[Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL

Fri Oct 17 22:05:37 PDT 2014

Holli,

    "The basic 'components' of separate human activities are the actions
    that realize them. We regard action as the process that corresponds
    to the notion of the result which must be achieved, that is, the
    process which obeys a conscious goal. Just as the concept of motive
    is correlative with the concept of activity, so the concept of goal
    is correlative with that of action." (Leontyev, 1978)

An *Action* differs from "an activity" because is order to satisfy its 
motive, people act according to "partial" goals, which taken together 
realise the motive of the whole activity. But in general the motive of 
the activity is not guiding everything a person does along the way. It 
is in the background so to speak.

An action differs from an *operation* because even though an action is 
completed only thanks to a series of operations (lift left foot, move 
weight to right, move weight forward, straighten leg, ...), these 
operations are not done with conscious control but are determined by the 
conditions. An operation changes into an action and comes under 
conscious control if we trip for example, and an action changes into an 
operation when for example we learn to tie out shoelaces without 
thinking about every twist and turn of tying the knot.

Actions are inclusive of all the psychological processes entailed in 
their execution (like Mike rehearsing what he going to say on xmca while 
driving).

A *Defect-compensation* is the psychological development a person makes 
to compensate for the social deficit entailed in norms of interaction 
which are not adapted to the person's "disability." "Defect" does not 
refer to a person "having a defect"; the defect is in the relation 
between the person and their social environment.

Andy

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

Tonyan, Holli A wrote:
> Can you explain more about "action" versus "activity"?  These two terms get used a lot in nuanced ways and I get confused.  If there is a place where this is already delineated, could you please point me in that direction?
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> Also, I am not familiar with defect-compensation.
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> Sent from my iPad
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>> On Oct 17, 2014, at 9:35 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>> <html>
>> Martin, I think the issue is that we have certain concepts which are intrinsically both subjective and objective (action, activity, meaning, experience for example) but we also have other concepts which are intrinsically either objective or subjective (behaviour, weight, thinking, consciousness, mood for example). Of course, because subject and object are mutually constituted, any of these domain-specific concepts also entails relations to the other domain. Otherwise we have nonsense. If I say "The Stock Market crashed in 1929" I am not talking about a state of mind, though obviously states of mind were entailed in this event. Likewise "I'm in a bad mood today" is not a statement about events in my life, even though these may be the cause.
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>> What Vygotsky has done which allows him to develop a nondualistic psychology is that he took as his *most fundamental* concept "action". His other key concepts, his units of analysis for the various investigations, are also concepts which are intrinsically subjective/objective. E.g., word meaning, defect-compensation, perezhivanie. This is it: choose as your unit of analysis a concept which is a unity of objective and subjective.
>>
>> ANL would agree with his, but in his critique he is trying to muddy the water by claiming that Vygosky takes as his fundamental concept, "consciousness".
>>
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__home.pacific.net.au_-7Eandy_&d=AAICAw&c=Oo8bPJf7k7r_cPTz1JF7vEiFxvFRfQtp-j14fFwh71U&r=nc0IzcQ7AJuG1zNoaB3azX4jLwOThkgntuk4nvTAto4&m=gKMMa479BWWTMz0UJqBIkjS5I75PRZR54MHJbhn8NCY&s=lsnDPs27Ct58Y8MBNnCw3hdGxQkaKKMS-MEISlsP3JM&e= 
>>
>> Martin John Packer wrote:
>>     
>>> Who says that emotional experience is "subjective," Huw? LSV writes throughout The Problem of the Environment that perezhivanie is the child's relationship to social reality. In my book that makes it personal, not subjective. The word "subjective" doesn't occur once in the text. It is certainly a common assumption in today's dualistic psychology that experience is subjective, a mental state.That would indeed be idealist.  But since LSV is avoiding dualism...
>>>
>>> Martin
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