I think I did Elias a disservice by not situating his question, posted
yesterday, or perhaps translating it. He had trouble getting his message
accepted by the list, so I was impatient to send it.
We are now reading Chapter 2 of Thinking and Speech, but Eliasıs question
comes from Chapter 1. (All the discussion here of Chapter 7 and 6 has been
fascinating but at the same time frustrating, and some of the student here
are chomping at the bit [I donıt want to translate that!] to get to those
chapters. David, Iıd welcome your comments on Ch 2!)
Anyway, I think that the students are a bit puzzled by Vygotskyıs effort to
analyze *consciousness*. Not knowledge, not thinking, but consciousness. And
then, the claim that consciousness has units (cells)! Then, that these units
are words! And as if that were not enough, that it is the inner aspect of
these words that is important, namely word meaningı (significadoı in
Spanish). As Elias points out, word meaning seems very variable. (And heıs
surely right, since as Ivan pointed out in his message, word meaningı turns
out later in the book to be much closer to senseı (sentido) than to a
dictionary definition.)
All of this is, for sure, a very different kind of psychology. Anyone have
any suggestions for making it all seem a bit more likely?
Martin
[my translation of Eliasıs message:]
My first doubt is about the " Cell of the Meaning ", since
meaning is a variable since every person has a different meaning, as also
every culture, therefore every meaning has
other meanings, so, what is the true cell of the meaning,
of what does it consist and how it is possible to recognize it? that is to
say: what is the root of
meaning?
Another doubt that I have is: is the meaning equal to the simbología?
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