Social Movements >>>>>> Home Page >>>>>> On 15/08/2020 1:14 am, David H Kirshner wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Thanks for your accessible example, Michael. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Vygotsky?s scientific / spontaneous distinction between types of concepts has always struck me as such an unfortunate solution to the problem of differential sophistication in modes of reasoning. I?m sure this problem must have deep roots in classical and contemporary philosophy, even as it is reflected in cognitive psychology?s Dual Process Theory that at its ?theoretical core amounts to a dichotomous view of two types of processes?: type 1?intuitive, fast, automatic, nonconscious, effortless, contextualized, error-prone, and type 2?reflective, slow, deliberate, cogitative, effortful, decontextualized, normatively correct? (Varga & Hamburger, 2014). What externalizing this distinction as different kinds of cognitive products (this or that kind of concept) seems to do is distract/detract from the sociogenetic character of development. Surely, a sociogenetic approach seeks to interpret these different forms of reasoning as differential discursive practices, embedded in different cultural contexts (Scribner, Cole, etc.). But talking about different kinds of concepts seems like the wrong departure point for that journey. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> David >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu On Behalf Of Glassman, Michael >>>>>> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2020 7:03 AM >>>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi Andy, Henry, Anna Lisa, >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Let me start by saying that this is completely restricted to the way conscious awareness is used in Thinking and Speech. If it is use differently in other places this perspective may be wrong. To my mind (with the proviso that my mind if often wrong) Vygotsky is using the idea of conscious awareness for a specific purpose. To differentiate the role of spontaneous concepts with non-spontaneous concepts. Spontaneous concepts are based initially in affective memory and they give energy and motivation to many of our activities. However we are not consciously aware of them. To go back to chess, I am at the pool and my friend comes up to me and says ?Chess?? I say yes. I have no conscious awareness of the concept of chess in my life, why I say yes so easily why it may be a way to make a social connection between me and my friend. It is residue of my affective memory (I don?t know how much Vygotsky was using Ribot when making this argument). We are playing chess and I remember that my brother showed me the non-spontaneous/scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit. As this point in my life I have to think about it and whether I want to use it. I must summon the intellectual functions of memory and attention as I think about the use of the bishop?s gambit. This then is conscious awareness of the scientific concept. I used the bishop?s gambit and win the game and I applaud myself. I got home and tell my brother, the bishop?s gambit was great, thanks. I am mediating the scientific concept of the bishop?s gambit with my everyday concept of playing chess. Voila, development!!!! >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> I don?t know if Vygotsky uses conscious awareness differently elsewhere. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Michael >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu > On Behalf Of Andy Blunden >>>>>> Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 11:51 PM >>>>>> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu >>>>>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "conscious awareness enters through the gate" (a Participation Question) >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Henry, my aim was just to introduce Annalisa and whoever to the scientific way that the terms "conscious awareness" and "consciousness" are used in CHAT. I say "scientific" in the sense that in CHAT we have a system of concepts and associated word meanings which have, if you like, conventional meanings. There is nothing wrong with "automatic and controlled processing" and "ballistic processing" but so far as I am aware these terms were not in Vygotsky's vocabulary. I could be wrong of course and I am sure I will be rapidly corrected if this is the case. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> >>>>>> I The Angel's View of History >>>>>> >>>>>> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution of the theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of humans. (Marx, 1844). >>>>>> >>>>>> Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!XkoWmFcSguuRWezOLRGw3risIQEwheWm8sPlDl3m8xdhe2yN_Lu2i1HhWujM4_hk_UILMA$ >>>>>> Re-generating CHAT Website: re-generatingchat.com >>>>>> Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu . >>>>>> >>>>>> Narrative history of LCHC: lchcautobio.ucsd.edu . >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200820/8899e615/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Fri Aug 21 08:11:26 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2020 11:11:26 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Shut Down STEM/Academia? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Mainly with the goal of keeping this thread alive and encouraging others to weigh in on David's questions, here's an encouraging footnote, widely referenced in my little corner of the world: - in-group warmth does not correlate with out-group coolness (except in times of conflict) This is one of my favorite findings in recent social science, not only because it's commonsensical to me but because it appeals to the healthiest type of multiculturalism I can think of: liking yourself while not disliking others. Good vibes all around. Sorry, I don't have the citation (there are a few) on-hand, but it's probably here is this Eric Kaufmann piece in the Times: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/opinion/race-america-trump.html__;!!Mih3wA!Vr1T80N0XkSREtXR9qhdyA0j59ThJryIz12WNh8D3Hk1KIu_rDKxC-VrpHgoARdx84Br9Q$ Thanks, Anthony P.S. Can anyone think of a good way to pursue Mike Cole's recent idea, i.e, getting a bunch of contributors to share some stuff that worked in their classrooms, followed by some sort of debriefing? Reference here > "It would be great to gather answers to that question from everyone on > XMCA, Anthony. Or coordinate a zoom session where everyone provides an > example and there is adequate provision for later discussion/reflection. > 'Can you say just a tad more about *"when the teaching 'works' e.g., is appropriated > and built upon"*?" On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 7:52 PM Anthony Barra wrote: > Proud American white male of Italian decent. > > Since I've been asked, I am happy to call attention to one small point: > not one Hispanic individual in my extended family, my wife most notably, > likes or uses the term "Latinx," and most actively mock it. Around here, it > is considered contrived, offensive, politically-motivated, and/or outright > goofy. > > That said, everyone should feel free to offend; after all, "in order to be > able to Think, one must risk being offensive." And, without question, few > things are more precious than our precious tools for thinking. > > I love diversity, especially diversity of the mind and diversity of > perspectives. > > Thanks, > > Anthony > > P.S. I'm curious to hear various opinions about your questions re: the > current call for papers. Thanks for asking. > > > > > On Thursday, August 20, 2020, David Kellogg wrote: > >> (Anthony--are you sure you are really a white male? You seem rather >> Latinx to me.) >> >> I am curious about the call for papers currently up on MCA. Here's what >> it says: >> >> "The recent global pandemic lays bare the ongoing disparities in health >> and economic well-being amongst racialized communities in North America >> (Poteat et al., 2020). Amplified by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna >> Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter >> movement brought to global awareness and provoked dialogue about ongoing >> antiblack racism in the United States and global colonial and >> settler-colonial contexts. In academia the hashtags #ShutDownSTEM and >> #ShutDownAcademia brought similar attention to racisms within academic and >> scientific communities. This movement corresponds to recent emphasis on the >> sociopolitical nature of teaching and learning in fields broadly construed >> as STEM, which continuously construct (sic) racialized assumptions based on >> deficit views about learners from nondominant communities (Adams, in >> press). Racialized and deficit-based discourses have been detrimental to >> Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities whose potential >> for flourishing has been stifled by the imposition of ?solutions? from >> ?experts? who claim to know what is ?best? for them (Kayumova et al., >> 2019). Studies rooted in deficit discourses determines (sic) the >> orientation a researcher may take towards communities of learners from >> BIPOC backgrounds which often fails to show the richness, variation, and >> ingenuities inherent in diverse communities." >> >> >> Here are my questions: >> >> >> a) What are the grammatical subjects of the verb "construct" and the verb >> "determines" (marked [sic] above)? >> >> >> b) Was the resurgence of Black Lives Matter "amplified" by police >> murders? How did that happen? >> >> >> c) Is the USA a settler-colonial context or not? If so, why single it >> out? If not, when and how did it stop being one? >> >> >> d) Is support for affirmative action, for hiring quotas, for busing and >> integration of schools, academia and STEM a "deficit" view? Isn't >> displaying the richness, variation, and ingenuity of racialized groups in >> an undiluted form what Jim Crow, Plessy vs. Ferguson, and the Bakke >> Decision of 1975 purported to do? >> >> >> (By the way, the Vygotsky presentation in Russian that Anthony is >> directing our attention to has some important points to make about systemic >> racism in the USA, written by a prominent intellectual from a viciously >> oppressed minority group whose access to STEM/academia was directly enabled >> by the revolutionary integrationism of the early Soviet Union. Vygotsky >> often uses American events to comment on developments that are closer to >> home....) >> >> >> David Kellogg >> Sangmyung University >> >> New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: >> Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, >> Hasan, and Vygotsky >> >> Some free e-prints today available at: >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!Vr1T80N0XkSREtXR9qhdyA0j59ThJryIz12WNh8D3Hk1KIu_rDKxC-VrpHgoAReMXN5XJg$ >> >> >> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works >> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Vr1T80N0XkSREtXR9qhdyA0j59ThJryIz12WNh8D3Hk1KIu_rDKxC-VrpHgoARfEj4sCvQ$ >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200821/ae212ec0/attachment.html From dkellogg60@gmail.com Mon Aug 24 18:26:16 2020 From: dkellogg60@gmail.com (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2020 10:26:16 +0900 Subject: [Xmca-l] The Dynamics of Mental Development in Schoolchildren Message-ID: Anthony: Here's a very rough translation. Note, but leniently, the awkwardness of "teaching/learning". (I was wrong about the part where Vygotsky discusses racial problems in the USA--that's in another paper in the same book. But there's plenty here that is timely as well as quite a bit that is familiar....) Mike has expressed an interest in giving this a close reading on Cultural Praxis. Are you in? David Kellogg Sangmyung University New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, Hasan, and Vygotsky Some free e-prints today available at: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!VhSId3Ud5nbqXBHik1TuNXJIEUj-ZgGWZsH08LGxukdJopxcRNU_lWF0XBEBanVSismMFQ$ New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VhSId3Ud5nbqXBHik1TuNXJIEUj-ZgGWZsH08LGxukdJopxcRNU_lWF0XBEBanXnszLRIg$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/b64b8ad0/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Dynamics.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 93723 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/b64b8ad0/attachment.bin From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Tue Aug 25 16:27:21 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2020 19:27:21 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Dynamics of Mental Development in Schoolchildren In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes, sounds terrific. Thank you. On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 9:39 PM David Kellogg wrote: > Anthony: > > Here's a very rough translation. Note, but leniently, the awkwardness of > "teaching/learning". > > (I was wrong about the part where Vygotsky discusses racial problems in > the USA--that's in another paper in the same book. But there's plenty here > that is timely as well as quite a bit that is familiar....) > > Mike has expressed an interest in giving this a close reading on Cultural > Praxis. Are you in? > > David Kellogg > Sangmyung University > > New article in Mind, Culture, and Activity: > Realizations: non-causal but real relationships in and between Halliday, > Hasan, and Vygotsky > > Some free e-prints today available at: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Y8YHS3SRW42VXPTVY2Z6/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1806329__;Lw!!Mih3wA!V4_TErE2ijTp0pdvPBmdB2Pp3ADrgNOfquNc4BH-pXdEnV9XoXaFg_wUIT_40HzbR6_LWg$ > > > New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works > Volume One: Foundations of Pedology" > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!V4_TErE2ijTp0pdvPBmdB2Pp3ADrgNOfquNc4BH-pXdEnV9XoXaFg_wUIT_40Hyeq-VkaQ$ > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/96f4fc78/attachment.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Tue Aug 25 17:58:29 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2020 18:58:29 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Huw, David, and Andy videos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Huw, It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. for the reading from Vygotsky. First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as you interacted with your children:) 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often in posts to the chat. 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An example being picking up the child to turn on a light. 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about how you might address differences between your two children in your scaffolding. 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t do you harm. 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the change. 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You say this relates to the ZPD. 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. Worth expanding upon I am sure. 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk in its own right. Well done! Henry > On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd wrote: > > Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!STOI1z0-2M6p2RiJ9OeBv4alhvk79E7Pswy5r6AnE8nkHjMlgmvrf7Z7TfjZJgPfRN_GKg$ > > Best, > Huw > > On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark > wrote: > Thank you, Anthony > > > > For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, have found them illuminating. > > > > John > > > > From: > on behalf of Anthony Barra > > Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > > Date: Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > > Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos > > > > Good afternoon, > > > > Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. > > "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!STOI1z0-2M6p2RiJ9OeBv4alhvk79E7Pswy5r6AnE8nkHjMlgmvrf7Z7TfjZJgN2hvBhGg$ > "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!STOI1z0-2M6p2RiJ9OeBv4alhvk79E7Pswy5r6AnE8nkHjMlgmvrf7Z7TfjZJgMzVFLqSg$ > "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!STOI1z0-2M6p2RiJ9OeBv4alhvk79E7Pswy5r6AnE8nkHjMlgmvrf7Z7TfjZJgMGFXr_BQ$ > And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. > > "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!STOI1z0-2M6p2RiJ9OeBv4alhvk79E7Pswy5r6AnE8nkHjMlgmvrf7Z7TfjZJgOMiGK86A$ > Sincerely, > > > > Anthony Barra > > > > > > > Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. > > Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/fb520d68/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Dynamics.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 93723 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/fb520d68/attachment.bin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/fb520d68/attachment-0001.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Tue Aug 25 21:27:31 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2020 22:27:31 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Corrections to Henry's notes on Huw's video Message-ID: Corrections to the notes: David K. is David Kellogg, of course. In #3, ?teachability? is my term, not Huw?s. Also in #3, it?s ?relative achievement?. Vygotsky?s term. In #14, the two kinds of understanding are of the adult, not the child. Henry > Begin forwarded message: > > From: HENRY SHONERD > Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos > Date: August 25, 2020 at 6:58:29 PM MDT > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > > > Huw, > It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. for the reading from Vygotsky. > > First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: > 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing > 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as you interacted with your children:) > 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) > 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often in posts to the chat. > 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An example being picking up the child to turn on a light. > 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. > 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about how you might address differences between your two children in your scaffolding. > 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t do you harm. > 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the change. > 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. > 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. > 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) > 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You say this relates to the ZPD. > 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. Worth expanding upon I am sure. > 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) > 