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RE: [xmca] Experiences or an experience

"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 meaning. 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
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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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> >>>     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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