Re: [xmca] John Shotter in 1995 discussing the link between Wittgenstein and Vygotsky

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Hi Monica, Martin, Andy, Mike and others interested in "ways of seeing".
Martin, that is a fscinating story of Joh in London. Your question if he was
reading M-P at that time is likely no [considering his bibliographical
references in his articles. He mentions that he used the term "joint
activity" [participation] from 1980 to 1993]  His articles around the year
2000 is when he was using the term "dialogical".  Only in more recent
articles do I see the term "chiasmic intertwining".
I have been reading a number of his articles from around 2000 and reflecting
on the change of language to "dialogical" ways of seeing [perspectives]  I
am comparing them with later articles when the term "expression" comes to
the forefront.

I want to summarize a "commentary" John wrote in 1999 in the Journal "human
Development" that captures the theme of his writings at this time.  Monica
asks what the relation is between representational and carnal ways of
seeing. John in this commentary is contrasting "seeing as reasons " and
"seeing as dialogical". He is attempting to help us see as pointing to or
showing or grasping a particular perspective.  John is "instructing" us to
see another principled way of observing "participation" that contrasts with
"turnbull and Carpenter's way of seeing "participation".

Following is my summary. [I also think this article speaks to last months
article on action research].

Turnbull and Carpenter [T&B] are critiquing the Chomskyan idea of
talk-as-spoken-language and want to move to a model of talk-as-interaction
within the discourse of conversational ANALYSIS.  They want us to see mutual
understanding as a "practical" problem of interaction. Thus, once we pay
sustained shared attention to people's RESPONSIVE relations to each other in
the sequential structure of interaction and develop shared vocabularies to
"describe" these interactions occurring between people we will develop a
more "appropriate way to view participation.   Each partner must be able to
sense what is being DONE in the talk amongst the partners.  This presents a
complicated problem of coordination.  Only if a sequence of turns at talk
are all linked to each other can the sequence of turns be said to constitute
interaction.  Turns linked this way are characterized as being in a relation
OF 'conditional relevance" to each other

At this point John introduces a THIRD way [not Chomsky or T&B ] tp contrast
with the conversational analytic approach [way of seeing]  John points out
that in T&B's model CERTAIN responsive relations must NECESSARILY hold
between people's actions constituting the structured flow of the
interaction.  John asks if T&B are not radical enough in APPEALING TO
PROCESSES OF REASONING in terms of ABSTRACT principles They talk about
interpretations based on observable details that researchers can be trained
to CODE RELIABLY. Although T&B claim that the attributes of talk are not
category members "they still talk OF interactants as understanding  each
others talk by RECOGNIZING it as fitting into ABSTRACT categories.Except now
social actions are the basic analytic categories of talk. Therefore for both
speakers and analysts understanding is an interpretive task to be understood
on the basis of reasoning in terms of concepts and categories that now
include entities such as "turn cnstruction units" and "conditional
relevance"

John then asks if it is really the case that interactants base their
recognition on turn constructional units that have been COMPLETED. "is it
actually the case that speaker-listeners FIRST gather evidence of a certain
category of relation holding between their utterances BEFORE they actually
respond o each other.  John believes in his move from "joint action" to
dialogue" that T&B's move to participation as reasons is not radical
enough.  They miss what is only available to to INVOLVED participants
asbeing addressed by another and answering the calling. What T&B miss is the
SPONTANEOUS DIALOGICALLY structured RESPONSIVE embodied call from the
other.

John goes on to elaborate the third way of seeing that he is instructing us
is dialogical [and been discussed on XMCA]  He is continuing to elaborate
this theme of being called and responding but now has added M-p' notion of
"expression to deepen this project.

Giving reasons for and spontaneously responding for John and M-P are
distinct and different ways of seeing.

