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Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation



Great to hear from you Valerie.

My point about Michael's example of the mathematicians'
brainstorming on the whiteboard is that the players may be
working very freely and without any feeling of constraint by
rules, but it is the *artefacts* they are using, which are
the outcome of maybe millennia of such interactions, that
make this free-flowing interchange possible.

When you suggest replacing "interiorisation" and
"reflection" with other words from the Bakhtinian lexicon,
does that mean that you think that we *ought to* avoid using
these words??

Again, nice to hear a new voice Valerie!!

Andy

PS, in my postgrad work many years ago, I dealt with a
couple of mathematical formalisms in wide use in
engineering, which had never been properly tested
mathematically before being adopted uncritically, and turned
out to be internally inconsistent, so this question was
close to my heart.

Valerie Farnsworth wrote:
This recent exchange (having had a rare few moments this morning to read a few xmca emails) provoked several thoughts that I would like to throw out there, see what folks think.

First, in response to the most recent response from Andy: Does the whole thing really degenerate into nonsense? I would think that some people could still make sense of this mathematician you conjecture. What I could see happening though is that the formalists may choose not to. What is implicit in your argument which I would accept is that formal rules and terms may allow for more efficient dialogue. However, they should not restrict our thinking to the point of not allowing us to consider other ways of expressing what we want to say. I see Michael’s suggestion of using concrete examples as one alterative to formal terms and abstract discussions. Second, I would suggest another alternative. If we follow with Bakhtin, perhaps words like ‘interiorisation’ and ‘reflection’ can be replaced by ‘internally persuasive’? This term allows for an agentive self who assesses how the world s/he is in is persuasive (or not). Dialogue which is not internally persuasive, as I choose to understand it, remains ‘authoritative’. This, I think, moves us away from setting up an external/internal situation and instead qualifies different aspects of the world and the person in world as ‘internally persuasive’ or ‘authoritative’ (and so on?). Third, Michael’s suggestion to focus on concrete things also converges for me with what I was just reading from Bruner in The Culture of Education about narratives of science and also concerns I have with certain assumptions regarding research. That is, what I interpret from Michael’s suggestion is that much of research is about telling a good story (something I’ve also heard from Etienne Wenger). This may cause some uproar among those wanting ‘objective measures’ of ‘what works,’ but given the complexity of human relations in cultural-historical contexts, can we really expect to ‘explain’ what we see happening to the point that the explanation can be tested in another context in order to be verified? Maybe this is possible to some extent in some contexts. But isn’t validity for most education research more like verifying stories? To quote Bruner: “stories are judged on the basis of their verisimilitude or ‘lifelikeness.’” (p. 122) If we accept

this proposition, Michael’s suggestion of using concrete examples makes good sense, especially if verifiability is achieved “with respect to a specifiable world.’ (ibid). Perhaps then, "rigorous, detailed critique
according to exhaustively demanding criteria of logic" is not as important as it is with mathematics, for example? Instead, research (and theorising) can be seen as a form of dialogue which people in the world assess for their likeness to the world as they live it – research can then be internally persuasive or authoritative for different people at different times…. This does not mean, however, that research and theory should not be developed with the help of formal terms!

My last point relates to an ESRC Seminar Series I’m planning here in the UK to which you are all invited. The idea is to shift the dialogue about research from being about 'what works' to 'how' questions and considering the ways sociocultural theories help us to do this. I’ll send a website link (a wiki) to the list when we’ve worked out the kinks.

Best wishes,
Valerie Farnsworth


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: 07 January 2009 05:49
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation

But a mathematician can only "play around with" equations and so on, because over the preceding centuries the formalisms she is using to structure and communicate her thoughts have been subject to rigorous, detailed critique according to exhaustively demanding criteria of logic. As soon as the mathematician departs from the rules implied in the use of a given formalism, the whole thing degenerates into nonsense. The same goes for philosophy and psychology.

Andy

Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
Perhaps because all of this is so ABSTRACT. Why not look at concrete people doing concrete things---even mathematicians do concrete things, use a pen and doodle or chalk to write on the board. Get some tape and talk about it, make sense of it, rather than talk about words, because this just goes round and round and round, I am getting dizzy from all of these words. Inherent in words is that they mark of the other, they dichotomize, unless you do what you have in Bakhtin or CA, where you cannot reduce to the individual thing /person, and you get dialogue, you get inherent linkages.
Michael


On 6-Jan-09, at 8:49 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

But Michael, as I understand it, Martin is asking us is there any meaning to words like "reflection" and "interiorisation" if we are to avoid "dichotomizing"?

