Steve,
To tell you the truth , I still don't know the weight , height , and
place of AT within the whole CHAT . Is there , in principle , such a
thing as AT within the works of Vygotksy ? Where is it ? Where are
they ? Apparently , if the division is right whether with Jussi or
with David , whoever , Vygotsky III said a irreversible good-bye to
the AT . Then why CHAT ? Don't you think Faith overshadows Reason
when supporting Sign-Belief ? You might ask me the same question vis
a vis Leontiev : OK ! I'm not yet in the position to say for certain
if Vygotsky went wrong at some point and if he did , where exactly
was it ? I really need to read more . But with Leontiev , I don't
see so many things wrong . Just I know Leontiev here occupies a very
lower case UNFORTUNATELY as Marx does . One very good respectable
learned active participant once wrote to me Leontiev was one of
those whom he should stay away from . Now , I sent you the article/
lecture by Ilyenko
on Alexandr Meshcheryakov , which now will be sent to others . This
and these we owe to Dot Robbins . I'm not so indeterminate over
providing sort of a discussion ; however , when I read the writing ,
for a moment I thought as if Ilyenko were alive and knew about the
discussion , so he aimed at this article . Most and majority of the
lines are direct responses to the Sign-Belief . The secondary ,
derivative position of sign and all semiosis vis a vis real object ,
artificial objects , actions with them etc.etc. is so clear in this
writing which leaves no doubt as to the rejection of the supremacy
of SIGN over ACTION (within bounds of AT) when compared one to the
other .
When reading Jussi's paper , I marked as usual the points I liked to
think about afterwards , but after reading Ilyenko's writing , which
is also marked , I saw they could be seen as contrasts . And there
is always the option of * delete * for non-enthusiasts . I , as
one , always say * welcome * to whatever is sent to us from
comrades , let alone getting annoyed .
Best
Haydi
--- On Fri, 1/30/09, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote:
From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's Plural Discourse!!
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, January 30, 2009, 2:47 PM
Some comments on Jussi's very interesting paper. Semiotic mediation,
socio-behaviorism, epistemological breaks.
********************************
First, on semiotic mediation.
Jussi's discussion of Vygotsky's theory of semiotic mediation being
the
basis of consciousness, formulated late in Vygotsky's short career,
and how
it transitioned from an instrumentalist concept, seems to be his
paper's
strongest aspect, where Jussi assembles the most persuasive quotes and
arguments. I believe this assemblage adds up to an unfortunately
narrow
assessment of Vygotsky's overall approach to psychology and
consciousness,
but Jussi makes a strong case that needs to be taken very
seriously. I applaud
his scholarship and work on this. He offers a worthy argument. It
appears that
his work dovetails very nicely with many of David Kellogg's insights
into
Vygotsky's last and most important work, Thinking and Speech,
including
David's emphasis on semiotic mediation.
I owe Sasha a serious response to his recent comprehensive post,
which replied,
among other things, to my objection to what I perceived as an
erroneous
reduction of Vygotsky to a theory of sign mediation. Again, as
above, I claimed
that reducing Vygotsky - meaning, Vygotsky I, II or III, to use
David's
terminology - to his 1932-34 theory of semiotic mediation, is a narrow
assessment of his approach to psychology. Have I managed to climb
my way out on
a limb? We'll see ... :-))
My question at this point, since Jussi has spoken so well, is to
Sasha - what
is your evaluation of Jussi's take on Vygotsky's theory of semiotic or
sign mediation? Do you agree, for example, with Jussi's description
of
Vygotsky's views on sign mediation, for example, in the section "Sign
and Meaning" (pg 11) where Jussi says things like:
"If the lower forms of activity are characterised by the immediacy of
psychological processes, the higher psychological functions are
characterized
by sign-mediation."
"It is clear for him [Vygotsky] that the sign mediation ‘is the most
important distinguishing characteristic of all higher mental
functions.’ (L.