Larry




On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> There is, of course, a distinction between everyday life and institutions.
> I particularly liked Agnes Heller's distinction between the t thin ethos of
> everyday life and the thick ethod of participation in institutions (see also
> John Rawls). This distinction is important precisely because of the fact
> that each sustains the other. No institution could survives if those
> participating in it had only the ethics and language of the institution in
> order to collaborate with others not in the institution. So distinction is
> not equal to dichotomy.
>
> Mutual transformation. Everyday life is the product of the accumulated
> sedimentation of different institutions down the centuries. Consider the
> idea of "interfacing" - this idea came out of the US military from there
> into computer manufacture and design of automated systems and from there
> into general usage, where different communities, institutions and people
> "interface" with each other. This migration of a form of practice from a
> specialised institution out into general life is a microcosm of all the
> concepts and words and forms of activity of which everyday life is made up.
> Everyday life is a kind of amalgam of all institutions past and present, not
> just something outside of any specific instutition. So that's how
> institutional life is transformed into everyday life. Now the converse. When
> I first started work at Melbourne University (in the buildings branch) in
> 1987, I used to smoke in front of my computer. By about 1989 that became
> impossible. All instituions have now "institutionalised" the ban on smoking
> which began life in the medical profession, was taken up by the government
> bureaucracy, went into everyday attitudes which were transformed and from
> there into every institution in the country. That's how everyday life
> changed the rules in Melbourne Uni. There are of course examples without
> number. After all, institutions are staffed by human beings.
>
> On science and philosophy, of course you are right. When the Frankfurt
> School was founded in 1923, the idea was for an interdisciplinary group of
> researchers who would be able to replace generalised conceptions of Mind (a
> la Hegel) with the results of real psychological research. As it turned out
> (Hitler and all that) they had to instead develop a practice of
> *appropriating* the work of others, but for psychology they only ever
> appropriated Freud and Piaget. I argue that nowadays, any social theory or
> philosophy which relies on a generalised concept of mind or appropriates
> outdated theories of psychology, is not viable as a social theory *or* a
> philosophy (if one could even talk of such a thing!), so as a social
> theorist/philosopher I cannot operate without the support of real
> psychologists and teachers, Vygotsky and all of you CHAT people who really
> know through experiment and observation how the mind works. Any philosopher
> who tries to bypass this, and "deduce" the nature of mind without reference
> to science is OK as a part of history, but cannot function usefully today.
> Likewise social theory. That's how I see it.
>
> Andy
>
>
> Monica Hansen wrote:
>
>> I agree, Andy, with your point about everyday life and institutional life
>> being unnecessarily dichotomized. You end that section of your comments
>> with
>> "The two can only be understood through the mutual transformation of one
>> into the other." Can you explain more about what you mean with that?
>> Transformation might imply that one turns into the other, but when you add
>> "mutual" you are saying they are interrelated and cannot be two different
>> things?
>>
>> You also make the point that philosophy is not the same thing as science
>> and
>> that Wittgenstein didn't have the same considerations Vygotsky in trying
>> to
>> develop psychology as a science. This is why Shotter, brings them
>> together,
>> isn't it? I would say this is really one of the main foci for the
>> different
>> threads of these discussions: How human activity, both practice and
>> thinking, are shaped by the field/discipline/method of approach or inquiry
>> and what are understood to be the requirements and obligations of that
>> line
>> of inquiry in regard to method. What Vygotsky was trying to do with his
>> line
>> of argument was to remedy the crisis as he saw it in working towards a
>> better, more inclusive science? And philosophers, they are what,
>> rationalizing and using words? Is this the chiasm, where one point of view
>> has to be brought to bear upon the other?
>>
>> Monica
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.**ucsd.edu<xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>]
>> On
>> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>> Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 10:23 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] John Shotter in 1995 discussing the link between
>> Wittgenstein and Vygotsky
>>
>> Thank you Larry for providing the Shotter article on Vygotsky and
>> Wittgenstein. I just want to share a few observations on it. I must qualify
>> these comments by noting that I am never sure how much I am talking about
>> Wittgenstein and how much about Shotter.
>>
>> Firstly, the article makes it very clear that the subject matter of
>> Wittgenstein's work is speech taken very much as a part of activity, both in
>> the sense of extended projects (the metaphor about a city and its districts)