Andy

Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
HI All,
I don't think that we should continue with dichotomizing the internal external. There are some others later ----I think I saw some stuff in JREEP but don't remember if it was Mikhailov-----You cannot separate inside from outside, and when you follow communication, there is always inside and outside. People don't orient to inside and outside, they are orienting and arranging worlds, and consciousness is a refracted/refracting parallel to the material world. Jean Lave is showing us, as Chuck Goodwin, and all my work also, that people are acting in settings, and it makes very little sense to use the model of the little homunculus whispering into our ears what we should be doing. Acting always is IN the world and FOR the world. So Bakhtin has a better way of talking about the issue when he says that the word is always bestraddling speaker and listeners, and to me, this is an inherent orientation to and for the world, and this means, that cognition never is solely on some inside, but, as action, always bestraddling both. No doubt, there is grey matter and it gets us to operate, but whatever there is matters little to the person, who, as Bakhtin says, is in the world as a person. In all of this talk about the inside, I am missing the person in body and flesh, with emotions, with pain and elation, real people. Let's get real people back into our analyses, not idealized shells of people.
Michael
On 6-Jan-09, at 5:07 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
OK, to keep the ball rolling, what are we to make of the discussion around
page 310 of "interiorization," which Leontiev defines as "the gradual
conversion of external actions into internal, mental ones"?
On page 284 Leontiev has just praised Rubinstein for proposing that mind is
*in* activity. Now he says that mental activity is the *product* of
'external' activity, and furthermore that mental activity is 'internal'
activity. This sounds very dualistic to me.
And here are my notes on page 311:
"But this is circular reasoning. Interiorisation is necessary, ANL tells us,
because accumulated human knowledge comes to the child as something
'external.' These 'objects, verbal concepts, knowledge' have an 'immediate
physical aspect' that is 'not yet refracted through the prism of the
generalized experience of social practice.' But what happened to ANL's
recognition that the child acts on objects always with adult guidance, so
that the *immediate* contact *is* refracted through this prism (though I'd
like to avoid the refraction/reflection metaphors).
"And even if ANL were correct, why is any of this an explanation of why
interiorization is necessary? If (past) human activity is 'embodied' in
objects, that doesn't mean that I need mental actions to act with them. On the contrary, the whole notion of 'embodiedness' began as an *alternative*
to idealist psychology.
"And 'reflection in the child's head [p. 311]'?!"
Someone give me a monist gloss of all this, please!
Martin
On 1/5/09 6:46 PM, "Haydi Zulfei" <haydizulfei@yahoo.com> wrote:
Martin,
Just one quote :
[[Mind arises at a certain stage of the evolution of life not
by chance out of necessity.i.e. naturally . But in what does
the necessity of its origin consist? Clearly, if mind is not
simply a purely subjective phenomenon, and not just an
'epiphenomenon' of objective processes, [but a property that
has real importance in life] , the necessity of its origin
is governed by the evolution of life itself . More complex
conditions of life require an organism to have the capacity,
to reflect objective reality in the form of the simplest sensa-
tions. The psyche is not simply 'added' to the vital functions
of organisms, but arises in the course of their development
and provides the basis for a qualitatively new, higher form
of life-life linked with mind, with a capacity to reflect real-
ity.
This implies that in order to disclose the transition from
living matter that still has no psyche to living matter that
has one, we have to proceed not from internal subjective states
by themselves, separated from the subject's vital activity,
or from behaviour taken in isolation from mind, or
merely as that through which mental states and processes
are studied, but from the real unity of the subject's mind
and activity, and to study their internal reciprocal connections
and transformations.]]
Here we read there was a time when the organism faced *undifferentiated* flat environmet ; in his A,C,P , Leontiev also alludes to the idea of environment once having been *objectless* for the organism , then at a higher stage having
faced *object-based differentiated* environment .
If I'm right in my reading , first the rustling in the environment triggers the frog to be led then to the food direct (insect) . This is when Leontiev
says need is not sufficient clue to activity ;  it must hit an object .
The other problem with your *dualism* vs *monism* is explained as follows :
Leontiev says at one time in evolution , it's not been the case that the
organism has been able to see the thing once ; the image of that thing twice . He has seen just one . Here we face the idea of the extension of matter . In his book Lenin says quite clearly extension , time , place , causality are
intrinsic to the Matter . Monism says the superhuman existence is the
extension of **matter** . These are not two but one and and the same thing .
Decartes , Hume , you well know had a different problem in view . They
believed in so-called one SOULED-body . Soul having been incarnated , as Andy says , in the Air and detachable capable of leading independent life This is Dualism . But when you believe in *Mind* being just a *property* of matter , then philosophical dualism is eliminated . And here is again where I could say when you initiate with *culture* as one agental transformative , we object as you placing yourselves just midway ignoring *continuity* disconnecting culture
from its whereabout/origin .
Best
Haydi

