RE: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?

[David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>]

Thanks very much, Andy.
I've much enjoyed this thread, and am grateful for the link to your discussion of Kuhn. I will send a copy of my paper for posting on XMCA. 
If anyone is interested and planning on attending AERA, I'm organizing a symposium titled "The Multiplicity of Learning Theory: Problems and Perspectives," that will undoubtedly pick up many of the themes running through this discussion. 
David


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 7:43 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?

David, send a copy of your genres paper to the list. I have a copy, but it is not my business to post your papers. Everyone would enjoy reading it, after this foretaste of your ideas. You might be interested in an excerpt from my book touching on Kuhn which is here: 
http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/concepts-language.htm

David, I am not at all "in two minds" over this question. I think Kuhn's main error was that he mistakenly took the development of a science through peer review as insulating the science from the world outside. 
But nonetheless, his idea of the internal development of a science is valid and interesting. But "every philosopher is the thought of their age" and the same goes for those scientists, those philosophers in the business of reifying their concepts as existent objects.The same is true for individual human beings, whose self-identity is but a concept of themselves, and is realised only in practical dialogue with a million other souls. And I do think that sciences, psychologies in particular, are dead when they follow Kuhn's precepts and spend their time dotting i's and crossing t's and ignoring the rising tides and gathering winds, important as it is to have all the i's dotted.

So, psychologyu has been "pre-paradigmatic" for about 2,200 yers (taking Aristotle as my starting point). OK. Perhaps this points to a problem in the concept of "paradigm" rather than a problem in the sciences who have not attained one? Have you ever read Marx talking about "the universal class." Your observations about sciences which hope to totalise all the other sciences are an echo of Marx here.

I think the point is that we have to see science as part of the world, in every sense. Thesis 11 applies:

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm#018

Andy

David H Kirshner wrote:
> ... Within your theoretical effort, you seem to be of two minds about science in relation to other activity systems. On the one hand, you acknowledge that CHAT is unlike science: "Activity Theory is inherently interdisciplinary, but science as a whole, in this world, is not." On the other hand, you want to homogenize science into a broader frame that includes CHAT: "the world is made up of an array of distinct activities (projects) but all these projects interact with one another, both cooperatively and in conflict." It seems to me the effort to decompose and recompose CHAT as separate sciences, but in intercourse with one another, only is accomplished by ignoring the bounded character of scientific discourse (though perhaps you can mount a more compelling case). I disagree that "being a self-enclosed, independent, self-consistent theory it is /dead /as a science, and science is only alive to the extent that it struggles at its boundaries." The dynamic struggle at the boundaries is characteristic of scientific revolution, not the everyday business of normal science. In characteristic sociological mode, I wonder if the motive for maintaining a connection between CHAT and science isn't tied to the very real and material advantage to be gained by having CHAT remain part of the scientific enterprise.
>
> Finally, turning to your third paragraph, I don't see the unlikelihood of psychology ever actually achieving paradigmatic consensus as relevant to its preparadigmatic status. The important question is how do the branches of psychology interact with one another? If, as I've suggested, the relationship is characterized by encroachment and competition, then we have a preparadigmatic science. Now, I do think the weak prospects for achieving paradigmatic status are relevant to education's relationship to psychology. Psychologists within the dominant paradigm are always talking about how we're just on the verge of putting into place the comprehensive picture of learning that educators need to do their work effectively. The behaviorists did it, the cognitivists are doing it now, and I have little doubt that if sociocultural psychology were to emerge as the dominant paradigm in psychology, we'd be doing it too. This is NOT dishonesty; psychologists in the dominant branch generally really do believe they are about to unify all of psychology under their own tent. They almost need to believe it, because promulgating one's paradigm as comprehensive is a necessary competitive strategy within a competitive process that is inherently sociological, involving as it does incommensurable framings of the field. So, if I really believed the hype, I'd be waiting, along with the rest of education, for Nirvana, instead of pushing for a genres approach that takes the fragmented state of learning theory as its starting point.
>
> David
>
> -



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