Hi Andy,
Thanks for this piece. First I have to say that I've been reading your
book "An interdisciplinary theory of activity" which is been a
wonderful intellectual journey for me. Thank you and congratulations!
You said Andy that "People interact with the world through culture,
and there were no human beings before culture, and no children born
into a culture-free world". And as an ontological premise I would say
that if culture is here from the start so are We. We exist, interact
and that is culture. So there is no culture prior to human beings, nor
human beings prior to culture, but both simultaneously. And for me
this is important, because We neither become cultural or individualist
reductionists. My worries are centered in the way We, within the
cultural historical approach could avoid the postmodern trap of
extreme cultural relativism. What I find in Gendlin's approach is a
way to "rescue the human being" from 3rd person artifacts, respecting
at the same time his cultural and historical structure. How can we
explain otherwise cultural evolution in the lasts couple of centuries
or how can we explain creativity if we cannot rescue the human being,
our first person experiences and processes? In a Gendlin's small text
that I would love you to comment called "On the new epistemology"
(http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2173.html) he says
"In the regular notion, human beings have lost their instincts and are
just culture products. It's true when you look at human beings across
cultures, we don't share anything like as much as any animal species.
Any given species of animals sleep the same, have intercourse the
same, eat the same things. We have been varied and complexified,
elaborated, made more intricate and in different ways. We certainly
have cultural routines. This whole talk [this is in a conference] is
going on in a cultural routine; otherwise you wouldn't sit there and
let me talk nonstop at you. But the body starts out already as tissue
with a great deal of internal organization and then becomes an animal
, in a evolutionary way of talking, in which tissue processes are
organized so the animal can move around and go after something, and
then it becomes culturally human."
You see, the way of looking at culture is different, the emphasis on
human beings as creators and molded at the same time by culture is the
main point here. In what degree we "exceed culture" or move the
culture forward?
Ivo
On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 4:17 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Ivo,
Never having heard of Gendlin I consulted WIkipedia, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Gendlin and on this slender
basis I could venture a few comments.
That concepts are ways of understanding the world, rather than
things existing in the world is hardly news. You would have to go
back 500 years to find a "philosopher" to argue against this. The
question is where you go with this.
The example Wikipedia gives is gravity. Gendlin takes the
observation "things fall" to be the basis of all concepts of
"gravity" and says that this is the basis for gravity and the
various historically arising theories of gravity, which modify the
concept of gravity. Thus "Gendlin insists that 'gravity' is a
concept and that concepts can't make anything fall. Instead of
saying that gravity causes things to fall, it would be more
accurate to say that things falling cause [the different concepts
of] gravity. Interaction with the world is prior to concepts about
the world."
The thing is that more recent theories of gravity do not arise
from the observation that things fall, but rather from much more
developed systems of activity which have become possible only in
recent times. Such theories co-exist with mundane concepts of
gravity, just as developed scientific forms of activity co-exist
with mundane forms of activity. So we would say it is not the
_passive observation_ that things fall which underlies all
concepts of gravity, but rather the historically and culturally
developing _forms of activity_ which continuously cause the idea
of gravity to be recast in new theories. "Interaction with the
world is prior to concepts about the world" means "culture is
prior to concepts about the world." People interact with the world
through culture, and there were no human beings before culture,
and no children born into a culture-free world.
Vygotsky showed in his study of ontogenesis that the nature-given
mental functions are recast and recombined in new Gestalten under
the influence of participation in the social activity around them.
Their minds are restructured, but still made up from the same
nature-given functional units at base. If I have this wrong,
others will correct me. I am not a child psychologist or even a
psychologist of childhood. But I think this gives an opening to
see how Gendlin's interesting innovations into therapy work.
Another example, according to Vygotsky, "the subconscious" exists,
but it is a construct which arises only in the course of later
development. It does not - as it seems - preexist conscious
awareness. It's a bit analogous to inner speech, which
onotgenetically arises on the basis of speaking aloud. Even though
everyone was quiet and nonetheless intelligent before they ever
spoke, both onto- and phylo-genetically. It seems to me that
Gendlin may well have a good technique for therapy, but that
doesn't mean that the ontology and epistemology and theory of mind
by means of which he systematises his understanding of it stands
up to criticism.
Does that make any sense to you Ivo?
Andy
Ivo Banaco wrote:
Hi Michael and all,
Thank you for your interest and quick reply. I am studying in
Lisbon,
Portugal in ISPA (Higher *Institute of Applied Psychology). I
have a
background in Economics (my undergraduate studies and master
degree is in
Economics) but I did not quite fit in the mainstream way of
looking for
economic issues. My long time interest in Psychology drove me
to study on my
own all that kept my attention in a rather random way.
