Yes, I believe you can make the completions you make in LSV's name, Natalia. But not everyone agrees. As a continuation of this thread, I am attaching a paper that Vladimir P.Zinchenko wrote in the collection of essays on non-classical psychology edited by Dot Robbins and Anna Stetsenko. I believe that the essay is interesting for many reasons. The lead in from art harks back to the essays by David and Peter. Locally we are discussing a local version of "functional organs" that Ivan Rosero has dubbed "living artifacts." That is what initially caught my eye. But today i kept reading and bingo, there was Vygotsky and Leontiev, Kharkov, 1935 and a major author is VPZ's father. I think that David will find evidence that for his notion that Leontiev was thumbing his nose at Vygotsky by writing that language is not the demiurge of thought. The elder Zinchenko was arguing rough, as his son points out. It was VPZ who gave me the materials from Kharkov in Ukrainian so that they could be translated into English and thereby, perhaps, remembered. The essays were, at the time, and may remain so now, considered "bibliographic rarities" in Moscow psychology circles. It was illegal to take them abroad. I have no idea how they got here. One thing that struck me was a very strong resemblence between what VPZ quotes his father as writing in 1935 and Alex Kozulin's citation from Leontiev at the same time concerning psychological operations and reality. Odd. mike On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Natalia Gajdamaschko <nataliag@sfu.ca>wrote: > Hi Mike, > What if I'll follow your suggestion to complete LSV sentence: > > "All our work is focused on a single basic problem, on the genetic analysis > of thought and word........." > You said that -- an "American contextualist completion of the > sentence..... Of course, we > constantly have to keep in mind that the meaning of words depends upon the > context" > > And, what if I add LSV words to this thread written as a critique of > Piaget's views on concept development: > " Others have said that concepts arise in the process of castrating > reality. Concrete, diverse phenomena must lose their traits one after the > other in course that a concept might be formed. Actually what arises is a > dry and empty abstraction in which the diverse, full-blooded reality is > narrowed and impoverished by logical thought. This is the source of the > celebrated word of Goethe: “Grey is every theory and eternally green is the > golden tree of life.” > This dry, empty, gray abstraction inevitably strives to reduce content to > zero because the more general, the more empty the concept becomes. > Impoverishing the content is done from fateful necessity, and for this > reason, proceeding to develop the teaching of concepts on the grounds of > formal logic, presented thinking in concepts as the system of thinking that > was the poorest, scantiest, and emptiest" (Vygotsky, 1997, vol.4, p.53) > > Don't you think that Vygotsky sounds suspiciously as an "American > contextualist" here? > And, from here, it is only one step (IMHO) to the Russian completion -e.g. > if mediation is done by castrating reality AND "outside the context of > practice" AND in the situation when "practical activity of a child is > missing", one can't form a true concept. > > No wonder you do both in your very successful Californian after-school > activities! > Cheers, > Natalia. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "mike cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> > To: "Natalia Gajdamaschko" <nataliag@sfu.ca> > Cc: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" < > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> > Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2011 11:21:17 AM > Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims > > Yes, Natalia. The treatment of egocentric speech is an excellent example of > Vygotsky's assumption that one needs to consider the mediational means and > the (imagined!) reality, events we call "practical activity." > > I fear from Andy's comment, and perhaps yours, that my little bit of > quotation and "translation" starting with the sentence in Vygotsky's preface > was not properly conceptualized. I wrote that note having > just spent time trying to understand the discussion about Vygotsky, > Leontiev, & Piaget. David had > pointed out that there was good evidence that more emphasis was put on > activity among the Kharkovites, > but I was confused by the interesting "changing of partners" as one > considered the relationship between > the three thinkers ideas. In the ensuing discussion, Martin pointed to the > preface of T&L (I assume in the T&S 1987 version) and I went back to read. > Which I did and then produced that strange note. > > My basic point was that reading that preface one could easily make the case > that LSV ignored activity. If, for example, one were trying to distance > himself from notions of idealism and cosmipolitism, physically by getting > out to the edges of the shadow of the Kremlin, intellectually by placing > (deserved!) attention on mind-in-activity/activity-in-mind this chapter > would be one very fine bit of text haul out at your show > trial and condemn the man with. > > I have personally found Leontiev very helpful in thinking through ways of > designing educational activities, thanks in large part to being able to work > with Peg Griffin. I work in the after-school, informal sector, so we have > unusual opportunities to design theoretically interesting activities. The > example i have in mind in is a group reading activity for the instruction of > reading. But Vygotsky has been no less important in my thinking about this > same line of work. > > There more to be said, of course, but I have wandered off the end of the > screen. > mike > > On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Natalia Gajdamaschko < nataliag@sfu.ca > > wrote: > > > > Hi Dear All, > I thought you may enjoy this quote from Vygotsky himself to be added to the > discussion on Piaget-Vygotsky. LSV wrote it while discussing cultural > development a child. And his surprise is about absence of a culture and > history in child’s development in Piagetian theory. And, ironically, absence > of the child himself, the personality of the child, in the process of > development: > > "We would suggest that absence of two factors with Piaget first discussion > on narrow issue of egocentric speech. What is missing, then, in Piaget’s > perspective, is reality and the child’s relationship to that reality. What > is missing is the child’s practical activity. This is fundamental. Even the > socialization of the child’s thinking is analyzed by Piaget outside the > context of practice” (vol. 1, p. 87). > > Natalia. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Andy Blunden" < ablunden@mira.net > > To: lchcmike@gmail.com , "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" < > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > > Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 8:38:29 PM > Subject: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims > > > Mike, my reading of it is this: Vygotsky poses a question: "What is the > relation between thought and word?" > Then he provides an answer: "The relation between thinking and speaking is > an action: namely, word meaning. > > The relation between thinking and speaking is an enquiry into the > intellect, ie., symbolic activity. It seems to me that many CHAT writers > have interpreted "meaning" not as something which inheres in a word, but an > action , ie., a basic unit of activity, viz., using a word. In my own > Hegelian interpretation of Vygotsky and Activity Theory I connect everything > up on the idea that action = meaning = particular. > > I think this is something general. You don't start off with the mediating > element. That has to be discovered. You start off with the problem which can > be cast in the form: "What mediates between A and B?" Your answer may be C, > i.e., "A->C->B." There are other possible solutions to the same question, > e.g. "A->D->B." > > Does that make any sense? > > Andy > > 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__________________________________________ > _____ > xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca__________________________________________ > _____ > xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca > > -- > > Hegel Summer School: The New Atheism: Just Another Dogma? > > __________________________________________ > _____ > xmca mailing list > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca > >
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V. P. Zinchenko. From Classical to Organic Psychology - In Commemoration of the Centennial of Lev Vygotsky's Birth.pdf
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