[Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL
Huw Lloyd
huw.softdesigns@gmail.com
Fri Oct 17 20:16:40 PDT 2014
BTW, community is something I find lacking within AT's explicit
formulations. But that doesn't mean to say it doesn't align with
formulations of motive.
Best,
Huw
On 18 October 2014 03:58, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems to me to be about locating psychology within social conditions.
> Delineating how important social tensions manifest psychologically.
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
> On 18 October 2014 03:31, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>> Here's an excerpt from http://www.marxists.org/
>> archive/leontev/works/1947/historical-development-consciousness.pdf in
>> which social theory is taken up under the heading of the historical
>> development of consciousness. He could not loudly proclaim a new social
>> theory of course because the USSR already had a social theory, viz
>> "historical materialism." This is a chapter from "The Development of Mind"
>> which begins with amoeba and works it way up to Soviet Man.
>>
>> The same process that led to separation of the producers led on the
>> other hand to a separation as well of the conditions themselves,
>> which appeared as the property of capitalists in the form of
>> capital. The capitalist now also personifies these conditions,
>> which, as far as the worker is concerned, are opposed to him, the
>> worker. But the capitalist’s capital also has its own existence
>> separate from the capitalist, which takes possession of his own
>> life and subordinates it to itself.
>>
>> These objective conditions, engendered by the development of private
>> property, also determine the features of man’s consciousness in the
>> conditions of class society.
>>
>> The traditional psychologist, of course, refuses to consider them,
>> seeing in them only a relation of things. He demands that psychology
>> should, come what may, remain within the context of the
>> ‘psychological’, which he understands purely as subjective. He even
>> reduces psychological study of man’s industrial activity to
>> investigation of its ‘psychological components’, i.e. of those
>> psychic features for which engineering presents a demand. He is
>> unable to see that industrial activity itself is inseparable from
>> people’s social relations, which are engendered by it and determine
>> their consciousness.
>>
>> But let us return to our analysis of these relations.
>>
>> A consequence of the ‘alienation’ of human life that has occurred is
>> the emergent disparity between the objective result of man’s
>> activity on the one hand, and its motive on the other. In other
>> words, the objective content of the activity is becoming discrepant
>> with its subjective content, with what it is for man himself. That
>> also imparts special psychological features to his consciousness.
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>
>>
>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 18 October 2014 02:56, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>> He? ANL or LSV.
>>> LSV states his aim to create a General Psychology in "Historical
>>> Crisis"
>>> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri13.htm
>>>
>>> ANL, I think the aim of a creating general theory of human
>>> activity was always meant to be interdisciplinary. Although for
>>> very good reasons it has only ever been taken up by Psychologists,
>>> I think it is very obviously interdisciplinary.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, ANL. Did he state an attempt to provide a social theory. Seems
>>> not?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Huw
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>>
>>>
>>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 18 October 2014 02:20, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Which only means that Vygotsky did not attempt to create a
>>> Social
>>> Theory, only a Psychology.
>>> But in creating a General Psychology, he left us a
>>> paradigm for
>>> the human sciences. ANL attempted to carry that through to
>>> create
>>> a Psychology which was equally a Social Theory, but in my
>>> view he
>>> was largely unsuccessful. But to have created a Psychology
>>> rather
>>> than a Theory of Everything does not make one an Idealist,
>>> just a
>>> specialist.
>>>
>>>
>>> Does he state this aim somewhere? That might be interesting
>>> to look at.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Huw
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Andy
>>> ------------------------------
>>> ------------------------------------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>>
>>>
>>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 18 October 2014 01:48, Andy Blunden
>>> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>>>
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> No, LSV is quite right, Huw. You and I can go
>>> through the same
>>> sequence of events, but if, for example, the
>>> events really get
>>> under your skin, and perhaps due to past
>>> experiences, or
>>> to some
>>> sensitivity or another, it really shakes you up
>>> and causes
>>> you to
>>> dwell on the experience, work over it and reflect
>>> on it,
>>> then most
>>> likely you will make a personal development. If
>>> perhaps on
>>> other
>>> hand, maybe because of some prejudice I had, the same
>>> experience
>>> just went like water off a duck's back for me and
>>> I didn't
>>> care
>>> tuppence about the experience and just simply
>>> turned to next
>>> business, then I will not make a development.
>>>
>>>
>>> But does ANL refute this? He is simply asserting that
>>> experience is derivative to activity, not that meaningful
>>> things don't follow from experience.
>>> It is *only* the "subjective" side of
>>> experience and the
>>> *reflection* of "objective" relations/events that
>>> forms
>>> personal
>>> development. Only. And that is LSV's point.
>>>
>>>
>>> And it is ANL's point that these experiences arise in
>>> activity. Note that LSV doesn't provide a medium for
>>> their
>>> formation, he simply refers to them as forms.
>>> And can I just echo Martin and
>>> David's observation
>>> that
>>> consciousness before language was well-known and
>>> foundational to
>>> Vygotsky, and consequently consciousness other than
>>> language. And
>>> Julian and Mike's observation that "the ideal" lies
>>> ultimately in
>>> social practices, the doing-side of which give
>>> content and
>>> meaning
>>> to speech which speech would lack outside its
>>> being part
>>> of those
>>> activities. Vygotsky knew this, and this was why he
>>> introduced a
>>> range artifacts derived from the wider culture, as
>>> mediating
>>> elements, into social interaction.
>>>
>>> So ANL is going along with the still widely held
>>> prejudice
>>> that
>>> Vygotsky was *just* all about language. Not true.
>>>
>>>
>>> I would read these in terms of the opening paragraph
>>> ("propositions that have been connected to a unified
>>> system,
>>> but are far from equivalent") and then there is the
>>> politics
>>> of survival.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Huw
>>> Andy
>>> https://www.academia.edu/
>>> 7511935/The_Problem_of_the_Environment._A_Defence_of_Vygotsky
>>> ------------------------------
>>> ------------------------------------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>>
>>>
>>> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>>
>>> ....
>>>
>>> Hence ANL is right to impute (metaphysical)
>>> idealistic
>>> tendencies to this
>>> paper of LSV's. Because to base the
>>> development on
>>> subjective
>>> emotional
>>> experience is idealistic. ANL, conversely,
>>> refers to the
>>> relativity of
>>> experience upon activity. It does not help
>>> that LSV
>>> refers to
>>> his norms as
>>> ideals and that all of the examples he
>>> provides are
>>> about speech
>>> communication. It is ripe for
>>> misinterpretation as an
>>> idealistic paper.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Huw
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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