I especially like what you are writing here, Michael, at the end about the
complex web of thinking that seems all too linear.
Writing (and research) can be linear and sequential. The use of logic, as
well. Both scientific method and written language are tools for
communication and mediation of meaning. Even though words are strung
together in a sequential order, there are other devices used in texts, let's
say Hamlet, for example, in which the text "means" more than just the
logical sequential arrangement of words. Not only qualitatively more, but at
the same time: literal and figurative, symbolic, etc. In scientific writing
the goal is clarity, in art, it is often ambiguity. An author does not cease
to be a part of this complex web of subjectivity and psyche when he/she
attempts clarity. Neither does a reader, when reading or experiencing a
text.
Monica
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Michael Glassman
Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 10:01 AM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [xmca] Re: An article by Kimiharu Sato exploring Fernando
Rey'stheme.
Hi Mike, Larry, Andy, whoever,
It is interesting that the conversation on Fernando's article made me think
of something and spurred me to read it. That something is he suggests (and
its a good suggestion) that Vygotsky went through the same, I don't want to
call it evolution because it is not really directional, well adaptations in
thinking then that a number of other thinkers I have read during the 20th
century have gone through.
The way I have read Fernando's article he is suggesting that Vygotsky is,
well in my own thinking, adapting to three "traps" in attempting to develop
a framework for understanding human thinking. Vygotsky starts out with his
work on art, and maybe in part in his work on pedagogy, dealing as the
article suggests with really complex issues such as emotion and aesthetics.
Vygotsky, who I believe himself was really interested in this stuff, is
saying that you don't just take in art or emotional based information but
you mediate it as part of your understanding. When we watch Hamlet we don't
just experience the words of the melancholy Dane, but tap into deep
emotions, in ways I am guessing most don't when watching "Billy Madison."
We know and understand Hamlet, when we give it time and effort, has a much
deeper impact on who we are - in part because it is generative, perhaps in
making us think about ourselves and the world around us, using our
imaginations to go far beyond what we are seeing on stage. Ah, but there's
the rub, and the first of the "traps." Where does this mediating force come
from? Meaning we know the Hamlet is better than Billy Madison but how do we
know it and why do we know it. We know that Tolstoy is a better writer than
John Grisham, even though we might enjoy both, but how do we know it. Where
does this picky mediating force come from. Why will we sit through three
hours of one movie and turn off another after ten minutes. The only
explanation is that there is some ideal sense of beauty and what we are
reading or seeing in some way approaches that ideal. And come on, don't we
all think that way to one degree or another when experiencing a great piece
of art. But then that makes us idealists. I kind of think that Vygotsky
got pushed off his idealist perch earlier than some because of what was
going on in Russia at the time, but maybe he was hanging on to this idea
that there are some things that we just communally understand.
The next stop after idealism is empiricism, or instrumentalism, which easily
gets caught up in realism. All that you can really trust is that which you
see in front of you, that which you experience as working in some objective
sense. The difficulty with empiricism is it does not last, there is nothing
communal about a response. And perhaps this is part of what Vygotsky was
looking for, where does this communal response come from, Why do people
think one play is good and another terrible and this is a response that
almost all agree with. A communal understanding cannot really be based on
objective data, because objective data can be so easily corrupted after it
has occurred. Individuals and even groups remember things that happen in
their lives very differently. There is that famous experiment where an
individual rushes into a room and attacks an instructor and then they ask
afterwards for people to write down what they saw. There are often very
different responses from the same people a short time later. We tend to
rearrange history based on our own expectations of what is going to happen
(Neisser 1976 has some interesting ideas on this). But the big question
then becomes what good really is empiricism and objectivity if it becomes
lost in the haze of history. And how is it possible to have any real
communal reactions. And remember one of the early driving issues is why
does such a large majority think Hamlet is better than Billy Madison (yeah,
yeah, I know Vygotsky didn't know about Adam Sandler. But I bet you Adam
Sandler doesn't know about Vygtosky!) There are three ways to deal with
this - the first is the second "realist trap" in which we claim that
objects contain information and we draw the information out from the
objects, we just have to do it the right way - but we know from everyday
experience there is little actual value in this idea and is usually promoted
by a dominant group which can lay claim to objects. The second one is to
stay in the immediate experience, and the third is to suggest that there is
some lasting impact from history that you can divine, but it is not solely
in the object nor solely in human thinking - the combining of subjective and
objective Andy likes to talk about. Vygotsky had to figure out a way back
to this place I think because of his initial interests in aesthetics and
emotions as Fernando suggests.
