[Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Sat Jan 18 12:06:49 PST 2020

Hello Haydi and Alfredo,

The way it seems to me we have two basic choices about humans. Humans either are or they become. If they are then reactions, capabilities are innate. If they become then these reactions and capabilities are in reaction to the ecology (stimulus unless somebody has a better concept). I see Vygotsky falling in to the same category. This existential question is who controls the stimulus response feedback look. Two individuals can give the same response to a stimulus and that the feedback is completely different means the ecological feedback has great power in determining our responses. Vygotsky’s first step, it seems to me, is to agree with Kohler. Non-humans to not have the ability to remember responses to stimulus which gives them limited control over their ecology. If I give you an apple on Tuesday and you give me five dollars it is a great advantage to know that if I give you an apple on Thursday you will give me another five dollars. Vygotsky hypothesized a set of external moving to internal tools for this (semiotic mediation) but I think that is an idea he was using to explain the process but it was not basic to what he was after.

As we move to a more modern society we begin to recognize that we not only remember how to react to different stimulus, but with the right reactions we have the ability to control the stimulus and therefore manipulate the stimulus response loop. In other words more power is given to the responder. I plant wheat in a field. It does not grow. I respond by not planting wheat anymore. But what if I ask my neighbor and he tells me he was successful on a field on the other side of the mountain. I don’t own any fields on the other side of the mountain but I go look at them and figure out what they have (maybe streams running down from a mountain). So I look for fields with a similar water supply. People who are able to use their thinking as a tool in this way have a great advantage. Of course there is no way this would naturally come from interacting with the environment. You could not learn this type of control of your thinking just through natural stimulus response patterns. But even here I don’t think this is what Vygotsky was really after. Then what. I think you find it in his critique of Piaget. Vygotsky agrees with Piaget (really I think this tribalism has really hurt education, thinking epistemology). His big critique I think is why Piaget things the change in thinking (from concrete to more abstract) would happen at all. People do not naturally embrace conflict and change. It would be easiest for the farmer to just give up on planting wheat. I would be easiest for the neighbor to not mention the fields on the other side of the mountain (would you?). What is the mechanism, what causes this to happen? I think this is where Vygotsky started his search and it is where he (unfortunately much too early) ended it.

So I question whether it is right to say behaviorism is about prediction and control and Vygotsky theory is not. Unless the theory is completely idealistic there is going to be some element of prediction and control in human behavior.

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Haydi Zulfei
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2020 11:41 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Andy, all,

1Behaviorism as the science of controlling people, as the opposite of an emancipatory science, is exactly how I teach it in my learning theory courses. 2I too find the most useful reading of Vygotsky’s attempts as aiming at an emancipatory science, 3although clearly the instrumental bend in some of the formulations gets in the way, including the terminology of4 “control” that also characterized, for example, Dewey’s ideas on inquiry. “The artificial control of behavior” could for example be 5as well formulated as the object-oriented activity of a social movement, which 6precisely aims to gain “control” over conditions for development; 7only that “control” might be a quite misleading way of posing it…

