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

[Monica Hansen <monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>]

Thanks, Andy, for your clarification. 
I especially appreciate your illustrations weaving the everyday life and with the work of institutions. I understand your use of mutual transformation. I see how philosophy and social theory are more dependent now on compatible evidence, but there is such a controversy over which evidence and the interpretations of evidence , especially in regard to those of the mind. It is a great topic for discussion.

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2011 8:27 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] John Shotter in 1995 discussing the link between Wittgenstein and Vygotsky

There is, of course, a distinction between everyday life and 
institutions. I particularly liked Agnes Heller's distinction between 
the 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] 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*
Joint Editor MCA: 
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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