Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims

[Natalia Gajdamaschko <nataliag@sfu.ca>]

Hi Mike,
What if I'll follow your suggestion to complete LSV sentence: 
 
"All our work is focused on a single basic problem, on the genetic analysis
of thought and word........."
You said that   -- an "American contextualist completion of the sentence..... Of course, we
constantly have to keep in mind that the meaning of words depends upon the
context"

And, what if I add LSV words to this thread written as a critique of Piaget's views on concept development: 
" Others have said that concepts arise in the process of castrating reality. Concrete, diverse phenomena must lose their traits one after the other in course that a concept might be formed. Actually what arises is a dry and empty abstraction in which the diverse, full-blooded reality is narrowed and impoverished by logical thought. This is the source of the celebrated word of Goethe: “Grey is every theory and eternally green is the golden tree of life.”
This dry, empty, gray abstraction inevitably strives to reduce content to zero because the more general, the more empty the concept becomes. Impoverishing the content is done from fateful necessity, and for this reason, proceeding to develop the teaching of concepts on the grounds of formal logic, presented thinking in concepts as the system of thinking that was the poorest, scantiest, and emptiest" (Vygotsky, 1997, vol.4, p.53) 

Don't you think that Vygotsky sounds suspiciously as an "American contextualist" here? 
And, from here, it is only one step (IMHO) to the Russian completion -e.g. if mediation is done by castrating reality AND "outside the context of practice" AND in the situation when "practical activity of a child is missing", one can't form a true concept. 

 No wonder you do both  in your very successful Californian after-school activities! 
Cheers,
Natalia.  

  
----- Original Message -----
From: "mike cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>
To: "Natalia Gajdamaschko" <nataliag@sfu.ca>
Cc: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2011 11:21:17 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims

Yes, Natalia. The treatment of egocentric speech is an excellent example of Vygotsky's assumption that one needs to consider the mediational means and the (imagined!) reality, events we call "practical activity." 

I fear from Andy's comment, and perhaps yours, that my little bit of quotation and "translation" starting with the sentence in Vygotsky's preface was not properly conceptualized. I wrote that note having 
just spent time trying to understand the discussion about Vygotsky, Leontiev, & Piaget. David had 
pointed out that there was good evidence that more emphasis was put on activity among the Kharkovites, 
but I was confused by the interesting "changing of partners" as one considered the relationship between 
the three thinkers ideas. In the ensuing discussion, Martin pointed to the preface of T&L (I assume in the T&S 1987 version) and I went back to read. Which I did and then produced that strange note. 

My basic point was that reading that preface one could easily make the case that LSV ignored activity. If, for example, one were trying to distance himself from notions of idealism and cosmipolitism, physically by getting out to the edges of the shadow of the Kremlin, intellectually by placing (deserved!) attention on mind-in-activity/activity-in-mind this chapter would be one very fine bit of text haul out at your show 
trial and condemn the man with. 

I have personally found Leontiev very helpful in thinking through ways of designing educational activities, thanks in large part to being able to work with Peg Griffin. I work in the after-school, informal sector, so we have unusual opportunities to design theoretically interesting activities. The example i have in mind in is a group reading activity for the instruction of reading. But Vygotsky has been no less important in my thinking about this same line of work. 

There more to be said, of course, but I have wandered off the end of the screen. 
mike 

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Natalia Gajdamaschko < nataliag@sfu.ca > wrote: 



Hi Dear All, 
I thought you may enjoy this quote from Vygotsky himself to be added to the discussion on Piaget-Vygotsky. LSV wrote it while discussing cultural development a child. And his surprise is about absence of a culture and history in child’s development in Piagetian theory. And, ironically, absence of the child himself, the personality of the child, in the process of development: 

"We would suggest that absence of two factors with Piaget first discussion on narrow issue of egocentric speech. What is missing, then, in Piaget’s perspective, is reality and the child’s relationship to that reality. What is missing is the child’s practical activity. This is fundamental. Even the socialization of the child’s thinking is analyzed by Piaget outside the context of practice” (vol. 1, p. 87). 

