RE: [xmca] Experiences or an experience

[Achilles Delari Junior <achilles_delari@hotmail.com>]

Thank you Larry, David, Andy...

I will try to organize better my thoughts, further. But now, I must only to listen better....

Andy, I guess I am mixing my sources. I was wondering that was explicit mention from Vygotsky to the "motrice power", maybe "motor force" (I read in Spanish "Fuerza Motriz") - but I am not finding here, in order to quote English version through marxists.org version... But I am not founding. Maybe it was in Wertsch's book "Vygotsky and the social formation of mind" / "Vygotsky y la formación social de la mente"... The "motor force" is quoted not exactly as "motivation" in psychological common meaning... It is a meta-concept for all the methodological arrange of psychological theoretical concepts... As well as a psychological theory as its object, it would have to choice a "motor force" that is the principle which give movement for this object (process) genesis... I Remember that Wertsch talked about different ranges of this forces and explanatory principles changing in ontogenesis... But, I confess I am mixing. Forgive me. Here in Crisis of Psychology I only can found until now the terms "generalizer concept" and "explanatory principle"... as meta-concepts used by Vygotsky in order to analyze the origins of scientific theoretical concepts in different psychological trends... The idea of "explanatory principle", if I remember well was present at the text from 1925 about "Consciousness as problem of psychology of behavior"... I remember this was proposed before by William James. Then if consciousness  could not be explained directly by itself, it could be explained by a "explanatory principle"... this principle would be a "extract of reality" from which consciousness is a function... This is because I understood social relations as this "explanatory principle"... but the "motor force" (or I don't know how can this be called in English) I am not so sure... Forgive me.

Thank you.

Achilles.


> Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 09:47:29 +1000
> From: ablunden@mira.net
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Experiences or an experience
> 
> "motrice power"? Do you mean "motive power" or maybe 
> "motivation", Achilles?
> 
> I think one could say that any explanatory principle (or 
> unit of analysis) must include the source of motivation. I 
> believe it is one serious criticism by AN Leontyev, that LSV 
> did not (at least not with "word meaning"). I do not think 
> this criticism is correct, but still leads to valuable 
> interrogation of the notion of perezhivanie, and how this 
> concept includes or fails to include motivation.
> 
> Andy
> 
> Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
> > "Life is not so easy"... this is very right. Beyond concrete selection of a unit, we can see a complex meta-conceptual, methodological arrange of terms in LSV, not ever detailled - and not all connected in a single word, neither period of creative work of this author. For instance we can find the problem of "object of analysis" as a broader whole (not ever totality?) and the "unit of analysis", as "part" but containing the whole *main* contradictions (I guess not *all* contradictions). But I wonder we must connect even "object of analysis" also with its "explanatory principle" (another important meta-concept). Maybe a "unit of analysis" could be a kind of mediation between the object of analysis and its "explanatory principle" - I think the exploratory principle as social human existence... consciousness as function of human existence (social by  definition) but not a immediate function... what could be only "reaction" - but a mediated one - for instance mediated by word m
> eaning. I understand the problem of generalization/social interaction (obushchenie/obobushchenie ? how to translate?). Another metca-concept transversal for all analitical task is, of course, is the own genetic aproach, even better, historical apprach - withouth which nothing will be understood well... Then we must be put the three first categories is movement to really understand the object of analysis...
> > 
> > 
> > What do you think? This could makes some sense? 
> > 
> > 
> > Achilles.
> > 
> > 
> > P.S. Nevertheless I did not understand claerly the difference between "explanatory principle" and "motrice power" as Vygotsky explain in the book about The Crisis of Psychology... I guess a sample is that for psychoanalisys "sexuality" is "motrice power" and unconsciouss is "explanatory principle", orh vice versa... but I don't know well what the correspondent for own historical-cutural psychology. I only can see social relations, human social existence as both - explanatory principle and motrice power... but this could be a mistake of mine... I don't know.
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >> Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:30:55 +1000
> >> From: ablunden@mira.net
> >> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> Subject: Re: [xmca] Experiences or an experience
> >>
> >> I gave a pat answer to David earlier because I didn't want 
> >> to get into a big debate about this, but life is never so 
> >> easy is it?
> >>
> >> In the context of the study of comparative linguistics (is 
> >> that the right term?) "a language" is the complex whole 
> >> whose movement and dynamics of change you want to 
> >> understand. As you say, Achilles, it is in fact the "object 
> >> of analysis."
> >>
> >> What is the unit for the study of a "a language" is not 
> >> something which can be said off the cuff. It requires deep 
> >> study and understanding I don't have. But I would observe 
> >> for starters that a language cannot be considered separately 
> >> from the people, social practices and other constellations 
> >> of artefacts which constitute it. But what is the unit of 
> >> analysis? I don't know. According to Herder, every people 
> >> has the Schwerpunkt, or strong point, basically "leading 
> >> activity" and it would be this leading activity that should 
> >> be looked at. But I don't know.
> >>
> >> As to a pereshivanie, it is, yes, a unit of analysis for 
> >> Vygotsky for a more general study of consciousness, as in 
> >> the relation of a human being to their environment. "Word 
> >> meaning" as you say, David, is a unit of analysis only for 
> >> verbal thought, a specific mode of consciousness which 
> >> Vygotsky takes as the macrocosm for all consciousness. But 
> >> macroscosm is not totality.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >> Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
> >>> Please David, when "a language" is "an unit of analysis", what is the "object of analysis" in this case? Don't you agree that when LSV for instance, talk about a "word meaningn" or a "perezhianie" as an unit of analisys, this is a unit for analysis of consciousness development as an object of analysis?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Thank you.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Achilles.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:55:28 +1000
> >>>> From: ablunden@mira.net
> >>>> To: vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
> >>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Experiences or an experience
> >>>> CC: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, of course. I hesitated before sending that. In the 
> >>>> appropriate context "a language" is the unit of analysis.
> >>>>
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> >>>> David Kellogg wrote:
> >>>>> Of course, language CAN be a unit of (cultural historical) analysis. 
> >>>>> Suppose we are trying to understand, for example, how languages change 
> >>>>> from standard languages into lingua franca (e.g. French in eighteenth 
> >>>>> century Europe, Latin in the middle ages, English today)and vice 
> >>>>> versa (e.g. Swahili). Then languages are a unit of (historical 
> >>>>> linguistics) analysis, but they are not a unit of psychological analysis.
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> I think that word meaning is indeed a unit of analysis for 
> >>>>> consciousness,  and it is a superior unit of analysis than "activity", 
> >>>>> which is too general and which often does not contain the properties of 
> >>>>> the whole (e.g. animal activity). But I think word meaning covers 
> >>>>> consciousness only after a particular point (the point at which speech 
> >>>>> becomes rational and thinking becomes verbal, let us say, age two). 
> >>>>> Perhaps Vygotsky was looking at "perizhvanie" as a rather more 
> >>>>> general unit of analysis for a different set of problems (not 
> >>>>> only consciousness as we know it, but thinking in preverbal children and 
> >>>>> schizophrenics).
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> It is a little fashionable, in my neck of the woods, to argue that 
> >>>>> cognitivist approaches to language acquisition and socio-cultural 
> >>>>> (a.k.a. cultural historical) accounts are "incommensurable paradigms", 
> >>>>> that comparing the ZPD to Krashen's "i + 1" (that is, the hypothetical 
> >>>>> "next structure" that a language learner can acquire) is a little like 
> >>>>> trying to measure mass with a unit of information (kilobytes instead of 
