Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/

[Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>]

Hi Dear Chuck
1. I said Vygotsky not 'someone' ; hope I've not been lying !
2. The conditions of slaves and slave-owners's personal and social experiences were also 'material' ; their Gods were also material but the method they used to express their intentions was 'idealistic' ; no doubt at each era all along the path of 'idealism' , there was another path of 'materialism' . 
3. The same Vygotsky who innovated 'sign' for psychical activities as 'tool' had done for 'labour' , believes in distinguishing two lines of scientific research : materialistic vs. idealistic and is quite insistent on that . 
4. There is a 'hiararchy' between 'perceptions' , 'actions' , 'articulations' . 
5. I see no necessary relationship (maybe vygotsky doesn't either) between the 'above' and 'publicly circulated and internally reconfigured language . Any language could have many different things behind it . Let's further read Vygotsky's formation of concepts , etc.
6. What is that Vygotsky posits ?

The split of the dual analytical method
into a phenomenological and an inductive-analytical one leads us to the
ultimate points upon which the bifurcation of the two psychologies rests –
their epistemological premises. I attach great importance to this distinction,
see it as the crown and center of the whole analysis, and at the same time for me
it is now as obvious as a simple scale. Phenomenology (descriptive psychology)
proceeds from a radical distinction between physical nature and mental being.
In nature we distinguish phenomena in being. “In other words, in the mental
sphere there is no distinction between phenomenon [Erscheinung] and
being [Sein], and while nature is existence [Dasein] which
manifests itself in the phenomena,” this cannot be asserted about mental being
(Husserl, 1910). Here phenomenon
and being coincide. It is difficult to give a more precise formulation of
psychological idealism. And this is the epistemological formula of
psychological materialism: “The difference between thinking and being has not been destroyed in psychology.
Even concerning thinking one must distinguish the thinking of thinking and the
thinking as such” [Feuerbach]. The
whole debate is in these two formulas.

We must be able to state the
epistemological problem for
the mind as well and to
find the distinction between being and thinking, as materialism teaches us to
do in the theory of knowledge of the external world. The acceptance of a
radical difference between the mind and physical nature conceals the
identification of phenomenon and being,
mind and matter, within psychology,
the solution of the antinomy by removing one part – matter – in psychological
knowledge. This is Husserl’s idealism of the purest water. Feuerbach’s whole
materialism is expressed in the distinction of phenomenon and being within
psychology and in the acceptance of being as the real object of study.

When one mixes up the
epistemological problem with the ontological one by introducing into
psychology not the whole argumentation but its final results, this leads to the
distortion of both. In Russia the
subjective is identified with the mental and later it is proved that the mental
cannot be objective. Epistemological consciousness as part of the antinomy
“subject-object” is confused with empirical, psychological consciousness and
then it is asserted that consciousness cannot be material, that to assume this
would be Machism. And as a result one ends up with neoplatonism, in the sense
of infallible essences for which being and phenomenon coincide. They flee from
idealism only to plunge into it headlong. They dread the identification of
being with consciousness more than anything else and end up in psychology with
their perfectly Husserlian identification. We must not mix up the relation
between subject and object with the relation between mind and body, as Høffding
[1908] splendidly explains. The distinction between mind [Geist] and matter is a
distinction in the content of our knowledge. But the distinction between
subject and object manifests itself independently from the content of our
knowledge.


This is not the place to
give both problems a precise demarcation and basis in materialistic psychology,
but to indicate the possibility of two solutions, the boundary between idealism
and materialism, the existence of a materialistic formula. For distinction,
distinction to the very end, is psychology’s task today. After all, many “Marxists” are not
able to indicate the difference between theirs and an idealistic theory of
psychological knowledge, because it does not exist. Following Spinoza,
we have compared our science to a mortally ill patient who looks for an
unreliable medicine. Now we see that it is only the surgeon’s knife which can
save the situation. A bloody operation is immanent. Many textbooks we will have
to rend in twain, like the veil in the temple [58], many phrases will lose
their head or legs, other theories will be slit in the belly. We are only
interested in the border, the line of the rupture, the line which will be described
by the future knife.


Best 
Haydi


________________________________
 From: Charles Bazerman <bazerman@education.ucsb.edu>
To: Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>; "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> 
Cc: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>; "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> 
Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2012, 23:59:48
Subject: Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/
 

It seems to me that what is needed at this point in the discussion that someone come forth with a clear articulation of how the personal and social experiences that appear to be idealist are produced from a material basis, the material conditions of our experiences in the world and the way language and other symbols come to create a transformed set of mental processes in which we recognize "ideas."  This account must also contend with the prelinguistic thinking which Vygotsky posits as dominating in the early couple or three years, and then remains in a sublated form even as our perceptions, actions, and articulations become increasingly formed through publicly circulated and internally reconfigured language. This, of course is all in Vuygotsky, but until we actually discuss the mechanisms Vygotsky posits we will not be able to remove ourselves from the philosophical thickets.


Chuck


----- Original Message -----

From: Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>

Date: Sunday, December 16, 2012 12:04 pm

Subject: Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/

To: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>


> Ok ! Thanks a lot , Martin ! This is my puzzle . This is my confusion 

> . You are mostly absent from the discussions . Andy also believes 

> Vygotsky is a staunch marxist/materialist . My puzzle is Vygotsky 

> seems to have gotten mixed up . In his name everything is justified . 

> I remember your ' Is Vygotsky still relevant ? ' to which you and many 

> others answered , 'yes' . I so suppose Vygotsky tries to get the 

> 'good' of everything and credits the 'bad' things to liveliest , at 

> times , hot critiques . He deals , for instance , with Spinoza in such 

> manner . What I want to say is , here , on this forum , I might fancy 

> ! there's no dividing line between 'materialism' vs. 'idealism' , the 

> theme so pivotal to Vygotsky's understanding ; Not that 'idealists' , 

> if any but me , have no right to come up with their ideas but that if 

> the backbone of this forum recognizes someone as talking 

> idealistically which goes against what Vygotsky intends ,  they should 

> clarify the

>  points as Vygotsky himself so clearly and brilliantly does . And if 

> they are so progressive as to put Vygotsky behind their back , it's we 

> who should sit calm and listen . Does this forum support Vygotskyian 

> 'Materialism' ?

> Best

> Haydi        

> 

> 

> ________________________________

>  From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>

> To: Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>; "eXtended Mind, 

> Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> 

> Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2012, 20:25:52

> Subject: Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/

>  

> 

> Hi Haydi,

> 

> 

> I'm not entirely sure what aspect of this complex section of Crisis 

> you'd like to discuss, but on this matter...

> 

> On Dec 16, 2012, at 9:27 AM, Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com> 

> wrote:

> 

> 

> > Here we see lots of stuff dealing with and appraising 

> 'phenomenology' and 'idealistic approches' and epistemologies . Are we 

> really discussing a mixture of 'idea' and 'matter' as one nomad ? Are 

> they identical or just distinct ? while our beloved is a non-stop 

> believer in 'materialism' at the least account ? 

> 

> 

> My reading is that this is where LSV wants to cut psychology in two, 

> and discard the idealist part. All he takes from phenomenology (and at 

> the time this meant the phenomenology of Husserl, not of Heidegger or 

> of Merleau-Ponty, which are quite different) is aspects of its 

> methodology. He completely rejects its idealist ontology - that what 

> exists are 'eidetic structures' (mental essences, in effect). The new 

> psychology is to be completely materialist. However, LSV insists that 

> this doesn't mean it will ignore consciousness. On the contrary, it 

> will study consciousness as something material. 

> 

> 

> Martin

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