Ricardo;
You say; These cotations of LSV presented by you Bruce reiforces the inner
contradictions of his positivist discourse I reffer because, latter, he will
advocate THE TRUTH and the validity of only one truth
I have heard that "positivism" has a slippery semantic slope, but I think of
Vygotsky differently than as developing a positivist discourse. I see him as
attempting to define a materialist and a methodological space between three
poles, positivism, pan-textualism and uncritical Marxism, all idealist
positions.
One pole is the phenomenalist positivism of Mach and the behaviorists.
"Epistemological consciousness as part of the antinomy 'subject-object' is
confused with empirical, psychological consciousness and then it is asserted
that consciousness cannot be material, that to assume this would be Machism.
And as a result one ends up with Neoplatonism, in the sense of infallible
essences for which being and phenomenon coincide. They flee from idealism
only to plunge into it headlong.” <A HREF="http://members.home.net/schmolze1/crisis/psycri13.htm#p1367">TwoPsychologies</A>
The second pole he rejected was the Geisteswissenschaft, "science of the
soul". I don't understand his total position, but I get the feeling that he
might have foreseen an idealist pan-textualism of some postmodernisms.
The third pole was the uncritical importing of Marx into psychology. Marx
had great insights into psychology, but his distrust of philosophy led him
not to proceed in this direction. To import quotations from Marx without
psychological theory development could be seen as another idealist position.
I wonder if neo-Marxism is playing this role in psychology today?
I see Vygotsky's modernist view of truth as being tempered because it is
truth only in relation to its supporting theory, not divine truth with a
capital "T". Given the thorough critique of postmodern postcolonial thought,
is there any hope for this sort of materialism today or would Vygotsky have
rethought this completely?
I am a "Johnny come lately" here. Is this the wrong way to see Vygotsky?
Does anyone else have a different view.
Howard
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