[Xmca-l] Re: Intellect and consciousness

[Larry Purss]

I want to thank everyone for their reflections on consciousness and
intellect.
Mike commented,
Well, myself I am following Larry's lead and reading Alex's book on
Vygotsky so that i can understand the context in which he brought this
topic up, and in the context of his general interpretation of core
Vygotskian concepts.

I re-read Alex last comment in the epilogue of his book *Vygotsky's
Psychology* which gives his understanding of why he wrote this book. Alex
reads Vygotsky's legacy as having moved through 3 stages.
In the 1920's and 1930's the focus was on SOCIAL mediation to help create
the *new man*.
In the 1960's Vygotsky was re-discovered in the West as a response to
Piaget's quasi-naturalistic theory of development.

In 1990, when the book was written Kozulin suggest a new plane opened. Here
is Kozulin's understanding of this third phase of Vygotsky's legacy. [page
278]

"The third plane of Vygotsky's theory, the contours of which are only just
emerging, presupposes both the re-evaluation of its origins and its
projection into the future of psychology. What in the 1920's appeared to be
a rather straight forward thesis of SOCIAL mediation, and in the 1960's as
a necessary correction to the overly individualistic approaches of Western
psychology, nowadays appears as a new problem emerging from the realization
that social and cultural mediatory mechanisms do not coincide. Vygotsky's
analysis of the crisis in psychology, earlier perceived as a critique of
psychology's past, is now recognized as an inquiry into the fundamental
mechanism of psychology's divergent development. The origins and context of
Vygotsky's theory are now being seen in a new light.; in the place of
comparisons to Pavlov, the Gestaltists and Piaget comes the context of
PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS AND THE THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION.  In an
even broader sense, what once looked like Vygotsky's contribution TO
psychology appears now as leading BEYOND psychology or at least beyond
traditional psychology and into the sphere of the human studies BASED on
the humanities, rather than the scientific model."

Mike, how others *respond* to Kozulin's vision that a new plane based on
the humanities is a re-visioning that goes too far BEYOND Vygotsky or if
they acknowledge this third plane as a valid emerging of a hermeneutical
response is an open question.
Thought Kozulin's epilogue may generate more reflections and responses on
his perspective of the relation of [intellect] and [consciousness]

Larry





On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> "A" paradigmatic exemplar will do, Mike.
> Vygotsky worked hard on the emotions, but my reading of his work on the
> emotions is that he did not bring his methodological work to a
> conclusive outcome, but I think nonetheless, writers of our time have
> been able to write Vygotskyan studies of the emotions, thanks to the
> fact that Vygotsky gave us an exemplar with study of the intellect. I
> take Vygotsky's work on the development of the personality through
> perezhivanija as *another* exermplar he left us.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
>> Well, myself I am following Larry's lead and reading Alex's book on
>> Vygotsky so that i can understand the context in which he brought this
>> topic up, and in the context of his general interpretation of core
>> Vygotskian concepts.
>>
>> I would prefer 2 or three potential paradigmatic exemplars of
>> consciousness before I decided that one was THE paradigmatic exemplar,
>> especially when that examplar is intellect. Also at the end of T&L is
>> Spinoza and emotion.
>>
>> mike
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 7:21 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     David, there is terminology, categorical distinctions, and the
>>     content of the science.
>>     Almost self-evidently, Thinking and Speech broke off at the
>>     threshold of the content of the science, and regretably, being a
>>     pioneer meant that his terminology was also unstable and
>>     rudimentary. My claim was that T&S was decisive in relaiton to the
>>     categorical distinctions underlying the science, despite the
>>     terminological mess.
>>
>>     I read Vygotsky as a Marxist, rather than as a linguist or a
>>     Phenomenologist or a teacher, all of which are I am sure
>>     legitimate standpoints for reading Vygotsky. But I think there is
>>     some basis for taking it that Vygotsky is using "consciousness" in
>>     line with Marxist terminology at the time indicating the entire
>>     class of phenomena encompassed by a general psychology, perhaps
>>     similar to what you mean by "general consciousness"?
>>     As to the distinction between "dialogical consciousness" and
>>     "intellect", if we are restricting "dialogic consciousnes"
>>     typologically to language use, then I think that that is too
>>     unstable and problematic for a categorical distinction. If on the
>>     other than we were to widen the meaning of "dialogical" to
>>     sign-use, then I would identify it with intellect. The spoken word
>>     is the *archetype* of sign-use, but not the only instance of sign-use.
>>
>>     I remain of the view that T&S, and in particular thes closing
>>     lines, specify that he has devoted the book to a study of the
>>     *intellect* (the special) as a paradigmatic exemplar for
>>     psychological research into human *consciousness* (as a whole).
>>
>>
>>
>>     Andy
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>>     *Andy Blunden*
>>     http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>
>