Natalia. 



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andy Blunden" < ablunden@mira.net > 
To: lchcmike@gmail.com , "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" < xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > 
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 8:38:29 PM 
Subject: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims 


Mike, my reading of it is this: Vygotsky poses a question: "What is the relation between thought and word?" 
Then he provides an answer: "The relation between thinking and speaking is an action: namely, word meaning. 

The relation between thinking and speaking is an enquiry into the intellect, ie., symbolic activity. It seems to me that many CHAT writers have interpreted "meaning" not as something which inheres in a word, but an action , ie., a basic unit of activity, viz., using a word. In my own Hegelian interpretation of Vygotsky and Activity Theory I connect everything up on the idea that action = meaning = particular. 

I think this is something general. You don't start off with the mediating element. That has to be discovered. You start off with the problem which can be cast in the form: "What mediates between A and B?" Your answer may be C, i.e., "A->C->B." There are other possible solutions to the same question, e.g. "A->D->B." 

Does that make any sense? 

Andy 

mike cole wrote: 

Thank you, Martin, brilliant as you are doomed to be. 

I turned from your note, picked up Thinking and Speech, and read the 
preface. That in itself is worth a good deal of discussion. But, just this, 
to begin with. I think its relevant to the issue of Vygotsky's ideas about 
the relationship of mediation and activity. 

Look at what you get if you complete the following phrase as a "stem" that 
needs to be completed. Vygotsky writes. 

All our work is focused on a single basic problem, on the genetic analysis 
of thought and word......... 

American contextualist completion of the sentence..... Of course, we 
constantly have to keep in mind that the meaning of words depends upon the 
context. 

A Russian cultural-historical theorist completion of the sentence...... Of 
course, we constantly have to keep in mind that words are constituitive of 
human activity. 

In the 5 claims LSV makes for the accomplishments of the book in the 
preface, not a single one refers to context/activity. 

Yet later in the text (earlier in his life?), he makes explicit reference to 
the importance of practical activity. 

Who among us is it who has Barthes reminding us that failing to re-read is 
failing to learn from experience, or some such aposite thought. Sure 
benefited from that bit of re-reading! 


mike 

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Martin Packer < packer@duq.edu > wrote: 

On Feb 10, 2011, at 9:04 PM, David Kellogg wrote: 

more than mildly brilliant. Thank you, David. I generally shoot for bitterly brilliant, and usually hit 
mildly stupid. 

I don't disagree with much of what you say about Piaget. I suspect he knew 
of LSV's critique before the 1960s, and I suspect he didn't pay much 
attention. Anyone who received 80 honorary degrees in his lifetime didn't 
need to pay much attention to criticism. Did he develop? I think he was 
*always* a genetic epistemologist; I am not sure he ever saw himself as a 
psychologist, so in that sense no. He was interested, it seems to me, in how 
a biological organism (a baby) becomes a logical organism (a scientist), one 
who has certain and necessary knowledge. In that respect he was thoroughly 
Kantian, though he felt Kant had gone 'too far' (as he put it, if I recall) 
in assuming that the categories of the transcendental ego were innate. Even 
his interest in morality clearly had Kantian roots. He was more an empirical 
philosopher than a psychologist; not that that's a bad thing to be. The 
same might be said of LSV, but his philosophical starting point was very 
different. 

And I agree that, as you suggest, it is very important to recognize the 
importance LSV attributed to practical activity. It runs through the length 
of Thought & Language - from the preface where he says that it is the book's 
practical task that unifies its parts - and of course in Crisis he insisted 
that practical concerns would drive the new, general psychology. 

Martin__________________________________________ 
_____ 
xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca __________________________________________ 
_____ 
xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca 

-- 

Hegel Summer School: The New Atheism: Just Another Dogma? 

__________________________________________ 
_____ 
xmca mailing list 
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu 
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca 

__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca