Re: Heidegger RE: [xmca] When does an action begin and end?

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Monica--- Problems of the development of mind. Progress. 1981 and maybe on
marxists.org.

Not sure what Andy was after, David. You may be correct to relate it to
operation.action.activity.

Tony/David and anyone:   Is the word, consciousness, being used consistently
across examples here? I fear not, but am unsure.
mike

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> Is it useful to think of this as an example of Heidegger re: using tools
> without actively thinking about them until they break down or something?
>
> On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Monica Hansen wrote:
>
>  David:
>>
>> You wrote:
>>
>> And on p. 237 we have an unmitigated disaster, when this passable model of
>> a physical skill is used to produce a theory of reading in which
>> consciousness has no part in the recognition of text.
>>
>> ÿÿWhen a person is reading, for example, it seems to him that both the
>> ideas expressed in the book and the outward graphic form of their
>> expression, i.e. the text itself are recognized identically-both the one and
>> the other. In fact, however, that is not wholly so; in fact only the ideas
>> and their expression are presented in consciousness and the outward aspect
>> of the text may only seem to be conscious, as it usually is when there are
>> omissions, crude typographical errors, etc.ÿÿ
>>
>> I have two questions, please:
>>
>> 1.) What Leontiev are you reading? You give page numbers, but I don't know
>> the original source. (Haven't even started that yet, but apparently need
>> to...)
>>
>> 2.) What do you mean in this comment? Can you expand? It looks to me like
>> he is not suggesting that consciousness has no part in text recognition, but
>> that the reader is usually unaware of the part of the process that is not
>> conscious.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Monica
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
>> Behalf Of David Kellogg
>> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 4:29 PM
>> To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] When does an action begin and end?
>>
>> Andy--
>>
>> I thought you meant "action" as opposed to operation as opposed to
>> activity. If that's the case then I think that your question should be
>> "where does an action begin and end?" rather than "when".
>>
>> In Problems of the Development of Mind, Leontiev tries to solve this
>> problem. If, for example, you have not completely automatized the operations
>> of changing gears on the car, then each operation becomes a conscious
>> action, with a discernible goal, not simply something that is the helpless
>> prey of operational conditions. Once you have automatized the operations of
>> changing gears on the car, then changing gears becomes itself the operation,
>> and goal directed actions include things like going around a corner.
>>
>> I am not happy with this solution (I'm also not happy with Bakhtin's
>> purely objectivist definition of  the utterance, for similar reasons).  On
>> p. 235, Leontiev gives the example of a trained marksman which is almost
>> identical to his example of shifting gears. The process of aiming and
>> steadying his grip and breathing and so on are considered automatized: ÿÿFor
>> the trained marksman noneof these processes is an independent action and
>> their objectives are not singled out in his consciousness.ÿÿ
>>
>> This is actually untrue, as the recent example of the Navy SEAL marksmen
>> who freed a ship captain taken hostage by Somali pirates will show. But even
>> if it WERE true it would be irrelevant to language.
>>
>> I think it was Bakhurst who pointed out that a lot of Leontiev's ideas are
>> really lead to a kind of Piagetianism without Piaget. Here, though, his
>> ideas lead to a kind of skills theory without Gagne or Anderson.
>> Essentially, Leontiev is taking the position that all skill learning is the
>> automatization of declarative knowledge in the form of procedural knowledge.
>> This is why Leontiev (and also Wertsch) like examples of sensorimotor skills
>> and hand to eye coordination; the Anderson model handles this quite well for
>> hte most part.
>>
>> On p. 236, Leontiev writes: ÿÿThese transformations of unconscious content
>> in conscious and vice versa that occur in connection with a change of the
>> place occupied by the content in the structure of the activity, can now be
>> understood neurophysiologically.ÿÿ p. 236.
>>
>> And on p. 237 we have an unmitigated disaster, when this passable model of
>> a physical skill is used to produce a theory of reading in which
>> consciousness has no part in the recognition of text.
>>
>> ÿÿWhen a person is reading, for example, it seems to him that both the
>> ideas expressed in the book and the outward graphic form of their
>> expression, i.e. the text itself are recognized identically-both the one and
>> the other. In fact, however, that is not wholly so; in fact only the ideas
>> and their expression are presented in consciousness and the outward aspect
>> of the text may only seem to be conscious, as it usually is when there are
>> omissions, crude typographical errors, etc.ÿÿ
>>
>>
>> The reason I am not very happy with Bakhtin's definition of the utterance
>> is twofold. First of all, many turns (and in fact almost all "feedback"
>> turns that a teacher takes) consist of several utterances within a single
>> turn.
>>
>> T: How are you all today? (one turn, and one utterance)
>> S: Fine, thanks, and you? (one turn, but three utterances)
>>
>> So it's actually much more useful to define an utterance as a POTENTIAL
>> turn than as an actual one. But even this definition is too objectivist for
>> what I want to do.
>>
>> It does not help us at all at the most crucial moment of language
>> development, the transformation of inter-mental vertical constructions in
>> discourse into intra-mental horizontal constructions.
>>
>> Imagine a small child nagging a parent for an ice lolly on a hot day. The
>> child can only utter one or two word turns, but the child can do this for
>> HOURS, using gestures, intonation, tears and tandrums.
>>
>> An older child has learned to ventriloquate objections and respond to
>> them, to incorporate the adults turns into his or her own, like this;
>>
>> "You promised me I could have a lolly if it was hot and I'm really hot and
>> thirst and I know it won't spoil my supper and besides you promised."
>>
>> Now this is only OBJECTIVELY a single utterance; when we begin to analyze
>> it we realize that it is a vitiated dialogue. The same thing is true of
>> paragraphs, of novels and so on, all of which a purely OBJECTIVIST analysis
>> would render as a single utterance.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>> .
>>
>> --- On Mon, 8/17/09, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] When does an action begin and end?
>> To: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Monday, August 17, 2009, 10:22 AM
>>
>>
>> Pepper's discussion of "events" as units of analysis within a
>> contextualist
>> world view might be helpful, Andy. World Hypotheses
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>>  I'll look in my Dewey and see what I can find. Then there's the internet
>>> which has lots of Dewey.
>>>
>>> It occurred to me that Bakhtin's utterance is delimited by turn-taking,
>>> and
>>> this is quite a nice definition for a pragmatic theory of social
>>> interaction
>>> etc. And then I realized that Vygotsky's conception seems to be very
>>> elastic
>>> on this point. Word-meaning shorter and much more cognitivist, the
>>> 'double
>>> stimulation experiments' more like Bakhtin's turn-taking, but the child
>>> development stuff much more open ended. And then 'activity' carries this
>>> connotation of being on-going and not delimited, which gives it quite
>>> different implications I think.
>>>
>>> And I certainly go with Im Anfang war der Tat.
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> Mike Cole wrote:
>>>
>>>  Some time before it ends, Andy?
>>>> For sure I recommend that you take a look at Dewey's early critique of
>>>> the
>>>> reflex arc concept in dealing with
>>>> this issue. Which was in the beginning, anyway, the word or the deed?
>>>> mike
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net<mailto:
>>>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   Can anyone tell me whether there has ever been any discussion about
>>>>   when an action begins and ends? (By "action" I mean in the technical
>>>>   sense of Activity Theory.)
>>>>   Andy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>   Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) http://www.erythrospress.com/
>>>>   Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  --
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) http://www.erythrospress.com/
>>> Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books
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> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK  DE  19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
>  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
>                  -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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