Alfredo,
This is what I replied to. Sorry I pressed the wrong button to reply therefore you’re in doubt which of your posts I was replying to. You’re right.
1I wonder if the matter for you is the preference of one science over the other or that you take both of them as complementary ones in your pedagogical courses.
On either case , I wouldn’t think Vygotsky is on your side with Behaviorism on what I explained in both my messages. If there’s vagueness in my argument in this respect , please refer to them verbatim.
2 says Vygotsky’s science brings up emancipation.
3 says “the instrumental bend” , as you take it , is the obstacle in the process of emancipation. What’s this “instrumental bend”. It seems you’re referring to the periodic divisions in Vygotsky’s career which is not one but several.
4 gives us a clear example of the instrumental bend as the “terminology of control”. Then , we have the concept of “control” in both Behaviorism and Emancipatory science. In the latter case you don’t like it.
With 5 [as well] we also understand what you cannot come into terms with is the “artificial control of behavior” generally even when we pose for the choice of the emancipatory science. I think here is where we can find the knot. Why is the object-oriented activity an obstacle in the way to development. And whether Vygotsky wholly even in his thinking and speech rejects this approach? What about his formation of concepts? What about his final part in thinking and speech where he emphasizes he , in fact , should have chosen a reverse order. That have always taken me to his unread work , that is , the Book of Praxis and Thought.
which 6precisely aims to gain “control” over conditions for development; 7only that “control” might be a quite misleading way of posing it…
I very much like to see if this gaining CONTROL over CONDITIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT means control-free development is favorable or non-control-free development is favorable on dear Alfredo’s view. But the terms “only” and “quite misleading” might come to the rescue.
You assert “conditions for development” but you’d like them to be free of such controls. Then when I say freedom is on the Earth not in the air , I refer you to the Origins and watersheds and genetics of Thoughts. Long ago I read your editorial. There was Marx. But I think Felix Mikhailov’s Marx. If you have any advice for me to read Marx again to see if practical activity with conscious goals is obstacle to free development or conditions for development (in which case you should be kind enough to clarify what those conditions are which seem favorable to you which you don’t like them to be fettered by “controls”) please say what source. This is just a prelude to what I wrote previously not concentrating much on your new post.
High regards and best wishes
Haydi

On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 4:05 PM Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@ils.uio.no<mailto:a.j.gil@ils.uio.no>> wrote:
Hi Haydi,

I am not sure if I understand what you mean entirely, specially when I arrive at your assertion that I “talk of free development as though it can be achieved in a vacuum and in the air”… which I am not sure if you are addressing to my prior post; certainly not what I was aiming to do. In any case, to take up some of the threads I gather from your e-mail, I’d say we can assert the issues of control about behaviourism without rejecting the notion of conditions as false or unnecessary. As I said, the issue of behaviourism and of controlling others is a question of pedagogy to me; of how you organize education and development, as practice, based on that epistemology. Not that pedagogy itself can or could exist without conditions or conditionings. I think what is interesting is the constrains and affordances that come with different approaches as theoretical technologies or economies (as means for organizing activity), and what forms of activity open up when you consider other approaches.

I know, for example, some scholars (e.g., A. Surmava) who argue that the whole theory of Vygotsky is constrained by having initially accepted the S-R scheme as the starting point (adding the third element of cultural mediation in the famous triangle), when that initial scheme itself may be questioned as an adequate characterization of the most basic principle of life to take as starting point.
Best wishes,

Alfredo
From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@gmail.com<mailto:haydizulfei@gmail.com>>
Reply to: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Date: Thursday, 16 January 2020 at 18:39
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Alfredo,
I’m just concentrating on your own word whether borrowed or created. How is behaviorism the science of controlling people?
The science which allows people to salivate without control , lead their lives just by associations which function is carried out by second signals as the ringtone functions as the Real food. Is that what you mean?
I might have forgotten Vygotsky and Leontiev. But from what I can take from your own saying , it seems that the reverse might be the case. Because we reject behaviorism as it does not go far beyond sensation and perception to reach true cognition. And as we are talking about sciences , we should be familiar with how concepts and categories are acquired. How we ascend from the abstract to the concrete. How we form ideas , concepts and categories by our acting on the World .That will take us to the concepts of necessity and freedom. Vygotsky has much to say how actuality leads to concepts. We cry of not being able to have control over our chaotic behavior ; therefore we seek shelter in goal-oriented activities. Actions conduit not unbridled.
But in this you again see defects , conditions! How can one conduct an action without being involved in Conditions (Ecology you say , OK.) ? Conditions in the language of philosophy becomes Necessity which concept Vygotsky likes and spends times to clarify its coming into being and this is the niceties of Vygotsky’s work. One might take thought into word as one direct line from external to internal. How energetic he was to see how it shapes and it what phases and stages! He takes the blocks as real things yet unrecognized or not gone through stages of true cognition. If there are not blocks with properties , ideas are not created and blocks are conditioned in quasi-real life circumstance (first abstraction from the real life situation) as commodities act as units of analysis in Capital.
You , friend , talk of free development as though it can be achieved in vacuum and in the air. Right now our unit of analysis in our current science is that Bernie Sanders’ Medicare is in the Senate. If we say this unit involves the whole world , we have not overestimated it. I hope some great scholar won’t ask me if I’m weaving politics or knowledge!
Conditions come their own way out of our checks and controls. Freedom is on the ground not in the air. How to know the shackles and how to change their ways or how to remove them altogether.
All the best
Haydi

