[Xmca-l] Re: Object oriented activity and communication
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Sun Oct 8 06:13:42 PDT 2017
I'll ask Sasha a question.
Sasha, when you say "activity" as in "such an initial
category can only be object-oriented activity" as it stands,
in English, this is clearly wrong, though it may be that you
are translating it from a Russian statement that is correct.
Surely you mean "object-oriented activities", as in when I
say "every activity has an object." But in your expression
above "activity" is not a word which has a plural and unless
you are a religious person is not something which can have a
specific object. All English translations of A N Leontyev
make this mistake which has caused no end of confusion among
English-speakers.
Am I right? You meant "activities" not "activity," just as
you wouldn't say "water is a unit of water."
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 9/10/2017 12:03 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil wrote:
> Dear Sasha, all,
>
>
> thanks for this brilliant, though also demanding response. I think you are right in your assertion that we are discussing some of the most fundamental problems of CHAT, and therefore it may be worth the try. However, one can see in the lack of response by other members that not everyone has the privilege of the time it requires to go through all of it. In any case, I continue believing that this is a valuable resource for xmca to produce and I hope it is/will be appreciated as such.
>
>
> If I may summarise the core of your argument, I quote from your response:
>
>
> "If we want to make our choice of the initial category, without looking back at the academic fashion, then for us as for the materialists the choice is obvious. We will choose the one of the two categories from which one can derive the entire diversity of human life, including another, the opposite category. And it is obvious that such an initial category can only be object-oriented activity, for it is easy to deduce communication from the latter, which is an attribute property of life. But from communication, addressness, love, empathy and other such spiritually uplifting plots, we will not get life or object oriented activity with the greatest diligence"
>
>
> If we stay within the boundaries of the framework according to which we are looking of the most original germ cell, the one from which all others can be developed, then object-oriented activity is primary. I think it is possible, or perhaps necessary, to agree on that.
>
>
> But once we are back to the development of a concrete Psychology, we still have to deal with the fact that, for any child to participate in human forms of object-oriented activity, and not just the forms of object-oriented activity that also characterise any other multi-cellular organism, this child needs to somehow socialise into those forms of activity. So, while I assume that any category devised to account for human psyche needs to agree with the initial germ cell of reflexivity that you describe, is this germ cell initial to human concrete psychology, or is it a pre-requisite and not yet Psychology's one?
>
>
> As moderator, I should stop there and let others answer (which I hope some do).
>
> As a participant, I'd like to give the question a try:
>
>
> Object-Oriented activity can be found to be primary in ontogenetic development too. Even in the case of teaching deaf-blind children, as the classical studies show, this is only possible through *involvement* in collective activity. So, yes, object-oriented activity is primary over, for example, the teaching of a language (which is only possible in and through object-oriented activity). But then, is not the teaching, the instructional aspect of the relation between adult and child, inherently tied to this collective object-oriented activity? Is not this object-oriented activity already characterised by all those attributes that you just called 'spiritually uplifting' in the very moment in which we describe such activity as human? Addressivity, empathy, how do you get collective activity without them? On this, and precisely in an edited volume titled "The Practical Essence of Man", Vladislav Lektorsky (2015) writes, 'it is evident in that case that communication is included in activity and is its essential component: without relation to another person(s), activity is impossible' (144). Although I not always share all of the ideas with Lektorsky, here I can't see how he can be wrong.
