Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Thanks, Martin. Actually, I need some help with PRECISELY this point right now. 
 
I'm writing an article on "word meaning as palimpsest". I want to use the seventy-fifth anniversary of Thinking and Speech as a kind of platform from which to attack mainstream applied linguistics, for whom language exists as a hypostatized formal system and has always done, well, at least since Saussure.
 
The mainstreamers like to say that we wild-eyed Vygotskyans are very nice people and do interesting work but the problem is that we've got no theory of language as a formal system (so says Mitchell and Myles, 1998: 161) and we can't make the kinds of neat predictions about the rate of learning and the route which learning takes which they can't make either (ditto, p. 162).
 
Of course the answer (my answer, anyway) is that language is NOT a formal system and can't be theorized that way, and that the "rate of learning" and the "route which learning takes" doesn't tell us what we want to know, but the rate of DEVELOPMENT and the route that takes just might.
 
And part of the argument goes like this. We Vygotskyans are really not socioculturalists. We're not even cultural-historicists. We're just phylo-socio-onto-microgeneticists. For that matter, we're not really Vygotskyans. We're Darwinian-Marxian-Vygotskyan-Integrationists. 
 
One of the reasons why Vygotsky didn't like to go around shouting about Marxian psychology was that if we start appending names to what we think on every scale of semio-history at which we think about it then our discipline will end up with more principal investigators than an astrophysics paper.
 
Another reason is (I think) Vygotsky really rejected supra-theories, and for good reason. If you look at Mescheryakov's wonderful little chart in the Cambridge Companion, he gives us four "genetic laws", which he renders something like this, where "^" means something like "is differentiated into" and "-->" means something like "is reorganized into".
 
NATURAL-->CULTURAL
                       ^
                  SOCIAL-->INDIVIDUAL
                                        ^
                                       EXTRAMENTAL-->INTRAMENTAL
                                                                           ^
                                                                         SPONTANEOUS-->SCIENTIFIC
 
Of course, it's very tempting to see this as a neat little palimpsest of human culture: the first law, in which natural functions are reorganized into cultural ones, represents phylogeny, the second represents cultural historical progress, the third ontogenesis, and the fourth represents microgenesis.
 
But the more I think about this, the fishier it looks. A natural "law" has no exceptions whatsoever. A socio-cultural law has infractions that are legally sanctionable, during ontogenesis, we learn laws (which we really need to start calling rules at this point) precisely by flouting them, and at the level of microgenesis, we hardly even know the rules are there unless we break them. Is there any non-metaphorical sense in which ALL of these semio-historical timescales can be said to be "lawful" or "rule-governed" or even "patterned"?
 
Sure enough, when we read Vygotsky (p. 114 of Chapter Four) he's a lot more modest. The four laws are all there, but only in the context of ontogenesis. Here's the Hanfmann and Vakar version:
 

"Our investigations show that speech development follows the same course and obeys the same laws as the development of all the other mental operations involving the use of signs, such as counting or mnemonic memorizing. We found that these operations generally develop in four stages. The first is the primitive or natural stage, corresponding to preintellectual speech and preverbal thought, when these operations appear in their original form, as they were evolved at the primitive level of behavior."
 
"Next comes the stage which we might call “naive psychology”, by analogy with what is called “naive physics” – the child’s experience with the physical properties of his own body and of the objects around him, and the application of this experience to the use of tools: the first exercise of the child’s budding practical intelligence."
 
"This phase is very clearly defined in the speech development of the child. It is manifested by the correct use of grammatical forms and structures before the child has understood the logical operations for which they stand. The child may operate with subordinate clauses, with words like because, if, when, and but, long before he really grasps causal, conditional, or temporal relations. He masters syntax of speech before syntax of thought.
Piaget’s studies proved that grammar develops before logic and that the child learns relatively late the mental operations corresponding to the verbal forms he has been using for a long time."
 
"With the gradual accumulation of naive psychological experience, the child enters a third stage, distinguished by external signs, external operations that are used as aids in the solution of internal problems. That is the stage when the child counts on his fingers, resorts to mnemonic aids, and so on. In speech development it is characterized by egocentric speech."
 
