[Xmca-l] Re: In Defense of Fuzzy Things

[Andy Blunden]

Thanks for those comments, Huw. Much appreciated. In connection with one 
remark you made below, can I draw attention to one thing though, 
something that I think is often overlooked?

When you read through chapter 5 of T&S, the one on formation of concepts 
in childhood, i.e., "spontaneous concepts," what he describes is only a 
series of about 10 different forms of activity, not different mental 
formations or capacity. I have observed that it is possible to make 
sense of this strange series of forms of activity by means of 
hypethisising (or reifying) various "mental capacities" - the ability to 
isolate objects from a background, the ability to abstract one feature 
from a concrete object, the ability to synthesise objects into groups in 
some way and add new members, the ability to represent functional sets 
of objects, the ability to use adult words as a guide to isolating 
objects and situations, the ability to forms habits on situations, and 
the ability to act according to a finite set of rules. But Vygotsky 
*does not do that*! He just identifies the various forms of activity 
which we can see are made possible  if we reify these capacities as 
mental formations of some kind and their various combinations.

I find it easier to remember and understand it that way. That's how our 
minds work. We are born realists and when we reify something we feel we 
understand our actions around it. But Vygotsky holds back from that, and 
actually *restricts himself to the description of forms of activity*, 
and then calls this "concept formation". Generally, I think people read 
this chapter as describing a series of about 10 distinct mental 
capacities or formations, which it certainly isn't.

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


Huw Lloyd wrote:
> ...
> "Nevertheless, when we read Chapter One of Thinking and Speech, we see 
> that
> semantic structure, not activity structure, is precisely what Vygotsky has
> in mind: there is indeed a clear link between feeling and thinking (else
> children would never learn to think verbally), but there is also a
> dialectical leap (else children would already know how)"
>