On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 7:45 PM Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@ils.uio.no<mailto:a.j.gil@ils.uio.no>> wrote:
What you write makes sense to me, Michael. I meant behaviorism as a science of control from a pedagogy perspective. I use to raise the question “what type of pedagogy do arrive at when you take the S-R scheme (and conditioning) as your main explanatory scheme?” If you raise the same question from a sociocultural perspective, the answer is quite different, and allows for issues of freedom in a whole new light.

In terms of Vygotsky’s positions, I think you render a valid reading.

Although I think that today’s school curricula in most countries are quite explicit on the importance of the “adaptable thinking skills” that you refer to, rather than on educating for jobs (although I can see that is still the underlying assumption). You can read about those skills in the so-called XXIst century skills, very extended in recent educational reforms (including critical thinking skills, creativity, collaborative skills, digital skills…). I am afraid, though, that the ecosocial crises that we are facing are very quickly and patently showing how narrow our understandings of the sort of skills needed to survive in the XXIst century are. I think that what the climate crisis is showing us is that we need to connect those notions of thinking with the practical socio-economical organization of power and of the relations of humans with nature. I don’t remember now where I read that a scientist had been including spikes of civil activism, disobedience, and social disrest in his/her climate prediction computer models, and was showing that these were the only variables that may have a largest, quickest effect in achieving the gas emission reductions needed (if you can reduce the solution to reducing gas emissions…). I think events today are re-writing the way “progressing towards a modern world” made concious thinking more relevant… But this is a digression, sorry!

Alfredo
From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of "Glassman, Michael" <glassman.13@osu.edu<mailto:glassman.13@osu.edu>>
Reply to: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Date: Thursday, 16 January 2020 at 15:49
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Hi Alfredo and Andy,

I am not sure I agree with this characterization of behaviorism.  Especially at the time he was writing behaviorism was for the most part I think focusing on the behaviors of individuals rather than going inside the head to understand what individuals did. It cast quite a wide net, from Thorndike to Mead. But I don’t think at this point that Vygotsky had a dog in a cognitive/behaviorist fight (maybe I am wrong). I sort of see Vygotsky at this point as not so much discussing control of individuals by those outside them (at least not directly) but the ways individuals are able to control the ecologies around them. He sees this occurring in two possible ways, being able to use internalized tools in order to directly control the ecology, and being able to control their own thinking so that they can actually play (not the right word) with these internalized symbols before applying them. He has not difficulty with the former, and all that is really necessary is to be taught different applications for limited situations. But as we progressed to a modern world the ability to lead a satisfactory life from a small set of applications you might say becomes more and more difficult. Humans developed more abstract thinking, controlling their thoughts to deal with a quickly changing and heterogenous ecology, but this demanded conscious effort on the part of social interlocutors (formal teaching). The difficulty he raises in the socialist alteration of man is that this type of conscious effort was limited to only a small population that then used their more adaptable thinking skills (I am hesitant to say advanced) to manipulate (to differentiate from control) those who were on the lower rungs of society. I mean we continue to do this today when we argue to educate students for specific jobs but do not offer broader education in thinking (there is nothing wrong in training in skills such as mechanics and plumbing, but unless we teach people to manipulate their thinking about those skills they will never really have control of what they do in a complex society. I don’t think that is what Vygotsky was writing about in Crisis, but it does set up a road map for where he wants to go, which I actually think you can see in part even in his dissertation on Hamlet.

