Martin/Natalia.....
Is Vygotsky using the term reflection in the Soviet manner? in that case,
Martin's
paraphrasing may not be appropriate.
mike
On 12/2/06, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
> Natalia, thanks very much. The cyrillic didn't come through, but I can
> piece
> together the English:
>
> "after all a cornerstone of materialism is a proposition about (that)
> consciousness and the brain are, both, a product (of nature), (and) a part
> of nature, (the one) that reflects the rest of nature"
>
> Might you be able to take a look at the other two excerpts in the original
> Russian?
>
> Let me think about this 'out loud' a little. This is the point in Crisis
> where Vygotsky is specifying what a truly Marxist psychology, a 'general'
> psychology, must study. A science, he insists, studies not appearances but
> what really exists. Optics, for example, studies mirror surfaces and light
> rays, not the images we see in the mirror, for the latter are phantoms. A
> scientific psychology must study the real processes that can give rise to
> such appearances, not (just) the appearances. [It's not clear to me how
> far
> to go with this seeming analogy between the way a mirror reflects and the
> way the brain/Cs 'reflects the rest of nature'.] So any descriptive,
> intuitionist phenomenology must be rejected. What really exists? A
> materialist maintains that the brain exists, and consciousness too. V
> cites
> Lenin to the effect that what is matter, what is objective, is what exists
> independently of human consciousness. And, seemingly paradoxically,
> consciousness can exist outside our consciousness: for we can be conscious
> without being self-conscious. I can see without knowing that I see. So a
> general psychology must study consciousness, but to know the mind we can't
> rely on introspection, in part because in introspection mind splits into
> subject and object: a dualism arises in the act of self-reflection. We
> can't
> establish a psychological science only on the basis of what we experience
> directly (as Husserl tried to do); it must be based on knowledge, which is
> the result of analysis, not merely of experience. And what is analysis?
> Complicated answer put briefly: analysis lies at the intersection of
> methodology and practice: it is the exhaustive study of a single case in
> all
> its connections, taken as a social microcosm. It involves what Marx
> (following Hegel) called abstraction.
>
> I'll confess I'm still not clear what V is proposing as the solutions to
> the
> epistemological and ontological problems that he has distinguished. It
> looks
> to me as though he is saying that the epistemological problem - that
> concerning the relation between subject and object - arises only when one
> accepts uncritically the dualism that arises in introspection (or 'blind
> empiricism'?). So once one rejects introspection this problem dissolves.
> The
> implication is that if one begins not with introspection but with
> practice,
> one avoids any subject-object dualism. The ontological problem -
> concerning
> the relation between mind and matter - is what he's trying to study, no?
> How
> is a brain-in-a-body-in-a-social-world the basis for consciousness, then
> self-consciousness, then self-mastery and knowledge?
>
> Hmmm
>
> Martin
>
>
> > Hi Martin,
> > I found it --- in Russian, vol.1 of "Sobranie Sochinenii", on page 416.
> > It reads in Russian as very similar to the English quote your posted
> above:
> >
> > "Âåäü -- after all-- ê›àåóãîëüíûì êàìíåì ìàòå›èàëèçìà -- a corneestone
> of
> > materialism -- ÿâëÿåòñÿ ïîëîæåíèå î òîì, -- is a proposition about, ---
> ÷òî
> > ñîçíàíèå è ìîçã åñòü ï›îäóêò --- (that) consciousness and the brain are,
> > both, a product (of nature),--- ÷àñòü ï›è›îäû, ---(and) a part of
> nature, --
> > îò›àæàflùàflöàÿ îñòàëüíófl ï›è›îäó -- (the one) that reflects the rest of
> > nature"
> >
> > Or something like this.
> >
> > Hope this is helpful, and not making things more confusing.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Natalia.
>
>
> On 11/30/06 2:47 PM, "Natalia Gajdamaschko" <nataliag@sfu.ca> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:55:29 -0500 xmca@weber.ucsd.edu wrote:
> >>
> >> A few pages later:
> >>
> >> ""After all, a cornerstone of materialism is the proposition that
> >> consciousness and the brain are a product, a part of nature, which
> reflect
> >> the rest of nature" (327).
> >>
> >> The last sentence is not grammatical English, so something has clearly
> > gone
> >> wrong with the translation.
> >>
> >> If anyone has access to the original Russian and could comment,that
> >> would be
> >> great. (Page numbers are from the version in The Essential Vygotsky.)
> >>
> >> Martin
> >
> >
>
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>
>
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