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Re: [xmca] Taking the HAT out of CHAT



By "pragmatism" I mean the common-or-garden variety that says that all philosophy is bunkum, not the "Pragmatism" of Dewey &c.
andy

mike cole wrote:
To met, at least, you ARE splitting hairs, Andy. I would be really helped by understanding the relationship of Dewey and CHAT (at least for Dewey!). What is Dewey's great failing from a Marxist perspective? What did he get wrong?

They share a lot, it seems to me. So what have I got wrong?

mike



On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 1:54 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:

    *Response to Poehner and Lantolf.*

    Not being an L2 teacher or any other kind of teacher, I will limit
    my comments to Poehner and Lantolf’s attack on philosophy. That
    they can quote Vygotsky in support of their cause is neither here
    nor there, as Vygotsky’s entire lifetime is testimony to the place
    he gave to philosophy in his critique of psychology, and /vice
    versa/, and the great admirer of Spinoza could be quoted in the
    opposite spirit just as well.

      “... Practice sets the tasks and serves as the supreme judge of
      theory, as its truth criterion. It dictates how to construct the
      concepts and how to formulate the laws.” (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 304)
      Vygotsky concludes that the highest test of a theory is practice and
      that the distinction that had been made between general and applied
      psychology (e.g., industrial, educational psychology) was not only
      invalid but in fact, as he convincingly argued in “The Crisis,”
      applied psychology /is /psychology. This was, for Vygotsky, the full
      implication of Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach for the science
      of psychology: “Marx has said that it was enough for philosophers to
      have interpreted the world, now it’s time to change it” (Vygotsky,
      1997b, pp. 9–10).

    The claim that “practice is the truth criterion” for theory is the
    position of pragmatism, not Marxism. This may seem like splitting
    hairs, after all Marx does say in Thesis 2: “The question whether
    objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a
    question of theory but is a *practical* question. Man must prove
    the truth ... in practice. The dispute over the reality or
    non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a
    purely scholastic question.”

    But the passage of 150 years has clarified matters. “Applied
    psychology /is /psychology,” and the interpretation of Thesis 11,
    “... it was enough for philosophers to have interpreted the world,
    now it’s time to change it” makes things clear. Thesis 11 is
    saying that the point of philosophy is to change the world. In the
    absence of the socialist utopia, then, philosophy is not done for.
    The revolution Vygotsky wrought in /philosophy/ is testimony
    enough to that. The cry that the time for philosophy is past is a
    call to abandon philosophy.

    In this context, L2 theory may be fraught with dualisms, but it
    seems to me that there is a fashion nowadays to point to dualisms
    everywhere without justification, so I am not impressed with the
    claim of 20 dualisms which might just as well be 20 valid
    distinctions. My suspicions are confirmed when the authors
    themselves posit a false dichotomy: “mediation through cultural
    concepts” versus “mediation through social interaction.” This is a
    new dualism to me; probably it is what lies behind the neologism
    of “SCT” which the authors use to supplant CHAT. But more of that
    later.

    What on earth is a “/cultural/ concept”? What are “/non/-cultural
    concepts”? And how is an action to be mediated by a (cultural)
    concept /other than/ as part of a social interaction.” And what
    kind of interactions are /not/ social? And what is it that is
    being mediated other than the (social) use of a (cultural)
    artefact? Is there any other way of using an artefact other than
    in the course of a /socially/ meaningful action? How is a
    “cultural artefact” used without “social interaction”? How is a
    “social interaction” effected without the use of “cultural
    artefacts” or some other type of non-cultural artefact?

    So this is a false dichotomy. But what end does it serve? Well, it
    justifies the use of SCT = Socio-Cultural Theory, by (1) inserting
    “socio-” usually by contrast with “societal,” (2) dropping the
    “Historical” dimension of development, and more importantly (3)
    dropping Activity. So we have come full circle. The meaning of the
    use of Theses on Feuerbach against itself is to reduce Activity to
    being the test or manifestation of Theory. But the opposite is
    just as valid: Theory is the manifestation of Activity, a.k.a.
    Practice.

    Andy


-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    *Andy Blunden*
    Joint Editor MCA: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Journal/
    Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
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    Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
    <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
    MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Journal/
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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