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

[Andy Blunden]

Thank you for introducing this passage, David. What is Vygotsky's 
interest here, do you think? If I were to say "Vygotsky is interested in 
investigating the relation between doing and undergoing" I don't think 
we'd be any the clearer, even though it it formally true and accords 
with the title of the article. I suggest that Vygotsky's interest is 
continuing his work on child development (where he used the concept of 
Social Situation of Development) to find a foundation for a theory of 
*personal development* which would be adequate beyond childhood. This 
would mean that if we ask "What is an experience or a perezhivanie a 
unit of?" we would answer "personality" or what is the same thing 
"personal development" - since to understand the product of a process of 
development (a personality) is to understand the process itself.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


David Kellogg wrote:
> I don't see anything wrong with the idea that "felt experience" or
> "thought-over experience" or "contemplated experience" (i.e. perezhivanie,
> which develops in time) is always and everywhere a unit of doing and
> undergoing, just as Alfredo says. In fact, it seems to me to be exactly
> what Vygotsky says. Here is the nineteenth paragraph of Vygotsky's lecture
> "The Problem of the Environment".
>
> Я хотел сегодня на конкретном примере учения о среде показать вам несколько
> таких единиц, которыми оперирует психологическое исследование. Примером
> таких единиц может служить переживание. Переживание есть единица, в которой
> в неразложимом виде представлена с одной стороны среда, то, что переживается,
> - переживание всегда относится к чему-то, находящемуся вне человека, - с
> другой стороны представлено то, как я переживаю это, т.е. все особенности
> личности и все особенности среды представлены в переживании, то, что
> отобрано из среды, все те моменты, которые имеют отношение к данной
> личности и отобраны из личности, все те черты ее характера,
> конституциональные черты, которые имеют отношение к данному событию. Таким
> образом, в переживании мы всегда имеем дело с неразложимым единством
> особенностей личности и особенностей ситуации, которая представлена в
> переживании. Поэтому выгодным оказывается в методическом отношении вести
> анализ, когда мы изучаем роль среды в развитии ребенка, вести анализ с
> точки зрения переживаний ребенка, потому что в переживании ребенка, как я
> уже говорил, учитываются все личные особенности ребенка, которые
> участвовали в определении его отношения к данной ситуации. Например, все ли
> мои личные конституциональные особенности всякого рода участвуют целиком и
> на равных началах? Конечно, нет. В одной ситуации одни мои
> конституциональные особенности играют первую роль, в другой –другие играют
> первую роль, а в первом случае они могут и не проявляться вовсе. Нам важно
> знать не вообще сами по себе конституциональные особенности ребенка, а нам
> важно знать, какие из этих конституциональных особенностей сыграли решающую
> роль при определении отношения ребенка к данной ситуации, в другой ситуации
> уже другие конституциональные особенности сыграли роль.
>
>
> What this says (I think) is this:
>
>
> "I wish today as a concrete example of the teaching on the environment to
> show you a few of these units (единиц) with which psychological research
> operates. An example of such a unit which might serve is lived experience (
> переживание ). Lived experience is a unit whose form presents in an
> non-decomposable way, on the one side, the environment that is
> live-experienced—lived experience always refers to something that is
> external to the person—and on the other side represents the way that I
> live-experience it, i.e. all the features of the personality and all the
> features of the environment presented in the lived experience, what was
> selected from the environment, all the moments which are related to a given
> personality and selected in the personality, all of the features of its
> (i.e. the personality’s—DK) character, all its constituent features related
> to this event. Thus, in lived experience we are always dealing with the
> irreducible unity of features of personality and features of the situation,
> which is presented in lived experience. For this reason it is
> methodologically advantageous to carry out our analysis, when we study the
> role of the environment in the development of the child, from the point of
> view of the lived experience of the child, because the lived experience of
> the child, as I have already said, takes in all of the personality
> characteristics of the child which participate in the definition of his
> relationship to a given situation. Do, for example, all of the constituent
> features of my personality of every type participate fully and on an equal
> footing? Of course not. In one situation, one of my constituent features
> plays the first role, and in another, another plays the first role where in
> the first case it may not appear at all. To us it is not important to know
> the constituent features of the child in themselves, but to us it is
> important to know which of these constituent features plays the decisive
> role in determining the child’s relationship to a given situation where in
> other situations other constituent features have played a role."
>
>
> Of course, it's very hard (and not always necessary) to summarize all that
> in a single pithy expression. But it seems to me that when Andy uses the
> expression "radius of subjectivity" and Alfredo uses the expression "a unit
> of doing and undergoing" they are saying essentially the same thing.
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
> On 4 July 2014 11:22, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>
>>>