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk in its own right. > > Well done! > Henry > > > > > > > > >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd > wrote: >> >> Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8TnK1JKxQ$ >> >> Best, >> Huw >> >> On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark > wrote: >> Thank you, Anthony >> >> >> >> For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, have found them illuminating. >> >> >> >> John >> >> >> >> From: > on behalf of Anthony Barra > >> Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >> Date: Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am >> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >> >> >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> >> >> Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. >> >> "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8QjRdu64w$ >> "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8QFdQDE-g$ >> "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8TuZjA9Pw$ >> And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. >> >> "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8QSVmmPkQ$ >> Sincerely, >> >> >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. >> >> Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free. > > > > Begin forwarded message: > > From: HENRY SHONERD > Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos > Date: August 25, 2020 at 6:58:29 PM MDT > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > > > Huw, > It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. for the reading from Vygotsky. > > First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: > 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing > 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as you interacted with your children:) > 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) > 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often in posts to the chat. > 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An example being picking up the child to turn on a light. > 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. > 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about how you might address differences between your two children in your scaffolding. > 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t do you harm. > 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the change. > 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. > 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. > 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) > 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You say this relates to the ZPD. > 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. Worth expanding upon I am sure. > 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) > 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk in its own right. > > Well done! > Henry > > > > > > > > >> On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd > wrote: >> >> Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8TnK1JKxQ$ >> >> Best, >> Huw >> >> On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark > wrote: >> Thank you, Anthony >> >> >> >> For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, have found them illuminating. >> >> >> >> John >> >> >> >> From: > on behalf of Anthony Barra > >> Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >> Date: Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am >> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >> Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >> >> >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> >> >> Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. >> >> "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8QjRdu64w$ >> "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8QFdQDE-g$ >> "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8TuZjA9Pw$ >> And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. >> >> "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!WR51txswW48rXoyKIyjsmbK40-YLbgKFBpQFnBw77Smlh8PIdKlSs7RXbYLLL8QSVmmPkQ$ >> Sincerely, >> >> >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. >> >> Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/8aa876ce/attachment-0003.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Dynamics.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 93723 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/8aa876ce/attachment-0002.bin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/8aa876ce/attachment-0004.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Dynamics.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 93723 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/8aa876ce/attachment-0003.bin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200825/8aa876ce/attachment-0005.html From huw.softdesigns@gmail.com Wed Aug 26 05:06:35 2020 From: huw.softdesigns@gmail.com (Huw Lloyd) Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2020 13:06:35 +0100 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Corrections to Henry's notes on Huw's video In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello Henry I'm glad you find value in the video. Regarding corrections, I would be cautious about referring to the teaching influence as 'scaffolding', or at least to encourage exploring what is at play that the notion of scaffolding may not normally include or connote. An important item that is absent from your list is the relation of cognitive organisation (and its re-organisation) to strategic sophistication in activity (including construal), and that this is closely related to active orientation; the role of the parent as an auxiliary mind providing, amongst other things a meta-cognitive support aligned to the capabilities of the child but that may go beyond the organisational structure of the child's form of understanding, yielding, potentially, a harmonic coupling between the two. On crises, I say that it seems that the upheaval aspect may be circumvented with some children for some crises, but not the logical crisis in the sense of a big change. It is not so much an 'option' as a facet of the child''s experience (in relation to their development) as to whether the upheaval and 'negative behaviour' become a necessary part of the child's transitional behaviour. On what you paraphrase as "doing no harm" (my time at comprehensive school), I would say that it is what the school does not do that is of relevance here, i.e. that I found alternative resources to encounter a 1st hand appreciation of cultural ideas through creative activity and projects. Anthony has recorded a subsequent video of our conversation pertaining to his interest in developmental education. The concept of active orientation is explored more in that video, with its relevance for developmental education, so that might help with elaborating further what you are calling scaffolding. I suspect there would be questions about that too, which would require going further into the conceived organisation of cognition, the relevance of meta-cognition and how this architecture is conceived of socially. Thanks for sharing your impressions. Huw On Wed, 26 Aug 2020 at 05:29, HENRY SHONERD wrote: > Corrections to the notes: > David K. is David Kellogg, of course. > In #3, ?teachability? is my term, not Huw?s. > Also in #3, it?s ?relative achievement?. Vygotsky?s term. > In #14, the two kinds of understanding are of the adult, not the child. > Henry > > > > Begin forwarded message: > > *From: *HENRY SHONERD > *Subject: **Re: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos* > *Date: *August 25, 2020 at 6:58:29 PM MDT > *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > > > Huw, > It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I > think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your > views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time > well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope > anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct > any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. > for the reading from Vygotsky. > > First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the > sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I > could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your > present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: > 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a > strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing > 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s > development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as > you interacted with your children:) > 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, > that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather > than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from > Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls > this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) > 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what > you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often > in posts to the chat. > 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An > example being picking up the child to turn on a light. > 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide > options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. > 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about > how you might address differences between your two children in your > scaffolding. > 