Re: [xmca] The "Inner Form" of the Word

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Tony-- I have written to David to see if he has any texts, short of everyone
running out and buying his book (which I am sure he would not object to!),
that could guide our
discussion. His article in the Vygotsky companion ends with "in place of a
conclusion" and a warning not to cleanse Vygotsky of "rationalistic
tendencies."

Part of my unease in this discussion has been the binary nature of the terms
used, even as those using them believe in a basically trinary organization
of humaness.

mike

On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 8:23 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> Thanks, Martin
>
>  From a Peircean perspective, there seems to be a falsely exhaustive
>>
> dichotomy here between the ["laws of reason"]-logical and the
> psycho-logical. The semio-logical is not reducible to either of those.
>
> Again, I think that Bakhurst's _The Formation of Reason_ is very much on
> point here. While he's not using Peirce, he is using Vygotsky et al. along
> with the Bildung tradition, which is all about forming within culture, but
> not [I would argue] as a matter of something merely psycho-logical.
>
> On Sat, 28 May 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
>
> ...
>
>
>> The charge of "psychologism" - which Frege made against Husserl, Shpet's
>> teacher, for example - was that someone was reducing logic to psychology;
>> turning the timeless and universal laws of reason into merely the way people
>> happen to think, with all the imperfections that this involves. The counter
>> charge would have been "logicism," that someone is treating as necessary and
>> analytic matters that are in fact contingent and synthetic.
>>
>> So LSV was willing to risk the accusation of psychologism; he rejected the
>> notion that the inner form of the word is a timeless, universal essence, and
>> instead located it in history. He was not separating word meaning entirely
>> from sense, though he did, however, argue that word meaning is the most
>> stable aspect of sense.
>>
>> And the issue that would then have confronted him is whether he could
>> build a convincing account of the genesis of reason using changing and
>> contingent building blocks. Could he build logic from psychology? Or was he
>> willing to propose a psychological account of logic? He does, seemingly
>> approvingly, quote Lenin on the notion that logical truths are simply the
>> result of millions of years of repetition of habits. I must say that I find
>> that rather unsatisfying.
>>
>> Martin
>>
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