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RE: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
Thanks, Mike.
I presume that theory that is sufficiently bounded or closed to be falsifiable is the scientific standard that behavioral psychology, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology aspire to, and that Vygotsky aspired to during the time he formulated his theories. I'm very interested to understand what happened to those aspirations for sociocultural theory:
--Has sociocultural psychology renounced those ambitions?
--Are theorists divided on the question of whether sociocultural theory strives for closure?
--Are theorists ambivalent about this issue, unsure about how to frame these aspirations?
--Or, perhaps, in a poststructural frame, are the aspirations of sociocultural theory indexed to particular discourses, in some of which sociocultural theory is clearly scientific, and others clearly not?
--None of the above?
David
From: mike cole [mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:00 PM
To: David H Kirshner
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
That is indubitably a high standard for science, David.
It seems incompatible with how I understand what bio-cultural-social-historical activity/practice/situated
theories of human nature could aspire to, and not sure even that they should.
mike
On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 10:12 AM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu<mailto:dkirsh@lsu.edu>> wrote:
Mike,
Empirical falsification requires a theoretical system that is sufficiently fixed and determinate so as to enable indubitable logical deduction. Whether the correct word for such a system is "closed" or "bounded" I don't know. Feel free to substitute "bounded, if that works better for you; but the question stands.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 11:39 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
David-- It had never occurred to me that sciences are by definition closed.
Bounded perhaps? With leaky borders and a commitment to falsification?
mike
On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 8:08 AM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu<mailto:dkirsh@lsu.edu>> wrote:
> So, Nektarios, CHAT is just chat!
> More seriously, thinking of CHAT as a methodology--a set of
> practices--accommodates what seems to be its irrevocably "open,"
> non-absolute in character.
> But what does this do to the aspirations of sociocultural psychology
> to be taken seriously as a "science?" Aren't sciences, by definition,
> closed systems of thought?
> --Has sociocultural psychology renounced those ambitions?
> --Are theorists divided on the question of whether sociocultural
> theory strives for closure?
> --Are theorists ambivalent about this issue, unsure about how to frame
> these aspirations?
> --Or, perhaps, in a poststructural frame, are the aspirations of
> sociocultural theory indexed to particular discourses, in some of
> which sociocultural theory is clearly scientific, and others clearly not?
> --None of the above?
> David
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>]
> On Behalf Of Nektarios Alexi
> Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 9:25 AM
> To: ablunden@mira.net<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: RE: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
>
>
> What an interesting genealogy!!
>
> So the father of CHAT was Aristotle?:) Is ike the Abraham of Bible?:)
>
> But i think in terms of dialectical materialism CHAT it is all them
> interrelating to each other,and one theorists complementing each other
> and very often the fruit of it is a qualitavely different theory than
> the other but neverthless the fruit of the previous theories.. So it
> means that CHAT it is not a close system, it is not an absolute
> theory, it is more like a method that because of its not teleological
> morphology it always create the appropriate space to integrate
> anything relevant that helps us to understand us (humans) in relation to society and culture and vice versa?
>
>
>
> Nektarios
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>]
> Sent: Thu 11/8/2012 12:36 AM
> To: Nektarios Alexi
> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
>
> Others can probably enlighten us more than I can, Nektarios, but I
> think he was a very erudite person. Clearly from a young age he was
> hungry for knowledge and read widely in many languages. But
> specifically, he was coming of age in Russia right in the midst of the
> Russian Revolution. This revolution threw literally millions of people
> into all kinds of "social criticism" (Luria describes the tumultuous
> scene in his University at the time, in his Autobiography). New
> movements in Art, literature, Linguistics, natural science, social
> theory, philosophy, technology, social organisation,... sprung up
> spontaneously on all sides. Vygotsky was a part of that. That is the
> main thing. But for geopolitical reasons it was a short-lived "Spring."
>
> In particular, I think, Vygotsky came from Art Criticism (in a milieu
> where drama theory, linguistics and aesthetic theory were making world
> historic advances in Vygotsky's immediate social circle. Then his
> intellectual disposition (as exhibited in his Psychology of Art) took
> him into education and scientific psychology. At that time, prior to
> and independently of the Revolution, Russia was already in the
> forefront of Behaviourist research in Psychology. Vygotsky was in an
> ideal position to bring the social criticism he learnt as a student
> into the scientific establishment around Pavlov, Bekhterev, etc. Add
> to that his close study of Marx's Capital, Lenin's philosophical
> works, and Engels' popularisation, is the broth which produced Vygotsky.
>
> See http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/chat/Genealogy-CHAT.htm
>
> Andy
>
> Nektarios Alexi wrote:
>
>
> Hi Andy,
>
> My question is how Vygotsky could tackle such subtle problems
> in the theories of Piaget but also others in his book Thought and Language?
> What kind of intellectual or theoretical backgorund did Vygotsky had
> that allowed him to see the human nature in such a depth and not just
> that but also find the precise language to describe it, but not just
> describe it but describe it in scientific terms and also with
> evidence? Can we say that it was his comprehensive knowledge on arts
> and especially of classic literature that helped him to see that deep
> and notice such subtle details and errors in so many other important psychological theories of his time?