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the > school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your > own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t > do you harm. > 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a > bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable > in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the > change. > 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday > activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. > 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March > to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. > 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. > ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates > the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) > 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something > though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You > say this relates to the ZPD. > 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. > Worth expanding upon I am sure. > 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children > might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when > the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and > move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) > 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk > in its own right. > > Well done! > Henry > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd wrote: > > Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yK2zcS3wQ$ > > > Best, > Huw > > On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark < > john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au> wrote: > >> Thank you, Anthony >> >> >> >> For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, >> and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, >> have found them illuminating. >> >> >> >> John >> >> >> >> *From: * on behalf of Anthony Barra < >> anthonymbarra@gmail.com> >> *Reply-To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" >> *Date: *Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am >> *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" >> *Subject: *[Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >> >> >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> >> >> Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage >> (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from >> David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. >> >> - "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" >> (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yJR2jTLAw$ >> >> - "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yJYND1ATw$ >> >> - "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yIqgYykcw$ >> >> >> And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of >> Vygotsky and parenting. >> >> - "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yKA4HyiKg$ >> >> >> Sincerely, >> >> >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> * Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for >> the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, >> reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you >> have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments >> immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin >> University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error >> or virus free.* >> > > > > Begin forwarded message: > > *From: *HENRY SHONERD > *Subject: **Re: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos* > *Date: *August 25, 2020 at 6:58:29 PM MDT > *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > > > Huw, > It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I > think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your > views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time > well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope > anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct > any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. > for the reading from Vygotsky. > > First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the > sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I > could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your > present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: > 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a > strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing > 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s > development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as > you interacted with your children:) > 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, > that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather > than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from > Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls > this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) > 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what > you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often > in posts to the chat. > 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An > example being picking up the child to turn on a light. > 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide > options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. > 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about > how you might address differences between your two children in your > scaffolding. > 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the > school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your > own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t > do you harm. > 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a > bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable > in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the > change. > 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday > activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. > 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March > to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. > 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. > ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates > the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) > 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something > though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You > say this relates to the ZPD. > 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. > Worth expanding upon I am sure. > 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children > might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when > the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and > move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) > 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk > in its own right. > > Well done! > Henry > > > > > > > > > On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd wrote: > > Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yK2zcS3wQ$ > > > Best, > Huw > > On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark < > john.crippsclark@deakin.edu.au> wrote: > >> Thank you, Anthony >> >> >> >> For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, >> and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, >> have found them illuminating. >> >> >> >> John >> >> >> >> *From: * on behalf of Anthony Barra < >> anthonymbarra@gmail.com> >> *Reply-To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" >> *Date: *Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am >> *To: *"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" >> *Subject: *[Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >> >> >> >> Good afternoon, >> >> >> >> Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage >> (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from >> David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. >> >> - "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" >> (short excerpt) - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yJR2jTLAw$ >> >> - "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yJYND1ATw$ >> >> - "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yIqgYykcw$ >> >> >> And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of >> Vygotsky and parenting. >> >> - "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!VaTqxqEztN1pgkmiMynmoGjQvIn8KXFE83ZkQwL5VGxWRxK4gxLoFQQlwkiA3yKA4HyiKg$ >> >> >> Sincerely, >> >> >> >> Anthony Barra >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> * Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for >> the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, >> reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you >> have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments >> immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. Deakin >> University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error >> or virus free.