S. Vygotsky, 1999b, 41)."
"The use of signs results in a completely new and specific structure
of
behaviour in man, a structure that breaks with the traditions of
natural
behaviour and creates new forms of cultural-psychological activity.
(L. S.
Vygotsky, 1999b, 47)."
"There is no sign without meaning. ‘The formation of meaning is the
main
function of sign. Meaning is
everywhere where there is a sign --- meaning is inherent in the sign.’
(Vygotsky, 1997h, 134, 136)."
Also, Sasha, if you would, please repeat, even if ever so briefly,
what you
find incorrect about Vygotsky's views here, as Jussi has expressed
them.
*************************************
Second, on socio-behaviorism.
Another theme in Jussi's paper is that Vygotsky went through three
stages,
the first, behaviorism.
David sees Jussi's three stages as overlapping quite a bit with his
Vygotsky I, II, and III, which he bases on Norris Minick's analysis.
Similar how? They strike me as quite different, except for perhaps
seeing
1932-1934 as a specific phase. I like Minick's analysis myself - it
is a
good starting point for a very important study. Certainly, Vygotsky
was in
constant transition his whole career.
But was there really more than one Vygotsky? Were there enough
Vygotskys to
satisfy both David's and Jussi's sequences? Are there enough LSV's
for each of us to have several Vygotsky's of our very own? :-))
Anyway,
Plenum CW Vol 1 is on Google Books (yay!) and here is the Minick
article.
"The Development of Vygotsky's Thought: An Introduction" I see no
discussion of a behaviorist phase by Minick, btw.
http://books.google.com/books?id=u8UTfKFWb5UC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=vygotsky+collective+works+minick&source=web&ots=VAYusF0J-0&sig=xOE1A6IM58poswGLWdrpqawx7hU&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA33,M1
Jussi does well discussing the aspects of the transition from an
instrumental
to semiotic viewpoint, from early to late CHP, but I find his
discussion of
Vygotsky's so-called "socio-behaviorist" phase unconvincing. His
focus on pg 3-5 in his paper on a 1925 essay by Vygotsky, found in
Plenum CW Vol
3. Jussi offers a reading of that essay that is, in an important
way, the
opposite of mine. I appreciate that Jussi's paper got me to take
this close
look at Vygotsky's 1925 essay. I had looked at it before, but somewhat
quickly. This time, I read it with great interest. In some
passages, Vygotsky
does sound like a behaviorist. And it is true that in this essay
Vygotsky
restricts himself to the terms of the behaviorism-reflexologism of
his time,
which was dominated by Pavlov (and according to Minick, Bekhterev)
in the Soviet
psychology of the time. My reading, which is certainly somewhat
speculative,
not having done the thorough study of Soviet psychology in the
1920's that
this kind of inquiry requires, is that Vygotsky was doing everything
he could to
prove, using Pavlovian terminology and his persuasive writing
abilities, that
the central subject of psychological research should be
consciousness, not
reflexes, and that behaviorism was simply dead wrong about that and
a lot of
things. My reading is that Vygotsky was attempting to **defeat**
behaviorism in
that essay, using its own terms. Or more precisely, relegate it to
the study
only of animal and human reflexes, which it indeed was making
important
discoveries in.
I think Jussi is right on a very important observation: Vygotsky is
certainly,
from our point of view looking back, being somewhat contradictory at
this point
in his career, in 1925. But rather than assess Vygotsky as
"committed to
behaviorism," I would assess him has committed to **anti**-
behaviorism and
**anti**-reflexology, but still not having found sufficient
arguments and
evidence to fully dismiss and move beyond them, that is, replace
them. So, as
part of his searing critique (and Vygotsky sure could cook, one of
the things
we love about him), he is forced to use behaviorism's own
discoveries and
terms to try to defeat them as serious contenders for hegemony in
Soviet
psychological research. At the time, this was a David and Goliath
endeavor..
