Mike means, of course, that all systems leak. Russian just has a rather
scatological way of putting it; I'm sure no aspersions on real
persons or Buridan's best were intended.
Andy--there's a very good essay by Rene van der Veer in the Cambridge
Companion called "Vygotsky in Context: 1900-1935" (pp. 21-50). The
section on Kornilov (pp. 41-44) is particularly good.
Rene van der Veer makes it clear that Kornilov was a very contradictory
man, and that "reactology" was not simply (as Luria makes it sound) a
relabelling of reflexes as "reactions". When Kornilov invited Vygotsky
to join his laboratory, it was on the basis of real agreement.
First of all, both men agreed that biology was not reducible to
physiology. Kornilov expressed this by saying that physiology was
"objective" and biological processes were "subjective". Vygotsky, who
for a while thought that the Buridan's ass problem could be solved by
simply turning humans into dogs that ring their own bell, probably
thought that consciousness could and eventually would be accounted for
("without remainder", as he liked to say) by biological processes, so
long as these were not understood in a narrowly physiological way.
Second, both men wanted a materialist psychology and were profoundly
suspicious of the data produced by introspectionism. Kornilov expressed
this by calling his psychology "dialectical materialist" and even
"Marxist", and by 1925 Vygotsky was, as we know, quite hostile to this
kind of nomenclature (See History of the Crisis in Psychology). But
Vygotsky, who for a while thought that Marxism was simply coterminous
with scientific, was probably very sympathetic to the relabelling of
responses as "reactions". When we read "Educational Psychology" it is
easy to find whole chapters (e.g. 2, 3 and even Chapter 8, "The
Reinforcement and Recollection of Reaction") that are part of this exercise.
But I think the main thing we learn from van der Veer's essay is how
completely unformed psychology (and probably every other science too)
was at that time. That's why I don't think it's at all correct to say
that behaviorism was the "official" psychology of the period. In
addition to inviting Vygotsky, Kornilov invited the well-known Freudian
A.R. Luria to take part in his laboratory, and he was not at all sure
that Freud's psychoanalysis was a nonmaterialist variety of psychology.
By the way there are also two good essays in the Companion about the
resemblances between Vygotsky and Mead (Anne Edwards, and Holland and
Lachichotte) and of course there's a similar essay in Daniels'
"Introduction to Vygotsky" by Valsiner and van der Veer, where they
trace BOTH men's thinking back to Baldwin. All of these articles suggest
that there wasn't that much difference between social behaviorism and
early Vygotsky.
Here are MY answers to your questions. You ask:
"(1) By "social behaviourist" do you mean a follower of GH Mead? Or do
you mean someone thinking along the lines to which GH Mead would come?
Can you
define the central idea?"
No, I don't. Vygotsky never read Mead or referred to him, as far as I
know. But "social behaviorism" is a broader concept than Mead; to me it
simply suggests that behavior is the explanadum and social organization
is the explanans. You ask:
"(2) The idea of construction of self (I) via Other (me) is not
sufficient basis
for calling someone "social behaviourist" is it? Whether you track
this idea to Hegel (1807), Mead (1932), Kojeve (1937), or elsewhere?"
No, it isn't. Bakhtin was not a social behaviorist, or a behaviorist of
any kind as far as I can tell. I think saying that consciousness is a
problem in the structuring of behavior is at least potentially a very
different statement from saying that there is nothing more to
consciousness than its ability to structure behavior. You say:
"(3) Do you agree that Vygotsky's January 1924 speech is a full-on attack on
Behaviourism, which was at that time the dominant creed at the Congress?
He also
attack the other speakers at the Congress."
No, I don't. First of all, it wasn't the "dominant creed" at the
Congress, as van der Veer makes clear. Secondly, as you say, it's not
clear that this WAS the speech he delivered; the speech that others
claim that he delivered is a fairly dull one on "The Methods of
Reflexological and Psychological Investigation" (Vol. 3, 35-50).
Thirdly, even if he did deliver the "Problems" paper, it's not clear to
me that it is either pro- or anti-behaviorist.
Vygotsky's "Consciousness as a problem in the structure of behavior" is
really rather more bold than empirical but he does note that in deaf
mutes conscious awareness of speech and social experience emerge
together. To me this suggests that speech is in some very important
sense prior, because speech emerges before consciousness of speech
(except in second language learning). You say:
"(4) Do you think it makes sense to call someone engaged in a critique
of all
existing views, who knows they do not yet have an adequate theory and
are just
at the beginning of their critique, any "ism" ?"
He was a young teacher who was trying to run a psychological laboratory
so he could train teachers. He wasn't in the position of someone who
could simply attack everybody and look smart and leave it at that.He
wasn't engaged in the sort of "epater les bourgeois" exercise that
people do so avidly at academic conferences today. I don't think even
the very young Vygotsky is reducible, without remainder, to chutzpah.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education