* >> > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200826/6cd2bcd9/attachment.html From hshonerd@gmail.com Wed Aug 26 16:39:01 2020 From: hshonerd@gmail.com (HENRY SHONERD) Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:39:01 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Corrections to Henry's notes on Huw's video In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2086D727-0E68-4BED-A779-0CDB80E55870@gmail.com> Thanks, Huw. It doesn?t surprise me that ?scaffolding" would be a concern. I think the term has a checkered history on the chat. Other concerns you raise are, frankly, new to me: -The relation off cognitive organizatiion (and its re-organization) to strategic sophistication in activity (including construal) -Active orientation, -Organizational structure of the child?s form of understanding I think if I understood those concepts, I would better understand the whole of your concerns. It may be a concern that I am not familar with the concepts, that is I am in hopelessly over my head. Not surprising in that we are tackling the Zone of Proximal Development , something that seems to have stumped a lot of people. That your understanding is Vygotsky INSPIRED, rather than all Vygotsky, may be a key here. Vygotsky presents problems of translation. Developmental education is the bigger nut to crack. Thanks for your thoughtful efforts in trying to help me with it. I llook forward to seeing your new video with Anthony. Henry > On Aug 26, 2020, at 6:06 AM, Huw Lloyd wrote: > > Hello Henry > > I'm glad you find value in the video. Regarding corrections, I would be cautious about referring to the teaching influence as 'scaffolding', or at least to encourage exploring what is at play that the notion of scaffolding may not normally include or connote. An important item that is absent from your list is the relation of cognitive organisation (and its re-organisation) to strategic sophistication in activity (including construal), and that this is closely related to active orientation; the role of the parent as an auxiliary mind providing, amongst other things a meta-cognitive support aligned to the capabilities of the child but that may go beyond the organisational structure of the child's form of understanding, yielding, potentially, a harmonic coupling between the two. On crises, I say that it seems that the upheaval aspect may be circumvented with some children for some crises, but not the logical crisis in the sense of a big change. It is not so much an 'option' as a facet of the child''s experience (in relation to their development) as to whether the upheaval and 'negative behaviour' become a necessary part of the child's transitional behaviour. On what you paraphrase as "doing no harm" (my time at comprehensive school), I would say that it is what the school does not do that is of relevance here, i.e. that I found alternative resources to encounter a 1st hand appreciation of cultural ideas through creative activity and projects. > > Anthony has recorded a subsequent video of our conversation pertaining to his interest in developmental education. The concept of active orientation is explored more in that video, with its relevance for developmental education, so that might help with elaborating further what you are calling scaffolding. I suspect there would be questions about that too, which would require going further into the conceived organisation of cognition, the relevance of meta-cognition and how this architecture is conceived of socially. > > Thanks for sharing your impressions. > > Huw > > On Wed, 26 Aug 2020 at 05:29, HENRY SHONERD > wrote: > Corrections to the notes: > David K. is David Kellogg, of course. > In #3, ?teachability? is my term, not Huw?s. > Also in #3, it?s ?relative achievement?. Vygotsky?s term. > In #14, the two kinds of understanding are of the adult, not the child. > Henry > > > >> Begin forwarded message: >> >> From: HENRY SHONERD > >> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >> Date: August 25, 2020 at 6:58:29 PM MDT >> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >> >> >> Huw, >> It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. for the reading from Vygotsky. >> >> First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: >> 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing >> 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as you interacted with your children:) >> 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) >> 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often in posts to the chat. >> 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An example being picking up the child to turn on a light. >> 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. >> 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about how you might address differences between your two children in your scaffolding. >> 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t do you harm. >> 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the change. >> 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. >> 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. >> 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) >> 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You say this relates to the ZPD. >> 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. Worth expanding upon I am sure. >> 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) >> 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk in its own right. >> >> Well done! >> Henry >> >> >> > >> >> >> >> >>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd > wrote: >>> >>> Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75XjzfNUD5maw$ >>> >>> Best, >>> Huw >>> >>> On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark > wrote: >>> Thank you, Anthony >>> >>> >>> >>> For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, have found them illuminating. >>> >>> >>> >>> John >>> >>> >>> >>> From: > on behalf of Anthony Barra > >>> Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >>> Date: Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am >>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >>> >>> >>> >>> Good afternoon, >>> >>> >>> >>> Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. >>> >>> "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75Xjzep4hYRDA$ >>> "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75XjzdM9IvV8Q$ >>> "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75XjzcIQURjMw$ >>> And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. >>> >>> "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75Xjzfp1foacQ$ >>> Sincerely, >>> >>> >>> >>> Anthony Barra >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. >>> >>> Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free. >> >> >> >> Begin forwarded message: >> >> From: HENRY SHONERD > >> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >> Date: August 25, 2020 at 6:58:29 PM MDT >> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >> >> >> Huw, >> It has taken me until now to find the time to view carefully your video. I think it was time well spent your answering Anthony?s question about your views on the application of Vygotsky to parenting. And I consider my time well spent taking notes to better understand your contribution. I hope anyone reading my notes will consider it time well spent. Please correct any misunderstandings on my part. Thanks to you and Anthony and to David K. for the reading from Vygotsky. >> >> First of all, I appreciate very much the pace of your delivery. I had the sense you were thinking in depth as you spoke, at a pace that very often I could follow and take notes without a lot of rewinding. In the order your present your ideas, here is what I especially appreciated: >> 1) Your construal of your thinking as Vygotsky inspired, rather than a strict adherence to Vygotsky?s writing >> 2) That you do not think that these ideas apply only to children?s development?I got the feeling, in fact, that you developed as an adult as you interacted with your children:) >> 3) You profiled the zone of proximal development as about ?teachability?, that is the openness of the child to the scaffolding of the adult, rather than the level of intelligence. (Interestingly, I was just a reading from Vygotsky (see below) posted to the chat by David K., wherein Vygotsky calls this ?realtive achievement. See paragraphs 21-24 especially.) >> 4) The role of the adult as observer/participant without obstructing what you call the ?orientation? of the child, a term I have seen you use often in posts to the chat. >> 5) Encouraging the agency of the child, while helping them with a task. An example being picking up the child to turn on a light. >> 7) Your sense that crises are often optional, if you know how to provide options, rather than demands, and still get the child to bed. >> 8) At about 1:05:30, I lost the thread of something you were saying about how you might address differences between your two children in your scaffolding. >> 9) Interesting how you were the out-of-school parent, vis a vis the school-curriculum role of your wife. Furthermore, your sense, based on your own experience in comprehensive schooling in the UK, that schooling didn?t do you harm. >> 10) You described the process of your younger child learning to ride a bike with training wheels for two years, at which time he felt comfortable in riding without the training wheels. You let him decide when to make the change. >> 11) Your out-of-school scaffolding focused on projects and games, everyday activities, problems as food for thought to encourage independent thinking. >> 12) Covid-19 provided the conditions for alternative schooling from March to July. You did mornings, your wife did afternoons. >> 13) An interesting comment you make about ?notational understanding? vs. ?engaged understanding?, where the second kind of understanding facilitates the orientation of the child. (See #4 above.) >> 14) An interesting comment you make that children can sense something though not fully understand it, so that it is not ?foreign? to them. You