That is a fascinating text, Andy. but both the terms activity and
operation appear to wobble in their usages/meaning over the course of
the text. Its a really interesting question. In in beginning was the
dead as an underlying assumption that carries a lot with it!
mike
On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 9:02 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>> wrote:
That's great Andy. thanks.
Is this what you were referring to, Manfred?
mike
On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:56 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Mike, I attach pp 154-180 from A N Leontyev's "Development of
Mind" where he introduces the concept of "operation" as part
of a "second stage of evolution of the psyche".
Full text at http://www.erythrospress.com/store/leontyev.html
Andy
mike cole wrote:
Yes, thanks Andy: OPERATIONS are something like automated
actions, subject to conditions not goals.
mike
On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
"operations", you mean.
a
mike cole wrote:
What is your understanding of this issue, Manfred.
In the text
most used by Americans, *actions*
are something like automated actions, subject to
condions not
goals. Components of actions.
What does it mean, ontogenetically, for operations
to preceed
actions? How does this relate to the classic
Leontiev formulation?
Mike
On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 6:28 PM, Andy Blunden
<ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>> wrote:
Michael, here is what Manfred said in his message:
"A young infant has not already established a
goal-driven level of
actions. In the first weeks one can observe the
acquisition of
first
operations and of first expectations what
should
happen. But these
expectations are not yet represented as a
mental image
about the
desired future states. This is the product
of the
acquisition of a
sign system which enables the person to
evoke and
imagine a future
state in the here and now and to start to
strive for
it. And for
this starting point, not only to imagine
different
future states,
but also to select one of them and to start
to strive
for it,
emotional processes come into play that
color one of
the imagined
future state e.g. in a state worth striving
for and
that mobilize
the executive power to start striving for
it. However,
the ability
to form such notions of goals and to
transform them
into actions is
not something that occurs automatically. It
emerges in
a long-drawn
ontogenetic learning process in which the
attainment of
goals
through actions is tried, tested, and
increasingly
optimized."
I make no claim to be a psychologist, Michael,
but it always
seemed to me that ascribing a knowledge of the
world to
neonates
would be a hard position to sustain. We have
to find some
other
way of understanding the behaviour of neonates
and infants
other
than presuming that they form a goal and then
take appropriate
premeditated action to realise that goal.
An "operation" is a form of behaviour which
has the
potential to
be transformed into an action, that is, for
the subject to
become
consciously aware of the behaviour and subject
it to conscious
control. So at first I think we have to say
that the neonate
smiles, moves its hands around, pouts,
squeezes, etc, etc.,
without first forming the idea "I think I will
smile at this
woman, and she might give me some more food"
or any such
thing.
But after the relevant stimuli have been
repeatedly
accompanied by
the various kinds of responses which adult
carers provide
to the
child and the successful satisfaction of the
stimuli, the
child
might begin to associate the behaviour with an
object,
accomodate
its behaviour to the social world around them,
and what
began as
an operation may be transformed into an
action. Otherwise,
I think
we are imply a hell of a lot about innate
knowledge!
Andy
Glassman, Michael wrote:
.... But I also I think disagree with Andy
to some
extent. Do
infants simply engage in operations? Is that
possible? Isn't
there an action tied to every operation,
or else why
is the
infant doing it. I think infants
definitely do react to
stimuli (feedback I think can be define
through
information
processing but it can also perhaps be
defined through
social
cognitive theory which is more behavior
oriented).
But when
they react don't they have an aim of some
type? It
might be
very rudimentary but it is an aim and the
child is
developing
operations to meet those aims (it also
seems to me
that there
are much fuzzier boundaries between
operations and
actions at
this point).
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*Andy Blunden*
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<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
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*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
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