Yes, Christopher Bollas -- I am chewing on "Becoming a Character -
Psychoanalysis and Self Experience" at the moment - The Shadow of the object
is also excellent. For decades I resisted reading object relations theory,
but actually, there are very significant elements of self-other formations
that are completely obscured by the rationalist foundations of say,
paradigmatic CHAT theory -- as in -- how do we deal with the role of
abjection in subjectification - the self as Other, sometimes to itself, and
sometimes Othered hegemonically... This is where I find it helpful and
important --- where it goes into the language of psychoanalytic, clinincally
motivated diagnosis, I find it obnoxious, paternalistic, and pathologizing,
and it reminds me why I resisted reading this stuff for so long...
Mary
On 11/16/05 3:10 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mary-- By Bollas do you mean this book by Christopher Bollas-- looks right
> but perhaps you have something else in mind: *The shadow of the object :
> psychoanalysis of the unthought known .
>
> Peter-- There was a special issue of MCA a while back about
> Scientific/Everyday concepts that Vera was guest editor of or had a paper
> in.
> mike
>
> *
> On 11/15/05, Peter Moxhay <moxhap@portlandschools.org> wrote:
>>
>> Anna (& Victor & Vera & all):
>>
>> Yes, I would very much like to read your (Anna's) paper on concepts in
>> mathematics.
>>
>> Also, does anyone have the reference to Gordon's paper or chapter?
>>
>> Though perhaps this is off the main line of interest for most on the list,
>> I think that the current discussion of Anna's paper has helped me start to
>> resolve some difficulties I have had in understanding and correlating:
>>
>> - everday concepts vs. scientific concepts (Vygotsky)
>> - theoretical concepts vs. empirical concepts (Davydov)
>> - Ilyenkov's knowledge of the object vs. verbally expressed conceptions
>>
>> I would be most grateful if anyone could send me (perhaps off the list)
>> references to any recent literature on this topic of concept formation.
>> (Perhaps Anna and Eduardo's paper has comprehesive references?)
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>>>> AStetsenko@gc.cuny.edu 11/15/05 10:41 AM >>>
>> Peter,
>>
>> I find you points on concepts very much in tune with previous
>> argumentation. Indeed, this can be seen as an important grounding for the
>> more general points previously made (at the level of a worldview) in
>> analysing conrete interactions of teaching-and-learning. Especially for the
>> worldview level point about the centrality of contribution by each
>> individual to the flow of social practice unfolding in history.
>>
>> Vygotsky's discussion of everyday and scientific concepts is very relevant
>> here, I would think. Gordon Wells has an excellent paper (or was it
>> chapter?) reflecting on this distinction.
>>
>> Knowing how important such grounding of general ideas in concrete concepts
>> is, I have written a paper comparing various models of teaching-and-learning
>> concepts in mathematics (Nunes and Cobb versus Davydov-Elkonin). With the
>> notion of individual contribution to social practice at the center (also
>> making an argument how worldview level ideas get chanelled into practice and
>> vice versa). This paper was written together with Eduardo Vianna who is my
>> doctoral student and of whom I am very proud -- he works precisely at the
>> juncture of general ideas and practice -- in the context of a Group Home for
>> boys (he presented in Seville). Could send you a paper, if you like - it's
>> in press for Theory&Psychology.
>>
>> AStetsenko
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Peter Moxhay
>> Sent: Mon 11/14/2005 2:36 PM
>> To: Activity eXtended Mind Culture
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] concept as gambit
>>
>>
>>
>> Anna -- thanks for your comments on my query; I've finding it very
>> useful in understanding your article to think in terms of concept
>> formation .
>>
>> And Victor -- thanks so much for the references, especially for
>> sending me to reread Chapter VI of Andy's "The Meaning of Hegel's
>> Logic":
>>
>> http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/mean06.htm
>>
>> where I found this, in particular:
>>
>>> Even (or rather especially) when what we see sharply contradicts
>>> what we know it to be, truth lies neither in abandoning our former
>>> opinion nor in ignoring the evidence of the senses but in forming a
>>> unity of the two: modifying our former opinion and seeing it in a
>>> new light, finding in immediate perception what was formerly so but
>>> now is not so.
>>
>> Andy gives the example of one's immediate perception of "the Moon"
>> taken together with the accumulated human knowledge of the Moon:
>>
>>> When we look at "the Moon", we do not question the immediacy of
>>> this perception. A murky cloud-covered view we would unhesitatingly
>>> refer to as "the Moon" equally as the Moon on a clear night. The
>>> Moon itself is inseparable from our concept of it, and has
>>> reflected sunlight on to countless generations of people. And in
>>> apprehending the Moon, we apprehend that which is referred to in
>>> the word "lunacy" and the words "romantic moonlit night" and which
>>> causes the tides.
>>
>> Now what this puts me in mind of is a conversation I had a few years
>> ago with Sergei Gorbov, who is one of Davydov's co-authors of the
>> Elkonin-Davydov mathematics curriculum for elementary schools. He
>> told me that one of the most important moments of the teaching-
>> learning process is when the children come forward and express their
>> _subjective_ reactions to a given mathematical problem situation.
>> That is, the children may have in common certain ways of acting when
>> faced with a mathematical problem, but then they are confronted with
>> some new problem situation where what they know so far doesn't work.