--- On Mon, 1/5/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, January 5, 2009, 2:51 PM

'Sad' because my sense is that if one wants to avoid dualism - crucial
for
Vygotsky - Lenin's writing about 'reflection' isn't the way to
go. I don't
know the details well, but from what I have read Lenin assumed a simple
dualism in which mental representations 'reflect' the real world. The
'image' may be reversed, but still it is in a realm quite different
from the
real. (Bakhurst discusses Lenin's philosophy in *Consciousness and
Revolution* if I remember correctly.)

I recently read through *Problems of the Development of Mind*, which Michael
and Andy generously made available (it fell down my chimney early one
morning) and was disappointed to discover how little Leontiev seems to have avoided dualistic ways of thinking/writing. Here too the relation of psyche
to world is expressed in terms of 'reflection,' for example:

"The transition to existence in the conditions of a complex
environment formed as things is therefore expressed in or-
ganisms' adaptation to it taking on a qualitatively new form
associated with reflection of the properties of a material,
objective reality of things" (44)

The sense of reflection is not very clear in this excerpt, but the term is
used repeatedly in ways that generally suggest Leontiev sees the psyche
forming subjective representations of an objective reality. Perhaps this can
be saved by drawing on Marx's use of 'widerspiegeln,' which as
Michael
points out avoids the connotations of mirroring. But at least it invites
readings of CHAT which don't challenge the dualism in contemporary western
social science.

By the way, although the repeated presentations of the same notions in
Leontiev's book made me suspicious along the way, it wasn't until the
very
end that I discovered (from an endnote) that it is a compilation of articles from very different dates. I'd recommend reading it in chronological order to get a clearer sense of how his ideas developed. For instance, I need to
go back to see how his relative emphasis shifted between the child's
encounter with objects, and adult guidance of this encounter. At times the
latter is not mentioned, at others it is added on ("by the way..."),
and at
times it is highlighted. But since the chapters are out of order, I don't
yet have a clear sense of the chronology of these shifts.

Martin

On 1/4/09 11:50 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

The idea that always occurs to me about reflections is that in mirrors,
left
and right are reversed.

Sad? Or a reason to pause to think?
Quien
Sabe?
mike

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
wrote:
Why sad?


Martin Packer wrote:

I know, but it would be sad
to discover that Vygotsky was drawing so
heavily
from Lenin.


On
1/4/09 9:42 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
 I might say
as an aside, that "reflection" whatever it is in
Russian, has a strong
place in Russian Marxism. This is
because Lenin made such a powerful
attack on his
philosophical enemies in "Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism"
written in 1908. Ilyenkov still defends this books in
the
mid-1970s, though almost all non-Russian Marxists would say
that
it is a terrible book and was written before Lenin had
studied Hegel, etc.
In M&EC Lenin makes reflection a central
category, a universal property of
matter, etc., and bitterly
attacks the use of semiotics of any
kind.
I have an ambiguous attitude to M&EC myself. Apart from

"sins of omission" perhaps, Lenin is right, but did he
really have to
shout it that loud? Well, in the historical
context of the wake of the
defeat of the 1905 Revolution,
probably he did. Did all Russian Marxists
for the next 100
years have to follow his lead? Probably not.

I
note that in Dot Robbins' book on Vygotsky and Leontyev's
Semiotics etc.,
Dot defends the notion of reflection. The
situation, as I see it, is that
"reflection" has a strong
advantage and an equally strong disadvantage in
conveying a
materialist conception of sensuous perception.

On one
side it emphasises the objectivity of the
image-making - there is nothing
in the mirror, or if there
is, it is an imperfectionit which distorts the
image. On the
other side, mirror-imaging is an entirely passive process,
a
property of even non-living matter.