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Alfredo Jornet Gil
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2020 7:34 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Andy, all,

Behaviorism as the science of controlling people, as the opposite of an emancipatory science, is exactly how I teach it in my learning theory courses. I too find the most useful reading of Vygotsky’s attempts as aiming at an emancipatory science, although clearly the instrumental bend in some of the formulations gets in the way, including the terminology of “control” that also characterized, for example, Dewey’s ideas on inquiry. “The artificial control of behavior” could for example be as well formulated as the object-oriented activity of a social movement, which precisely aims to gain “control” over conditions for development; only that “control” might be a quite misleading way of posing it…

Alfredo

From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto:andyb@marxists.org>>
Reply to: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Date: Thursday, 16 January 2020 at 12:52
To: "xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Michael, I simply take Vygotsky at his (translated) word. He wants "a scientific theory which would lead to the subordination and mastery of the mind, to the artificial control of behaviour" and whether he likes Munsterberg or personality testing for jobs is, to me, irrelevant.

Now there is an ambiguity in Vygotsky's claim. Behaviourism, for example, I would define as the science of controlling people, and as such is the opposite of an emancipatory science. What Vygotsky is mainly interested in, on the other hand, is giving to people the capacity to control their own mind. But this is not clear from the above, and maybe Vygotsky himself wasn't clear. His writing on "socialist man" and the business with lie detectors suggest that there were some blind spots there.

Anyway, I was only interested in using the quote for my own purposes in contrasting the academic literature on "social Movement Studies" and that genre of social movement literature written by and for activist, which is usually narrative or autobiographical in style, and in the above sense "technic" rather than "epistemology."

Andy

________________________________
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On 16/01/2020 6:42 am, Glassman, Michael wrote:
I don’t know, the sense I get is that he was really criticizing Musterberg, not embracing him, at least from what I read in Crisis. Vygotsky seems to believe we should be wary of this idea of a practical psychology that can use empirical means to look predict human behavior. One hint I get from the piece is his mention of using practical psychology to determine whether people should be tram drivers. To me it sounds like he was arguing also against the rising use of intelligence tests as a psychological tool. James brought over Musterberg in part I think to explore the idea of empirical psychology and Musterberg it seems wound up merging empirical and practical in ways that Vygotsky thought might be detrimental, rightfully suggesting it would send psychology towards the types of practical models of the physical sciences where it did not belong, something that I think has plagued the field since. At least from my reading of this piece is that Vygotsky also found it confusing that Musterberg by following James was also grabbing hold of an idealist vision of psychology, that people behave in certain ways because they were human. Vygotsky seemed to think that there was no way to reconcile this. At this moment I see this as sort of a precursor of where Vygotsky wanted to go, finding a way to merge the idealist vision with a material approach but not falling into a trap in either direction. He did not want to be Wundt and he did not want to be Musterberg, he definitely wanted nothing to do with the intelligence testers who combined “empirical” and practical psychology for ideological reasons (just recently heard about Thomas Teo’s idea of epistemic violence. I think that might fit in here).

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Jussi Silvonen
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 1:15 PM
To: mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu><mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu><mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Mike,

take a look at Internet Archive (archive.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/archive.org__;!!KGKeukY!g0z5AnYuBtHP1ztZp9gfyRkHQd8Mrc9viBg9aABVwZWMofGVfc-82HDzu8YQME58uggdq0Hr$>), you can find PDF files of most of Münsterberg's books there. It is obvious, that Müsterberg had  a great influence on LSV, at least in his theory's instrumental phase.

JusSi
----------------
Jussi Silvonen
Dosentti
Itä-Suomen yliopisto, Joensuun kampus
Kasvatustieteiden ja psykologian osasto
PL 111 (Metria)
80101 Joensuu
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Lähettäjä: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> käyttäjän mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>> puolesta
Lähetetty: keskiviikko 15. tammikuuta 2020 19.56
Vastaanottaja: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Aihe: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

In my view, Munsterberg was no fool and was deeply immersed in the problem of the "two psychologies" that LSV sought to supercede. For a quick take on "psychotechnics" in work, check his book out on google and search the term. For example,

Psychotechnics is really a technical science related to a causal [experimental-mc] psychology as engineering is related to physics.  Psychotechnics necessarily refers to the future while the psychohistorical sciences refer to the past. (Munsterg, 1915, p.354)

It would be interesting to stage a discussion bertween Munsterberg and LSV.  Which one would have more to say for his accomplishments view from, say, 2020?

