Re: [xmca] If all hopes are lost for establishing a more workable social system , then please tell me where A.N.Leontyev has gone wrong with his definition of "Personal Meaning"

From: Mike Cole <lchcmike who-is-at gmail.com>
Date: Sat Mar 01 2008 - 11:37:51 PST

Heidi
So here is another multi-faceted contribution I have negelected.
1. Paul F. Ballantyne? What is the url? Going back to reach Charles Tolman
is always a good idea. Thanks.
 1. My question about personal sense is my effort to understand how the use
of this term relates to the sense/meaning distinction in Vygotsky. I do not
recall sense being contrasted
with Objective Meaning. I am not sure what that term means either, I guess.

2. The question about primitive adults thinking like children from
Industrialized countries was intended to be ambiguous. Sorry. Paul picked up
on part of what I was referring to. If there
is cultural evolution, or progress in history, how does one adopt a cultural
historical, activity perspective that declares thinking to be functional
systems that include the accumulated
artifacts of the community without concluding that thinking in, say, a small
agricultural village high in the Andes just to pick up on Paul's current
environment, is less complex because
the range of activities seems limited, the mediational means limited,
etc.? I believe there are ways to deal with the issue and have tried to in
my work ( a very abreviated form of this is
at The Illusion of Culture-free Intelligence
Testing<http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Cole/iq.html>
on the lchc web page). Carol provides another way to think about it.

This is a point where my Russian colleagues believe me to be pretty nearly
totally demented, so it may not be worth pursuing.

All of your number 2: Did I write that Leontiev imprisoned himself in
education, studies of perception, etc? On the other side of the ledger, I am
unaware of any psychological research he conducted outside of these domains.
I could not figure out just what to do with the rest of your points in #2.

Like you, I am pushed to go back and read more!
mike

On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 2:00 AM, varnam soupend <heidizulfai@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Dear Mike
> 1. At the moment it's not possible for me to go to Paul Ballantyne's
> website and to Tolmin's rendering of A.N.Leontyev's Activity Theory
> Terminology ; however , I suppose within the bounds of this terminology
> "sense" is the same as the "personal meaning" in opposition to the
> "objective meaning" . Any corrections ?
> 2. Don't you think your second question is somewaht ambiguous ? It has
> many sides to it :
> 2.1. Where should I read Leontyev having imprisoned himself within the
> bounds of "education" , "pedology" , even psychology proper , etc. ? How
> many times did Anna Stetsenko stress that these scholars and revolutionaries
> hoped and tried for a better social system and life , which in their view
> was nothing but "socialism" ?
> 2.2. I had to review my collection of different paragrapshs but saw
> nothing which entails the content being allocated to , and exclusive of
> pedology (children) . kids , adolescents , etc. .
> 2.3. Marx quite intelligently knew it was boys and girls (children) who
> went to schools and that part of this folk would then become the
> intelligentsia of the society , mental workers , farmers , managers , etc. ;
> however , nothing prevented him from dealing with the "labour" issue
> (Engels' point referring to what labour did to man) , erecting his
> monumental work "Capital" upon this "basic category" which is included
> within the bounds of "political economy" and the "philosophy" which supports
> and advocates it .
> 2.4. Yes , children go to their desks and sit in their seats waiting for
> the good teacher to come and work with them within the limits of their
> differentiated ZPDs getting scaffolding from the more capable peers , the
> teacher , the newly-invented devices , the 5th dimension , etc.etc. , yes
> , but all these endeavourings aside , generally and on a final count , these
> same children have the objective world outside them and the social relations
> arising from it infiltrating in and even imposing upon them the "ideal"
> plane of that same "objective world" and the relations therefrom , in our
> case , the "shadow" or the "ghost" of "capitalistic relations" (stereotypes
> in the passage and the due resistence) which they should deal with but not
> so smoothly because they possess something called "personal meanings" which
> are not yet "intrinsic" , either being alianated by them and going through
> pathological disorders of various degrees or being able to endure (here
> personality comes
> in) and predominate .
> It's not important which boy becomes an intellectual or which girl
> becomes a worker . Marxist political economy puts the weight on the workers'
> shoulders because of the factors you're quite familiar and clear with .
> 2.5. While seeing your questions , I had to read the whole article again
> , many quotes are provided , yet better to get finished up with it now .
> Best Wishes
> Heidi
> heidizulfai@yahoo.com
>
>
>
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Received on Sat Mar 1 11:39 PST 2008

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