>
>
> So, let me summarise that I agree that the idea of reflexivity that you discuss and, in that sense, the category of object-oriented activity, is most primary. Let me also note that there are other authors who have developed similar ideas to that of reflexivity that you discuss, including Michel Henry, who himself built on French philosopher Maine de Biran, and for whom affectivity is the concrete 'essence of auto-affection' ( https://www.amazon.com/Incarnation-Philosophy-Studies-Phenomenology-Existential/dp/0810131269 )
>
>
> As we work towards a concrete human psychology, I wonder whether we should be forced to choose between activity and communication. Is not the distinction just an artefact of a partial understanding of what it means activity and what it means communicating. I still feel that communication, in the sense of addressivity that Mikhailov describes, is not a synonym for verbal activity, or for semiotics. If the question is whether practical activity precedes verbal activity, the answer is clear. You don't get the latter outside of the former. But, in my perhaps naive view, we ought to have a notion of communication that would not reduce itself to 'verbal activity' (as in the opposition 'practical' vs 'verbal' activity), for I don't see how any practical activity can have any sense (and so be achieved) for any human outside addressivity. Unless this is a sense-less, human-less activity we are talking about; one machines could perform on their own without consciousness.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Alfredo
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Alexander Surmava <alexander.surmava@yahoo.com>
> Sent: 30 September 2017 01:54
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu; Ivan Uemlianin; Alfredo Jornet Gil; Haydi Zulfei ; Mike Cole
> Subject: Object oriented activity and communication
>
> Dear Alfredo, Ivan et al
> The discussion really becomes more and more interesting, touching on the most fundamental categories. But before proceeding to the answers, a short replica aparté (replica aside) :-)
> Theoretical discussion can be productive only if it is conducted in the context of a single theoretical approach, based on the general principles accepted in its framework and shared by the debaters. Here, on the XMCA, such a common, unifying conception are usually considered the theories of Vygotsky, Spinozism or even Marxism. Meanwhile, I am afraid that the course of our discussions reveals not just a difference, but a gap in the interpretation of these concepts.
> For example, is semiotics compatible with the principle of activity, is Spinoza's materialistic monism compatible with the plurality of bases of the theory, that is, it is possible to consider both objective activity and communication as the "germ cell" of the theory. Or maybe for completeness of the theory it is necessary to add to these two principles something third, say - "subjectness"?
> I am convinced that without answering these and similar fundamental questions at the very beginning of our inquiry and without answering them in the most general form, we are doomed to stumble on them at every next step. But this leads us to another difficulty. Over and over again, returning the conversation to the most basic theoretical grounds, we come across the inevitable reproach that instead of discussing a substantive psychological theory, based on which we can practically solve socially significant problems, let us say, create a consistently democratic education system, we draw everyone to the interesting only for us theoretical verbiage<https://www.multitran.ru/c/m.exe?t=188297_1_2&s1=%EF%F3%F1%F2%EE%F1%EB%EE%E2%E8%E5> about imposed on everyone in the teeth psychophysical problem, and the real or imaginary contradictions between Vygotsky and Leontiev.
> Believe me, it would be much more interesting for me too to reflect on how to help find the path to education and culture for the children of poor migrants from Central Asia in Moscow or migrants from Mexico to San Diego.
>
> Agitprop
> sticks
> in my teeth too,
> and I’d rather
> compose
> romances for you -
> more profit in it
> and more charm.
> But I
> subdued
> myself,
> setting my heel
> on the throat
> of my own song.
> Vladimir Mayakovski
>
> И мне
> Агитпроп
> в зубах навяз,
> и мне бы
> строчить
> романсы на вас —
> доходней оно
> и прелестней.
> Но я
> себя
> смирял,
> становясь
> на горло
> собственной песне.
> Владимир Маяковский
>
>
> Among other things, such an over and over again forced return to the very foundation makes it difficult to understand even these very basics, for it forces us to return to the most abstract level all the time, literally stuck in abstractions, instead of moving from the abstract to the concrete.
> Alfredo, you put in your post very interesting questions about how to understand the principle of interaction as such and about the relationship of object oriented activity to communication. With pleasure I will answer them. I will only note in brackets that the detailed answers to these questions have been formulated by me in my theoretic research almost thirty years ago ORIGIN OF LIFE, PSYCHE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.docx In Russian Принципы теории рефлексивной деятельности<https://www.academia.edu/34223109/ORIGIN_OF_LIFE_PSYCHE_AND_HUMAN_CONSCIOUSNESS.docx_In_Russian_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%8B_%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8>. Since 2006, an article with a brief outline of the principles of the "theory of reflexive activity" is available in English. It was even sent in published in English international journal... but for some strange reason was not published then or later.