say this relates to the ZPD. >> 15) You spoke of a ?theory of design? that relates to dialectal processes. Worth expanding upon I am sure. >> 16) You spoke of ?leniency? (yours) regarding how long your children might spend mastering a skill, sensing that ?fluency? requires it and when the practice becoms trivial to the child, they will get bored with it and move on. (See #4 and #13 above.) >> 17) Finally, you noted that you didn?t cover metacognition, worth a talk in its own right. >> >> Well done! >> Henry >> >> >> > >> >> >> >> >>> On Aug 15, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Huw Lloyd > wrote: >>> >>> Anthony has posted a version with the synchronisation fixed here: >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOg1B_Y40Y__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75XjzfNUD5maw$ >>> >>> Best, >>> Huw >>> >>> On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 at 23:32, John Cripps Clark > wrote: >>> Thank you, Anthony >>> >>> >>> >>> For these and all the videos you have created and curated. I know that I, and many colleagues in the cultural-historical activity research community, have found them illuminating. >>> >>> >>> >>> John >>> >>> >>> >>> From: > on behalf of Anthony Barra > >>> Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >>> Date: Saturday, 15 August 2020 at 3:19 am >>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" > >>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Huw, David, and Andy videos >>> >>> >>> >>> Good afternoon, >>> >>> >>> >>> Those interested in our recently discussed "conscious awareness" passage (Thinking and Speech, Ch. 6) may well enjoy these video close-readings from David Kellogg and Andy Blunden. I thank them both. >>> >>> "Distinguishing spontaneous, scientific, and pseudo- concepts" (short excerpt) - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/oyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75Xjzep4hYRDA$ >>> "Spinoza, Chess, and Other Magic Gateways" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/fyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75XjzdM9IvV8Q$ >>> "Andy Blunden on Conscious Awareness" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/kyansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75XjzcIQURjMw$ >>> And thank you as well to Huw Lloyd for taking on the very wide topic of Vygotsky and parenting. >>> >>> "Huw Lloyd on Parenting and Vygotsky!" - <>https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/syansz__;!!Mih3wA!Se6t35Inw92tIpliSo43HuSAKBhza3PJZXva1xQPGEuRaRb8N7P7bprej75Xjzfp1foacQ$ >>> Sincerely, >>> >>> >>> >>> Anthony Barra >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Important Notice: The contents of this email are intended solely for the named addressee and are confidential; any unauthorised use, reproduction or storage of the contents is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it and any attachments immediately and advise the sender by return email or telephone. >>> >>> Deakin University does not warrant that this email and any attachments are error or virus free. >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200826/bb10490d/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Wed Aug 26 17:40:59 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2020 20:40:59 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] "Self-awareness, Perspective, and Imagination -- with Huw Lloyd" Message-ID: Huw Lloyd is an interesting guy and a gracious conversation partner. He recently helped me close some (of the many) gaps in my knowledge and understanding here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/4kspsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLuKDyXZyA$ Huw's commentary will likely be enjoyable even for fellow experts, who could compare his answers to what their own might be, as well as my questions to what they might've asked. I do feel a bit weird pushing my stuff here, but at the same time, enough people have told me in public and private that they enjoy the videos, so I do like sharing them. Thanks, Anthony (audio-only here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/hlspsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLu_tqA_Lw$ ) -------------------------------------------- Video description and Timestamps: Researcher Huw Lloyd, fluent in numerous mental models, is a good explainer of concepts -- including many I was completely unversed in. A few threads run through the entirety of this chat: development, self-awareness, and construing an active orientation to any given situation. SECTION 1: Our pathways to Vygotsky 0:36 - Reflections on Huw's recent "Vygotsky and Parenting" ( https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/ymqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLsZtF8ADg$ ) 1:45 - Pros and cons of taking scholarly shortcuts 6:07 - Huw's arrival to Vygotsky, in part through dissatisfaction elsewhere SECTION 2: Huw's ideas about Active Orientation 16:38 - What is Active Orientation? 23:30 - Is Active Orientation a practice? (An exercise in self awareness) 31:58 - Active Orientation can be documented (microgenesis research of Huw's) SECTION 3: What is Developmental Education? 40:37 - A primer on Davydov and Developmental Education 46:07 - Empirical thinking vs. Theoretical thinking 50:23 - Grokking the material and the History of ideas 52:59 - Problems are Good 55:40 - An illustrative lesson of Davydov's 1:03:43 - Some key characteristics of developmental education 1:07:41 - Crises, construals, and neoformations 1:10:20 - The Desert Oak: a developmental TRIZ problem SECTION 4: Imagination and Confidence-building 1:16:07 - Imagination, flow, and problem-solving 1:24:10 - Systems and Design Ideas (TRIZ approach) 1:30:22 - Earned, authoritative confidence: Your tempered ideas are become Real 1:35:20 - The importance of problem-construal or framing 1:48:04 - Problem-creating, -solving, and -construing 1:53:51 - This is rich, highly concentrated material (Foundational, generative, "unfoldable" concepts) 1:55:27 - Notational vs. developmental education (and epistemology) 1:57:10 - Final two questions (adult-development & advice for problem-designers) 2:06:20 - Complex vs. complicated (and self-regulation and distance learning) 2:09:46 - An idea for lunch (as promised: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/bvqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLtChKpY9A$ ) References: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/5vqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLvsEkixEg$ - "A Study of Active Orientation" (brief introduction) https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/2xqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLsWabuhdQ$ - "TRIZ: a Powerful Methodology for Creative Problem Solving" https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/dxqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!X7YGqw7zcXg6Q2t0d7Fxgiw61TIB9gDb1rcyBIB0fKIeY4I0UnNHoaVgMd-KMLuieRaiCQ$ - "Going with the Flow: How to Engage Boys (and Girls) in Their Literacy Learning" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200826/47593c75/attachment.html From hhdave15@gmail.com Thu Aug 27 03:27:03 2020 From: hhdave15@gmail.com (Harshad Dave) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2020 15:57:03 +0530 Subject: [Xmca-l] The unemployment is an essential requirement of capitalist society. Message-ID: Hi, This refers to the words of Exchequer as follow, "the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, expressed in a famous remark to the House of Commons in 1991, made all the more chilling because of the way in which it connects to the logic of social reality: ?unemployment is a price worth paying? for economic and political stability (The Observer, 19.5.91)." My views say that labor against money-wage is an exchange. Here exchange ratio gets determined by fixing an amount of wage against some determined hours of labor.... say 8 hours. The exchange process ultimately freezes an exchange ratio and there are various parameters of influence that impacts on the determination of exchange ratio. "Helplessness" of either party in the exchange process is one of the sensitive parameters that exerts influence in favor of the party that is not helpless. Its influence impacts on the determination process i. e. to freeze the exchange ratio in favor of the party without helplessness. Now, unemployment is such a social situation that persistently (incessantly) keeps the labor force of the society under the burden of helplessness. The exchange process between labor and money-wage is now a process where the Master always gets a helpless party (labor) while determining a wage amount against 8 hours labor. The parameter of helplessness offers the Master upper hand to dictate an exchange ratio favorable to him (Master) only. So, no capitalistic society can afford complete unemployment in the society because it will reduce the dictating status of the Master. However, the politicians who rule the social system are responsible and entrusted to maintain the show by the capitalist crook only. The politicians provide their services with protected remedial actions against unemployment in such a careful way that it should never go below a certain level or reach to zero . But, it surely ensures required unemployment in the society. At the same time, it should never cross such a higher limit that might threaten a major collapse in the social productive system due to unemployment