"The fourth stage we call the “ingrowth” stage. The external operation turns inward and undergoes a profound change in the process. The child begins to count in his head, to use “logical memory,” that is, to operate with inherent relationships and inner signs. In speech development this is the final stage of inner, soundless speech. There remains a constant interaction between outer and inner operations, one form effortlessly and frequently changing into the other and back again. Inner speech may come very close in form to external speech or even become exactly like it when it serves as preparation for external speech – for instance, in thinking over a lecture to be given. There is no sharp division between inner and external behavior, and each influences the other."
 
Sure, we can see that the first "stage" is a kind of residue laid down by phylogenetic evolution, just as the second one is an archaeological remnant of sociocultural progress, and the third represents the remains of the ontogenetic mastery of tools and signs and self. 
 
But we can also see that to the extent that we can really talk about "laws", we cannot talk about microgenesis, and to the extent we want to talk about "rules" we cannot talk about phylogenesis. 
 
I think it's even stretching it to call microgenesis rule-bound; "norms" is probably more suitable, and even then what we are really interested in is precisely the nonnormative. It's not just that at each stage some things recede into the background and others get foregrounded. It's that the scale of development itself has to develop. 
 
On some level, phylogenesis, cultural-historical progress, ontogenesis, and microgenesis are all one thing--namely time and the changes wrought thereby. But the changes and above all the means by which they are wrought are qualitatively different.
 
The laws of phylogenesis are really not useful in describing the norms of microgenesis; the connection is of such generality that referring to it as a system of laws really has to be a violation of Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
 
 
 
 
 
 


--- On Thu, 1/1/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, January 1, 2009, 12:22 PM

It's another occasion when access to the Russian original for
"discarded"
would be helpful. After all, Vygotsky wrote of sublation as both destruction
and preservation. My sense when reading Minnick was that when he wrote of
Vygotsky trying out and rejecting a series of candidates for unit of
analysis, one might instead see Vygotsky as exploring a complex totality,
bringing first one aspect and then another to the fore. He wrote that
"When
the word sublation is used in relation to some organic feature, this does
not mean that this feature is eliminated. Instead, the feature is sublated
and preserved, embedded somewhere within; it recedes into the background,
yielding to those regular features which arose at later stages.² This seems
to me true *in* V's account of development (where reflexes are not
eliminated but embedded) and *of* V's account of development, where a unit
of analysis isn't abandoned but moves into the background as another moves
to the foreground. 

