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RE: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?



Mike, 
Empirical falsification requires a theoretical system that is sufficiently fixed and determinate so as to enable indubitable logical deduction. Whether the correct word for such a system is "closed" or "bounded" I don't know. Feel free to substitute "bounded, if that works better for you; but the question stands. 
David


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 11:39 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?

David-- It had never occurred to me that sciences are by definition closed.
Bounded perhaps? With leaky borders and a commitment to falsification?

mike

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:08 AM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu> wrote:

> So, Nektarios, CHAT is just chat!
> More seriously, thinking of CHAT as a methodology--a set of 
> practices--accommodates what seems to be its irrevocably "open,"
> non-absolute in character.
> But what does this do to the aspirations of sociocultural psychology 
> to be taken seriously as a "science?" Aren't sciences, by definition, 
> closed systems of thought?
> --Has sociocultural psychology renounced those ambitions?
> --Are theorists divided on the question of whether sociocultural 
> theory strives for closure?
> --Are theorists ambivalent about this issue, unsure about how to frame 
> these aspirations?
> --Or, perhaps, in a poststructural frame, are the aspirations of 
> sociocultural theory indexed to particular discourses, in some of 
> which sociocultural theory is clearly scientific, and others clearly not?
> --None of the above?
> David
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] 
> On Behalf Of Nektarios Alexi
> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 9:25 AM
> To: ablunden@mira.net
> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: RE: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
>
>
> What an interesting genealogy!!
>
> So the father of CHAT was Aristotle?:) Is ike the Abraham of Bible?:)
>
> But i think in terms of dialectical materialism CHAT it is all them 
> interrelating to each other,and one theorists complementing each other 
> and very often the fruit of it is a qualitavely different theory than 
> the other but neverthless the fruit of the previous theories.. So it 
> means that CHAT it is not a close system, it is not an absolute 
> theory, it is more like a method that because of its not teleological 
> morphology it always create the appropriate space to integrate 
> anything relevant that helps us to understand us (humans) in relation to society and culture and vice versa?
>
>
>
> Nektarios
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
> Sent: Thu 11/8/2012 12:36 AM
> To: Nektarios Alexi
> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
>
> Others can probably enlighten us more than I can, Nektarios, but I 
> think he was a very erudite person. Clearly from a young age he was 
> hungry for knowledge and read widely in many languages. But 
> specifically, he was coming of age in Russia right in the midst of the 
> Russian Revolution. This revolution threw literally millions of people 
> into all kinds of "social criticism" (Luria describes the tumultuous 
> scene in his University at the time, in his Autobiography). New 
> movements in Art, literature, Linguistics, natural science, social 
> theory, philosophy, technology, social organisation,... sprung up 
> spontaneously on all sides. Vygotsky was a part of that. That is the 
> main thing. But for geopolitical reasons it was a short-lived "Spring."
>
> In particular, I think, Vygotsky came from Art Criticism (in a milieu 
> where drama theory, linguistics and aesthetic theory were making world 
> historic advances in Vygotsky's immediate social circle. Then his 
> intellectual disposition (as exhibited in his Psychology of Art) took 
> him into education and scientific psychology. At that time, prior to 
> and independently of the Revolution, Russia was already  in the 
> forefront of Behaviourist research in Psychology. Vygotsky was in an 
> ideal position to bring the social criticism he learnt as a student 
> into the scientific establishment around Pavlov, Bekhterev, etc. Add 
> to that his close study of Marx's Capital, Lenin's philosophical 
> works, and Engels' popularisation, is the broth which produced Vygotsky.
>
> See http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/chat/Genealogy-CHAT.htm
>
> Andy
>
> Nektarios Alexi wrote:
>
>
>         Hi Andy,
>
>         My question is how Vygotsky could tackle such subtle problems 
> in the theories of Piaget but also others in his book Thought and Language?
> What kind of intellectual or theoretical backgorund did Vygotsky had 
> that allowed him to see the human nature in such a depth and not just 
> that but also find the precise language to describe it, but not just 
> describe it but describe it in scientific terms and also with 
> evidence? Can we say that it was his comprehensive knowledge on arts 
> and especially of classic literature that helped him to see that deep 
> and notice such subtle details and errors in so many other important psychological theories of his time?
> Just saying..
>
>         Nektarios
>
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Larry Purss
>         Sent: Thu 11/8/2012 12:02 AM
>         To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>         Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
>
>         Andy
>         I just finished reading your article in the newsletter.
>         It is a clear statement of ways to expand the conversation.
>         I have recently re-read the 1st chapter of Raymond Williams 
> book *Marxism
>         and Literature* on the concept of *culture*. It is a wonderful 
> history on
>         the shifting flowing transforming meanings  of various uses of 
> the concept
>         *culture*
>
>         I noticed at the beginning of the article you are affiliated 
> with a group
>         with the title *continental philosophy*
>         I often wonder if this umbrella term could be more explicitly 
> brought into