>> and in the sense of actions, directed and constituted by speech; that for
>> Wittgenstein, texts unconnected with activity would indeed be meaningless,
>> and activity without talk inconceivable. This is very helpful for me,
>> because generally, those I have come across in the past who use
>> Wittgenstein, use him in a universe of texts, divorced from activity, but it
>> seems that this does not come from Wittgenstein himself.
>>
>> Secondly, in the remarks about the need to be attentive to what is going
>> on in and around speech, and the "unnoticed features of our own conduct" it
>> seems to me that the kind of work that Wittgenstein has done does function
>> to sensitise us to these "background" and unnoticed actions and contexts
>> which are in fact giving meaning to what is said. Goethe, with his "delicate
>> empiricism" would approve. How else would one write so as to sensitise
>> people to this unnoticed conduct? Shotter has drawn our attention to the
>> value of this work. And also, there are a lot of points of synergy between
>> Wittgenstein and Vygotsky, that is clear.
>>
>> That said, a couple of points on the other side. When Shotter says: "For,
>> if /'every sign by itself seems dead... [and only] in use [is it] alive...
>> '/ (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.432), then it is no use us searching (as we have
>> done in structural linguistics) for a word's meaning in terms of its
>> function or role within a closed system of formal and decontextualized sign
>> type-to-sign type relationships." Then the words jump out at me "as */we/*
>> have done in structural linguistics." So Shotter identifies himself as a
>> structural linguist, or maybe a reformed structural linguist, addressing
>> other structural linguists, and basically telling about this radical stuff
>> he has discovered in Vygotsky and Wittgenstein. Shotter writes well and he
>> does justice to these writers but this is the occasion of the article - a
>> structural linguist telling others about what Vygotsky and Wittgenstein have
>> to offer. All well and good of course.
>>
>> But this leads to some shortcomings. A little way in, Shotter mentions
>> "context" and points to the importance of context, presumably because
>> structural linguists have neglected context. But coming from Cultural
>> Psychology, this begs the question! People have spent lifetimes not just
>> discovering context, but trying to figure out how to theorise context in
>> psychology. Likewise with "joint action." No cultural psychologist needs to
>> be told about the importance of joint action, but what constitutes "joint"
>> and what kind of "jointness"? If I work for my boss, is that "joint action"?
>> Am I doing "joint action" with my audience when I write? If so, are the
>> audience and my boss in the same relationship to me? What I am saying is
>> that it is not enough to make gestures to jointness and context but we have
>> to work out how to theorise these relations. That is the whole point.
>>
>> Another point I want to make. I am not sure if this is Shotter or
>> Wittgenstein, but I think the dichotomy between institutional life and
>> everyday life is a false dichotomy. There may be many reasons for rejecting
>> this dichotomy, but in particular there seems to be an assumption that while
>> the life of one institution is different from that of another, everyday life
>> is everywhere and always the same. If only! Cultural psychology deals with
>> the obvious fact that everyday life is highly differentiated, heterogeneous
>> and dynamic. And what is the source of everyday life? In the main
>> yesterday's institutional life. And what is the source and foundation of
>> institutional life? Everyday life. The two can only be understood through
>> the mutual tranformation onf one into the other.
>>
>> Another observation: what marks Vygotsky off from Wittgenstein or Bakhtin
>> so far as I know, is that Vygotsky was building a scientific psychology, his
>> observations were supported by experiment and he exhaustively studied child
>> development and pathology, and through this constructive work, developed a
>> nuanced understanding of thinking and speaking which I personally think is
>> inaccessible to any philosophy, Bakhtin and Wittgenstein included.
>> Wittgenstein is useful for critical purposes, but I cannot see how one could
>> go from Wittgenstein to build a psychology, except by wrapping him up with
>> someone else.
>>
>> Enough said for the moment, I think.
>>
>>
>> Andy
>> Larry Purss wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I have not yet read the article I'm attaching but when I googled [Shotter
>>> XMCA] this article was located.  I looked at the bibliography and did not
>>> see Merleau-Ponty referenced.  His engagement with M-P's ideas must have
>>> come after 1995 [when he wrote the article I'm attaching.] For others
>>> interested in this line of inquiry I thought the article may be
>>>
>>>
>> interesting.
>>
>>
>>> In the more recent article I was discussing John says he has moved from
>>> using the term "joint activity" to the term "dialogue" and most recently
>>>
>>>
>> to
>>
>>
>>> using the term "chiasmic intertwining".  I'm wondering what others  think
>>> about John's journey of exploration and how it links up to CHAT?
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>  ------------------------------**------------------------------**
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>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
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