> Just saying..
>
> Nektarios
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Larry Purss
> Sent: Thu 11/8/2012 12:02 AM
> To: ablunden@mira.net<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] ISCAR Newsletter?
>
> Andy
> I just finished reading your article in the newsletter.
> It is a clear statement of ways to expand the conversation.
> I have recently re-read the 1st chapter of Raymond Williams
> book *Marxism
> and Literature* on the concept of *culture*. It is a wonderful
> history on
> the shifting flowing transforming meanings of various uses of
> the concept
> *culture*
>
> I noticed at the beginning of the article you are affiliated
> with a group
> with the title *continental philosophy*
> I often wonder if this umbrella term could be more explicitly
> brought into
> the conversation to illuminate the multiple streams of
> sociocultural theory
> and how CHAT is situated within this umbrella term.
> It would possibly assist in engaging deeply with philosophy as
> you advocate.
>
> I would like to bring in a distinction that Charles Taylor
> uses between
> what he refers to as *strict* dialectics and *interpretive*
> dialectics.
>
> Strict dialectics assumes each side of the dialectic [for example
> individual and social] are interactive but the essence of the
> objects
> interacting is determined. Interpretive dialectics in contrast
> puts in play
> the interpretive nature of the objects which are then joined
> in interaction.
>
> I am attaching the first two chapters of Raymond Williams book
> *Marxism and
> Literature* which I believe is an example of *interpretive*
> dialectics as
> described by Charles Taylor.
>
> The contrast between the notions *strict* and *interpretive*
> may be helpful
> in illuminating different notions of *interaction* and
> *activity* within
> mediated worlds.
>
> Andy, I hope others read the ISCAR newletter and join with us
> in a friendly
> CHAT.
> Larry
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> > Strangely enough, Ron, my first contacts with Vygotskyan
> theory was with
> > academic colleagues at the University of Melbourne, with
> whom I was
> > interacting in the project of creating collaborative
> learning spaces. I
> > knew about social constructionism, which I took to be Berger and
> > post-modern critical theory (having only the vaguest
> knowledge of these
> > things) but then from my colleagues, who were van der Veer
> and Valsiner
> > types, I was surprised to find out that Vygotsky (whose name
> I knew from
> > Ilyenkov) was also a constructivist (I have never properly
> separated the
> > way those two words are used). So I then got a book out of
> the library on
> > constructivist epistemology which said that there were
> dozens of varieties
> > of constructivism, but that Vygotsky was a constructivist
> who took the
> > collaboration of carer-child dyads as the basis for the
> social construction
> > of knowledge, rather than the wider culture .... took me
> quite a while to
> > find my bearings in all that mess.
> >
> > I just think that we always have to allow a lot of latitude in
> > understanding what people actually mean when they use a word
> in a given
> > context. A word meaning is not a concept.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> > Ron Lubensky wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Andy,
> >>
> >> I too thought the ISCAR newsletter interview article was
> very good. I
> >> especially liked your comparison of CHAT to interactionist
> approaches,
> >> which you and I have discussed before. One area that
> continues to be messy,
> >> as you suggest, is the relationship of CHAT to social
> constructIVism and
> >> social constructIONism.
> >>
> >> Since CHAT's first home is developmental psychology, it is
> out of the
> >> work of Piaget and Papert that these terms are usually
> defined, and so
> >> closely that they are often conflated. While these theories
> acknowledge the
> >> social and perhaps cultural influences on learning and
> interpretation, they
> >> centre on a cognitivist, mental model view of knowledge.
> There is also the
> >> normative aspect of giving control to the learner to
> construct his or her
> >> individual world-view.
> >>
> >> The other social constructIONism comes out of communications and
> >> sociology (e.g. Berger and Luckmann, The Social
> Construction of Reality,
> >> 1966), that challenges the inevitability of categorisations
> that are taken
> >> for granted in common discourse, and which form the bases
> for many
> >> institutions. This post-modern constructIONism generally
> places knowledge
> >> in discourse and interaction, but in more recent
> scholarship focuses on the
> >> cultural situation of the individual. This isn't a learning
> theory but
> >> rather a critical, meta-theoretical stance. To complicate
> matters, there
> >> are different strands with various accounts of what should
> be treated as
> >> real, true, essential, scientific, etc. and how
> communication should relate
> >> to action. It also challenges academic research standards
> with advocacy for
> >> interventionist approaches to practice. For an
> interdisciplinary expansion
> >> of CHAT, I think this constructIONism offers a rich field
> for comparison.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Ron Lubensky
> >> http://www.deliberations.com.**au/ <
> http://www.deliberations.com.au/>
> >> 0411 412 626
> >> Melbourne Australia
> >>
> >
> > --
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> > ------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <
> http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
> > Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> > http://ucsd.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<
> http://ucsd.academia.edu/AndyBlunden>
> >
> > ______________________________**____________
> > _____
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> >
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> ________________________________
>
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> http://ucsd.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
>
>
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