First, thank you for your question!! These are the juicy philosophical
questions that really interest me!!! If only I could get someone to pay
me to research them!!
>As I've argued here and elsewhere, Lave and Wenger made a drastic step
>away from any conception of activity theory. <><> Bytes saved <><><>
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>These comments perplex me.
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>Redefining what counts as knowledge and the processes of its
>embodiment/origins/etc. is now the same as saying that there
>is no such thing as knowledge so transfer becomes a moot point,
>is it?
There are two versions of the reply. The short reply argues simply that
in my view of the world "knowledge" is socially constructed concept, not
an ontological primitive. If the concept of knowledge itself is socially
constructed, then the problem of transfer boils down to a question of
semantics: does the stuff we define as knowledge have the property of
transfer. It is our definition, we can do whatever we want with it!
That isn't very satisfying, so that brings us back to this notion of
ontological primitive: what sort of "stuff" actually exists in the world?
Now we are in the realm Existentalism.
Existential is something of a red flag. At the risk of a gross
oversimplification, it seems to me the majority of the folks on this list
are asking the following question: "Why bother with this much more
complex account of being-in-the-world? Can't we get an adequate
description of human world by 'holding the beings constant' and
distributing the knowledge?"
I think there is also a subcurrent of discontent: "Can't we get away from
a complex notion of beings, by taking a pragmatic stance as our
philosophical foundations?" It is undeniable: people successfully
function in the world. Somehow they resolve the figure/ground and
subject/object relationships just fine. If it was good enough for the
Neanderthals, Egyptans, Greeks, Romans, and all of modern life to survive
- how as analysts can we possibly go wrong?
This is the essential battleline: can we ignore existential issues
through a pragmatic stance to research? I believe that Lave and Wenger,
Lave and Packer, Hubert Dreyfus, and ultimately Heidegger argue
vigorously against this simplification. Now what follows is my best
attempt to smash a lot of ideas, including no doubt some reinvented
wheels. However, please bear with me and hopefully I can get the point
across.
Let's take a simple example, suppose we are observing Garfield who hates
spiders. While moving around he sees one of those ugly things,
immediately he grabs a handy rock, and proceeds to squash the guts out of
this poor creature. As analysts our task is to explain how this happened.
If knowledge is taken as a phenomenological primitive, this problem goes
straight back to the nightmare's of Artificial Intelligence. You can't
distribute the knowledge anywhere (sorry folks, you can't convince me
that the rock has the knowledge that it can squash spiders.) Now you
need some sort of rule system that describes some of the appropriate
actions to take when encountering spiders (scream, run away, etc.)
Worse, you know need a prototype of "spider killer" and a pattern matcher
that correctly identifies all possible objects that could be used to kill
a spider (medium not small or large rocks, sticks, note pads, CD boxes,
etc.) This example is a perfectly common situation that we can cope with
almost "unthinkingly." This is the frustration that Cognitive Science
has wrestled with ever since the introduction of the "information
processing" paradigm. Programmers have found that getting robots to
barely mimic insects to be a massive task. Why is it so trivial for
humans to accomplish what seems so complex to understand from a knowledge
perspective?
When in doubt - simplify. Let us consider another example, let us
suppose you are running your hands through a mix of rock and sand and you
feel something unpleasant, so you shift your fingers to push aside "the
thing," and move on. All of a sudden, things are easy, no representation
of "thing" required, no analysis of "thing crushers," etc. The task
seems so simple that we could imagine the neurological system coping with
the phenomenon with little if any brain activity.
Now we arrive at the existential question: why are these two cases
seemingly so different? Why does bringing the spider into physical
contact with our "being" solve the problem? What Heidegger realized is
the existential implications of Mach's concepts of relativity (and
Einstein's more familiar notion of "frames of reference.") Heidegger
came out of the phenomenological tradition of Husserl. Heidegger's
elegant solution to our dilemma is simply this: the two cases of spider
smashing *ARE* identical - within the frame of reference of Dasein (in
this case Garfield.) Our problem as analysts is that we are not in the
same frame of reference as Garfield.
The implications seem mind-boggling. As analysts we are very comfortable
with the idea that human beings are adequately characterized by physics,
chemistry, biology, and psychology. The idea that Garfield's "being" is
in some sense extending to the limit of his vision seems utterly absurd.
Heidegger, however, has in his workshop precisely the examples to show
that this is the case. He asks, while in the process of hammering a
nail, can you experience the separation between hand and hammer? My
favorite example is that of the rear view mirror. While driving, do you
experience a mirror?, or does the mirror "vanish" into the background so
that all you experience is the traffic behind you?
I don't know if Heidegger or his successors would appreciate the analogy
to frames of references. Heidegger used a different terminology that is
more accurate: figure/ground distinction. Heidegger argues that there is
no "Gods eye view" (nevermind correct scientific view.) Instead, beings
encounter the world in different ways depending how they are engaged in
it. So when driving, my rear view mirror slips into the background.
When restoring my car, no only the mirror comes into view, but the rust
of 30 year of use. It isn't that the rust suddenly appears on the
mirror, instead, my relationship to the mirror has changed such that the
rust becomes part of "the figure" what I am attending to.
Existential philosophy has a bizarre feel to it much like quantum
mechanics. I think it implies a sort of equivalent "uncertainly
principle" for the human sciences: You can locate an object "as it is"
(Heidegger's "unready-to-hand"), or you can capture the essence of an
object in motion with a project (Heidegger's "running-in-hand"), but you
cannot to both at the same time. If we sit in Garfield's frame of
reference (figure/ground) we experience his being "flowing out" until it
encounters the spider, the rock, and the project of crushing the spider.
If we sit outside, we see Garfield and can describe what he does, but we
cannot say anything about why it happens. In this constructed example,
we can see two different modes of "beings" in action. In the field
though, we don't have access to both frames of reference (figure/ground
relationships.)
Apologies for the long message, I hope it helps clarify the differences
between social ontology/practice theories and activity theory. I guess
as a member of the "other side" of the philosophical rift I should ask
the question: "How does an Activity theory account deal with questions of
existence? How does activity theory cope with the constantly changing
frames of reference (figure/ground relationships) including the frame of
reference of the analyst?" The question that has loomed in my own
thoughts for all too long is: what is the relationship between an
existential point of view and activity theory? Can concepts be shuttled
back and forth between the two paradigms? In what sense are they
inconsistent?, in what sense are they complementary?
I've served up a very large and barely cooked meal for thought.
Oh well, Bonne Appetit!
Peace, Edouard
. - - - . . . - - - . . . - - - . . . - - - . . . - - - .
: Edouard Lagache, Lecturer :
: Department of Communication (0503) :
: University of California, San Diego :
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:...................................................................:
: That perspective implied emphasis on comprehensive understanding :
: involving the whole person . . .on activity in and with the :
: world; and on the view that agent, activity, and the world :
: mutually constitute each other. :
: :
: Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger, _Situated Learning_, 1991, p 33. :
. - - - . . . - - - . . . - - - . . . - - - . . . - - - .