For that moment in time, the behaviorist approach was one of the
most advanced
materialist psychology's available, but hopelessly and erroneously
committed
to denying the importance or even existence of consciousness and
will. It was a
materialist counterpoint, but a badly mistaken one, to subjectivist
psychology.
Vygotsky, to my knowledge, was unwavering in this assessment of
behaviorism -
its objectivist materialism was equally erroneous in its approach to
human
psychology as was the subjectivist idealism of other schools. One
understated
mind and ignored it, the other overstated and isolated it. That
1925 essay may
have been, in fact, LSV's goodbye letter to behaviorism, his funeral
address
to it. He was going to go study consciousness, and so should all
psychologists.
'Nice knowing y'all. 'Bye!'
In other words, my take on the 1925 essay Jussi cites is that
Vygotsky was
using dialectical thinking to challenge and stretch this mechanical
materialist
trend to its extremes, to force it over the boundaries it refused to
cross, with
a very deliberate intent on breaking its back in the process. His
1924 speech
that started his Moscow career was in that spirit, as was his
1926-27 Crisis
monograph wherever it mentions behaviorism, and to my knowledge,
everything he
ever said about behaviorism was also written with these intents. No
one
confuses cultural psychology or cultural-historical research with
behaviorism in
any way today. The record shows Vygotsky always opposed it. It
does not appear
historically supportable to characterize Vygotsky as a behaviorist, a
socio-behaviorist, a reflexologist, or a reactologist, even for a
month, let
alone from say 1917 through 1927. He was a die-hard opponent, and
never an
advocate of those schools. Yes?
I should add that I don't think discarding this aspect of Jussi's
paper
takes away from the insights he offers in the above-discussed
portions. If
anything, it removes a distraction.
Something that is always hard to do from a distance, and especially
from the
future, let alone a different country, is fully grasp the rhetorical
issues and
contexts that drive a given piece of ideological writing. Vygotsky
in 1925 was
still establishing his own turf, still even getting his doctorate,
still
integrating himself as a psychologist. Things were changing very
fast in the
USSR, and all over the world. These observations are only
indicative, and of
course don't prove that my reading is "better" than Jussi's.
My point is that there can be much more going on than meets the eye
when one
studies the meanings of quotes. To understand the quotes Jussi
offers, we need
to look at them historically for their full meaning.
One interesting viewpoint on this 1925 essay and Vygotsky's view of
behaviorism, is that of AN Leontyev, who wrote and introduction to
the Russian
version of this volume of the CW, "On Vygotsky's Creative
Development," where he discusses this essay and Vygotsky and
behaviorism on
pg 14 of the Plenum Vol 3 of the CW. There is no hint from Leontyev
that
Vygotsky went through a behaviorist phase. (Btw, what is
"socio"-behaviorism?) I am interested in who else has offered
commentary on the relationship of Vygotsky and behaviorism. I know
I for one
would benefit from others that have looked into this. And Jussi may
have more
insights and views in addition to those he shared in his paper.
********************
Finally, on Vygtosky's supposed epistemological breaks.
Here, Jussi, in my opinion, is on very thin ice. I am afraid that
neither
Althusser nor Foucault are much help to Jussi's thesis, since
neither were
discussing Vygotsky. Just because it might rain in London does not
mean it is.
The biggest problem with Jussi's thesis is that Vygotsky never
claimed or
observed he underwent a change in outlook of the magnitude of an
"epistemological break." (Or am I wrong? Please correct me on this if
I am!) The second biggest problem is that Vygotsky was very clear,
from at
least the early 20's, that he was ontologically and
epistemologically a
dialectical materialist. From this he never budged - in fact, he
consistently
grew more confident and capable as a Marxist theoretician. He
consistently
applied the methodology of dialectical and historical materialism to
psychology.
As a matter of fact, he made some significant improvements to Marxist
methodology, making him one of the preeminent Marxist theoreticians
of the 20th
Century. In my opinion, no epistemological assessment of Vygotsky
makes sense
without fully assessing him as a Marxist philosopher and
methodologist.
