Re: [xmca] Vygotsky ?s historicism

>So we have a German who is confused about that as well as a lot of Frenchmen.
Andy

>... By the way, Andy, Marcuse says that Marx based chunks of the 1844
>manuscripts on Hegel's acount of lord and bondsman in the Phenomenology.
>It´s not just those crazy French! :)
>
>Martin
>
>
>On 4/6/08 6:24 PM, "David Kellogg" <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Andy--
> >
> > Since the ideal can also be material, how does the ideal/material
> > distinction help to distinguish what is artefact from what is nature? Did I
> > get you right?
> >
> > I always think of the ideal in terms of the potential. I suppose for most
> > people (including Halliday) this would imply that somehow the material
> is one
> > possible instantiation of the ideal, and this leads to a distinctly
> Platonic
> > world view.
> >
> > But that's not how I see it at all. I think of the potential as something
> > that the human mind constructs directly on the basis of real, lived
> > experience. In a sense, the ideal is an abstract instantiation of the
> material
> > rather than the material being a concrete instantiation of the ideal.
> >
> > I suppose I'm in big trouble now!
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >
> > Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> > I think part of the difficulty with getting people to accept that
> unity of
> > material and ideal is that people generally take ideal to be almost
> > synonymous with "subjective" or "in consciousness" whereas "material"
> > simply means "outside of and independent of consciousness". For us,
> > however, "ideal" can also be material, distinguishing what is artifact from
> > what is nature.
> >
> > Andy
> > At 02:37 PM 6/04/2008 -0700, Mike Cole wrote:
> >> Andy tells me that my attempts to color code do not work any better than
> >> my ideas! :-) I'll see if caps help in the future.
> >>
> >> Andy-- I intepreted Martin's interpretion to derive from our earlier
> >> discussions of material/ideal psychologies and the effort to supercede
> them
> >> with a new psychology a la LSV. In that disucssion we started to come to
> >> a position that consciousness emerges from interaction between
> >> human organism and environment and in THAT sense is objective. Probably
> >> just another of my confusions, probably.
> >> mike
> >>
> >> On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Andy Blunden
> >> <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>> I don't really know what it would mean to say that "consciousness is ...
> >>> objective." If consciousness is objective what is not objective, what is
> >>> subjective? Activity is objective for sure, but if we say "consciousness
> >>> is objective" surely we destroy the very meaning of subject and object,
> >>> not just a distinction or a dichotomy.
> >>>
> >>> Classical German philosophy offered several solutions to this problem
> >>> represented by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Marx. The
> >>> "consciousness is ... objective" solution, i.e., erasing the difference
> >>> between subjective and objective is, I think, the Schelling solution,
> >>> which I see as a declaration that there ought not to be such a problem.
> >>> But the fact is that there is such a problem, namely intelligent, active
> >>> human beings with some kind of ability to have conceptions of the world.
> >>> How is it so?
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> At 01:48 PM 6/04/2008 -0700, you wrote:
> >>>> I like that formulation a lot, Martin. Little chance to gain general
> >>>> agreement, but perhaps a chance
> >>>> for some finer grained pointers toward a more satisfactory formulation.
> >>>>
> >>>> thanks
> >>>> mike
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Martin Packer
> >>>> <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Mike,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> No, I agree with your characterization of "embryology onwards..."
> When V
> >>>>> writes of "psychological [mental] functions" perhaps the problem is
> with
> >>>>> me
> >>>>> rather than him, but it's very easy to take for granted that
> perception,
> >>>>> attention, memory, emotion, thought are distinct mental systems. We all
> >>>>> see
> >>>>> to now exactly what each one is, and we think we can consider them
> >>>>> separately.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> OK, let's assume the problem is with me. So V immediately redefines
> >>>>> psychological functions as "forms of the activity of consciousness." In
> >>>>> Sasha's terms, this would be "object-directed activity," no? If
> >>>>> consciousness is real and objective, to be located in the interaction
> >>>>> between person and environment, as I have argued, then the different
> >>>> forms
> >>>>> of its activity would also be real and objective, always aspects of a
> >>>>> whole,
> >>>>> albeit one that is organized differently over ontogenesis.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Martin
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 4/6/08 1:29 PM, "Mike Cole"
> >>>> <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Martin and Sasha-
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I am having trouble following all the differernt threads and have this
> >>>>> idea
> >>>>>> it would be a good idea
> >>>>>> to summarize where we think each of them stands in terms of points
> >>>>> agreed
> >>>>>> upon, appoints clearly
> >>>>>> disagreed about, and points of confusion (on the assumption we can
> >>>>>> distinguish)!! A brief comment on
> >>>>>> a move made here by Martin that strikes me as a misdirection: I
> Bold in
> >>>>> red
> >>>>>> the part I want to focus on below.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Martin Packer
> >>>> <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Hi Sasha,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I would like to respond to just two of the points in your message,
> >>>>> though
> >>>>>>> I
> >>>>>>> think they are central. The first is something I've begun to think
> >>>>> about
> >>>>>>> but
> >>>>>>> have not taken very far.* It has been troubling me that Vygotsky
> >>>> adopts
> >>>>> a
> >>>>>>> notion of "psychological functions" which seems from the start to
> >>>>> divide
> >>>>>>> consciousness into separate components which then have to be stitched
> >>>>> back
> >>>>>>> together again.* I've been Goggling without much success to try to
> >>>>>>> discover
> >>>>>>> the history of this 'functionalism,' and some of it seems to be
> >>>>> medieval,
> >>>>>>> some of it even Greek (though perhaps the translations can be
> >>>>>>> questioned?).