unrest. The politicians do this work as agents of capitalist people and claim their benefits against the service from the system. I sense the same sound in the words of Norman Lamont. regards, Harshad Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200827/146089cc/attachment.html From hhdave15@gmail.com Thu Aug 27 03:37:14 2020 From: hhdave15@gmail.com (Harshad Dave) Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2020 16:07:14 +0530 Subject: [Xmca-l] The unemployment is an essential requirement of capitalist society. Message-ID: An error was found in the previous message. Reproduced with correction. Hi, This refers to the words of Exchequer as follow, "the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, expressed in a famous remark to the House of Commons in 1991, made all the more chilling because of the way in which it connects to the logic of social reality: ?unemployment is a price worth paying? for economic and political stability (The Observer, 19.5.91)." My views say that labor against money-wage is an exchange. Here exchange ratio gets determined by fixing an amount of wage against some determined hours of labor.... say 8 hours. The exchange process ultimately freezes an exchange ratio and there are various parameters of influence that impacts on the determination of exchange ratio. "Helplessness" of either party in the exchange process is one of the sensitive parameters that exerts influence in favor of the party that is not helpless. Its influence impacts on the determination process i. e. to freeze the exchange ratio in favor of the party without helplessness. Now, unemployment is such a social situation that persistently (incessantly) keeps the labor force of the society under the burden of helplessness. The exchange process between labor and money-wage is now a process where the Master always gets a helpless party (labor) while determining a wage amount against 8 hours labor. The parameter of helplessness offers the Master upper hand to dictate an exchange ratio favorable to him (Master) only. So, no capitalistic society can afford complete *employment* in the society because it will reduce the dictating status of the Master. However, the politicians who rule the social system are responsible and entrusted to maintain the show by the capitalist crook only. The politicians provide their services with protected remedial actions against unemployment in such a careful way that it should never go below a certain level or reach zero. B ut, it surely ensures required unemployment in the society. At the same time, it should never cross such a higher limit that might threaten a major collapse in the social productive system due to unemployment unrest. The politicians do this work as agents of capitalist people and claim their benefits against the service from the system. I sense the same sound in the words of Norman Lamont. regards, Harshad Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200827/527a1af7/attachment.html From anthonymbarra@gmail.com Sat Aug 29 08:53:16 2020 From: anthonymbarra@gmail.com (Anthony Barra) Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2020 11:53:16 -0400 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: "Self-awareness, Perspective, and Imagination -- with Huw Lloyd" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Straddling the Abstract and the Concrete -- with Andy Blunden": https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/ec94eQSSX8E__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85IMcOT5oGA$ "Researcher and chronicler Andy Blunden reflects on his own relationship with Vygotsky, his role and contributions to the Vygotsky-sphere, and some developmental landmarks of his own. (Originally published August 28, 2020) Thanks again to Andy. On Wednesday, August 26, 2020, Anthony Barra wrote: > Huw Lloyd is an interesting guy and a gracious conversation partner. > > He recently helped me close some (of the many) gaps in my knowledge and > understanding here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/4kspsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85IOQe1eSLA$ > > Huw's commentary will likely be enjoyable even for fellow experts, who > could compare his answers to what their own might be, as well as my > questions to what they might've asked. > > I do feel a bit weird pushing my stuff here, but at the same time, enough > people have told me in public and private that they enjoy the videos, so I > do like sharing them. > > Thanks, > > Anthony > > (audio-only here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/hlspsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85INDZx1Ftw$ ) > > > > -------------------------------------------- > Video description and Timestamps: > > Researcher Huw Lloyd, fluent in numerous mental models, is a good > explainer of concepts -- including many I was completely unversed in. A few > threads run through the entirety of this chat: development, self-awareness, > and construing an active orientation to any given situation. > > SECTION 1: Our pathways to Vygotsky > > 0:36 - Reflections on Huw's recent "Vygotsky and Parenting" ( > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/ymqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85IMmjZIOjA$ ) > > 1:45 - Pros and cons of taking scholarly shortcuts > > 6:07 - Huw's arrival to Vygotsky, in part through dissatisfaction > elsewhere > > SECTION 2: Huw's ideas about Active Orientation > > 16:38 - What is Active Orientation? > > 23:30 - Is Active Orientation a practice? (An exercise in self awareness) > > 31:58 - Active Orientation can be documented (microgenesis research of > Huw's) > > SECTION 3: What is Developmental Education? > > 40:37 - A primer on Davydov and Developmental Education > > 46:07 - Empirical thinking vs. Theoretical thinking > > 50:23 - Grokking the material and the History of ideas > > 52:59 - Problems are Good > > 55:40 - An illustrative lesson of Davydov's > > 1:03:43 - Some key characteristics of developmental education > > 1:07:41 - Crises, construals, and neoformations > > 1:10:20 - The Desert Oak: a developmental TRIZ problem > > SECTION 4: Imagination and Confidence-building > > 1:16:07 - Imagination, flow, and problem-solving > > 1:24:10 - Systems and Design Ideas (TRIZ approach) > > 1:30:22 - Earned, authoritative confidence: Your tempered ideas are > become Real > > 1:35:20 - The importance of problem-construal or framing > > 1:48:04 - Problem-creating, -solving, and -construing > > 1:53:51 - This is rich, highly concentrated material (Foundational, > generative, "unfoldable" concepts) > > 1:55:27 - Notational vs. developmental education (and epistemology) > > 1:57:10 - Final two questions (adult-development & advice for > problem-designers) > > 2:06:20 - Complex vs. complicated (and self-regulation and distance > learning) > > 2:09:46 - An idea for lunch (as promised: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/bvqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85IMu2Pv5mA$ ) > > References: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/5vqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85INPU-JiCw$ - "A Study of Active Orientation" (brief > introduction) > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/2xqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85IPBkikkbw$ - "TRIZ: a Powerful Methodology for Creative > Problem Solving" > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/dxqpsz__;!!Mih3wA!S33cTVIkU7U9v9FUG591iGWUqwJtBKNyXVcYA2nA_QKFGGvaUmFJKVsQ-Ah85IOUymWXPg$ - "Going with the Flow: How to Engage Boys (and > Girls) in Their Literacy Learning" > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200829/77b8c650/attachment.html From annalisa@unm.edu Sun Aug 30 12:55:04 2020 From: annalisa@unm.edu (Annalisa Aguilar) Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2020 19:55:04 +0000 Subject: [Xmca-l] Did Vygotsky Dream of Electric Speech? Message-ID: Hello Venerable Others, et al: I've been off the list for awhile and returned to I discover, as usual, there's been some interesting exchanges. In a Jungian bout of synchronicity I saw this in today's NYT Magazine on recent brain implant research, See: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/sunday/brain-machine-artificial-intelligence.html__;!!Mih3wA!UBpctb98QbTgdNnXnkfl2IJNSL38oDRGanLpjXxnO0fMGv8Q6RuGYmeguDmSkPDhRCj1Lg$ The idea of consciousness being a reflection and the interesting thought "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself," that Martin tapped into the listserv, appears (!) to be supported from this recent research of electrical imaging in the brain and how they've been able to "read" thoughts based upon data captured from visual cortex stimulation and reception. If we accept the material world as a continuum of the gross to subtle material, this idea of mind as a composite of reflections, is once again something already considered by the ancients. Also, ahankara as a notional construct oneself, is a way of identification of "self" from "not-self" in a similar way of differentiating what is real from what is a reflection of the real (if done properly). The NYT article very much reifies the concept of the vritti, which is Sanskrit for "thought-modification". Interestingly a "concept" might be considered an ontology of "cognitive grammars," or particular structures of vrittis. The video in the article that presents the imaging of these electrical impluses is a wonderful illustration of a vritti in