This is part of the content of those sharp words, "narrow,"
"one-sided," I have used in this regard. For me, to view Vygotsky as
first and foremost a semiotic mediationist, a theoretician of sign
mediation,
would be like regarding Marx as first and foremost an economic
analyst with an
interesting theory about labor. This would be a narrow, one-sided
assessment of
Marx's work, as I think it is Vygotsky's.
At the same time, Jussi's chart and discussion of "The development of
Vygotsky’s theory of signs as semiotic mediators" needs to be
scrutinized
closely and given serious consideration. He suggests not one but two
epistemological breaks, one between LSV's supposed socio-behaviorism
phase
and instrumentalist (early CHP) phase, and another, which he puts a
question
mark over, between early CHP, and late CHP, when LSV solidified his
his semiotic
approach to consciousness. I like, by the way, the way Jussi looks
for
"explanatory concepts" and "methodology of inquiry" to make
his analytical comparison. Thumbs up to the thinking that went into
that. It
does not demonstrate epistemological breaks, in my view, but it does
suggest
ways to look at the development of many of Vygotsky's ideas, in
addition to
his theory of signs as semiotic mediators.
But restricting one's view of Vygotsky's overall trajectory,
ideological development, research work and discoveries to just his
work on signs
- and judging "epistemological breaks" therefrom - to me loses sight
of far too many other important contributions by Vygotsky - and this
is very
important - the contributions of Vygotsky **and his associates**.
Vygotsky was
the leader of something much bigger than himself, something which
was broken up
by the Stalinist machine - but by no means killed off. Just delayed.
What is this something? As I hope I emphasized above, Jussi makes
some
valuable contributions to better understanding some important
**parts** of this
something. But, I think, one has to step back and look at much more
than just
Vygotsky's innovative ideas about the role of semiosis (sign use) in
human
consciousness and meaning-making to evaluate his work
epistemologically,
methodologically, and above all, as the founder of this "something,"
place-named for the time being cultural-historical psychology. Much
more. Yes?
Best,
- Steve
On Jan 29, 2009, at 10:42 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
David, I am being quite frank when I said I know nothing of this
topic. I
responded because I was asked to. But in any case, re Vygotsky vs.
Behaviourism,
I think I was basing myself on the Introduction to "Mind in Society"
so perhaps Mike could clarify for me.
Andy
David Kellogg wrote:
In defense (!) of Louis Althusser. He is really talking about the
youth of a science being the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS of newness, and as
such it's
a pretty good metaphor. It's in the context of Althusser's essay on
Freud and Lacan (in Lenin on Philosophy and other Essays). My dear
Andy,
behaviorism was the official psychology of the USSR in 1923, when
they barely
even had an official army? When the Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky,
was a fan of
Freud's writings? And Vygotsky "trashed" behaviorism in a paper
that claimed that consciousness could be explained as the structure
of behavior?
Doesn't seem likely, does it?
Unlike Andy, I agree completely with Jussi's point on semiotics.
Why else would LSV say that word meaning is a microcosm of human
consciousness?
When Vygotsky says that the mind is made of semiotic material, he is
explaining
exactly how it is that it becomes possible to internalize social
relations as
psychological ones and exactly why it is that human minds develop
from the
outside in rather than from the inside out.
In Hegel's Phenomeonology of the Mind (section 157) he discusses
the "inverted world", the moment where two modes of existence are
mapped on to each other (e.g. being onto concept). We find this
particular trope
throughout Vygotsky whenever we pass from (e.g.) the phylogenetic
semiohistorical timescale to the sociocultural one, or from the
sociocultural
semiohistorical timescale to the ontogenetic one. (And also from the
ontogenetic
to the microgenetic.)
