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Re: arievitch/leontiev



MIke and all:

Though I don't have ACP in the Russian, it seems to me there are a
couple of interesting points related to Igor's commentary on
the words of the English translation:

"Moving ahead somewhat, we must say at once that the mutual transitions
about which we are speaking form a most important movement of objective
human activity in its historical and ontogenetic development. These
transitions are possible because external and internal activity have a
similar [In the original: IDENTICAL ! - I.A.] general structure.

Here, of course, "identical" [tozhdestvennyi??] may be being used by
Leontiev in the sense of "dialectical identity," or dialectical unity. This would be consistent with how he discusses external and internal activity elsewhere.
I can walk away from reading such a passage and still believe that
Leontiev holds that external and internal activity are bound together dialectically
but are not "identical" in the formal sense.

The
disclosure of the common features of their structure [In the original:
GENERAL STRUCTURE]

As is well known, the Russian "obshchii" can be translated as either
"common" or "general." In contemplating Mike's question:

1. What is meant by "general structure" of external activity?

this question changes completely for me if I think of it as, "What is
the common structure of external activity and internal activity?"
I'm led back to the dialectical unity of the two forms of activity.

And if a "dialectical identity" or unity is meant, doesn't this naturally
result in a "spiral of development"?

So, I guess I'm unconvinced that there is anything in such passages
that shows a contradiction with Steve's formulation:

“Part of the solution may be seeing mental actions not as identical to
physical, but as emergent “internal” realities – following the operative
objective laws of nature and activity that spawned them – that indeed
“appropriate” and “think,” and then act back upon these “external” realities
as the person(s) involved interprets and reacts to them.”

Are there any other passages where there is a clearer case for Leontiev's
espousing a copy theory?

Peter