Re: Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

David,
Your responses always tickle me! Thoughtful, erudite, and wonderfully
playful.

So the question is whether microgenesis is interested in will-he, nill-he?
(just the other day I was wondering where the phrase "willy-nilly" came
from and what it could possibly mean - now I know!).

As you seem to be pointing out, the question points to a culturally
b(i)ased model of action - a legal-juridical model of accountability of
selves. But this is, of course, just one model of action among many around
the globe (actors around the globe far exceed what we would consider to be
the "participants" in an interaction - gods and ancestors and spirits are
often present -- and (imho) a thoughtful consideration of "psyche" would
make us realize that even our model of the actor is much more than we think
- full of spirits beyond our control - Flip Wilson's "the devil made we do
it" in psychoanalytic guise - "the depression made me do it" (and consider
the legal-juridical implications...) - and this is not to dismiss the real
reality of depression, I'm making a much more subtle point). But this model
of action is the one that Austin, Searle, and Grice (among others) adopt
and which, as I've argued before, leads down a path that shows you some
things and not others.

I'd think that rejecting this model of human action would be a starting
point for understanding (in a new and different way) what is going on in
micro- moments. Intentions are interesting objects for us to consider about
ourselves, but difficult to speak (intelligently) about when watching
others actions. Better to watch what is happening and try to point to what
kinds of happenings have occurred in these micro- moments. And hold off on
speculation about intentions as long as possible (but note how difficult it
is to do b.c. this is how we make sense of the world - what were they
trying to do).

So, simply put, all this talk of microgenetic accountings of will-he
nill-he is just shilly-shally.

-greg




On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 4:26 AM, kellogg <kellogg59@hanmail.net> wrote:

>   Greg--
>
>
>
> Back in 2010 I reviewed a collection of Gestaltist articles on
> microgenesis (Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 290-293).:
>
>
>
> Innovating Genesis: Microgenesis and Constructive Mind in Action,
> (2008) E. Abbey and R. Diriwachter (eds.) Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
>
>
>
> I don't recommend it, actually. I got into because I have always thought
> that one way to distinguish learning from development is to say that
> microgenesis refers to a particular KIND of learning, viz. that which leads
> to ontogenesis. Mike objected to this view, I think because he has the more
> traditional view that learning is one type of microgenesis.
>
>
>
> That's very much the view put forward by the Ganzheitpsychologie and its
> adherents in this book. Almost everybody sets themselves the
> methodological problem of determining how many hairs it takes to say that
> somebody has a beard, and whether beardiness is intrinsic in the existence
> of every hair. Hardly anybody sets themselves the more interesting
> methodological problem of deciding whether the various studies in the book
> are actually talking about the same thing, and if so what that same thing
> might be.
>
>
>
> For example, one study looks at people doing the video game "Duck Shoot"
> and tries to extrapolate this to the microgenesis of murder and suicide.
> But as a reviewer crisply remarks, "Live ducks in the experimental study
> are just video images, not the real duck!"
>
>
>
> This morning, I was re-reading Hamlet, and Vygotsky's Hamlet essay, about
> which I know you have pondered oft and deeply. As you know, there is some
> discussion of whether Ophelia committed suicide and can be legitimately
> buried in consecrated ground (the gravedigger says no, and Gertrude
> describes Ophelia's death to Laertes as an accident; she is eventually
> buried in hallowed ground but not given a Christian service as a
> compromise).
>
>
>
> A footnote in my edition of the play says that this is actually a
> reference to legal arguments in 1561-62 about the suicide of Sir James
> Hale, who drowned himself in 1554. There was a lawsuit, because although
> nobody begrudged him a Christian burial, English law held that the lands of
> a suicide were forfeit, and the family wished to inherit. So there was a
> lively discussion of the nature of human action, and it was decided that
> each act has three parts: the imagination, the resolution, and the
> perfection thereof, and self-murder had to be in all three for the land to
> be forfeited.
>
>
>
> FIRST CLOWN: For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it
> argues an act, and an act hath three branches--it is to act, to do, to
> perform.
>
> SECOND CLOWN: Nay, but hear you goodman delver
>
> FIRST CLOWN: Give me leave. Here lies the water--good. Here stands the
> man--god. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is will-he,
> nill he, he goes--mark you that. But if the water come to him, and drown
> him, he drowns not himself.
>
>
>
> The idea is that only suicide is really willy-nilly; everything else is an
> act of god. So microgenesis is the study of will-he, nill-he?
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
> --------- 원본 메일 ---------
>
> *보낸사람*: Yrjö Engeström <yrjo.engestrom@helsinki.fi>
> *받는사람* : "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> *날짜*: 2012년 9월 23일 일요일, 03시 23분 59초 +0900
> *제목*: Re: [xmca] Help? - Microgenesis, Microgenetic, Microgeny?
> A fairly useful collection is:
>
> Microdevelopment: Transition Processes in Development and Learning
> by Nira Granott (Editor), Jim Parziale (Editor)
> Cambridge University Press, 2002
>
>
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-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Department of Anthropology
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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