[xmca] Vygotsky and Behaviourism & Fools Can be Found Anywhere

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Yesterday evening I broke my own rule about using uncivil language in this
forum and failing to note carefully to whom one is addressing oneself. I
also
did a lousy job of translation. The Russian phrase to which I was referring
is best translated as "fools can be found anywhere." My own behavior
illustrates the truth of that aphorism applied to myself.
mike

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> David, there are a lot of issues here, and I hope that others who know more
> than me (or less!) will chime in and help us get clarity. Can I narrow it
> down to one question: Can Vygotsky's January 1924 speech be read as a
> critique of behaviourism? And if not, how would people characterise it?
>
> http://marx.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1925/reflexology.htm
>
> What do others think?
> Andy
>
>
> David Kellogg wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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