All,
It seems there are two directions that one can take concerning the question
of Leont'ev's work, its adaptation to the political reality in which he
worked, and how it determines the limitations of the theoretical framework
of activity theory. One is to question the entire marxist basis (as
Phillip and others seem wont to do, unnecessary clutter!), the other is to
determine the deviations from the original marxist concepts.
I would like to take the latter in a kind of rambling read through of Ch 1.
Some general observations first:
(a) chapter 1 is clearly an introduction in which what follows in the book
is situated with respect to other psychological traditions and the marxist
tradition itself... it ranges broadly and Leont'ev says he raises many
problems that cannot be dealt with in the present work.
(b) a framework is laid out that is clearly developmental at least on the
phylogenetic and historical levels in relationship to what Leont'ev calls
"work" and "practical activity" which I gloss as "social productive
activity".
(c) tension between "individual" and "collective" emerges in use of
contrasting terms: psyche/consciousness: consciousness a quality of the
pscyhe but has an objective existence as the social consciousness.
(d) history of consciousness not contained within psychology (study of the
psyche?). the first psychological problem to be addressed: "how is
consciousness reflected in the psyche." ********I keep thinking of Helen
Keller's before and after descriptions**********
Commented reading:
Whole first part: recapitulation of theoretical roots in early marx (Theses
on Feuerback, German Ideology). The prerequisites for the study of all
aspects of human practice: the actual individuals, their activity, the
material conditions of their lives (3). Strong emphasis on differences with
"old metaphysical psychology" that "knew only abstract individuals".
This one of the central themes and here Leont'ev points to role of
"ideality" which comes up again repeatedly. ". . . the transition of the
material into the ideal. And these are the very processes of the activity
of the subject that always are external and practical first and then assume
the form of internal activity, the activity of consciousness."(4) This is
the activity concept in question in Andy's response to Bill . This passage
is fundamental, the idea repeated throughout. There is an apparent
"chicken-egg" here. If activity always already involves the ideal how does
it get started. But this is only a chicken-egg problem if one overlooks the
2 million year phylogenesis (quite an oversight, I'd say but then
anthropologists are biased). from Cole's "Prehistory of East Africa",
"For nearly half a million years, the hand ax had continued to seve a great
many purposes in hunting, food collecting, and domestic life. All over the
African continent, parts of western and southwestern Asia, and Western
Europe, this tool was so standardized that, given an isolated specimen, it
would ofen be quite impossible to name even the continent of its origin."
(Cole 167). The brain developed (=got bigger, certainly more complex and
differentiated as well) AFTER hominids were fully bipedal with a fully
upright head and had been using tools for 1.5 million years.. Thus the
ideal (essential mediation to the environment) had become the framework
within which modern hominids developed. Peter challenges Bakhurst on this
point but I think that looking at the issue from the logic of becoming would
tend to support Bakhurst. Mikhailov also discusses how the tool functions
as symbol because it is ideal. I myself am always drawn to the elaborately
carved club that Trobriand Islanders used to kill fish, the shape that of
the fish providing, as Eskimos with the seals . . . (religion -- re ligio
tying back to the unmediated relation to the environment). Field work among
chimpanzees shows use of sticks for signing directions. For millions of
years, the ideal was present in the fact of dependence on tools, external
and practical . . . then
This is the space within which consciousness develops.
Interestingly Leont'ev discusses Durkheim whose collective representations
(like Jung's from a different direction) float above an abstract division of
Labor. Mauss' early systems of classification. Rejecting these luminosity
approaches to cs he also rejects the idea that it can be thrown away
completely and notably criticizes both James' pragmatism and Husserl's
phenomenology which he compares to Freud (and deep psychology=Jung) for "the
same understanding of consciousness as a 'messenger of the organization of
psychic processes." When Leont'ev says that "the principal interest
representing consciousness (in the Freudian framework), 'superego,' is
essentially metaphysic." it seems clear that he is making a statement
concerning the activity of consciousness. The id is blind force, but the
superego= rational structures of repressing the id, negation, recognition of
necessity in relation to survival, civilization. The ego is not associated
with consciousness per se, it is a balancing act between the demands of the
id and superego..
'consciousness represents a quality of a special form of the psych(e)' [7].
initially confusing statement ??the psyche=individual sentience?
consciousness one of the qualities of individual sentience? consciousness
"first appears" in the organization of work and social relations (here also
include family=biological reproduction as Marx and Engels did all of the
systems of kinship and their relations to definitions of property).
Here, if anywhere, Leont'ev's use of "work activity" could be considered a
confusing concession to official Soviet ideology. A notion more consistent
with the dual "work and social relations" would be "social productive
activity" which is also more in line with the original marxist conception.
