[Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

[Andy Blunden]

The reservations you mention are precisely the issues. That is why I 
look to concepts or ideals from which one can deduce norms of belief, 
action and meaning, rather than just relying on intentional pursuit of 
an externally existing aim.

Andy

Greg Thompson wrote:
> Andy,
> I think that this notion of "motive" gets a lot closer to where I'm 
> trying to get to. If we want to speak of motivations, then we need to 
> speak of them as distributed between people. This articulation of 
> "motive" does it very nicely.
> (I'm not thrilled with the distinction between "only understood 
> motives" vs. "really effective motives") 
> The one place where I might still suggest some tweaking is in the 
> sense in which a motivation appears as a highly intentional thing - as 
> if it is something that is reflected upon and then undertaken. I think 
> most activity does not have this quality - we too often find ourselves 
> doing things that we didn't necessarily plan to do. Or to put this 
> another way, we are often captured by moods such that it is only in 
> retrospect that we construct a "motivation". And, of course, there are 
> habitual actions that we engage in all the time, but which lack any 
> sense of reflection. 
> But this is not to say that there aren't many instances of intentional 
> reflection upon one's motivations.
> -greg
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 8:44 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net 
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     Greg,
>     perhaps we could try some alternative words to "motivation"?
>     What about "ideal" or "concept"? The ideal or concept of a project
>     defines the norms which characterise the activity, and give us the
>     best go at making sense of the "motivation of an activity". I say
>     "the best go" because "motivation" seems to me to be a word which
>     is applicable only to individual persons. Leontyev used the word
>     "motive" for what defined an activity in a way that is ambiguous.
>     It can be, as in Manfred Holodynski's interpretation, the end
>     which is being served by the immediate goals of the actions making
>     up the activity, in the subjective sense that a person is going to
>     the window (goal) because they want give a speech (motive), but
>     also in the objective sense, for example, that an arms factory is
>     producing guns because the community needs guns. In this latter
>     sense, the motive of "producing guns for the community" is an
>     "only understood motive," and what motivates the factory worker
>     (sets her in motion) is the need to earn a wage to raise their
>     family - that is the "really effective motive." But the concept of
>     "arms production" does not rely on the questionable idea of
>     "corporate motivation", just the norms of participation in "arms
>     production".
>
>     Does that assist at all in your issue, Greg?
>     Andy
>
>     Greg Thompson wrote:
>
>         ...
>         p.s. ... I think Larry described nicely
>
>         what I am trying to achieve - a notion of activity that does
>         not have at
>         its center a sovereign subject. My post questioning the merging of
>         phenomenology with activity theory speaks to the central
>         intellectual
>         concern and the "for what" of what I'm hoping to do in my work.
>
>          
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden