[Xmca-l] Re: Higher Mental Functions

[David Kellogg]

Andy:

Take a look at the end of Chapter Two, the Research Method Chapter,
pp. 60-62 in the English Collected Works. It's not that he objects to
the term "artifacts"; he doesn't use the term. It's that he objects to
the analogy between them being reduced to an identity, and on this
basis does not agree that "language is a tool of thinking" or that
language is an 'auxiliary device of memory". He also objects to
Dewey's phrase that language is a "tool of tools", and points out that
it is a bad paraphrase of Aristotle. He says that the relationship
between tools and signs is that they both belong to a logical
category, mediating activity, but their precise structural, functional
and genetic relationship has to be worked out.

David Kellogg
Hankuk Univeristy of Foreign Studies.

On 18 November 2014 19:32, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> For those of you who rely on marxists.org for their Vygotsky reading, I have
> scanned a couple more chapters from Volume 4 of the LSVCW today:
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1931/research-method.htm
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1931/analysis-higher-mental-functions.htm
>
> I was looking for material where Vygotsky discusses the relation between
> sign-mediation and tool-mediation (and other types of mediation!) and these
> chapters seemed to be necessary. I could not find the passage where he
> expresses some antipathy to calling both signs and tools "artefacts". I was
> sure I read this somewhere. Can anyone recall where that could have been?
>
> Andy
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>