Martin

On 12/31/08 10:52 AM, "David Kellogg"
<vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Oh, I don't think that an oak is a sublated willow. And I do think
that LSV
> II, the Vygotsky of the psychological system and the criss-crossing lines
of
> development, is a sublation of LSV I, the Vygotsky of the instrumental
act.
>  
> Vygotsky himself says this, though, and the end of the beginning of
Thinking
> and Speech:
>  
> "This book is the product of nearly ten years work. Many of the
questions that
> emerged in the investigation were not apparent to us when we began.
We were
> frequently forced to reconsider our positions during the investigation.
> Consequently, the results of a great deal of hard work had to be
discarded.
> Much of the remainder had to be redone, restructured, or
rewritten." (p. 40).
>  
> I take it this is Vygotsky's last word, both because of the phrase
"ten years
> work", which covers Vygotsky's entire career in psychology and
because it's
> the preface to his posthumously published work (which originally did not
even
> have a Chapter One; internal evidence suggests that in the first draft the
> Piaget chapter was the first one).
>  
> So it's LSV III speaking to us from his deathbed, inviting us to
consider
> carefully what exactly was discarded, what was redone, and what was gained
> thereby. 
>  
> And here we are, seventy-five years later, doing exactly that. For
example, a
> lot of our discussions seem to revolve around the question of whether (as
> neo-Vygotskyans believe) the fixation on object-oriented activity is the
work
> of a mature, continuing LSVIII or whether it was simply a discarded part
of
> LSV I (as I believe).
>  
> My problems with Chapter Five (discussed in this thread) are similar. They
> have to do with whether lines of development themselves become
functionally
> differentiated. LSV II says no, but LSV III (as I read him) says yes.
>  
> Finally, one of the most enduring threads of xmca has to be the zone of
> proximal development. It seems to me that this was the way in which LSV
III
> sublated the problems with LSV II: the idea of the psychological system
was
> reformulated to include a social situation of development, but this meant
> discarded the idea that lines of development do not functionally
> differentiate.
>  
> For some problems (which we can call, somewhat misleadingly, psychological
> problems), LSV III's unit of analysis is consciousness and his
explanatory
> principle is the social situation of proximal development (the classroom,
the
> playground, etc.), which is in turn composed of two mutually defining
> elements: imitation and generalization.
>  
> But as Bronfenbrenner points out, some of the most important problems the
> child experiences are in the "exo-system", a set of
relationships (e.g.
> parental employment) in which the child has no actual role and cannot take
> part. Where does that fit?
>  
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>  
>  
> 
> --- On Wed, 12/31/08, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> From: Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
> To: packer@duq.edu, "xmc a xmx" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 12:51 AM
> 
> Martin,
> 
> I'm really struck by your question as to whether David finds your
> counter-proposal (i.e., LSV developing (e.g., cultivating, growing) his
ideas
> dialectically (e.g., seed, sprout, vegetative, florescent))  reasonable,
(I am
> supposing)  in contrast to David's interrpretation that " ...he
was
> constantly throwing everything away and starting over from the beginning.
> ". 
> 
>  Insofar as every question presupposes a range of answers (a domain),
what is
> the domain over which you expect a response?
> 
>  Do you imagine a willow might become an oak upon reflection?  Are you
> casting flies?  
> 
> I'm curious.
> 
> Paul
> 
> --- On Tue, 12/30/08, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 1:24 PM
> 
> David,
> 
> For a while - at least ever since reading Norris Minick's Introduction
> (which is insightful in many ways) - I've been thinking that Vygotsky
> didn't
> so much change his mind as develop in his thinking dialectically. I know
> that's in danger of sounding cliched, but I think I have found places
in
> his
> texts where his earlier concepts are not simply abandoned or erased, but
> truly aufgehoben (it's that grammatically correct) - maintained and
> replaced
> at the same time.
> 
> I haven't had the time to pursue this point systematically, and right
now I
> can't even offer an example (though if I were try to find one it would
one
> where reflexes show up again in his late writings). But does the
suggestion
> strike you as resonable?
> 
> Martin 
> 
> 
> On 12/30/08 12:14 PM, "David Kellogg"
> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> Second the motion! I think that one of the reasons why LSV is SO
impatient
>> with Stern (and also Werner) is that he really can't understand
> thinkers who
>> never change their minds. LSV had only ten years to work (and thought
he
> had
>> less). Yet he was constantly throwing everything away and starting
over
> from
>> the beginning. That's courage.
>>  
>> But of course that means that almost everything we read of
Vygotsky's
> has to
>> be read dendrochronologically, the way we look at tree rings. This is
>> particularly true of Thinking and Speech, parts of which data from
1929
>> (Chapter Four) and parts from 1931 (Chapter Five) and parts from his
> deathbed
>> (Chapter Six and Seven).
>>  
>> LSV is always going on about geological strata (Kretschmer). But
perhaps
>> the best metaphor for reading somebody who scribbles over everything