> So, it's easy for me to answer both of your questions, especially since I can answer by quoting my old text https://www.academia.edu/33954148/LIFE_PSYCHE_CONSCIOUSNESS.
> But before I start to quote myself :-) I would like to repeat - I completely agree with you that the interaction of the subject and his object (predmet) should in no case be understood as a symmetrical interaction of two ready-made things. I'm not sure if such a false approach should be called a "dualism," the term dualism has in my opinion a fairly precise theoretical meaning that should not be expanded without special need, but it is obvious that such a logic of interaction is characteristic of the type of interaction that Hegel and Schelling called the mechanism and chemism. When it comes to the object oriented activity of a living organism, we are not dealing with the logic of abstract interaction, but with the logic of positing, positing of the object (логика полагания предмета), or "organic" type of interaction in the terminology of German classics. In other words, "positing" is also an interaction, but that is its highest, essentially different from the mechanism and the chemism type. Mechanism and chemism are symmetric, in the sense that one can not in principle separate out its active and passive side, on the contrary, in organic interaction, in the process of positing of an object one side is active, subjective, while the other is passive, objective. There are many interesting differences between them, but let us return to this somehow later.
> In the meantime, the promised quote from my graduation work of 1988:
> “Active or predmet directed (object oriented) relation can not be possibly comprehended as interaction of two objects external to each other. For example, the sun taken abstractly, out of touch with the process of life, is neither “predmet” for a plant, nor for astronomy. It receives a specific predmet quality exclusively due to spontaneous activity of a green plant (or astronomer) “selecting” the sun as its predmet and “scrupulously” imitating its celestial movement with that of the plant leaves (with his telescope).
> That is to say that living, active or predmet relation as such is possible only between a living, spontaneously acting subject and a predmet positioned by its vital activity.
> Something else again is a stimulating-reactive relation, or a relation of irritability. Firstly, it is not spontaneous on the side of a subject being stimulated. Secondly, it is not productive since the organism does not determine its predmet but has to satisfy itself with accidental and therefore indifferent external influence. Thirdly, the response of the organism (if only it is not just a mechanistic action of an external cause) can be conditioned only by abstract inner nature of the organism itself but in no way by the shape of the external thing indifferent to the organism incidentally coming into contact with its living subjectivity. To put it differently, we can find not the slightest trace of predmet directedness within a stimulating-reactive relation.”
> Now about the object oriented activity and communication, and it does not matter whether in the verbal form, or in the form of a special Mikhailovsky's "addressing" to another person.
> Which of these two categories should be considered primary and universal, in which of them we have to try to discern the notorious "germ cell" of human consciousness (psyche) is essentially the main problem that has been and remains the central problem of theoretical psychology associated with the names of Vygotsky, Leontyev and Ilyenkov.
> To begin with, one preliminary consideration. If we want to build scientific psychology in accordance with the famous Marxist method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete, whereas all three mentioned above thinkers believed that the method of ascent, the method of "Capital", is the only scientifically correct method, to ignore which means to condemn one's own theoretical discipline on vulgarity, then you will have to choose one thing - either activity or communication. And at first glance, the answer for any person who wants to be a Marxist is obvious - of course, communication, of course sociality, for it is not for nothing that the classic coined his famous sixth thesis, stating that ".…the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.. "
> And if the construction of a Marxist or, in Vygotsky's view, which we fully share, the construction of a purely scientific psychology consisted only in the need to reconcile the basic propositions of theoretical psychology with the "correct" ideological quotations from Marx, then the task ... Then we would again be in an extremely difficult situation, because the classics left us with different meanings on this topic and with which of them it is necessary to harmonize our theory in the first place, and with which in the second, it would still have to be solved by ourselves.
