You asked about what I meant about the difference between a flow between
motive and action and a break between motive and action. I wanted to go back
and read that section on plya and rules before I ansered because I think
it speaks to my point, and because it revolves around the development
of rule systems, an important topic for me right now.
Here, in a nutshell, is what I think about the relationship between
activity (driven by motive) and action and its relationship to rules
in the context of what Vygotsky says about play. Vygotsky says that
very early in life there is no imaginary play, because there is no
need for imaginary play. I think that what he means by this is that
there is a direct line from motive to rudimentary action (operation)
...I know I am integrating some of Leontiev's ideas into Vygotsky,
but I truly believe (even though there are a number of people who don't)
that it helps in understanding what Vygotsky was saying...Play emerges
at around the age of three as part of the merging of thinking and
speech, as well as, I think, the emergnece of two phase functions.
The idea of two phase functions is important I think because the child
no longer has to depend on motive to rudimentary action to meet his
or her needs. The child has the planning ability to meet needs
throug imaginary play (I'm not very good when it comes to play, so
I may be messing this up a bit).
What I think is true is that when the child plays he or she is meeting
needs in the immediate situation. The child takes a stick and calls it
a horse in that immediate situation. The rule of the stick being a horse
exists for the child _in that particular situation_. There is no
larger conceptual base for the rule. Thus the motive, the two phase
action, and the rule all exist in that single place and time. There
is an immediate flow from motive to action. When the imaginary play
situation is over, the rule itself is over. That is why vygotsky says
that these rules are not the same as the rules of a game (If anybody
is interested there is an expanded argument of the development of
rules, from a moral perspective, in the latest _Developmental Review_).
Adults do not normally engage in this type of rule making. OUr rules
for a situation go beyond the situation at hand. We obey rules in
a particular situation, not because they necessarily meet our needs
right then and there, but because we believe on a conceptual level
that by following the rules in the long run. This is because we
are able to separate our motive driven activity from our immediate
actions. There is a break between the two caused by the drive for
efficiency through the division of labor. I think my point is that
once we reach this point in our thinking we can never go back and
recapture the type of immediacy that the play of young children
has. Thinking in terms of the greater motive is too ingrained in
our activity. Let's say sa bunch of young children are sitting
around and they decide they want to have a rule for conversation
where nobody is allowed to use the word "and". If you use "and"
you are out. I don't think young children would have any trouble at all with
this game. Let's say Mike Cole came on the network and declared that
for the next week nobody could write the word "and" in one of ther
messages. some of us would want to know why, some of us would
lamnet the injustice to the word and, some of us would be trying to
figure out what he was trying to get to, what are the social historical
implications of not using the word "and". All of us would be trying
to figure out the motive behind the request, and the motive behind
our response to the request.
Michael Glassman
University of Houston