Discovering Vygotsky
was like discovering a golden mine that could start to
structure my thoughts
about some issues, namely the relationship between mind,
behaviour,
artifacts, economic and cultural structures, and how can all
fit in some
dynamic Whole. *
*
*
*This quote about Gendlin came under a certain psychological
tradition
related to the humanistic wave of Carl Rogers. Eugene Gendlin
was a close
collaborator of Rogers and then carried forward his own
original thought,
what can be called a existential humanistic and experiential
psychology. His
first book was "Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning" *
http://www.amazon.com/Experiencing-Creation-Meaning-Philosophical-Psychological/dp/0810114275/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1293031026&sr=8-3
<http://www.amazon.com/Experiencing-Creation-Meaning-Philosophical-Psychological/dp/0810114275/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1293031026&sr=8-3>
where
he talks about constructs like felt sense, or edge of
awareness, where
language emerges from nonlanguage, from the intricacy of the
bodily felt
felt meaning.
So in a sense he gives emphasis to experience and interaction
first and
before culture. It's a living thing that is formed first,
which is pre
cultural, cultural and more complex than culture. He says that
the body, the
human body is always more than any define form, from the
start. He tries to
find a 1st person science, that cannot be reducible to
neuroscience,
economics, culture. He points directly to experience, the
bodily felt
experience which allows human to act in the first place. So
here the unit of
analysis is the continuous experiencing.
I don't know if this helps to put Gendlin in context. My
question is how can
we avoid to be reductionist approaching the cultural dimension
of the human
being, that is not reducing humans to culture and vice-versa.
Ivo
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 2:53 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>> wrote:
Ivo--
Where are you studying? gmail is such a general address!!
If you have no existential doubts or gordian knots, start
to get concerned
about your state of mind. Perfectly normal and healthy.
Existential
uncertainty seems the lot of human kind.
Without knowing a lot more, I can offer no interpretation,
let alone a
reply, to Gendlin's statement about big things and little
things. Is
reference being made to neuroscientific 50 millisecond
little things and
100 millisecond big things?
In light of issues discussed here (feel free to buzz the
past decade or so
in the archives for context) where do this fit?
mike
On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 4:21 AM, Ivo Banaco
<ibanaco@gmail.com <mailto:ibanaco@gmail.com>> wrote:
Dear xmcaonaughts,
As a new kid on the block, recently researching in
Cultural Psychology and
wanting to do my Phd thesis in this area, I still have
"existential doubts"
and big gordian knots. Having read different kinds of
literature in
different traditions in Psychology I still have
troubles in replying to
sentences like this by the existential philosopher and
psychologist Eugene
Gendlin:
"Any little thing, any big thing is precultural,
because it is tissues and
it is animal life, and it's culture and it's also
after culture, more
complicated than culture. The body is this much more
complex, much more
intricate system from the start."
Any thoughts?
Best regards,
Ivo Banaco
PS: I wish you all a merry Christmas and a great 2011.
On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 5:03 AM, mike cole
<lchcmike@gmail.com <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>> wrote:
Several of the articles on show below appear of
interest to various
xmcaonaughts.
mike
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Teachers College Record
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Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:01 PM
Subject: Transitioning From an Innovative
Elementary to a Conventional
High
School
To: Recipient <mcole@ucsd.edu <mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>>
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Smuggling Authentic Learning Into the School
Context: Transitioning From
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Innovative Elementary to a Conventional High
School<http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15227>
by Renée DePalma, Eugene Matusov & Mark Smith
Analyzing the discourse of eighth-grade graduates
from an innovative
elementary school as they transition to
conventional high schools
revealed
distinct response patterns characterizing
concurrent projects of
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Our analysis suggests
that
a certain critical ambivalence toward
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particularly for those
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conventional schooling.
Designing Transparent Teacher Evaluation: The
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This article explores a policy intended to
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Book Reviews
Multiliteracies in Motion: Current Theory and
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by David R. Cole and Darren Lee Pullen (eds.)
reviewed by William Kist
------------------------------
Citizenship Education and Social Development in
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by Ali A. Abdi, Edward Shizha, and Lee Ellis (eds.)
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Henry Braun discusses his paper, co-authored with
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Monetary Incentives on
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Assessment."<http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16008>
Commentaries
In Praise of Slow Reading<
http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=16238>
by Thomas Newkirk
This commentary argues against the high valuation
schools place on
reading
speed, particularly on high sakes tests like the
SAT. In penalizing
slower
readers, these and other tests put at a
disadvantage students who
approach
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The ideal should not be
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and
effective-and this pace will vary depending on the
individual and the
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