[xmca] consciousness redefined

On March 16 Michael Roth writes:
When you closely analyze, then you will see that it no longer makes
any sense to speak about inside outside dichotomy, but
simultaneously, it forces you to think differently about Latour's
agency, which is something different, but which is captured in the
passivity moment in my model. Passivity captures how the world pushes
back at us, affects us, when we act toward it. Think about touching,
you may intend to learn about something through touching it, but at
the same time you have to open yourself up to be touched b y the
world, which leaves impressions in/on your body, that actually lead
to sensation, the first important moment in ANL's theory of
consciousness.

Latour does not talk about consciousness, which cannot be thought
independent of the world, to which it stands in an irreducible and
constitutive relationship. That is why his agency is different from
CHAT agency, or sociological agency. :-)"

Latour may not talk about consciousness but Valsiner sure does : )

However he is much more specific in his definition and refers to it as the
"process structure of semiotic mediation" Abstract from Human Development
volume 44:

*Development of semiotic mediation of psychological functions entails
construction and use of signs to regulate both interpersonal and
intrapersonal psychological processes. The latter can be viewed as
regulated through a hierarchy of semiotic mechanisms. It is demonstrated
that semiotic mediation leads to the creation of psychological problems as
well as to their solutions. Semiotic mediation guarantees both flexibility
and inflexibility of the human psychological system, through the processes
of abstracting generalization and contextualizing specification, which
operate through the layers of the semiotic regulation hierarchy. Context
specificity of psychological phenomena is an indication of general
mechanisms that generate variability. Much has been written about the role
of signs - semiotic mediators - in psychology over recent decades. Usually
more or less elaborate claims in favor of the importance of signs -
semiotic mediators, words, 'voices', meanings - in human psychological
worlds have been made [Cole, 1996; Shweder, 1995; Wertsch, 1991, 1998].
That importance is here taken for granted, and the question addressed moves
beyond the discourse about the social nature of the human individual psyche
[Valsiner & Van der Veer, 2000]. In which ways could one conceptualize the
functioning of signs in the regulation of psychological processes? The
present elaboration is based on previous work along similar lines
[Valsiner, 1996, 1997a, 1998a, 1999]. By a focus on regulation, a systemic
perspective is immediately evoked. The system that is being regulated
entails psychological processes of intra- and interpsychological
communication. These processes are mutually related in a hierarchical
organizational order - some of them (higher psychological functions, based
on the operation of signs) controlling others (lower, nonintentional
psychological functions, or flow of personal experience). The hierarchy can
be viewed as open to changes [including reversals, or formation of
intransitive order - see Valsiner, 1997d]. The person is viewed as
inclusively separated from its environment [Valsiner, 1997a, 1998c]. The
intrapsychological system is cultural through the inclusion of semiotic
regulators into the hierarchy of psychological processes [Valsiner, 1998a].
How that system works in its immediate relatedness with the environment is
the target of the present theoretical construction.

Copyright © 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel*

When this concept is a tripartite with Scribner and Cole's theory of
literacy practice and the functional method of double stimulation it his
hard to go astray when studying human development.

eric

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Received on Sun Mar 16 17:36 PDT 2008