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Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims



As Natalia points out, the central thrust of LSV's critique of Piaget is that Piaget left out the child's practical relationship to the real world - this in the last section of chapter 2 of T&L. Earlier in that chapter, when reporting on his own experimental studies of egocentric (or self-directed) speech LSV writes that "calls into being" this speech is "the difficulties or the disturbances in the smooth current of activity," as the child "attempts to size up the situation." Their speech "expresses the balance sheet of action" but at the same time it remains "inseparably interlaced with this action." "This speech, he writes "enters as a necessary moment in the reasoning activity of the child," so "that it is itself intellectualized". Speech is "beginning to serve as the means for the formation of intentions and plans in the more complex activities of the child." 

And his example:

"A child (5 1/2 years) sketches, in our experiments, a streetcar: making a circular line in pencil in order to depict one of the wheels, the child presses forcibly on the pencil. The graphite breaks. The child attempts nevertheless, by pushing the pencil hard onto the paper, to complete the circle, but on the paper nothing shows except for the concave trace of the broken pencil. The child mutters, as if to himself, “It’s broken,” and then, putting aside the pencil, begins by means of paint to depict a wrecked railroad car, being repaired after an accident, continuing to speak to himself from time to time concerning the change of drawing subject. This fortuitous egocentric speech of the child is so clearly connected with the entire process of his activity, so obviously forms the turning point of the entire drawing, and so unequivocally speaks of the awareness of the situation and the realization of the difficulty, of the search for a resolution, and of new intentions and the creation of a plan which determines the whole course of further behavior, in short, it is so indistinguishable, in its function, from the typical process of thinking, that to accept it as a simple accompaniment which does not interfere with the basic melody, as a simple by-product of the child’s activity, is simply impossible."

This is a very clear statement of the intricate relationship LSV saw among speech, thought, and activity.

Martin


On Feb 12, 2011, at 12:37 PM, Natalia Gajdamaschko wrote:

> 
> Hi Dear All,
> I thought you may enjoy this quote from Vygotsky himself to be added to the discussion on Piaget-Vygotsky.  LSV wrote it while discussing cultural development a child.  And his surprise is about absence of a culture and history in child’s development in Piagetian theory. And, ironically, absence of the child himself, the personality of the child, in the process of development: 
> 
> "We would suggest that absence of two factors with Piaget first discussion on narrow issue of egocentric speech. What is missing, then, in Piaget’s perspective, is reality and the child’s relationship to that reality. What is missing is the child’s practical activity. This is fundamental. Even the socialization of the child’s thinking is analyzed by Piaget outside the context of practice” (vol. 1, p. 87).
> 
> Natalia.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
> To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 8:38:29 PM
> Subject: [xmca] Vygotsky's claims
> 
> 
> Mike, my reading of it is this: Vygotsky poses a question: "What is the relation between thought and word?" 
> Then he provides an answer: "The relation between thinking and speaking is an action: namely, word meaning. 
> 
> The relation between thinking and speaking is an enquiry into the intellect, ie., symbolic activity. It seems to me that many CHAT writers have interpreted "meaning" not as something which inheres in a word, but an action , ie., a basic unit of activity, viz., using a word. In my own Hegelian interpretation of Vygotsky and Activity Theory I connect everything up on the idea that action = meaning = particular. 
> 
> I think this is something general. You don't start off with the mediating element. That has to be discovered. You start off with the problem which can be cast in the form: "What mediates between A and B?" Your answer may be C, i.e., "A->C->B." There are other possible solutions to the same question, e.g. "A->D->B." 
> 
> Does that make any sense? 
> 
> Andy 
> 
> mike cole wrote: 
> 
> Thank you, Martin, brilliant as you are doomed to be.
> 
> I turned from your note, picked up Thinking and Speech, and read the
> preface. That in itself is worth a good deal of discussion. But, just this,
> to begin with. I think its relevant to the issue of Vygotsky's ideas about
> the relationship of mediation and activity.
> 
> Look at what you get if you complete the following phrase as a "stem" that
> needs to be completed. Vygotsky writes.
> 
> All our work is focused on a single basic problem, on the genetic analysis
> of thought and word.........
> 
> American contextualist completion of the sentence..... Of course, we
> constantly have to keep in mind that the meaning of words depends upon the
> context.
> 
> A Russian cultural-historical theorist completion of the sentence...... Of
> course, we constantly have to keep in mind that words are constituitive of
> human activity.
> 
> In the 5 claims LSV makes for the accomplishments of the book in the
> preface, not a single one refers to context/activity.
> 
> Yet later in the text (earlier in his life?), he makes explicit reference to
> the importance of practical activity.
> 
> Who among us is it who has Barthes reminding us that failing to re-read is
> failing to learn from experience, or some such aposite thought. Sure
> benefited from that bit of re-reading!
> 
> 
> mike
> 
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote: 
> 
> On Feb 10, 2011, at 9:04 PM, David Kellogg wrote: 
> 
> more than mildly brilliant. Thank you, David. I generally shoot for bitterly brilliant, and usually hit
> mildly stupid.
> 
> I don't disagree with much of what you say about Piaget. I suspect he knew
> of LSV's critique before the 1960s, and I suspect he didn't pay much
> attention. Anyone who received 80 honorary degrees in his lifetime didn't
> need to pay much attention to criticism. Did he develop? I think he was
> *always* a genetic epistemologist; I am not sure he ever saw himself as a
> psychologist, so in that sense no. He was interested, it seems to me, in how
> a biological organism (a baby) becomes a logical organism (a scientist), one
> who has certain and necessary knowledge. In that respect he was thoroughly
> Kantian, though he felt Kant had gone 'too far' (as he put it, if I recall)
> in assuming that the categories of the transcendental ego were innate. Even
> his interest in morality clearly had Kantian roots. He was more an empirical
> philosopher  than a psychologist; not that that's a bad thing to be. The
> same might be said of LSV, but his philosophical starting point was very
> different.
> 
> And I agree that, as you suggest, it is very important to recognize the
> importance LSV attributed to practical activity. It runs through the length
> of Thought & Language - from the preface where he says that it is the book's
> practical task that unifies its parts - and of course in Crisis he insisted
> that practical concerns would drive the new, general psychology.
> 
> Martin__________________________________________
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> -- 
> 
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