Alfred,
I couldn't really tell whether you had answered Jennifer's quite direction
question concerning the mediated v. non-mediated character of perception in
your proposal for a semiotic ecology. As I understand it, this is not a
question about compatibility with Gibson by with Vygotsky and the AT
tradition for which all perception is mediated, the original connection with
"objectivity" being destroyed in the development of specifically
characteristic forms of human production. Or was Leont'ev wrote:
" . . . objects are reflected in language and consciousness merged with the
human needs concretized (objectified) in them. This mergin, however, later
is destroyed. The inevitablity of its destruction lies in the objective
contradiction of the production of goods, whivch give rise to the opposition
of concrete to abstract work and leads to the alientation of human
activity."
That is, the process that separates human social evolution, from direct
comparison with any other, non-mediated, form of adapatation to the
environment.
This is fundamentally the same question I was pointing to when I posted
concerning your invocation of Kant's schemata:. To me it's obvious that
you are positing a direct immediate transfer of information from the
environment to the individual. The conceptual problems with such a position
are nototrious and I think many of us would like to see those addressed --
sort of like putting down the foundation before building the walls and roof.
Is this direct perception/intuition of affinities a process situated in the
individual "human soul" which is where Kant located them? I felt that you
had perhaps dismissed these when you wrote, "Naturally there are more of the
basic and phil-of-science questions; but those can come anytime."
Nevertheless I think it is important to attain some clarification on this
issue of direct perception of objective qualities of the environment which
is not compatible with Vygotsky's psychology or anything else in the AT
tradition.
Paul H. Dillon
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