[Xmca-l] Re: LSV on language as a model of development

[mike cole]

That is how I interpreted Alfredo, Andy.
(signed)

an *in*-experienced oldtimer
mike


On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 6:45 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> I am familiar with Dewey's work on this, Alfredo, and I too have found it
> very useful. That was not my problem. But thinking about it, I suspect it
> was just an English expression problem.
> You said "experience is a unit of doing and undergoing". But I think you
> meant to say "experience is a unity of doing and undergoing," which is
> certainly true. Just as activity is a unity of consciousness and
> behaviour, or identity is a unity of recognition and self-consciousness,
> etc.
> But a *unit* is something different from *unity*. "Experience" in this
> sense is not a unit at all; "an experience" can be a unit, but not a unit
> of doing and undergoing.
>
> Is that right, Alfredo?
> Andy
>
> > Dewey, most extensively in chapter 3 of "Art as experience", makes a
> > distinction between the general stream of experience, and an experience,
> > which, according to him, is the experience that "is a whole and carries
> > with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency". After the
> > fact, an experience "has a unity that gives it its name, that meal, that
> > storm, that rupture of friendship", Dewey writes. He further says that,
> > within that unity, there is both an aspect of doing, of initiation, and
> > another of undergoing, "of suffering in its large sense". He further
> > articulates the relation between the doing and the undergoing in terms of
> > "anticipation" and "consummation" "Anticipation" he writes "is the
> > connecting link between the next doing and its outcome for sense. What is
> > done and what is undergone are thus reciprocally, cumulatively, and
> > continuously instrumental to each other"
> >
> > Although in most passages these notes have a rather individualistic
> taste,
> > he goes on to clarify that there is a prominent public character in
> > experience: "without external embodiment, an experience remains
> > incomplete" he says. In the same chapter, he also argues that "it is not
> > possible to divide in a vital experience the practical, emotional, and
> > intellectual from one another." Both these conditions may make it
> possible
> > to draw connections between Dewey's notion of experience and Vygotsky's
> > perezivanie.
> >
> > In any case, I find interesting the dialectic Dewey proposes between
> doing
> > and undergoing as aspects of a minimal unit of sense-full experience
> > because it allows for thinking of being immersed in a developmental
> > situation in which the final form already exists before the intellect
> > grasps it, so that we do not need to put individual knowledge
> > constructions as who puts the cart before the horse.
> >
> > But this is my reading, which may have obviated other aspects that would
> > preclude this reading?
> > Hope this was of help.
> > Best,
> >
> > Alfredo
> > ________________________________________
> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on
> > behalf of Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> > Sent: 03 July 2014 17:17
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: LSV on language as a model of development
> >
> > Alfredo, what did you mean by:
> >> ... as he argued, experience is a unit of doing and undergoing,
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>