And if someone has a pdf of the book, please sing out!
mike

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 8:25 AM Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu<mailto:glassman.13@osu.edu>> wrote:

I don’t know, I read it that he was criticizing Munsterberg with his discussion of psychotechnics, which I guess was the title of Munsterberg’s last book. To meet it reads like Vygotsky was thinking Munsterberg was falling into a dangerous materialist trap. Maybe that’s what you are saying Andy.

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 2:39 AM
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

This is what I was looking for:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri12.htm#p1207<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2Fwww.marxists.org*2Farchive*2Fvygotsky*2Fworks*2Fcrisis*2Fpsycri12.htm*p1207__*3BIw!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkzm3Ep0s*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C65f40880e53e4c1412c508d799e58718*7C87879f2e73044bf2baf263e7f83f3c34*7C0*7C0*7C637147083412462637&sdata=OBOvR6IPfkMeN4eKIcrZXz5aDBjX1t5LB6LokEBXrDg*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlKiUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!KGKeukY!mLhQUKQjrFOMsctcba8YuyUuqdKRguYi_RFCB738kunrmy7tUs2HLGZBW6feWd1QIXDWyWWT$>

It was the exclusion of "psychotechnics" from the fundamental problems of psychology which he objected to. On the contrary, the philosophy of practice provided all the solutions to these problems. "The goal of such a psychology is not Shakespeare in concepts, as it was for Dilthey, but in one word – psychotechnics, i.e., a scientific theory which would lead to the subordination and mastery of the mind, to the artificial control of behaviour."

Thanks all.
Andy

________________________________

Andy Blunden
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On 15/01/2020 3:09 pm, David Kellogg wrote:

But psychotechnics was really the Soviet version of human resource management. The idea was to select particular "types" for particular jobs. It wasn't really a Soviet idea--it started in Germany (and in fact, the Nazis were very big on it; the selection ramp at Auschwitz was based on it). In China, there was also quite a bit of emphasis on making sure that people suited the professions chosen for them, as education was a very scarce resource.

Isaac Spielrein--Sabine's brother, who was a colleague of Vygotsky--was a psychotechnician; his essay on the language of the Red Army soldier is written with that perspective in mind. And it was at a psychotechnic conference that Vygotsky was asked if there could be a pedology of adults, to aid in psychotechnic selection.

Vygotsky said no.

David Kellogg

Sangmyung University

New Article: 'Commentary: On the originality of Vygotsky's "Thought and Word" i

in Mind Culture and Activity

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2Fwww.tandfonline.com*2Fdoi*2Ffull*2F10.1080*2F10749039.2020.1711775__*3B!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBktaxJh-A*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C65f40880e53e4c1412c508d799e58718*7C87879f2e73044bf2baf263e7f83f3c34*7C0*7C0*7C637147083412482626&sdata=yllUDzZhK8*2BCHvi8HXvoxP457gXRNAa8VYC*2FPC4PQtc*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!KGKeukY!mLhQUKQjrFOMsctcba8YuyUuqdKRguYi_RFCB738kunrmy7tUs2HLGZBW6feWd1QIWQuZxxv$>

Some free e-prints available at:

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New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2Fwww.springer.com*2Fgp*2Fbook*2F9789811505270__*3B!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkiawojtY*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C65f40880e53e4c1412c508d799e58718*7C87879f2e73044bf2baf263e7f83f3c34*7C0*7C0*7C637147083412492624&sdata=PDdGgIgXqxWaVkzWvkE*2B24nBKC6nX6Vv*2Bq1mROYzdMk*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJQ!!KGKeukY!mLhQUKQjrFOMsctcba8YuyUuqdKRguYi_RFCB738kunrmy7tUs2HLGZBW6feWd1QISHX4tYT$>

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 1:02 PM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>> wrote:

Might you be looking for “psychotechnics” Andy?

