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

[greg.a.thompson@gmail.com]

Martin, I wonder whether you think the notions of "inside" and "outside run into similar trouble of mental/material dualism?
I was thinking in particular of the notion of the "inside" of a system (this was how Jay Lemke once described the notion of "stance" as the insides if the system). 
I can see trouble if we think of "Inside" solely in terms of "inside my head" as you mention. But I wonder if there isn't some possibility of working with this way of speaking that doesn't necessarily call in a mental/physical dualism? (I mean, "inside" and "outside are both ways of describing physical spaces, so it seems like as long as they aren't applied to a pre existing dualist if concept, then this shouldn't be a problem.)
And though I'm not fond of the brain-as-computer metaphor, it might be instructive as a way to think about this inside/outside distinction as the difference between watching the processor at work (outside) and watching the screens as a program runs (inside). 
In principle the one can be reduced to the other, but in practice it can't anymore (I assume this is true with today's computers). 
The degree of complexity can make it seem like the program running is an autonomous explanatory level of its own, but that doesn't mean that it is. Just that it is the "inside" of the system.
What do you think?
-Greg
Ps, apologies for not making more direct ties to lsv vs anl discussion. If this is too much of a sidetrack, I'm happy to take this up offline. But Martin, I find your position to be a very provocative one and would like to hear more about how it makes sense for you. It is a way of thinking that is very difficult to wrap one's Western language/mind/brain around!


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> On Oct 18, 2014, at 3:38 PM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> LSV points out that no proper science sets out to study appearances. Every science studies entities that exist, in order to *explain*  appearance. One of his examples is from the science of optics. When we place a burning candle in front of a mirror there *appears* to be a second candle burning behind the mirror, or 'in' the mirror. The scientist doesn't study that second candle. What he or she studies is the first candle, and the mirror, in order to discover principles by which to explain why an 'image' of a second candle appears, apparently located 'in' the mirror.
> 
> It's the same with the mind. It *appears* to us (at least to those of us raised in western, scientific cultures) that our thoughts and feelings exist in a special, internal, subjective, hidden place that we call "the mind."  A scientific psychology, says LSV, needs to try to explain how that appearance is possible. It's not too difficult, in fact: our verbal thoughts, our private subvocal speech, is possible, first, because we can use vocal speech to direct our own actions and second, because a fibre bundle called the arcuate fasciculus forms between Broca's area and Wernicke's area (to considerably simply the neuroanatomy and neurofunctioning).  The appearance of a "mind in the head" is a *folk* psychology: it is simply one way, among several, in which people try to make sense of an experience that they have; it is the way our own psychological processes *appear* to us. Scientific psychology cannot study the mind, any more than it can study the second candle. It can, however, set out to *explain* the mind, and that is part of what LSV did. 
> 
> Martin
> 
>> On Oct 18, 2014, at 8:11 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I sort of feel like (at this point) Vygotsky did open himself up for being critiqued for going inside the head.  It was a choice, I don't think he was willing to give up the idea of individual development (which I think you have to do if you are going to escape dualism - because what develops if you can't say there is something inside the head that develops (remember I am suggesting individual development here).  
> 
>