I for one have never rejected the notion of teleology and believe that one of the great disasters that empricism has wrought upon modern thought is the removal from sight of the multiple causes: formal, effective, teleological, etc. , leaving only effective cause.
And of course that notion is central to the concept of development whether it be in psychology or sociological theories of modernization. I agree with Andy that it is unavoidable, except for behaviorists and structuralists, to specify teleologies for individual subjects. The question remains for collectivities. It would seem that the idea of conversations with a future also implies teleology insofar as the conversations are exploratory and the topic has an internal organization yet to be discovered. This is perhaps the idea of history operating behind the backs of humans. Sartre's analysis of the storming of the Bastille in his Critique of Dialectical Reason provides a wonderful example of how one can see that apparently unstructured actions of mobs, motivated by an absence, can crystallize into a direction. The first steps determining the ones that follow.
Paul
Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
It is so interesting, confusing, thought provoking to follow people's ideas
about the process
of development.
It was peg griffin, not sylvia scribner, Paul, with whom we wrote about
zo-peds as conversations
with the future.
I have been pouring through LSV writings as best I can for all the places
where the term, development,
is used. I was reminded of the year that the LCHC seminar was devoted to
reading and trying to help
Norris Minnick as he labored through the translation of LSV Volume 1
Collected works. The term, development,
is used in some many ways/contexts by LSV that it is a real task to try to
arrive at some family group of
meanings.
Different metaphors highlight different sides of the multifacted (imagined?)
jewel. One question that is on my
mind is the issue of QUALITATIVE CHANGE being central to LSV's though and
the extent to which different
metaphors include this idea.
Other ideas floating in the discussion that I am chewing on are
interfunctional reorganization (both within the brain and
between person and environment, and issue of directionality in development.
I cannot agree that teleological thinkins is always wrong, as I interpret
the local concensus to be. It is hard to avoid the conclusion
that all culturally mediated action is teleological, which does not mean it
is not misguided!!
mike
God may be a blind watchmaker, but neither and Adam or Eve, skilled as they
were in watch making or making watchers, i am not sure which,
was blind.
mike
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 03 2007 - 07:06:19 PST