[Xmca-l] Re: RES: Re: Child Development: Understanding a Cultural Perpsective

[Andy Blunden]

My interest, David, was (1) that you had inverted the claim 
with which I am familiar, and (2) I have always been curious 
as to the basis for the confidence Vygotsky has for his 
claim. Of course the point you make about the concept 
arising as part of the perception of the problem (Marx says 
"Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it 
is able to solve, since closer examination will always show 
that the problem itself arises only when the material 
conditions for its solution are already present *or at least 
in the course of formation*.") is correct. But my point is 
that Vygotsky is making a point about the place of the 
*word* in concept-formation in this excerpt, not the 
social/technical context or the problem/solution issues.

Ad (1). "The word is almost always ready when the concept 
is" (neglecting the important "almost always") means word 
first, then concept. "The word is only ready when the 
concept is," (with the important "only") means concept first 
then word. So you've completely inverted Vygotsky's claim. 
Ad (2) - you may be right David, I know you read the Russian 
as well, or Master Lev may be mixed up. I don't think it's 
cut and dry like this. But the inversion was my point of 
interest. It would get to long-winded to go into the 
question itself, as I see it.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making 

On 21/05/2017 7:41 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Yes, Vygotsky cites that passage in Tolstoy three times in 
> Thinking and Speech (and he also cites it elsewhere, e.g. 
> in "Thinking in School Age" in the Lectures on Pedology). 
> But I don't want to be the fundamentalist on the list; I 
> think it's more important to grasp the context in which 
> he's citing this. It's always an emphasis on something 
> Andy himself has often noted: Marx's remark that human 
> beings set themselves only the tasks that they can solve 
> (which is, after all, the whole basis for the zone of 
> proximal development and the functional method of dual 
> stimulation).
>
> It's not just that we don't perceive problems as 
> problems until we perceive them as potentially soluble; 
> it's also because objectively the solutions to problems 
> evolve alongside the problems themselves. So that for 
> example, as Ruqaiya Hasan remarks, the reason why language 
> is able to fulfil so many of our needs is that many of 
> those needs are created by language use.
>
> I think Vygotsky is saying the same thing about concepts; 
> they only arise when the problems they solve have arisen 
> in development. They do not arise simply because we teach 
> the labels that they have, and they don't fail to arise 
> just because we are not using the right label. In any case 
> the idea that the word is only ready when the concept is 
> (which I think is what Andy is objecting to, although it's 
> hard to tell) is certainly implicit in the way Vygotsky 
> names his own concepts: they only emerge when the content 
> has become clear and the place in a system of concepts 
> that have also emerged is established.
>
> Here's what Vygotsky says his report to the section on 
> psychotechnics of the Communist Academy in November 1930:
>
> "I don't think that the adult never develops, but I think 
> that he develops obeying other rules, and for this 
> development the lines which characterize his development 
> are different from those of that of the child, and it is 
> the qualitative particularity of child development is the 
> direct object of the pedologist. For me, to speak of a 
> pedology of the adult is not only false from the point of 
> view of the very name of pedology but above all from the 
> point of view of isolating in a single unique line the 
> process of child development and the process of adult 
> transformation. I repeat: the same laws cannot embrace at 
> one and the same time the internal changes in child 
> development and the changes of later ages. It is not 
> excluded for science, and for psychology in particular, to 
> study those changes which are produced at ripe age or in 
> old age, but I do not associate these two problematics and 
> I don't think that this object belongs to the category of 
> phenomena that pedology deals with. "
>
> (I'm taking this from a PhD thesis by Irina 
> Leopoldoff-Martin of the University of Geneva, No 561, p. 
> 287).
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 10:03 AM, Andy Blunden 
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     "The word is almost always ready when the concept is" Yes?
>
>     Andy
>
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     Andy Blunden
>     http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>     http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>     <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
>     On 20/05/2017 9:07 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
>         Alfredo:
>
>         Just two quick points, and then I shall get back
>         to Vygotsky--we are having
>         our weekly on-line seminar today here and in
>         Seoul, and it's all about the
>         Pedology of the Adolescent and "The Negative Phase
>         of the Transitional Age".
>
>         First--I don't think pre-life or any of the terms
>         I offered are "adequate
>         labels" for the neoformations. In fact,
>         "neoformation" is not an adequate
>         label either (Vygotsky takes it from geology!) In
>         Vygotsky, the label is
>         just a place holder, it's a kind of mnemonic, a
>         way of remembering
>         something that hasn't actually even been really
>         said yet. "The word is only
>         ready when the concept is," remember?
>
>         ...
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> "The Great Globe and All Who It Inherit:
> Narrative and Dialogue in Story-telling with
> Vygotsky, Halliday, and Shakespeare"
>
> Free Chapters Downloadable at:
>
> https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2096-the-great-globe-and-all-who-it-inherit.pdf
>
> Recent Article: Thinking of feeling: Hasan, Vygotsky, and 
> Some Ruminations on the Development of Narrative in Korean 
> Children
>
> Free E-print Downloadable at:
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/8Vaq4HpJMi55DzsAyFCf/full