[Xmca-l] Re: Intellect and consciousness

[mike cole]

I have in fact been reading Alex's book, Larry.

I recommend strongly his chapters on Tool and Symbol and Language and
Thought.

Especially the former I found to be unusually well presented in ways that
helped me.

The future that Alex was pointing towards looks a good deal like what
became the concerns of the Comm department here at UCSD - a combination of
humanities, social sciences, and arts with mediation as its central
organizing concept.

If some group of xmca-ites would like to jointly read a chapter or two, I
would be glad to join in.

mike​

On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 7:33 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>