>My personal objection to Vygotsky/Hegel's almost positivistic reasoning is
>that unit of analysis is relative to the purpose of the analysis rather than
>simply rooted in the phenomenon or approach.
..........
>
>What do you think?
Well, one thing that strikes me is that this is close to a specific
application of the more general "pragmatic maxim." Pragmatists takes the
position that the truth or warrantability of any statement is judged in
terms of its consequence (and judgement is always relative to our human
purposes)--not in terms of any antecedent condition which has a status
independent of our purposes (such as a secured axiom, the pre-given nature
of the phenomena, or the strength of a method).
My original approach to "social psychology" came out of Mead oh so long ago
and this assumption is embedded deep within the way that I view things
social. So it may be that I have long imputed some variant of this to
Vygotskian/socio-cultural approaches that I consider similiar in many ways.
However I may be wrong. Is it true that the tradition alluded to by Eugene
(Vygotsky/Hegel) does not have an analog to this position?
John
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John St. Julien (stjulien who-is-at udel.edu)
School of Education
University of Delaware