> >>>>> kilograms). See, for example, the work of Dunn and Lantolf.
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> It's a nice argument. It helps us stake out our own territory, on which 
> >>>>> cognitivists do not dare to tread, and it helps us exchange ambassadors 
> >>>>> with contiguous territories and sign mutual non-agression treaties and 
> >>>>> so on. It also gets us out of a lot of the unpleasant work of disposing 
> >>>>> of competing cognitivist theories; we simply declare them 
> >>>>> incommensurable and go our merry way.
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> Churlishly, I am not very sympathetic to this argument. Krashen is 
> >>>>> simply wrong: he has been empirically shown to be wrong (Huilstijn and 
> >>>>> Huilstijn, for example). There isn't a universal hierarchy of language 
> >>>>> structures any more than there is one of Piagetian cognitive stages (to 
> >>>>> which it is undoubtedly related). But the fact that we can show that 
> >>>>> Krashen's attempt to map out fixed rates and routes of learning doesn't 
> >>>>> work, that the zone of proximal development accounts for ranges and 
> >>>>> routes of development much better, tells me that at some level our 
> >>>>> paradigms are commensurable, because we are measuring the same kinds of 
> >>>>> things even if they don't exactly have the same names (Ohms and volts do 
> >>>>> not measure exactly the same thing either, but they are certainly 
> >>>>> measurements of the same phenomenon).
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> Vygotsky's whole point about "units of analysis" is that that some level 
> >>>>> at which paradigms are commensurable can be too elemental. We need a 
> >>>>> unit where the properties of the whole are still present, and the unit 
> >>>>> will vary with the practical problem we want to solve. For historical 
> >>>>> linguistics it is the language, for verbal thinking it is word 
> >>>>> meaning, for evolution it's the species.
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> The point at which hypotheses such as Krashen's can be proven wrong (the 
> >>>>> reduction of language into words and rules acquired in a given order) 
> >>>>> does not always help us answer the practical question we are asking 
> >>>>> (e.g. how DO we teach children that "There is a fire" is demonstrative 
> >>>>> and even indicative and "Fire exists" is not). For this set of practical 
> >>>>> problems, we may find different units of analysis, or different 
> >>>>> refinements of a same unit of analysis (I think, for example, that the 
> >>>>> difference here has to do with the word meaning of "a" as well as the 
> >>>>> word meaning of "there" and not necessarily the word meaning of "exists").
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> This is unfortunate, particularly for those of us who think that good 
> >>>>> fences make good neighbors. But the situation is really no different in 
> >>>>> physics: there is a level at which energy and information are (or at 
> >>>>> least may be) commensurable, but it's not the level at which we solve 
> >>>>> most of our practical problems.  
> >>>>>  
> >>>>> David Kellogg
> >>>>> Seoul National University of Education 
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --- On *Thu, 8/26/10, Andy Blunden /<ablunden@mira.net>/* wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> >>>>>     Subject: Re: [xmca] Experiences or an experience
> >>>>>     To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >>>>>     Date: Thursday, August 26, 2010, 8:50 PM
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     No. Particularity is not the issue. One can make general statements
> >>>>>     about units of analysis. The point is that word meaning can be a
> >>>>>     unit of analysis but language cannot.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     Andy
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     Larry Purss wrote:
> >>>>>      > Hi Andy
> >>>>>      > I was pondering your question about experience and came across
> >>>>>     this quote by
> >>>>>      > Peirce.
> >>>>>      > [in an article written by S. Paavola, K. Hakkarainen, and M.
> >>>>>     Sintonen:
> >>>>>      > "Abduction With Dialogical and Trialogical Means"]
> >>>>>      >
> >>>>>      > Peirce was discussing the role of indexical signs in relation to
> >>>>>     our shared
> >>>>>      > world.
> >>>>>      >
> >>>>>      > "For  example, if example be needed, suppose a man to go out of
> >>>>>     his house at
> >>>>>      > night and see the light of a distant fire in the sky.  He meets a
> >>>>>     neibour
> >>>>>      > and remarks, "There is a fire."  If he had only said "a fire
> >>>>>     exists", he
> >>>>>      > would have conveyed next to NO meaning at all. Not quite no
> >>>>>     meaning, since
> >>>>>      > the remark would even so refer to that universe that is familiary
> >>>>>     known to
> >>>>>      > both men.  But in saying "There is a fire" he refers to the common
> >>>>>      > experience of THAT very PLACE and TIME, and virtually says that
> >>>>>     if the
> >>>>>      > second person will raise his eyes and look about him, he will
> >>>>>     find the
> >>>>>      > COMMON EXPERIENCE of THAT PLACE and TIME to connect itself with the
> >>>>>      > experience of a light AS OF a fire, the mode of connection being the
> >>>>>      > familiar one that the speaker INDICATED" [In collected papers of
> >>>>>     C.S.Peirce]
> >>>>>      >
> >>>>>      > Andy, was your question about "an" experience indicating the
> >>>>>     centrality
> >>>>>      > of "particular" shared experiences as foundational for creating
> >>>>>     "common
> >>>>>      > ground"  and not over generalized "lived experience"? [A term I
> >>>>>     notice I
> >>>>>      > like to use]
> >>>>>      >
> >>>>>      > Larry
> >>>>>      > _______________________________________________
> >>>>>      > xmca mailing list
> >>>>>      > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>>>     <http://us.mc1103.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >>>>>      > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>>      >
> >>>>>      >
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     --
> >>>>>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>     *Andy Blunden*
> >>>>>     Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >>>>>     Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> >>>>>     Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>     _______________________________________________
> >>>>>     xmca mailing list
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> >>>>>     http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> -- 
> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >>>> Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> >>>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>
> >> -- 
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >> Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> >> Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
> >>
> >>
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> > 
> > 
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
> 
> 
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