To youse guys I submit the following,
In researching the different theories regarding human’s conscious thought I
came across the following;
Leontiev writes in 1975, “. . . for the subject’sconsciousness the goal my
be in the form of an abstraction from that situation but his action cannot be
abstracted from it. That is the reason why, aside from the intentional aspect
(what must be accomplished) action also includes its operational aspect (how
in what way it can be accomplished), which is determined not by the goal in
itself, but by the object-related [environmental] conditions of its
accomplishment. In other words, the action that is being carried out matches
the task; the task - that is the goal which is given under certain
circumstances. That is why action has a special character that in special
ways ‘creates it – the ways by which it is carried out. I call these ways
of accomplishment of action operations.”
Compare this to what William James wrote in 1906 in an article entitled “What
Pragmatism Means” “. . . to develop a thought’s meaning, we need only
determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its
sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all our
thought-distinctions, however, subtle, is that there is no one of them so
fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To
attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only
consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve
– what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must
prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is
thenf or us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that
conception haspositive significance at all.”
I am left to the conclusion that Leontiev’s activity theory is pragmatism
revisited. In reaching this conlusion I then go on to theorize that the
reason pragmatism and activity theory are so similar is that neither are a
complete explanation of human development, they both belong to Mikhail
Basov’s third and final stage of human development that he labels the
apperceptively-determined process. Basov writes, “The stimulus directs the
whole process along a certain path in such a way that every part of
theprocess, every separate act, takes place under its [stimulus’]
immediateinfluences." I am not refuting neither Jame’s pragmatism nor
Leontiev’s activity theory I am only trying to point out that neither are
sufficient in explaining the entire process of development human’s encounter
in their lifetime.
Eric
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