Re: [xmca] Piaget's Periods

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Mike,

It's true that in the preface LSV's claims about what is new in his work, regarding the problem of the relation of thinking and speaking, do not refer to practice. The sentences I was mentioning are these:

"Thus our study proved to be complex and varied by its composition and structure, but at the same time each particular task which confronted the separate sections of our work was so subordinated to a common purpose, and so connected with the previous and subsequent sections, that the entire work as a whole, we dare to hope, is in its essence, united. Although presented in separate parts, everything is in its ensemble is directed toward the solution of the basic and central task, the genetic analysis of the relations between the thought and the word."

That is to say, it is the task at hand, with its common purpose, that unifies the parts of the book into a whole. LSV is repeatedly emphasizing this kind of synthetic unity; in this case, he is writing of the unity of his own book. The task that provides this unity, he hopes, is the scientific activity of carrying out a genetic analysis of the relationship, dynamic and developing, between thinking and speaking.   

The question of the connection between thinking-&-speaking and practical activity comes up towards the end of chapter 1. LSV is writing here of the way a whole new region of study opens up for the researcher who uses the method of analysis of units, including that of the relationship between intellect and the passions. LSV writes:

"He who has from the very beginning detached thinking from passion has forever barred himself from the way of explaining the causes of thinking, because the deterministic analysis of thinking necessarily assumes the discovery of the impelling motives of thought, the needs and interests, the motives and the tendencies, which direct the motion of thought this way or that. So too, he who has detached thinking from passion has in advance made impossible the study of the opposite effect of thinking on the affective-volitional aspects of mental life, since a deterministic examination of mental life excludes equally the attribution of thinking to a magical force which determines the behavior of man from within its own system and also the transformation of thought into an unnecessary appendage of behavior, into its impotent and vain shadow. 

"An analysis which disarticulates a complex whole into componential units again shows us the way which permits the resolution of this question, which is vitally important for all the studies examined by us. It shows that there exists a dynamic system of meanings which are the units of affective and intellectual processes. It shows that in any idea there is contained in a vestigial form the affective relation of a man to the reality represented in this idea. It makes it possible to uncover a direct motion from the needs and the motives of man to the known direction of his thinking and the reverse motion from the dynamics of his thought to the dynamics of his behavior and the concrete activity of his personality." 

The book, then, is focused on a specific relationship among two important psychological functions (both of which are to be considered as active processes). This relationship is itself only one aspect of the interfunctional relationships among all the many psychological functions, including "concrete activity" and "the dynamics of behavior." The latter are in the background rather than being focal, but LSV is insisting here, and in many other places, that they not be forgotten.

Martin

On Feb 11, 2011, at 8:37 PM, mike cole wrote:

> Thank you, Martin, brilliant as you are doomed to be.
> 
> I turned from your note, picked up Thinking and Speech, and read the
> preface. That in itself is worth a good deal of discussion. But, just this,
> to begin with. I think its relevant to the issue of Vygotsky's ideas about
> the relationship of mediation and activity.
> 
> Look at what you get if you complete the following phrase as a "stem" that
> needs to be completed. Vygotsky writes.
> 
> All our work is focused on a single basic problem, on the genetic analysis
> of thought and word.........
> 
> American contextualist completion of the sentence..... Of course, we
> constantly have to keep in mind that the meaning of words depends upon the
> context.
> 
> A Russian cultural-historical theorist completion of the sentence...... Of
> course, we constantly have to keep in mind that words are constituitive of
> human activity.
> 
> In the 5 claims LSV makes for the accomplishments of the book in the
> preface, not a single one refers to context/activity.
> 
> Yet later in the text (earlier in his life?), he makes explicit reference to
> the importance of practical activity.
> 
> Who among us is it who has Barthes reminding us that failing to re-read is
> failing to learn from experience, or some such aposite thought. Sure
> benefited from that bit of re-reading!
> 
> 
> mike
> 
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Feb 10, 2011, at 9:04 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>> 
>>> more than mildly brilliant.
>> 
>> Thank you, David. I generally shoot for bitterly brilliant, and usually hit
>> mildly stupid.
>> 
>> I don't disagree with much of what you say about Piaget. I suspect he knew
>> of LSV's critique before the 1960s, and I suspect he didn't pay much
>> attention. Anyone who received 80 honorary degrees in his lifetime didn't
>> need to pay much attention to criticism. Did he develop? I think he was
>> *always* a genetic epistemologist; I am not sure he ever saw himself as a
>> psychologist, so in that sense no. He was interested, it seems to me, in how
>> a biological organism (a baby) becomes a logical organism (a scientist), one
>> who has certain and necessary knowledge. In that respect he was thoroughly
>> Kantian, though he felt Kant had gone 'too far' (as he put it, if I recall)
>> in assuming that the categories of the transcendental ego were innate. Even
>> his interest in morality clearly had Kantian roots. He was more an empirical
>> philosopher  than a psychologist; not that that's a bad thing to be. The
>> same might be said of LSV, but his philosophical starting point was very
>> different.
>> 
>> And I agree that, as you suggest, it is very important to recognize the
>> importance LSV attributed to practical activity. It runs through the length
>> of Thought & Language - from the preface where he says that it is the book's
>> practical task that unifies its parts - and of course in Crisis he insisted
>> that practical concerns would drive the new, general psychology.
>> 
>> Martin__________________________________________
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