Mike

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 7:35 PM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:

Andy--

That really doesn't sound like Vygotsky to me.

Yes, he refers to art as the "social technique of emotion" (Psychology of Art). Yes, he did experiments on reading "Gentle Breath" to see if Bunin's short story had any affect on breathing rates. But as far as I know he had nothing to do with Luria's work on lie detectors (in The Nature of Human Conflict), and he was even rather skeptical of Luria's work on optical illusions in "uneducated" peoples

. Remember, this is the guy who denied that a general psychology could ever cut itself off from practice and vice versa (History of the Crisis in Psychology), who rejected the idea that thinking is speech with the sound turned off (Thinking and Speech). Besides, who ever heard of a technology opposed to an epistemology? What would that mean? A hand without a brain?

Vygotsky sounds more like this: "Neither the hand nor the brain left to itself can do much."  Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620), Book 1, Aphorism 2.

David Kellogg

Sangmyung University

New Article: 'Commentary: On the originality of Vygotsky's "Thought and Word" i

in Mind Culture and Activity

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2Fwww.tandfonline.com*2Fdoi*2Ffull*2F10.1080*2F10749039.2020.1711775__*3B!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBktaxJh-A*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C65f40880e53e4c1412c508d799e58718*7C87879f2e73044bf2baf263e7f83f3c34*7C0*7C0*7C637147083412492624&sdata=BP3oUS62Il2ysAn5qg8wmdRgzXL88z*2FStKI*2Bh6VwUKw*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!KGKeukY!mLhQUKQjrFOMsctcba8YuyUuqdKRguYi_RFCB738kunrmy7tUs2HLGZBW6feWd1QIW8z2T_v$>

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2Fwww.tandfonline.com*2Feprint*2FSK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY*2Ffull*3Ftarget*3D10.1080*10749039.2020.1711775__*3BLw!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkmu8ynwE*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C65f40880e53e4c1412c508d799e58718*7C87879f2e73044bf2baf263e7f83f3c34*7C0*7C0*7C637147083412502616&sdata=sDCVNon8FCfDczqUlefwc6O6XRxMu7kgYtTX5KhfPSk*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlKiUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!KGKeukY!mLhQUKQjrFOMsctcba8YuyUuqdKRguYi_RFCB738kunrmy7tUs2HLGZBW6feWd1QIUEJFvpx$>

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 11:49 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:

There's somewhere where Vygotsky talks about psychology as a technology as opposed to (for example) an epistemology. Can anyone point me to where this observation is to be found. I can find it with my search engines. I think Vygotsky and Luria's invention of the lie-detector has been mentioned in this connection.

Andy

--

________________________________

Andy Blunden
Hegel for Social Movements<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Furldefense.com*2Fv3*2F__https*3A*2Fbrill.com*2Fview*2Ftitle*2F54574__*3B!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBk8iLcReg*24&data=02*7C01*7C*7C65f40880e53e4c1412c508d799e58718*7C87879f2e73044bf2baf263e7f83f3c34*7C0*7C0*7C637147083412502616&sdata=q5ZRtmU7n76mwg2owaHdn8LcNDmLEHxREaF04n263AQ*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!KGKeukY!mLhQUKQjrFOMsctcba8YuyUuqdKRguYi_RFCB738kunrmy7tUs2HLGZBW6feWd1QITY6oecw$>
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--

 fiction is but a form of symbolic action, a mere game of “as if”, therein lies its true   function and its potential for effecting change - R. Ellison

---------------------------------------------------

For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other members of LCHC, visit

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--
 fiction is but a form of symbolic action, a mere game of “as if”, therein lies its true   function and its potential for effecting change - R. Ellison
---------------------------------------------------
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