Steve wrote:
And the zinger:
"To be a materialist in physiology is not difficult - try to be it in
psychology and if you cannot, you will remain an idealist."
And I am sure this will appear in papers everywhere, since he sources it so
well.
But here is an ignorant question:
Is the material/idealist opposition the only possible one?
I teach both Vygotsky and Piaget to my Honours students, and know that
Piaget has been seen to be a closet Kantian. My philosophy colleagues tell
me that there are problems with Radical Constructivism, which i teach as
underlying Piaget (and they are still to tell me more); but I have problems
simply attributing a social constructivist label to Vygotsky. Is there
anybody else out there who teachs both areas, and with whom I can converse?
Carol
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Gabosch [mailto:bebop101@comcast.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2004 11:12 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: bodies, matter, action, and meaning
Apropos to Jay's recent post on researching meaning-making and his remarks
on idealism, here is an apt quote from Vygotsky on the materialism/idealism
question I found the other night, in "Methods of Reflexological and
Psychological Investigation," the 1926 article based on his famous January
1924 talk to the All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology. This is from the
first chapter of Vol 3 of the Plenum Collected Works, pg 47-48.
Three setup sentences, and then the zinger:
"Academician Bekhterev in his "energetic" enthusiasm talks to the point of
panpsychism, stating that plants and animals are animated beings. Elsewhere
he cannot bring himself to repudiate the hypothesis about a soul. And in
such primitive ignorance with respect to the mind reflexology will remain as
long as it steers clear of the mind and isolates itself in the narrow circle
of *physiological materialism*."
And the zinger:
"To be a materialist in physiology is not difficult - try to be it in
psychology and if you cannot, you will remain an idealist."
Best,
- Steve
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