action: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://vp.nyt.com/video/2020/08/28/88321_1_28ManoffVideo_wg_720p.mp4__;!!Mih3wA!UBpctb98QbTgdNnXnkfl2IJNSL38oDRGanLpjXxnO0fMGv8Q6RuGYmeguDmSkPCqXF9mLA$ The imaging of the captured brain impulses present like dreamlike transformations, as if there is a matching going on instantaneously to identify what was seen from something stored in memory ("re-cognition"). It is interesting that there is a distinction between outlines and more comprehensive sensations, as with shape, color, and movement. When a vritti matches the object to be known in the empirical world, the ancients say that knowledge takes place. Anything else is a delusion of what is real. Another important concept of the ancients is "mithya" which is the acceptance of this apparent reality, and is, believe it or not, discussed in Vygotky's essay The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology in the very discussion of the table and its reflection, though Vygotsky probably didn't understand this concept, he is indeed pointing to it (pun intended). Mithya is to say that there an apparent reality which has rules of its own that must be considered for the very reason that it can't be fully dismissed. It is neither real, nor unreal. Similar to Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit, for every person who can point to the rabbit, another can point to the duck. When we see that the subjective experience of an individual (jiva) has a logic to it, we can at the same time dismiss the same experience with objective analysis of "not being real." The rules for evaluating the table and its reality are going to be different than the rules for evaluating the reflection of the table an its apparent reality. The catch is not to use one kind of analytical methodology for one reality to understand or analyze a different basis of reality. We don't use the rules of the waking world and apply them to the dreaming world. And vivid dreamers might say the same that we can't use the rules of the dream world and apply them to the real world, but innovative artists and scientists might actually be doing just that. This means that even if we can dismiss the mind, we cannot say it's viable to dismiss mind in all cases. If that were the case, then we could have no reason for determining motives in the minds of criminals; everyone could/could not be held accountable for their acts, real or imagined. I was also asking myself when Michael G brought up Vygotsky's interest in inner speech coming from Russian theater (in the gate of consciousness thread), how does this orient to Piaget's understanding of inner speech? Historically, or otherwise, in Vygotsky's development of the concept of inner speech? Anyone care to chat about that? I had always thought Vygotsky had adopted that concept from Piaget. I suppose the assertion that inner speech exists is impossible to ascribe to a particular person, as every human has such experiences when talking to oneself, whether or not it's verbalized. But I'm curious where it came from as a topic of scientific inquiry? Is it possible that inner speech was a "electric" topic of the times and was cross-pollinating in areas of science and art in various circles? Kind regards, Annalisa -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200830/9b376033/attachment.html From greg.a.thompson@gmail.com Sun Aug 30 14:51:22 2020 From: greg.a.thompson@gmail.com (Greg Thompson) Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2020 15:51:22 -0600 Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Did Vygotsky Dream of Electric Speech? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I nominate Annalisa for best subject line of the year! (maybe ever?). -greg p.s. somewhat relatedly, I was recently reviewing an article by someone who researches artificial retinas. Apparently some people who get these say that when they use the artificial retina they "see electricity". Fascinating! On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 1:56 PM Annalisa Aguilar wrote: > Hello Venerable Others, et al: > > I've been off the list for awhile and returned to I discover, as usual, > there's been some interesting exchanges. > > In a Jungian bout of synchronicity I saw this in today's NYT Magazine on > recent brain implant research, See: > > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/sunday/brain-machine-artificial-intelligence.html__;!!Mih3wA!RDgR2NYTTp5qQMlNbO9uiCxeHl6qZSfaUyobexb5ZS2Fw6eXSWSc5p1hha6TQP3rBkbQQw$ > > > The idea of consciousness being a reflection and the interesting thought > "Mind is the Body's Idea of Itself," that Martin tapped into the listserv, > appears (!) to be supported from this recent research of electrical imaging > in the brain and how they've been able to "read" thoughts based upon data > captured from visual cortex stimulation and reception. > > If we accept the material world as a continuum of the gross to subtle > material, this idea of mind as a composite of reflections, is once again > something already considered by the ancients. > > Also, ahankara as a notional construct oneself, is a way of identification > of "self" from "not-self" in a similar way of differentiating what is real > from what is a reflection of the real (if done properly). > > The NYT article very much reifies the concept of the vritti, which is > Sanskrit for "thought-modification". Interestingly a "concept" might be > considered an ontology of "cognitive grammars," or particular structures of > vrittis. > > The video in the article that presents the imaging of these electrical > impluses is a wonderful illustration of a vritti in action: > https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://vp.nyt.com/video/2020/08/28/88321_1_28ManoffVideo_wg_720p.mp4__;!!Mih3wA!RDgR2NYTTp5qQMlNbO9uiCxeHl6qZSfaUyobexb5ZS2Fw6eXSWSc5p1hha6TQP0IDCKvIA$ > > > The imaging of the captured brain impulses present like dreamlike > transformations, as if there is a matching going on instantaneously to > identify what was seen from something stored in memory ("re-cognition"). It > is interesting that there is a distinction between outlines and more > comprehensive sensations, as with shape, color, and movement. > > When a vritti matches the object to be known in the empirical world, the > ancients say that knowledge takes place. Anything else is a delusion of > what is real. > > Another important concept of the ancients is "mithya" which is the > acceptance of this apparent reality, and is, believe it or not, discussed > in Vygotky's essay The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology in > the very discussion of the table and its reflection, though Vygotsky > probably didn't understand this concept, he is indeed pointing to it (pun > intended). > > Mithya is to say that there an apparent reality which has rules of its own > that must be considered for the very reason that it can't be fully > dismissed. It is neither real, nor unreal. > > Similar to Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit, for every person who can point to > the rabbit, another can point to the duck. When we see that the subjective > experience of an individual (jiva) has a logic to it, we can at the same > time dismiss the same experience with objective analysis of "not being > real." > > The rules for evaluating the table and its reality are going to be > different than the rules for evaluating the reflection of the table an its > apparent reality. The catch is not to use one kind of analytical > methodology for one reality to understand or analyze a different basis of > reality. > > We don't use the rules of the waking world and apply them to the dreaming > world. And vivid dreamers might say the same that we can't use the rules of > the dream world and apply them to the real world, but innovative artists > and scientists might actually be doing just that. > > This means that even if we can dismiss the mind, we cannot say it's viable > to dismiss mind in all cases. If that were the case, then we could have no > reason for determining motives in the minds of criminals; everyone > could/could not be held accountable for their acts, real or imagined. > > I was also asking myself when Michael G brought up Vygotsky's interest in > inner speech coming from Russian theater (in the gate of consciousness > thread), how does this orient to Piaget's understanding of inner speech? > Historically, or otherwise, in Vygotsky's development of the concept of > inner speech? Anyone care to chat about that? > > I had always thought Vygotsky had adopted that concept from Piaget. I > suppose the assertion that inner speech exists is impossible to ascribe to > a particular person, as every human has such experiences when talking to > oneself, whether or not it's verbalized. But I'm curious where it came from > as a topic of scientific inquiry? > > Is it possible that inner speech was a "electric" topic of the times and > was cross-pollinating in areas of science and art in various circles? > > Kind regards, > > Annalisa > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 WEBSITE: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://anthropology.byu.edu/greg-thompson__;!!Mih3wA!RDgR2NYTTp5qQMlNbO9uiCxeHl6qZSfaUyobexb5ZS2Fw6eXSWSc5p1hha6TQP2BUK1S0Q$ https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson__;!!Mih3wA!RDgR2NYTTp5qQMlNbO9uiCxeHl6qZSfaUyobexb5ZS2Fw6eXSWSc5p1hha6TQP3XnMka4Q$ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200830/c9caa3f0/attachment.html