> he's ever
>> done every three or four years would be archaeological, or better yet,
>> textological: a palimpsest.
>>  
>> So far the most useful guide to the Vygotskyan palimpsest I've
read on
> this to
>> date is Minick's intro to Thinking and Speech, now reprinted as
the
> very first
>> chapter in Daniels' mistitled "Introduction (sic) to
> Vygotsky", 2005,
>> Routledge.
>>  
>> Minick's palimpsestization (?) corresponds very well to most
other
>> periodizations, including Veresov (though Veresov adds a pre-Marxist
> Vygotsky
>> from before 1924 which for rather tendentious reasons he finds very
>> important). It will be VERY interesting to see if the work Jonna
mentions
>> confirms it.
>>  
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>> 
>> --- On Tue, 12/30/08, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Passages from Chapter 5 of LSV
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Cc: "Jussi Silvonen" <jussi.silvonen@joensuu.fi>
>> Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 8:58 AM
>> 
>> We would welcome Jussi's input, thanks Jonna. We almost have a
> "history
>> of
>> psych" group here on
>> xmca at presentl. Perhaps a strength we should find a way to use
better.
>> mike
>> 
>>> a
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Mike Cole kirjoitti 29.12.2008 kello 2.55:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>  Ooops, forgot to cc boris on my reply to david. He is author of,
> among
>>>> other
>>>> interesting articles, the article on "LSV's
> terminology"
>> in the Daniels et
>>>> al
>>>> Cambridge companion to vygotsky.
>>>> 
>>>> I forwarded the message to him.
>>>> mike
>>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Mike Cole
> <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>  Thanks for these observations and inferences, David.
>>>>> The task of reconstructing the chronology of LSV's
> thinking is
>> a
>>>>> formidable
>>>>> one. I wonder if anyone anywhere has published such a
> chronology.
>> I will
>>>>> cc boris meshcheryakov who will know, if anybody does.
>>>>> 
>>>>> mike
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 10:42 PM, David Kellogg <
>>>>> vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On p. 131 of Chapter Five, LSV already has the concept
of
> the
>>>>>> psychological system, that is, the linkage of
disparate
>> functions into a
>>>>>> single Gestalt, e.g. attention, association,
judgement,
>> representation,
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> motivation in activity.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> But he denies that this linkage of disparate functions
has
> any
>> effect on
>>>>>> the functions themselves. The relations between
functions
>> change. But
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> functions themselves do not change.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Now, what causes the relationships between these
functions
> to
>> change?
>>>>>> That
>>>>>> is not clear. One possible answer is
"activity",
> and
>> that is the answer
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> activity theorists give. But we can see that LSV is
not
>> entirely
>>>>>> satisfied
>>>>>> with this answer.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There are two problems. The first is that as Mike
pointed
> out
>> LSV is
>>>>>> using
>>>>>> "activity" in a non-technical sense, it is
> really
>> just the task plus the
>>>>>> contraints. (Note that Prout actually translates
>> "task" as "problem").
>>>>>> In
>>>>>> other words, an "activity" is just a
subject, an
>> object, and a tool.
>>>>>> That
>>>>>> brings us back to the old stimulus-response unit with
>> mediating
>>>>>> artefact!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The second is that Vygotsky suspects that when the
> relations
>> between
>>>>>> functions change, the functions DO change internally
as
> well.
>> We know,
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> example, that when role play is reconstrued as rule
based
>> games, the
>>>>>> "roles"
>>>>>> of rule based games are quite different, more
abstract. So
> is
>> the goal,
>>>>>> which is not to make an imaginary situation but to win
a
> real
>> prize.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So why does Vygotsky stress in this passage that the
basic
>> processes of
>>>>>> attention, association, judgment, representation, and
> mindset
>> do not
>>>>>> actually change? I think there are two reasons.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> First of all, he is trying to critically appropriate
the
> work
>> of people
>>>>>> like Buhler who deny that there is anything
fundamentally
> new
>> in the
>>>>>> transitional age. His way of doing this is to say that
> they
>> are correct,
>>>>>> but
>>>>>> they are ignoring the way in which the familiar old
> functions
>> are united
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> a new Gestalt.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Secondly, this is old work, first carried out in 1929
and
>> written up
>>>>>> some
>>>>>> time in 1931. LSV has not yet conceptualized the
actual
>> mechanism by
>>>>>> which
>>>>>> differentiation takes place WITHIN functions and not
just
>> BETWEEN them.
>>>>>> That
>>>>>> does not happen until 1932, when he formulates the
zone of
>> proximal
>>>>>> development, and he does not write about it until
Chapter
> Six.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>> Seoul National University of Education
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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