> When the 1 month old infant is crying and I feed it and it stops crying,
am
> I wrong to assume that some experience of its own living existence, some
> awareness of the state of its existence was at the basis of its
behavior?
> How could I possibly assume that its experience was mediated by
> cultural-historical relations?
Yet, when that one month old is crying, how do I know to feed it, to change
its diaper, or that it is in pain. Hunger, and other needs seems to be part
of a particular system. We could always say evolution is involved, in
that, the child is coded for particular cries and we are coded to be
receptive to those cries, but that just naturalizes the system we are part
of. In speaking of the infant Vygotsky argued its whole existance was
socially mediated from needing to be carried from place to place, being fed
by the parents etc. When I feed that one month old I may hold that infant,
hug it, or if I was of another gender even breast feed it, or if of another
culture and gender breast feed the child til school age. My children were
not breast fed, as a male that gave me certain affordances and mediated not
only my children as infants but also me as a father. Very early on that
biological need becomes a social one. Even before kids are born, we might
talk to it, change behavior patterns, or not, which has an influence on the
"biological". We may eat fish from the great lakes which for
political-economic reasons is polluted and can have serious implication for
the unborn infant biologically. As a parent I may misinterpret the cries
and feed it everytime it cries without considering the child simply wanted
to be held or played with. A result for the infant may be that food is a
subsitute for social interaction. If the child cries, I could bring it to
my bed or give it a bottle or breast and put it back in the crib. The
choice I make is not simply "biological" but mediated by my cultural
beliefs about babies.
Nate
>