> So in the 1970s soviet psychologists divided on this issue into two camps clustered around two «bosses». A group of Moscow-Kharkov psychologists, whose leader was AN Leontiev and to which Davydov and Ilyenkov undoubtedly belonged, was inclined to the primacy of object oriented activity, that is, to the formulation of the first, second and fifth thesis "Theses On Feuerbach", whereas a group of Leningrad psychologists, led by B.F. Lomov was inclined to formulations of the sixth thesis. In other words, "Muscovites" were for activity, whereas "Leningraders" were for communication.
> Here, it is necessary, however, to clarify that our reference to Marx's Theses on Feuerbach is not a literal reproduction of a real theoretical discussion, but our current reconstruction of its logic. In reality, such a direct appeal to the texts and the authority of the classics of Marxism in the 1970s was considered something rather indecent.
> The end of the discussion between supporters of "activity" and supporters of "communication" is also characteristic. Lomov won a purely bureaucratic victory, convincing the ideological authorities that, by organizing the international Vygotsky conference, Davydov was dragging through dangerous Zionist ideas. Davydov was expelled from the party and dismissed from the post of director of the Institute of Psychology, and the dean of Leontief's psychology department was appointed a well-known adherent of "communication" Leningrader Bodalev. Thus, "communication" with the useful people in the ideological department of the Central Committee of CPSU won a pure victory over the supporters of scientific "activity." This concludes all meaningful discussions in Soviet / Russian psychology. To the leadership of the Faculty of Psychology were no longer allowed supporters of any kind of controversial scientific ideas. Davydov's short-term return to the Institute of Psychology of RAE could not reverse the situation too.
> Let us return, however, to our sheep, that is, to "communication" and "activity."
> If we want to make our choice of the initial category, without looking back at the academic fashion, then for us as for the materialists the choice is obvious. We will choose the one of the two categories from which one can derive the entire diversity of human life, including another, the opposite category. And it is obvious that such an initial category can only be object-oriented activity, for it is easy to deduce communication from the latter, which is an attribute property of life. But from communication, addressness, love, empathy and other such spiritually uplifting plots, we will not get life or object oriented activity with the greatest diligence.
> And this is not an unsubstantiated assertion, but a fact realized in a theory called the "Theory of Reflexive Activity", which demonstrates how inner reflexivity and the entire affective sphere associated with it is first generated by objective activity at the most basic level, in the evolution of life itself. Then a complex dialectic of the relation of activity and reflexivity in the course of the evolution of multicellular organisms is traced. And, finally, it demonstrates how the external reflexivity, that is, the relations of individuals, together and practically producing their own lives, assumes a specifically human character, being a reflexivity, mediating the joint-tool activity of man.
> We emphasize that in the "Theory of Reflexive Activity" communication and the affective side of life are taken not as initial and independent concepts, of the origin of which no materialist can say anything meaningful, but as necessarily inherent to object oriented activity it’s REFLEXIVE side.
> The concept of reflexivity was introduced by me in my diploma thesis in 1988 and, it seems to me, it is a Marxist theoretical solution to the question of the relation of objective activity and "communication". In the same time, reflexive object oriented activity, that is, the active relation of the subject to the object and to itself, is the only possible "germ cell" of the human, as, indeed, any other, psychology.
> Формат интернет чата не самое подходящее место для того, чтобы вводить столь фундаментальные понятия, потому тем, кто хочет разобраться в проблеме пресловутой «клеточки», следует заглянуть в не слишком большой английский текст https://www.academia.edu/33954148/LIFE_PSYCHE_CONSCIOUSNESS и прочитать его дальше первых нескольких страниц.
> The format of the Internet chat is not the most suitable place for introducing such fundamental concepts, therefore, those who want to understand the problem of the notorious "germ cell" should look into not too large English text https://www.academia.edu/33954148/LIFE_PSYCHE_CONSCIOUSNESS and read it to the end :-).
