Paul said,
An important thread moves through this entire discussion, one that refers
back in terms of the philosophical theory of reflection to Kant's
"perceptive judgment" through Hegel's presentation of the three stage
process of reflection to Marx's statement that the "human organs are
theorists" and has important points of contact with Peirce's difficulties
with the relationship between "firstness" and "thirdness". While reading
this Husserl's discussions of apperception, filling-in, continually also
came to mind. . . The lengthy discussion of experiments with the
pseudo-scope, experiments that dfemonstrate that the "pseudoscopic image"
appears only when it is plausible -- "It is understood that man must already
have a picture of this world [ie, that appearing in perception]. this
perception, however, is accumulated not only directly at the sensory level
but also at higher cognitive levels -- as a result of the individual's
experience with social practice reflected in the form of language in the
system of knowledge." The "operator" of perception, by which I undestand
Leont'ev to mean the concretely active aspect of perception, is not the
subjective stream of accumulated associations of sensation, but social
practice. This is precisely because the "most significant aspect of psychic
reflection, its "objectivity", consists of "extracting from 'real' activity
its properties, relationships, etc. their fixation in short-term or
long-term states of the receiving systems, and reproduction of these
properties in the acts of forming new images, in the acts of recognizing and
remembering objects." The REAL is extracted from social activity. The
image does not exist as a "thing" inside the head of the subject.
First, thanks Paul I think a nice job was done at isolating the major issues
of the chapter.
Your reference to the "real is extracted from social activity" is what stood
out for me, which by the way I think may accurately describe Leontev's
position. One question, that comes up for me is why isn't it social practice
that is real rather than something that gets extracted from it.
Maybe a differentiation between explaining "reality by activity" vs "reality
through activity". What I mean here is the former seeing "reality" existing
as a priori of sorts which itself needs no explanation wheras the latter
explains reality itself. In regards to Leon'tev could we say he approaches
"reality" like "consciousness" as "it either exists or it doesn't".
I would imagine there would be different implications here. In one approach
"reality" is taken as a given and activity more or less legitimizes its
existance wheras in the latter Activity is used to explain reality itself.
One example even today when teaching kids about trees the ideology of
survival of the fittest comes through - trees need to be planted so many
feet away from each other. Lysenko, although incorrectly, argued in a
communist society interdependence would reign - cooperation not competition.
He planted tress 3 feet by 3 feet and they all died of course, but he was
right as far as cooperation and interdependence within the ecosystem
including us. Both views expose a certain reality of the natural world
(trees) but it seems the respective reality tells us more than some truth,
but also about social practice itself - values, beliefs etc.
Nate
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