Dewey and Vygotsky: Incommensurability, Intersections, and the Empirical Possibilities of Metaphysical Consciousness

Since the dawn of sociocultural theory in the US and Western European academic contexts around the late seventies, many scholars have attempted to bridge the gap and make connections between Vygotskian-inspired theories of human development and learning and the US and Western European cognitive traditions. I am including both sociocultural theory (SCT) and cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). Prior to this period, US and Western European psychological traditions competed on several fronts with the Marxist-inspired perspectives of learning and human development grounded in dialectic materialism. Furthermore, the broader political and ideological context also frames the debates. On the one hand you have cognitive traditions embedded within nations based on the ideals of capitalism: minimal government interference, free enterprise and markets, individualism, and a laissez-faire economy. On the other hand, you have a cognitive tradition anchored in a nation state superstructure that believes in greater government interference, regulated markets, shared governance, and a communal economy. While these dichotomies are somewhat simplistic and essentialist, they nevertheless inform the broader context through which these respective cognitive traditions emerged. The discursive and ideological tensions that exist between nation states inevitably or inherently, depending on the perspective, mediate what transpires within microgenetic levels of life. The fundamental question here is: how do macroideological framings of the nation state mediate the tug of war of ideas with respect to learning, cognition, and human development? It is the tension between an individual mind, an embodied mind