> Полный текст на русском ORIGIN OF LIFE, PSYCHE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.docx In Russian Принципы теории рефлексивной деятельности<https://www.academia.edu/34223109/ORIGIN_OF_LIFE_PSYCHE_AND_HUMAN_CONSCIOUSNESS.docx_In_Russian_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%8B_%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8>
> Наконец, краткий текст на русском, соответствующий английскому переводу https://www.avramus.com/app/download/5446025763/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86+%D0%BF%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9+%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8B.doc?t=1486819527 .
> Dear Alfredo, Ivan et al
> The discussion really becomes more and more interesting, touching on the most fundamental categories. But before proceeding to the answers, a short replica aparté (replica aside) :-)
> Theoretical discussion can be productive only if it is conducted in the context of a single theoretical approach, based on the general principles accepted in its framework and shared by the debaters. Here, on the XMCA, such a common, unifying conception are usually considered the theories of Vygotsky, Spinozism or even Marxism. Meanwhile, I am afraid that the course of our discussions reveals not just a difference, but a gap in the interpretation of these concepts.
> For example, is semiotics compatible with the principle of activity, is Spinoza's materialistic monism compatible with the plurality of bases of the theory, that is, it is possible to consider both objective activity and communication as the "germ cell" of the theory. Or maybe for completeness of the theory it is necessary to add to these two principles something third, say - "subjectness"?
> I am convinced that without answering these and similar fundamental questions at the very beginning of our inquiry and without answering them in the most general form, we are doomed to stumble on them at every next step. But this leads us to another difficulty. Over and over again, returning the conversation to the most basic theoretical grounds, we come across the inevitable reproach that instead of discussing a substantive psychological theory, based on which we can practically solve socially significant problems, let us say, create a consistently democratic education system, we draw everyone to the interesting only for us theoretical verbiage<https://www.multitran.ru/c/m.exe?t=188297_1_2&s1=%EF%F3%F1%F2%EE%F1%EB%EE%E2%E8%E5> about imposed on everyone in the teeth psychophysical problem, and the real or imaginary contradictions between Vygotsky and Leontiev.
> Believe me, it would be much more interesting for me too to reflect on how to help find the path to education and culture for the children of poor migrants from Central Asia in Moscow or migrants from Mexico to San Diego.
>
> Agitprop
> sticks
> in my teeth too,
> and I’d rather
> compose
> romances for you -
> more profit in it
> and more charm.
> But I
> subdued
> myself,
> setting my heel
> on the throat
> of my own song.
> Vladimir Mayakovski
>
> И мне
> Агитпроп
> в зубах навяз,
> и мне бы
> строчить
> романсы на вас —
> доходней оно
> и прелестней.
> Но я
> себя
> смирял,
> становясь
> на горло
> собственной песне.
> Владимир Маяковский
>
>
> Among other things, such an over and over again forced return to the very foundation makes it difficult to understand even these very basics, for it forces us to return to the most abstract level all the time, literally stuck in abstractions, instead of moving from the abstract to the concrete.
> Alfredo, you put in your post very interesting questions about how to understand the principle of interaction as such and about the relationship of object oriented activity to communication. With pleasure I will answer them. I will only note in brackets that the detailed answers to these questions have been formulated by me in my theoretic research almost thirty years ago ORIGIN OF LIFE, PSYCHE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.docx In Russian Принципы теории рефлексивной деятельности<https://www.academia.edu/34223109/ORIGIN_OF_LIFE_PSYCHE_AND_HUMAN_CONSCIOUSNESS.docx_In_Russian_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%8B_%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8>. Since 2006, an article with a brief outline of the principles of the "theory of reflexive activity" is available in English. It was even sent in published in English international journal... but for some strange reason was not published then or later.