Personally, I think
"reflection" belongs to Feuerbachian
materialism, not Marxism, but in
historical context, the
position of many Russians who use the concept,
is
understandable.

That's how I see it anyway,


Andy
Ed Wall wrote:

Martin

      It appears the
root is more or less
                       отрaжáть
(отрaзить)

and, at least according to my dictionary, has the
sense of  reflecting
or having an effect. However, my qualifications are
dated.
Ed

On Jan 4, 2009, at 7:01 PM, Martin Packer
wrote:
 At the end of last year several of us were trying to figure
out whether
'reflection' is a good term to translate the way
Vygotsky
and leontiev
wrote
about 'mental' activity. Michael Roth pointed
out that the German word
that
Marx used was Widerspiegeln rather
than Reflektion (see below). I don't
think anyone identified the Russian
word that was used. I still haven't
found time to trace the word in
Vygotsky's texts, English and Russian.
But
an article by Charles
Tolman suggests that the Russian term was
'otrazhenie.'  Online
translators don't like this word: can any Russian
speakers suggest how
it might be translated?
Reflection (German: Widerspiegelung;
Russian: otrazhenie)
Tolman, C.W. (1988). The basic vocabulary of
Activity Theory. Activity
Theory, 1, 14-20.


Martin
On 10/25/08 12:40 PM, "Wolff-Michael Roth"
<mroth@uvic.ca>
wrote:
 Hi Martin,
Marx does indeed use the term
"widerspiegeln" in the sentence you
cite.

Das Gehirn
der
Privatproduzenten spiegelt diesen doppelten
gesellschaftlichen
Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten nur wider in den
Formen, welche im
praktischen Verkehr, im Produktenaustausch erscheinen
- den
gesellschaftlich
nützlichen Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten
also in
der Form, daß das Arbeitsprodukt nützlich sein muß,
und zwar
für
andre - den gesellschaftlichen Charakter der
Gleichheit der
verschiedenartigen
Arbeiten in der Form des gemeinsamen
Wertcharakters
dieser materiell verschiednen Dinge, der
Arbeitsprodukte.

But the Duden, the reference work of
German language says that there
are 2 different senses. One is
reflection as in a mirror, the other
one that something brings to
expression. In this context, I do not
see Marx draw on the mirror
idea.
For those who have trouble, perhaps the analogy with
mathematical
functions. In German, what a mathematical function
does
is
"abbilden," which is, provide a projection
of, or reflection,
or
whatever. You have the word Bild, image, picture in
the verb.
But
when you look at functions, only y = f(x) = x, or -x
gives you
what
you would get in the mirror analogy. You get very
different
things
when you use different functions, log functions, etc.
Then
the
relationship between the points on a line no longer is
the same
in
the "image", that is, the target domain.

We sometimes
see the word "refraction" in the works of Russian
psychologists, which
may be better than reflection. It allows you to
think of looking at the
world through a kaleidoscope, and you get all
sorts of things, none of
which look like "the real thing."

Michael




On 25-Oct-08, at 9:01 AM,
Martin Packer wrote:
Michael,

Here's one example
from Marx, and several from Leontiev, if we can
get into
the
Russian too.
"The twofold social character of the labour of
the
individual appears
to
him, when *reflected* in his brain, only
under those forms which are
impressed upon that labour in every-day
practice by the exchange of
products." Marx, Capital, Chapter 1,
section 4.
" Activity is a non-additive unit of the
corporeal,
material life of
the
material subject. In the narrower sense,
i.e., on the psychological
plane,
it is a unit of life, mediated
by mental *reflection*, by an *image,*
whose
real function is to
orientate the subject in the objective world."
Leontiev,

Activity & Consciousness.
" The circular nature of the processes
effecting the interaction of
the
organism with the environment
has been generally acknowledged. But
the main
thing is not this
circular structure as such, but the fact that the
mental

*reflection* of the objective world is not directly generated by the
external influences themselves, but by the processes through which the
subject comes into practical contact with the objective world, and
which
therefore necessarily obey its independent properties,
connections,
and
relations." ibid

" Thus,
individual consciousness as a specifically human form of the
subjective
*reflection* of objective reality may be understood only
as the

product of those relations and mediacies that arise in the course of
the
establishment and development of society." ibid


Martin
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