Entire sentence "the real explanation . . ." [8] also seems garbled but
seems to be a clarification of "work activity": its materialization, its
'extinction', results in a product. (Work) moves from form of activity
(ideality) to form of existence" this entire section is very dense, help
Andy, Peter, others?
"in order for the process [of perception] to take place, the object must
appear before man precisely as registering the psychic content of activity .
. . it's theoretical side." from this into the just-so of formulating a
language that serves to represent objects, etc. All of this just-so
historicizing leaves one dissatisfied, Stalin's "Marxism and The Problem of
Linguistics" was published in 1954. Language (and all of its political
ramifications in the multi-ethnic Soviet Union) was clearly a politically
sensitive area in the period Mohammed describes.
Historical investigations of consciousness . . . "the stage of the original
formation of consciousness and of language, the stage of transformation of
consciousness into a universal form of specifically human psyeche when
reflection in the form of consciousness encompasses the whole range of
phenomena of the world surrounding man -- his own activity and man himself."
Phylogenesis 2+ million years during which the mediated relationship to the
environment, tool based, increasingly encompasses all relationships to the
environment. Tool use always immediately ideal activity : (a) tool use is
always learned, (b) object of use always indirect (mediated) consequence of
use itself. Every expanding its domain -- contrast to
wilderness/civilization, raw/cooked "It was in neolithic times that man's
mastery of the great arts of civizilzation -- of pottery, weaving,
agriculture, and the domestication of animals -- became firmly established .
. . Each of these techniques assumews centuries of active and methodical
observation, of bold hypotheses tested by means of endlessly repeated
experiments." (C Levi-Straus: The Savage Mind). Only a short 20,000 ya
after millions of years of increasing dependence on tools.
perception:
organs of perception are the labor of ages - "the eye became the human eye
precisely when its object became a social, human object . . ." critique of
empiricist conceptions of perception, totally similar in tone and emphasis
to Ilyenkov's critique.
" a whole century was necessary for psychology to free itself from the
approach that viewed perception as the result of a one sided action of
external things on a passive, world-contemplating subject, and for the
introduction of a new approach to the perceptive processes." [12]
thought processes:
production of ideas originally incorporated into material activity =>
production of conditions of existence.
THE PROBLEM: how, having sensory perceptions as its only source, thought
penetrates the surface of phenomena that act on our sensory organs.
the answer: "the instrument": the first real abstraction [14]
stages:
1. cognition of properties of the object world beyond direct perception
results from actions directed to practical purpose [social productive
activity]
2. cognition adapts to special tasks, preliminary practical testing,
simple experiment (models begin to emerge). "Actions of this kind, serving
conscious, cognitive goals, already represent in themselves real thinking,
although it preserves the form of external processes." Models are not
abstracted to the principles themselves (concrete universals?) but still
rely on sensuous properties of the individual: essentialism whether totemic
or Aristotelian.
3. the results of this primary "experience" is generalized and fixed in
language, transmitteed in the process of verbal communication, forms the
content of social consciousness--
4. the plane of speech creates "a condition that allows a subsequent
carrying out of its processes on the plane of speech alone . . . speech in
its cognitive function alone . . . internal processes that take on all the
more **a character** of internal processes carried out for themselves "in
the mind".
The historical division of mental and physical labor (neolithic
revolution??) Private property relations even more strongly separate
"thought activity" and "practical activity". Alienation.
On [16] Leont'ev neatly addresses himself to (a) vulgar materialists, (b)
transcendental idealists, and (c) neo-positivists: "In contrast to the
views of the laws of logic (a) as if they arise from principles of the
working of the mind (or (b) as if they express immanent laws of a thinking
spirit, (c) or finally as if they are evoked by the development of the
language of science itself), the marxist position is . .
laws of logic are: generalized reflection of those objective relations of
activity that practical human activity produces and to which it is subject."
Lenin -- millions of repetitions of the various logical figures that these
might assume the signficance of axioms" logic of the tool, logic of the
instrument,
[17] Contrasts concept of activity in "foreign [psychological]
investigations" presented from ;point of view of adaptive function not as
"one of the forms of thought through which man comprehends reality and
changes it."
this comment calls to mind June's discussions with Bruce concerning
dialectical models in systems theory, and Leont'ev seems to make a political
statement against technocrats here. Activity is embodied practical social
thought. The theoretical "autonomization" of logical operation ("deeply
alien to Marxist teaching and thought") is based on the reduction of mental
functions (logical operations) to one material form or another. But they do
not cease to be only means of human activity and its objects.
Paul H. Dillon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Oct 01 2000 - 01:01:00 PDT