> So, it's easy for me to answer both of your questions, especially since I can answer by quoting my old text https://www.academia.edu/33954148/LIFE_PSYCHE_CONSCIOUSNESS.
> But before I start to quote myself :-) I would like to repeat - I completely agree with you that the interaction of the subject and his object (predmet) should in no case be understood as a symmetrical interaction of two ready-made things. I'm not sure if such a false approach should be called a "dualism," the term dualism has in my opinion a fairly precise theoretical meaning that should not be expanded without special need, but it is obvious that such a logic of interaction is characteristic of the type of interaction that Hegel and Schelling called the mechanism and chemism. When it comes to the object oriented activity of a living organism, we are not dealing with the logic of abstract interaction, but with the logic of positing, positing of the object (логика полагания предмета), or "organic" type of interaction in the terminology of German classics. In other words, "positing" is also an interaction, but that is its highest, essentially different from the mechanism and the chemism type. Mechanism and chemism are symmetric, in the sense that one can not in principle separate out its active and passive side, on the contrary, in organic interaction, in the process of positing of an object one side is active, subjective, while the other is passive, objective. There are many interesting differences between them, but let us return to this somehow later.
> In the meantime, the promised quote from my graduation work of 1988:
> “Active or predmet directed (object oriented) relation can not be possibly comprehended as interaction of two objects external to each other. For example, the sun taken abstractly, out of touch with the process of life, is neither “predmet” for a plant, nor for astronomy. It receives a specific predmet quality exclusively due to spontaneous activity of a green plant (or astronomer) “selecting” the sun as its predmet and “scrupulously” imitating its celestial movement with that of the plant leaves (with his telescope).
> That is to say that living, active or predmet relation as such is possible only between a living, spontaneously acting subject and a predmet positioned by its vital activity.
> Something else again is a stimulating-reactive relation, or a relation of irritability. Firstly, it is not spontaneous on the side of a subject being stimulated. Secondly, it is not productive since the organism does not determine its predmet but has to satisfy itself with accidental and therefore indifferent external influence. Thirdly, the response of the organism (if only it is not just a mechanistic action of an external cause) can be conditioned only by abstract inner nature of the organism itself but in no way by the shape of the external thing indifferent to the organism incidentally coming into contact with its living subjectivity. To put it differently, we can find not the slightest trace of predmet directedness within a stimulating-reactive relation.”
> Now about the object oriented activity and communication, and it does not matter whether in the verbal form, or in the form of a special Mikhailovsky's "addressing" to another person.
> Which of these two categories should be considered primary and universal, in which of them we have to try to discern the notorious "germ cell" of human consciousness (psyche) is essentially the main problem that has been and remains the central problem of theoretical psychology associated with the names of Vygotsky, Leontyev and Ilyenkov.
> To begin with, one preliminary consideration. If we want to build scientific psychology in accordance with the famous Marxist method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete, whereas all three mentioned above thinkers believed that the method of ascent, the method of "Capital", is the only scientifically correct method, to ignore which means to condemn one's own theoretical discipline on vulgarity, then you will have to choose one thing - either activity or communication. And at first glance, the answer for any person who wants to be a Marxist is obvious - of course, communication, of course sociality, for it is not for nothing that the classic coined his famous sixth thesis, stating that ".…the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.. "
> And if the construction of a Marxist or, in Vygotsky's view, which we fully share, the construction of a purely scientific psychology consisted only in the need to reconcile the basic propositions of theoretical psychology with the "correct" ideological quotations from Marx, then the task ... Then we would again be in an extremely difficult situation, because the classics left us with different meanings on this topic and with which of them it is necessary to harmonize our theory in the first place, and with which in the second, it would still have to be solved by ourselves.