>         the conversation to illuminate the multiple streams of 
> sociocultural theory
>         and how CHAT is situated within this umbrella term.
>         It would possibly assist in engaging deeply with philosophy as 
> you advocate.
>
>         I would like to bring in a distinction that Charles Taylor 
> uses between
>         what he refers to as *strict* dialectics and *interpretive* 
> dialectics.
>
>         Strict dialectics assumes each side of the dialectic [for example
>         individual and social] are interactive but the essence of the 
> objects
>         interacting is determined. Interpretive dialectics in contrast 
> puts in play
>         the interpretive nature of the objects which are then joined 
> in interaction.
>
>         I am attaching the first two chapters of Raymond Williams book 
> *Marxism and
>         Literature* which I believe is an example of *interpretive* 
> dialectics as
>         described by Charles Taylor.
>
>         The contrast between the notions *strict* and *interpretive* 
> may be helpful
>         in illuminating different notions of *interaction* and 
> *activity* within
>         mediated worlds.
>
>         Andy, I hope others read the ISCAR newletter and join with us 
> in a friendly
>         CHAT.
>         Larry
>
>
>
>
>
>         On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Andy Blunden 
> <ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>  wrote:
>
>         > Strangely enough, Ron, my first contacts with Vygotskyan 
> theory was with
>         > academic colleagues at the University of Melbourne, with 
> whom I was
>         > interacting in the project of creating collaborative 
> learning spaces. I
>         > knew about social constructionism, which I took to be Berger and
>         > post-modern critical theory (having only the vaguest 
> knowledge of these
>         > things) but then from my colleagues, who were van der Veer 
> and Valsiner
>         > types, I was surprised to find out that Vygotsky (whose name 
> I knew from
>         > Ilyenkov) was also a constructivist (I have never properly 
> separated the
>         > way those two words are used). So I then got a book out of 
> the library on
>         > constructivist epistemology which said that there were 
> dozens of varieties
>         > of constructivism, but that Vygotsky was a constructivist 
> who took the
>         > collaboration of carer-child dyads as the basis for the 
> social construction
>         > of knowledge, rather than the wider culture .... took me 
> quite a while to
>         > find my bearings in all that mess.
>         >
>         > I just think that we always have to allow a lot of latitude in
>         > understanding what people actually mean when they use a word 
> in a given
>         > context. A word meaning is not a concept.
>         >
>         > Andy
>         >
>         >
>         > Ron Lubensky wrote:
>         >
>         >> Hi Andy,
>         >>
>         >> I too thought the ISCAR newsletter interview article was 
> very good. I
>         >> especially liked your comparison of CHAT to interactionist 
> approaches,
>         >> which you and I have discussed before. One area that 
> continues to be messy,
>         >> as you suggest, is the relationship of CHAT to social 
> constructIVism and
>         >> social constructIONism.
>         >>
>         >> Since CHAT's first home is developmental psychology, it is 
> out of the
>         >> work of Piaget and Papert that these terms are usually 
> defined, and so
>         >> closely that they are often conflated. While these theories 
> acknowledge the
>         >> social and perhaps cultural influences on learning and 
> interpretation, they
>         >> centre on a cognitivist, mental model view of knowledge. 
> There is also the
>         >> normative aspect of giving control to the learner to 
> construct his or her
>         >> individual world-view.
>         >>
>         >> The other social constructIONism comes out of communications and
>         >> sociology (e.g. Berger and Luckmann, The Social 
> Construction of Reality,
>         >> 1966), that challenges the inevitability of categorisations 
> that are taken
>         >> for granted in common discourse, and which form the bases 
> for many
>         >> institutions. This post-modern constructIONism generally 
> places knowledge
>         >> in discourse and interaction, but in more recent 
> scholarship focuses on the
>         >> cultural situation of the individual. This isn't a learning 
> theory but
>         >> rather a critical, meta-theoretical stance. To complicate 
> matters, there
>         >> are different strands with various accounts of what should 
> be treated as
>         >> real, true, essential, scientific, etc. and how 
> communication should relate
>         >> to action. It also challenges academic research standards 
> with advocacy for
>         >> interventionist approaches to practice. For an 
> interdisciplinary expansion
>         >> of CHAT, I think this constructIONism offers a rich field 
> for comparison.
>         >>
>         >> --
>         >> Ron Lubensky
>         >> http://www.deliberations.com.**au/ < 
> http://www.deliberations.com.au/>
>         >> 0411 412 626
>         >> Melbourne Australia
>         >>
>         >
>         > --
>         > ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>         > ------------
>         > *Andy Blunden*
>         > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ < 
> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>         > Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
>         > http://ucsd.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<
> http://ucsd.academia.edu/AndyBlunden>
>         >
>         > ______________________________**____________
>         > _____
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>         >
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> ________________________________
>
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> http://ucsd.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
>
>
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