Re: [xmca] A matter of priorities in different models

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Dear Larry, Ana, and others:
 
Vygotsky talks a lot about structure, but he is not a structuralist. He also talks a lot about function, but he is not a functionalist. He talks a lot about genetic explanation, but he is no genetic epistemologist (and condemns Piaget for substituting the genetic principle for causality). 

Sure, structure is terribly important to Vygotsky. In fact, STRUCTURE is the key to understanding the gap between his idea of a zone of proximal DEVELOPMENT as opposed to merely one of learning. New structures (e.g. role play, rule based games, arithemetic, algebra, complexes, the "measurement of generality" underlying concepts) allow the re-expression of learning in an infinite number of ways, quite independent of their content. So structural change is almost a touchstone of development vs. learning, the way in which we know that "one pfennig of development has given us a hundred marks of learning.   
 
Function is important too, and not just because form follows function; mental structures are the way they are because they do what they have to do. Function is important because mental functions, not behavior, provide the content of consciousness. I guess that's why I don't think that functions can really be said to be independent of context. When I remember something, I remember a context, and I remember in a context, in more or less the same way that when I perceive something I perceive a background and I perceive it inside a situation.
 
A genetic account "explains" function in much the same way that function has to explain structure. But Vygotsky does not really describe his psychology as a genetic psychology, at least not in Chapter One of Thinking and Speech. The term he uses is "causal dynamic", and in Chapter Two he lays out exactly what that means in philosophical terms: psychological phenomena are caused, and not simply reversible functions of experience the way they appear in Piaget. The arrow of development runs from communication to cognition and it is not any more reversible than the arrow of time.
 
We all know that the arrow of time ran out on Vygotsky. One of the things we learn from reading the latest revelations from the Vygotsky archive is that Thinking and Speech was really a Prolegomena to a much larger work on the subject of consciousness. I had always assumed that his great unfinished work was the textbook on Child Development we see outlined in Chapter Five. But I see from Zavershneva 2010 that I was probably wrong.
 
Vygotsky died with a gigantic three volume work on consciousness itself on his mind. He wanted initially to co-author with Leontiev and Luria, and only reluctantly took it upon himself when both of his dear disciples proved unreliable. So I am quite willing to re-read the last sentence of Vygotsky's hasty preface to Thinking and Speech ("This investigation is broken off on the very threshold") in that dark light.
 
What would the great three volume "Capital" of consciousness have contained? Well, I think the very first volume would have had to revisit his long essay on the emotions. In Peter Smagorinsky's vimeo talk on "The Psychology of Art", he complains a lot about how the essay never really gets over James and Lange. But I think that a lot of the work that Professor Smagorinsky is really looking for really right under his nose, in "The Psychology of Art".
 
He's right, of course: this is EARLY Vygotsky, and I think that a reworked "Psychology of Art" would have been much more precise about the higher esthetic concepts that he thinks distinguish successful art from the mere "social expression of emotion". I think it would have been every bit as precise as Chapter Five and Chapter Six of Thinking and Speech and might even bear more than a passing resemblance to them. I even think we would get a real sense of what artworks mediate these higher emotions and how, just as we get a sense of how systematic school instruction mediate science concepts in Chapter Six. 
 
Does that mean "cold cognition" in art, that is, a system of abstract esthetic concepts that have nothing to do with interpersonal contexts? I doubt it. On the contrary. The RELATIONAL aspects of communication in Tolstoy, for example, are large as life and twice as natural. 
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
.
 
 
--- On Thu, 9/16/10, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:


From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
Subject: [xmca] A matter of priorities in different models
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 16, 2010, 10:03 PM


Ana  Mike and David K

The thread that  recently discussed Bahktin's and Vygotsky's alternative
perspectives was thought provoking.
Mike mentioned that we must bracket out some perspectives in order to focus
and elaborate other perspectives. He also mentioned that it's very difficult
to remain self conscious of our biases.

I agree that whenever we bracket out and turn a searchlight on phenomena, we
are going to leave other aspects of the phenomena in darkness. However, it
is possible  to try to become conscious that one is braceting out phenomena
for particular purposes and try to gain insight into the value's implicit in
what is bracketed out.

I'm reposting one particular  paragraph written by Ana that speaks to this
issue of bracketing and hoping for further comments by others.


"Although Vygotsky criticized Gestalt Psychology for the lack of the
dynamic, developmental approach to the relationship between language and
thought, he himself looked at the change of the relationship between
language and thought as a change in structural and functional aspects of
language and thought  -- as decontextualized - synchronic categories. In
addition, although Vygotsky insisted on the unity of the affective and
intellectual aspects of language-thought and on the "union of generalization
and communication", his analysis of communication stayed focussed on
transformations of conceptual categories (generalization) and did not
concern RELATIONAL aspects of communication. Was the relational aspect of
communication somehow there, but just backgrounded? I think it is the matter
of priorities -- not just research priorities, but the priorities IN THE
WHOLE MODEL and the analysis of development." [Ana]

What do others think of Ana's suggestion that  Bahktin's and
Vygotsky's theoretical models focus on different priorities.
A similar question was recently posted by Peter S recently when he asked

"what are the foundational concepts which inform the CHAT perspective?"
when he was opening debate on this month's article.

I personally am attempting  to deepen my understanding of the "intersection"
of these different priorities in a spirit that I believe was reflected in
Ana's thought provoking analysis.

Larry
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