[Xmca-l] Re: Hegelian sources of CHAT

[Andy Blunden]

Thanks, Huw.

The interconnectedness of the "four concepts," I agree, they 
imply each other, but nonetheless, they remain distinct 
insights. Just because you get one, you don't necessarily 
get the others.

Hegel uses the expression "true concept" only rarely. 
Generally, he simply uses the word "concept," and uses a 
variety of other terms like "mere conception" or 
"representation" or "category" to indicate something short 
of a concept, properly so called, but there is no strict 
categorisation for Hegel. Hegel is not talking about 
Psychology, let alone child psychology. Like with Vygotsky, 
all thought-forms (or forms of activity) are just phases (or 
stages) in the development of a concept. Reading your 
message, I think I am using the term "true concept" in much 
the same way you are.

(This is not relevant to my article, but I distinguish "true 
concept" from "actual concept." All the various forms of 
"complexive thinking" fall short, so to speak, of "true 
concepts," and further development takes an abstract 
concept, such as learnt in lecture 101 of a topic, to an 
"actual concept". But that is not relevant here. Hegel 
barely touches on these issues.)

I don't agree with your specific categories, but yes, for 
Vygotsky, chapters 4, 5 and 6 are all talking about concepts 
in a developmental sense. There are about 10 distinct stages 
for Vygotsky. And they are not equivalent to any series of 
stages identified by Hegel. Vgotsky's "stages" were drawn 
from a specific experiment with children; Hegel's Logic is 
cast somewhat differently (the Logic is not a series of 
stages) and has a domain much larger than Psychology.

The experienced doctor does not use what I would call 
"formal concepts" in her work, which are what I would call 
the concepts they learnt in Diagnostics 101 when they were a 
student. After 20 years of experience, these formal concepts 
have accrued practical life experience, and remain true 
concepts, but are no longer "formal." Of course, the student 
was not taught pseudoconcepts in Diagnostics 101. But all 
this is nothing to do with the article in question.

Hegel and Vygotsky are talking about different things, but 
even in terms of the subject matter, but especially in terms 
of the conceptual form, there is more Hegel in "Thinking and 
Speech" than initially meets the eye.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements <https://brill.com/view/title/54574>
Home Page <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
On 27/09/2019 4:32 pm, Huw Lloyd wrote:
> The "four concepts", for me, are four aspects of one 
> understanding -- they imply each other.
>
> Quoting this passage:
>
> "The ‘abstract generality’ referred to above by Hegel, 
> Vygotsky aptly called a ‘pseudoconcept’ - a form of 
> abstract generalization, uniting objects by shared common 
> features, which resembles conceptual thinking because, 
> within a limited domain ofexperience, they subsume the 
> same objects and situations as the true concept indicated 
> by the same word.
> The pseudoconcept is not the exclusive achievement of the 
> child. In our everyday lives, our thinking frequently 
> occurs in pseudoconcepts. From the perspective of 
> dialectical logic, the concepts that we find in our living 
> speech are not concepts in the true sense of the word. 
> They are actually general representations of things. There 
> is no doubt, however, that these representations are a 
> transitional stage between complexes or pseudoconcepts and 
> true concepts. (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p. 155)"
>
> My impression from your text, Andy, is that you are 
> misreading Vygotsky's "Thinking and Speech". Implicit 
> LSV's whole text of vol. 1 is an appreciation for 
> different kinds of conception (3 levels: pseudo, formal, 
> and dialectical), but the terminology of "concept" is only 
> applied to the formal concept, i.e. where Vygotsky writes 
> "concept" one can read "formal concept".
>
> In vol. 1, the analysis of the trajectory of the thought 
> of the child is towards a growing achievement of employing 
> formal concepts. These formal concepts are only called 
> "true concepts" (not to be confused with Hegel's true 
> concept) in relation to the pseudo (fake or untrue) formal 
> concepts. The pseudo concepts pertain to a form of 
> cognition that is considered by Vygotsky (quite sensibly) 
> to precede the concepts of formal logic.  This is quite 
> obvious to any thorough-going psychological reading of the 
> text.
>
> However, within the frame of analysis of the text there is 
> another form of conception which is Vygotsky's approach 
> towards a dialectical understanding. None of Vygotsky's 
> utterances about dialectics (in this volume) should be 
> conflated with the "true concept" which he is using as a 
> short-hand for the "true formal concept", similarly none 
> of Vygotsky's utterances about "pseudo concepts" should be 
> confused with formal concepts.
>
> I hope that helps,
> Huw
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 21 Sep 2019 at 06:37, Andy Blunden 
> <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>
>     I'd dearly like to get some discussion going on this:
>
>         It will be shown that at least four foundational
>         concepts of Cultural Historical Activity Theory
>         were previously formulated by Hegel, viz., (1) the
>         unit of analysis as a key concept for
>         analytic-synthetic cognition, (2) the centrality
>         of artifact-mediated actions, (3) the definitive
>         distinction between goal and motive in activities,
>         and (4) the distinction between a true concept and
>         a pseudoconcept.
>
>     https://www.academia.edu/s/7d70db6eb3/the-hegelian-sources-of-cultural-historical-activity-theory
>
>     Andy
>
>     -- 
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>     *Andy Blunden*
>     Hegel for Social Movements
>     <https://brill.com/view/title/54574>
>     Home Page
>     <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20190927/d2c95065/attachment.html