[Xmca-l] Re: Resending LSV/ANL on crisis in ontogengy

[Huw Lloyd]

Andy, the obvious biological developments manifest as social needs.  They
strengthen the need for good social relations.  Impulses towards crawling,
walking, attachment all have their cognitive and communicational elements.
Even growing teeth, or simple digestion, has the baby trying to get the
adult to do particular things.

There are lots of changes, yes, though as they are all closely related a
clear change in cognition also shows up in terms of affect, use of memory
etc.

The casting of profound cognitive changes as only applicable in
circumstances where biological change is happening isn't right, I think.
Talking of a clear directed development with adults, however, is clearly
more problematic from the point of view of labelling people as being more
or less developed (from some sort of imputed ideal).  As LSV says, there
are old adults who have never come to grips with conceptual appreciations,
and that is a big difference.

Huw


On 21 March 2015 at 03:28, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Huw, what I think is distinctive about SSD for child development, as
> opposed to adult personality development, is that there is still a
> significant biological process of maturation and growth going on which
> constantly challenges social arrangements. This is not the case for adults.
> An adult can get a job when they leave school and stay in that job for
> life, except that the *social* arrangements keep challenging the individual.
>
> Also, I don't think all this is best conceived in terms of *cognition* -
> there are a lot of other psychological processes involved.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>> As a unit, 'SSD'  should be referring to conditions which are necessary
>> to go through for the subsequent 'unfolding'.  But SSD as a referent to all
>> important (and less important) stages can easily become overly abstract.
>>
>> For the fundamental developmental situations, we are looking for
>> conditions under which the nature of cognition changes, so milder
>> situations like career progression are not in the same category.
>>
>> The way I think of this is that the child's old form of social support is
>> no longer suitable. Not only is the support deemed to be too restrictive,
>> but the semantic interpretation that the child places upon the old form of
>> support is experienced as being 'wrong'.  When the two year old says "no",
>> I suspect that s/he may sometimes be saying "no, you've got it wrong".  The
>> child certainly seems to communicate similarly complex expressions such as
>> pushing an object out of sight, pulling it back and then smiling at an
>> adult as if to say, "Isn't that amazing, it was still there!" or, perhaps
>> "Look, I made it reappear!"
>>
>> An adult version of that semantic difficulty is perhaps evident in the
>> shift of meanings between formal and genetic/dialectical materialist
>> logic.  The terms abstract, generalisation, ideal, material, universal,
>> concrete, unit all have different meanings along with many other
>> differences, hence the old way of knowing may interfere with the natural
>> progression.
>>
>> Huw
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 21 March 2015 at 00:47, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     I think Huw put the alternative interpretation of Leontyev's words
>>     very well. There *is* a difference there, but it is not as
>>     profound as at first sight.
>>     I don't agree with the cast David has put on my view though. It is
>>     precisely in understanding the crises as being transitions between
>>     SSDs which is where SSD is invaluable as the unit.
>>     In general of course it is true, that a unit shed light on a
>>     specific problem, and is not the key to everything.
>>     Andy
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>> ------------
>>     *Andy Blunden*
>>     http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>>     <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>>
>>
>>     David Kellogg wrote:
>>
>>         ... he set out the necessity of different units of analysis
>>         for different problems (which is why I agree with Andy that
>>         the SSD is an
>>         adequate unit of analysis for SOME problems but not for the
>>         crisis). He
>>         says that even in kids like Huw's, who experience no apparent
>>         crisis, we
>>         can observe that particular periods appear to stand out
>>         against more stable
>>         periods in three respects:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>