In the inverted world, the first shall be last and the last shall be
first. (Or, as Mike says, the only thing we really know for sure
about the
mirror is that right is left is right is left.) For example, on the
phylogenetic
timescale sex differentiation is late emerging but on the
sociocultural
timescale it's very early. This, and not some purely functional
difference,
is why tools are different from signs. Tools are late emerging in
phylogenesis,
but they are very early emerging in sociocultural history, but the
mastery of
tools is late again in ontogenesis, and on the other hand
comparatively early in
the microgenetic mastery of a skill. Signs (in the form of signals)
are very
early emerging in phylogenesis, but very late (in the form of
written symbols)
in sociocultural history, and again very early in ontogenesis. The
SIGNIFICANCE
of signs (that is, there signifying as opposed to their indicative
function) is
late emerging in microgenetic development.
It seems to me that THIS more than anything accounts for the
CRITICAL
differences we find in development when we change time scales. Of
course, on one
level, it's a little like comparing weather and climate (or climate
and
global warming). We are always talking about time and the changes
wrought
thereby.
But the changes wrought are qualitatively different and not simply
quantitatively so. When we change semiohistorical timescales (when
ontogenesis
erupts into sociocultural history, as when children grow up and
create social
progress, or when sociocultural progress changes the course of
evolution, as
when clothes replace fur and houses replace caves), the very order
of things is
changed.
At some point the first must BECOME last and the last must BECOME
first. That critical tipping point is not a matter of smooth
development;
it's a moment of violent crisis. In ontogenesis, signs do not
replace tools
in a gradualistic, benevolent, Biblical manner after the beatitudes;
they must
lay violent hands upon them and overthrow them by force. The same
is true of
microgenesis, at least from what I've seen. The transition from a
first
language to a foreign one is a profoundly uprooting experience and
only much
later liberating (In first language learning, we find that
deliberate control of
phonemes is very late, but in second language learning it's at the
very
beginning; conversely, in first language learning, fluency occurs
almost
immediately while in foreign language learning it comes late if at
all.)
Contrary to what Foucault says (and what Stalin thought),
discourse is
part of the SUPERSTRUCTURE of society. That is the very opposite of
what
Stalinist linguists like Ya Marr (and also Stalin himself) claimed.
It's
also AGAINST what Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan say today (they believe
that
language is the base and not the superstructure of society).
Of course, if we say that language is part of the ideological
superstructure and not part of the productive base of sociocultural
progress
(that is, cultural historical change), this does not mean that it is
insignificant. But it DOES mean that it is not causative, at least
with respect
to cultural history. Language does not by itself bring about a
transformation in
the relations of production. On the semiohistorical timescale of
cultural
history, language cannot create or destroy state power; it is a
result and not a
reason, a consequence and not a cause. Of course, as we know,
results can become
reasons, and consequences can become causes. But when that happens,
there is a
qualitative change in the very domain, the timescale, of history.
But late Vygotsky, Vygotsky III, knows that ontogenesis is special,
distinguishable, distinct from cultural history. It's distinct
precisely
because in ontogenesis (but not in cultural history) language IS a
reason and
not just a result, word meaning IS a cause and not just a
consequence. In fact,
verbal thinking and imagination (and of course play) are precisely
the result of
the INABILITY of object oriented human activity to provide for the
child's
wants, needs, and desires. Here, actually, there IS a parallel with
cultural
history, for throughout sociocultural change, man has created
literature and art
precisely as a result of the INABILITY of human labour to provide
from man's
wants, needs, and desires for a harmonious society without the
exploitation of
man by man. But of course in sociocultural history, play is late
emerging and in
ontogenesis it's quite early, because the first shall always be last
and the
last shall be first.
I also agree with Zinchenko's point on two paradigms: the paradigm
of mediated action at the core of activity theory is NOT the
paradigm of word
meaning at the core of a cultural historical psychology. I think
that Mike and
other founders of CHAT founded it as a loose federation between two
rather
incompatible Vygotskies, the Vygotsky of mediated action and the
Vygotsky of wod
meaning, with the assumption that a common tradition and a set of
common
practices would hold it together. That assumption has proved quite
justified.
In China, we say that a good marriage is the same bed and different
dreams.
Otherwise, what do you talk about over breakfast? David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
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