Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Okay, I'll give it a shot!  :)

I find it significant that when LSV discusses the emergence of verbal thinking in early childhood he suggests that speech 'goes inward' in two steps. First, it goes inward 'psychologically.' Speech that has been up to this point social becomes self-directed; it becomes individual. The young child now does to herself what she has been doing to other people and what they have been doing to her - she tells herself what to do. She speaks out loud - we can hear what she says, and so can she. This self-directed speech appears first when the young child encounters a problem in her ongoing practical activity; with time it shifts to become a way of planning what she will do in advance. This is a material change.

Second, speech becomes inner 'physiologically.' Up to this point, the speech production regions of the brain have worked with the motor regions controlling the articulatory apparatus to emit audible speech. The reception regions of the brain have monitored this speech via the ears. Now the young child becomes capable of sending the output of the speech production regions directly to the reception regions. There is evidence that the arcuate fasciculus provides this direct connection. This too is a material change (one which Luria proposes).

The result of this 'becoming inner physiologically' is that the young child can hear herself talking, but we cannot hear her. This is 'covert' self-directed speech. We adults can all do this too, and the natural question to ask is, where is this speech located? We tend to reply, in the mind. I would suggest that this is an illusion. In a similar way when I listen to music through earphones I experience the sounds as coming from inside my head, though this is not in fact the case. This kind of 'user illusion' is, in my view, what LSV was referring to in his example in Crisis of reflection in a mirror. We experience an object apparently 'behind' the mirror, but this is an illusion. We can easily explain the illusion in terms of the material characteristics of the mirror, and the laws of reflection of light. In the same way, we can explain the illusion of 'inner speech' and 'mental activity' in terms of the material characteristics of the brain. (At least, neuroscience is beginning to enable us to do so.) The young child begins to be able to deliberately employ those neural characteristics in early childhood, and during middle childhood becomes much more skilled at doing so. 

Prior to this, in infancy and toddlerhood, LSV describes a practical intelligence that is not thinking in the sense that self-directed speech is verbal thinking. It is the smart problem-solving in action that Piaget, of course, called sensorimotor intelligence.

Martin

On Dec 16, 2012, at 3:29 PM, Charles Bazerman <bazerman@education.ucsb.edu>
 wrote:

> It seems to me that what is needed at this point in the discussion that someone come forth with a clear articulation of how the personal and social experiences that appear to be idealist are produced from a material basis, the material conditions of our experiences in the world and the way language and other symbols come to create a transformed set of mental processes in which we recognize "ideas."  This account must also contend with the prelinguistic thinking which Vygotsky posits as dominating in the early couple or three years, and then remains in a sublated form even as our perceptions, actions, and articulations become increasingly formed through publicly circulated and internally reconfigured language. This, of course is all in Vuygotsky, but until we actually discuss the mechanisms Vygotsky posits we will not be able to remove ourselves from the philosophical thickets.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>
> Date: Sunday, December 16, 2012 12:04 pm
> Subject: Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/
> To: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> 
>> Ok ! Thanks a lot , Martin ! This is my puzzle . This is my confusion 
>> . You are mostly absent from the discussions . Andy also believes 
>> Vygotsky is a staunch marxist/materialist . My puzzle is Vygotsky 
>> seems to have gotten mixed up . In his name everything is justified . 
>> I remember your ' Is Vygotsky still relevant ? ' to which you and many 
>> others answered , 'yes' . I so suppose Vygotsky tries to get the 
>> 'good' of everything and credits the 'bad' things to liveliest , at 
>> times , hot critiques . He deals , for instance , with Spinoza in such 
>> manner . What I want to say is , here , on this forum , I might fancy 
>> ! there's no dividing line between 'materialism' vs. 'idealism' , the 
>> theme so pivotal to Vygotsky's understanding ; Not that 'idealists' , 
>> if any but me , have no right to come up with their ideas but that if 
>> the backbone of this forum recognizes someone as talking 
>> idealistically which goes against what Vygotsky intends ,  they should 
>> clarify the
>> points as Vygotsky himself so clearly and brilliantly does . And if 
>> they are so progressive as to put Vygotsky behind their back , it's we 
>> who should sit calm and listen . Does this forum support Vygotskyian 
>> 'Materialism' ?
>> Best
>> Haydi        
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
>> To: Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com>; "eXtended Mind, 
>> Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> 
>> Sent: Sunday, 16 December 2012, 20:25:52
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Haydi,
>> 
>> 
>> I'm not entirely sure what aspect of this complex section of Crisis 
>> you'd like to discuss, but on this matter...
>> 
>> On Dec 16, 2012, at 9:27 AM, Haydi Zulfei <haydizulfei@rocketmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> Here we see lots of stuff dealing with and appraising 
>> 'phenomenology' and 'idealistic approches' and epistemologies . Are we 
>> really discussing a mixture of 'idea' and 'matter' as one nomad ? Are 
>> they identical or just distinct ? while our beloved is a non-stop 
>> believer in 'materialism' at the least account ? 
>> 
>> 
>> My reading is that this is where LSV wants to cut psychology in two, 
>> and discard the idealist part. All he takes from phenomenology (and at 
>> the time this meant the phenomenology of Husserl, not of Heidegger or 
>> of Merleau-Ponty, which are quite different) is aspects of its 
>> methodology. He completely rejects its idealist ontology - that what 
>> exists are 'eidetic structures' (mental essences, in effect). The new 
>> psychology is to be completely materialist. However, LSV insists that 
>> this doesn't mean it will ignore consciousness. On the contrary, it 
>> will study consciousness as something material. 
>> 
>> 
>> Martin
>> __________________________________________
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>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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> 


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