Judy,
you wrote,
>
> I would not agree that negotiation presupposes that differences can be
> equally valued, and if that is the meaning you give to the term, I'm happy
> to stick with "dialog" which doesn't connote equivalence of value in
> anyone's book, to my knowledge.
but doesn't this come down to a question of meaning? The idea that
"dialogue" doesn't connote equivalence in value is not valid. Since
dialogue presupposes that the individuals involved in the dialogue
understand that the other understands what they understood themselves to
have stated (to paraphrase Bateson's level III in Laing's adaptation). Thus
there is equivalence. What is the source of this equivalence? I'm not at
all sure that dialogue presupposes any "negotiation" of meaning at all. If
anything negotiation might come down to issues of positioning within a
pre-existing system of meanings. The process of transformation of systems
of meanings, at least as far as can be understood from the historical record
of the transformation of language, world views, scientific paradigms, etc.,
has nothing to do with this process of positioning.
So we are dealing with the the ground of the possibility of
intersubjectivity. In my opinion, if you start with a notion of independent
subjects and attempt to account for how these initially independent,
autonomous subjects can link together and produce a commonly shared space
of agreement (of equivalences that allow the above presupposition), you are
starting out from an inverted conceptualization. As I understand it, the
issue rather concerns how subjects themselves are brought into existence at
the same time as the system that allows mutual understanding.
> I would not claim to know the basis for a psychology that was not
> culturally specific. What would be your basis, Paul?
I rarely use the word "culture" in any way that allows its incorporation
into a phrase such as "culturally specific". To my mind this is an
attribution of differences to an illusory substance (akin to "ether" in
pre-Einsteinian physics which accounted for the otherwise inexplicable
ability of light to pass through a vacuum). If anything, the term "culture"
has value as a general, very abstract term denoting a wide range of
variations in language, customs, world views, etc. that cannot be given any
explanatory weight.
More to the point, in relation to Carl's position, is the question: What are
the adequate bases for a psychology that accounts for the general patterns
of meanings/subjectivities that exist in specific historically determinate
periods. To accomplish this you need an adequate social ontology for
characterizing historically determinate periods. In my opinion, the only
adequate social ontology begins with the relations of production and
reproduction of the society itself.
Paul H. Dillon
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