>> A particular child will then tell what he or she thinks is the action
>> to be performed to solve the problem. In some cases, the child's
>> suggested action will not solve the problem, but even this "mistake"
>> gets folded back into and enriches the socially-shared mathematical
>> ways of acting. In other cases, the child's suggested action does
>> solve the problem, and so is successful in pushing forward the
>> collective knowledge of the classroom of children. The child takes a
>> risk (gambit?) of suggesting some new action, and the class as a
>> whole evaluates whether this new action solves the mathematical
>> problem or not.
>>
>> So, it is an individual's "subjective image" of "how to act in the
>> new situation" that drives forward the socially-shared body of
>> knowledge. If we think of the "concept" not as the existing body of
>> knowledge but as a kind of vector along which that knowledge
>> increases, then the concept is intimately tied to individuals'
>> subjective ways of acting. But it's a subjective suggestion for
>> action that is socially (intersubjectively?) evaluated.
>>
>> Anna, Victor -- does this example make any sense? Is this the kind of
>> subjectivity we've been talking about in the discussion of Anna's
>> article?
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>> [Anna wrote]: Yes, Peter, you are right, this is critical indeed
>>> and I was going to elaborate on this too as this agrees with my
>>> position very much (and the readings Victor suggested are also
>>> critical - but let me try to make some points already here).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In my take on this issue, and in more Vygotskian terms, concepts
>>> are TOOLS that are embedded within (in the sense of them coming out
>>> and returning to) the reality they are meant to serve. Concepts are
>>> saturated with this reality they serve and never break away from it
>>> ((Of course, if twe are dealing with meaningful concepts)). The
>>> reverse dependency is also true - this is as an upshot of the
>>> argument in my paper.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This reality often, and more immediately for many of those who do
>>> theorizing, is the reality of theoretical debates, approaches and
>>> so on. In this sense, concepts are inextricably dependent on the
>>> whole theoretical system under consideration (hence the point about
>>> each and every idea or principle making sense only within the whole
>>> system) - and this is something readily acknowledged by many
>>> (though certainly not all) who come to think about and work with
>>> concepts. As, for example, reflected in the argument we all like
>>> very much - about the importance of context. But then, as also
>>> argued in my paper, behind this seemingly abstract theoretical
>>> reality there are always practical engagements with some issues out
>>> in the world, beyond the ivory tower of science - hence the
>>> practical and ideological saturation of concepts and theories.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This embedded nature of concepts comes through very clearly in
>>> works on science as a social construction (the best in psychology
>>> being by Danziger, I think, who was referred to before), and in
>>> works by Sandra Harding on positionality and standpoint
>>> epistemology, and in Morwaski and other feminist scholars (Mary has
>>> mentioned some too in a different context).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There are many renditions of this position - varying from extreme
>>> views of social constructionism a la Gergen for whom constructs are
>>> only instruments of social discourse (and are ephemeral, leading to
>>> extreme relativism - in my view), to more dialectical views in
>>> which concepts do reflect real practical contingences, at the same
>>> time as they serve as tools within discourses (many in philosophy
>>> of science, e.g. Young and in psychology - e.g., Ian Paker make
>>> similar arguments). In history of science, it was Russian
>>> philosopher Hessen who argued for this quite passionately in the
>>> 1940s, shocking members of the then established positivistically
>>> oriented community of historians of science. Young gives a
>>> fascinating account of the storm Hessen caused at some
>>> international congress on history of science with his presentation
>>> on Newton. This is my very brief selection, but there are many many
>>> more - as Victor points to readings in this direction. For me
>>> personally, this social-practical and history-context embedded
>>> nature of concepts was one of the first stark realizations that
>>> helped me throughout all my subsequent work (being really one of
>>> the threads of all my works, starting from early 1980s, I apologize
>>> for making this allusions to earlier works - this is meant as
>>> adding to context).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My take on all of this, again, is about the importance of seeing -
>>> and using - concepts as embedded within the flow of practical
>>> activity/ engagements with the reality out in the world and its
>>> challenges, as well as the reverse movements between concepts-
>>> practice (the two being in unity but not in equivalence).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't know if this agrees with what Victor meant (will read his
>>> posting more closely now).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Incidentally, this is the way to answer also Mike's question - why
>>> subjectivity? Because the explanation has to do with the context. I
>>> will refer to this in the next message.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks to all who are still following the discussion (if there are
>>> some such people),
>>>
>>> A Stetsenko
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Peter Moxhay
>>> Sent: Thu 11/10/2005 12:25 PM
>>> To: Activity eXtended Mind Culture
>>> Subject: [xmca] concept as gambit
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Victor,
>>>
>>> You wrote:
>>>
>>>> the concept, is a gambit that is in fact a subjective challenge to
>>>> objective social practice (the idea is Hegelian though Hegel as an
>>>> idealist had a much more restricted concept of the negating effect
>>>> of the concept than that implicit in Marxian dialectics).
>>>
>>> I find this comment extremely clarifying (with respect to the ongoing
>>> discussion) and exciting. Could you perhaps provide references for
>>> further reading on this? In what works/sections would you say Hegel
>>> touches on this? Do you have any papers that expand on this comment?
>>>
>>> Also, I'm wondering whether this idea was really refused by _all_
>>> Soviet dialecticians...
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
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>>>
>>
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