Vygotsky's answer in this scenario is the concentrate not on the objects, or
on the human mind, but on the mediators themselves, especially the semiotic
mediators that are passed down from generation to generation, which carry
history with them, but are also flexible. In a sense Vygotsky perhaps was
going back by going forward.
The way I wrote this makes it all sound too linear, and I agree with
Fernando it is not linear at all, but the development of an increasingly
complex web of thinking, something in academia we seem to have a very hard
time with, and many times simply don't want to accept.
Anyway, that's my take for what it's worth - three and a half cents worth
perhaps.
Michael
_____
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of mike cole
Sent: Wed 8/3/2011 12:38 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: An article by Kimiharu Sato exploring Fernando
Rey'stheme.
This line of thinking underpins the approach that Vygotsky and Luria took to
neuropsychology, Larry. It underpins a good deal of research on
rehabilitation
as summarized in his autobiography.
What, I wonder, is the link between the instrumentalism phase and the
systems ideas on the one hand and the more semiotic phase at the end (which,
i believe, Fernando is saying was in the beginning as well).
mike
On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm going to continue circling around this topic of "sense" as a direction
> Vygotsky was pointing. Mike mentioned the tricky "predicament" {Andy :-)}
> of moving between merely instrumental vs merely semiotic[ideal]
> explanations
> within our circular descriptions. I believe Kimiharu Sato and Fernando
Rey
> and John Shotter are also struggling with this predicament. So her goes my
> reflections on my "conversation" [commognition] with Kimiharu. In other
> words what do I link to when reading his article.
>
> (p.39) For Vygotsky, consciousness is a very complex, STRUCTURE of
> behaviour. In particular it is, and in the historical development of a
> doubling of behaviour. Consciousness can be understood as a SYSTEM of the
> various functions of mental action. In 1930 [Fernando's 3rd period]
> Vygotsky wrote "On Psychological Systems" in which he stated,
> "In the process of development and in the historical development of
> behaviour in particular, it is NOT so much the functions which change.
What
> IS changed and modified are rather the RELATIONSHIPS the LINKS BETWEEN the
> functions. New constellations emerge which were unknown in the preceding
> stage. That is why INTRA-functional change is often NOT ESSENTIAL in the
> transition from one stage to the other. It is INTER-functional changes,
the
> changes of inter-functional CONNECTIONS and the inter-functional
> STRUCTURE WHICH MATTER. The development of such NEW FLEXIBLE relationships
> BETWEEN FUNCTIONS we will call a PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM' (p. 92)
>
> Kimiharu in providing THIS quote adds "This passage REVEALS that Vygotsky
> considered the human mind to emerge FROM the INTER-relations of the
various
> mental functions and therefore human consciousness IS an active process
> WITHIN a mental "network"[metaphor to picture INTER-relations BETWEEN
> functions and not the intra-functional relations within an isolated
> function]. From this linking to Vygotsky Kimiharu makes the "leap of
> intuition" to state,
> "It can be concluded that Vygotsky's theory of consciousness is
> anti-substantialism, and he assumed consciousness is an attribution OF
FORM
> and a process of actualization"
>
> I'm not sure if everyone would draw the same conclusion, but what I want
to
> focus on is Kimiharu focussing our attention on the inter-relations
BETWEEN
> functions that form a particular STRUCTURING and that these
> inter-relational structurings change with development
>
> Larry
>
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > This month's article by Fernando Rey must have had some impact on
others,
> > either positive, negative, or ambivalent. For anyone who is quietly
> > reflecting on this topic, I'm attaching another article by Kimiharu Sato
> > from Hokkaido University. Kimiharu also recommends reading E. Kamiya's
> > unpublished doctoral desertation titled "Unfinished Vygotsky's Theory"
> > (2008) Does anyone have access to this thesis. It seems it may hold
> > potential for exploring sense in Vygotsky's project.
> >
> > Larry
> >
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