> >>>>>>> I'd welcome eduction on this from any/everybody out there!
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Where does this idea come from? We don'[t need lsv to know that at
> >>>>> birth,
> >>>>>> and before
> >>>>>> birth for normal term infants, that the different "psychological
> >>>>> functions"
> >>>>>> are no "separate
> >>>>>> components". From early embryology onward (at least!!) we are dealing
> >>>>> with a
> >>>>>> complex,
> >>>>>> morphologically and functionally differentiated organism|environment
> >>>>> (even
> >>>>>> layers of
> >>>>>> envrionment), the CONFIGURATIONS of which change over development. We
> >>>>> are
> >>>>>> not talking
> >>>>>> about stitching together Frankenstein here, we are talking about
> >>>> organic
> >>>>>> evolution. Both
> >>>>>> organism, "its" enviroment, and their inter-relationships are all and
> >>>>> always
> >>>>>> changing vis a vis
> >>>>>> each other.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> That is how I understand the starting point of our analysis. Is
> >>>> this not
> >>>>>> something we can agree upon?
> >>>>>> And if not, what is a formulation we might be able to start with??
> >>>>>> mike
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It seems that one would indeed, as you sugest, want to both start and
> >>>>> end
> >>>>>>> with monism: the neonate doesn't have distinct fuctions such as
> >>>> memory,
> >>>>>>> attention, emotion. The adult has a smoothly integrated system of
> such
> >>>>>>> functions. It's certainly the case that Vygotsky avoided trying to
> >>>>> analyse
> >>>>>>> these functions separately, and indeed insisted in Thought and
> >>>> Language
> >>>>>>> that
> >>>>>>> what was new in his appoach was that it was the study of their
> >>>>>>> *relations*.
> >>>>>>> For example, although Thought & Language seems to be a study of two
> >>>>>>> distinct
> >>>>>>> functions and their interrelation, Vygotsky began the book by
> >>>> insisting
> >>>>>>> that
> >>>>>>> consciousness has to be understood as a unity of functions and
> >>>> that any
> >>>>>>> analysis of these two has to be conducted against a background of all
> >>>>> the
> >>>>>>> others.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> But why talk of "functions" at all?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On 4/2/08 3:54 PM, "Alexander Surmava"
> >>>> <monada@netvox.ru> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> To correspond this
> >>>>>>>> statement with dialectical logic we have to turn it upside down and
> >>>>>>> state
> >>>>>>>> something like this: perception is an abstract form of conceptual
> >>>>>>> thinking
> >>>>>>>> while ³multiple psychological functions?do not ³work
> together?lt;br>>>>
> >>>>>>>> > because
> >>>>>>> they
> >>>>>>>> do not exist anywhere beyond multiple psychological theories.
> (By the
> >>>>>>> way,
> >>>>>>>> A.Leont¹ev in his late years realized the necessity of formulation
> >>>>>>> basically
> >>>>>>>> new, monistic, not knocked together from different ³psychological
> >>>>>>> functions?lt;br>>>> > >>> psychological theory but let this task
> to us
> >>>>>>> ?his successors.)
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Your second point is that we need to pay attention not just to
> the ape
> >>>>> but
> >>>>>>> also to the man. Here too I fully agree with you. When I read
> Vygotsky
> >>>>> it
> >>>>>>> is
> >>>>>>> with later thinkers in view, though for me it is not Leont'ev but
> >>>>> thinkers
> >>>>>>> (and actors) such as Bourdieu and Foucault. I'm not suggesting this
> >>>>> choice
> >>>>>>> of thinkers is better than yours, only that it's easier for me
> because
> >>>>>>> these
> >>>>>>> later thinkers are located within work I am more familiar with,
> >>>> such as
> >>>>>>> critical theory and phenomenology.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Martin
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> When the fact of development take place, when after Kant do
> >>>>>>>> appear firstly Hegel and lately Marx we have only one chance to
> >>>>>>> understand
> >>>>>>>> both later thinker and his predecessor starting from the later, more
> >>>>>>>> developed theory. It sounds as paradox, but that is objective
> >>>>>>> dialectical
> >>>>>>>> paradox of the process of cognition.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>>
> >>>>>
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> >>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
> >>> Andy Blunden :
> >>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3
> >>> 9380 9435, mobile 0409 358 651
> >
> > Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> > mobile 0409 358 651
> >
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Sun Apr 6 18:43 PDT 2008