>
> So in the 1970s soviet psychologists divided on this issue into two camps clustered around two «bosses». A group of Moscow-Kharkov psychologists, whose leader was Leontiev and to which Davydov and Ilyenkov undoubtedly belonged, was inclined to the primacy of object oriented activity, that is, to the formulation of the first, second and fifth thesis of Marx's "Theses On Feuerbach", whereas a group of Leningrad psychologists, led by Lomov was inclined to formulations of the sixth thesis. In other words, "Moscovites" were for "activity", whereas "Leningraders" were for "communication".
> Here, it is necessary, however, to clarify that our reference to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach" is not a literal reproduction of a real theoretical discussion, but our current reconstruction of its logic. In reality, such a direct appeal to the texts and the authority of the classics of Marxism in the 1970s was considered something rather indecent.
>
> The end of the discussion between supporters of "activity" and supporters of "communication" is also characteristic. Lomov won a purely bureaucratic victory, convincing the ideological authorities that, by organizing the international Vygotsky conference, Davydov was dragging through dangerous Zionist ideas. Davydov was expelled from the party and dismissed from the post of director of the Institute of Psychology, and the dean of Leontief's psychology department was appointed a well-known adherent of "communication" Leningrader Bodalev. Thus, "communication" with the useful people in the ideological department of the Central Committee of CPSU won a pure victory over the supporters of scientific "activity." This concludes all meaningful discussions in Soviet / Russian psychology. To the leadership of the Faculty of Psychology were no longer allowed supporters of any kind of controversial scientific ideas. Davydov's short-term return to the Institute of Psychology of RAE could not reverse the situation too.
>
> Let us return, however, to our sheep, that is, to "communication" and "activity."
> If we want to make our choice of the initial category, without looking back at the academic fashion, then for us as for the materialists the choice is obvious. We will choose the one of the two categories from which one can derive the entire diversity of human life, including another, the opposite category. And it is obvious that such an initial category can only be object-oriented activity, for it is easy to deduce communication from the object oriented activity, which is an attribute property of life. But from communication, "addressness", love, empathy and other such spiritually uplifting plots, we will never get life or object oriented activity even with the greatest diligence.
>
> And this is not an unsubstantiated assertion, but a fact realized in a theory called the "Theory of Reflexive Activity", which demonstrates how inner reflexivity and the entire affective sphere associated with it is first generated by objective activity at the most basic level, in the evolution of life itself. Then a complex dialectic of the relation of activity and reflexivity in the course of the evolution of multicellular organisms is traced.
> And, finally, it demonstrates how the external reflexivity, that is, the relations of individuals, together and practically producing their own lives, assumes a specifically human character, being a reflexivity, mediating the joint-tool activity of man.
>
> We emphasize that in the "Theory of Reflexive Activity" communication and the affective side of life are taken not as initial and independent concepts, of the origin of which no materialist can say anything meaningful, but as necessarily inherent to object oriented activity it’s REFLEXIVE side.
>
> The concept of reflexivity was introduced in my diploma thesis in 1988 and, it seems to me, it is a Marxist theoretical solution to the question of the relation of objective activity and "communication". In the same time, reflexive object oriented activity, that is, the active relation of the subject to the object and to itself, is the only possible "germ cell" of the human, as, indeed, any other, psychology.
> The format of the Internet chat is not the most suitable place for introducing such fundamental concepts, therefore, those who want to understand the problem of the notorious "germ cell" should look into not too large English text https://www.academia.edu/33954148/LIFE_PSYCHE_CONSCIOUSNESS and read it to the end :-).
>
> The full Russian text: ORIGIN OF LIFE, PSYCHE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.docx In Russian Принципы теории рефлексивной деятельности<https://www.academia.edu/34223109/ORIGIN_OF_LIFE_PSYCHE_AND_HUMAN_CONSCIOUSNESS.docx_In_Russian_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BF%D1%8B_%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8>
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> Finally short Russian text which corresponds to short English one https://www.avramus.com/app/download/5446025763/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86+%D0%BF%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9+%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8B.doc?t=1486819527.
>
> Sasha
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>
>
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