mike, other followers of this reading:
Thanks for the reference to Leont'ev's article in the Handbook of Soviet
Psychology. Although he never specifically mentions "reflection" in that
article, Leont'ev makes it very clear that he does not see perception to
function through the input of sensations into a central nervous system. He
even clearly rejects the notion that the organs of perception are pregiven.
Introducing the notion of "functional organs", he argues and presents
experimental research to show that our very organs of perception are the
product of human activity, that children learn to develop these organs
through social activity. This is the meaning of "organ theorists". I don't
have time right now for much except other to offer the following selections
from that paper with just a few added thoughts..
This selection should make it amply clear that the notion of "reflection"
can in no way be reduced to the "mirror phenomena" which doesn't even make
sense when applied to perception except in the crudest and most laughable
way -- I mean, what could possibly link together sight, smell, sound, taste,
and touch into a coherent whole. Or how can the same coherent whole be
produced that Tommy (or Helen Keller) can share with people whose physical
organs are all functioning. What is reflected is most certainly not
anything directly provided by the physical organs associated with those
functional abilities. The proposed theory holds that it is a property (the
ideal) of the world that is introduced into the world through social
activity to begin with and that has evolved over the course of several
million years into the social-cultural world in which members of homo
sapiens presently live (with ever increasing threat of auto-destruction
resulting from their failure to come to grips with it).
Selections:
"By effecting the process of production, both material and cultural work is
crystallized or assumes final form in its product. Whatever manifests
itself as activity on the part of the subject takes the form of a potential
quality in the product--that of existence or objectivity." (Leont'ev in Cole
and Maltzmann: 425).
*** as I understand it, this is equivalent to Ilyenkov's theory of the
ideal. Existence or objectivity is the ideal product of practice that can
be reflectively apprehended as the real and that is the only quality that
can be apprehended as the real. Here the transcendence of Kant's dilemna.
****
"For the individual to discover the human aspect of the objects in his
surrounding world, he has to relate to them through some activity which is
adequate to those objects" (ibid.)
"The individual, the child, is thus not "set" before a world of objects
created by man; if he is to live in this world, he has to function actively
and adequately in it." (426)
"Let me add that it represents one in which the individual reproduces the
abilities which the species Homo sapiens acquired in its social and
historical evolution. . . . At the moment of birth a child is merely a
candidate for a human being . . ."
"Even in the sphere of sensory functions, which one would think were so
elementary, an actual restructuring occurs, with the result that completely
new sensory abilities, as it were, are produced which are exclusively
characteristic of man." (ibid).
*** Hence the distinction of "functional organs". I find it somewhat
interesting/paradoxical that William Blake's ideas about the senses are
strikingly similar ****.
"Were I askerd what I consider to be the most important results of the
humanizing of the brain, I would say it is the transformation of the cortex
into an organ which is capable of forming organs." (438)
" . . . they [functional organs] develop differently than do simple chains
of reflexes . . . The links which constitute them do not merely trace the
order of external stimuli, but combine both the independent reflex processes
and their motor effects in a single reflex act of a complex nature. At the
start, "composite" acts of this type always have elaborate external motor
components; subsequently these are deferred and, by changing its initial
structure, the act as a whole becomes more contracted and automatic. As a
result of these successive transformations, a stable constellation appears
which functions as a complete organ--as though it were an innate ability."
"In conclusion, I want to bring up another position that I strongly adhere
to., As I mentioned several times, the process of mastering or learning the
world of objects and phenomena created by people during the history of
society is one in which the individual develops distinctly human abilities
and functions. It would be a gross error, however, to regard this process
as the result of conscious activity, or as the effect of "intentionality" in
the sense that Husserl and others understand this. Learning takes place
through the subject's very relationships with the world, and these do not
depend either upon the subject or his conscious awareness, but are
determined by the specific historical and social conditions in which he
lives, and the way his life takes shape within them." (440)
Paul H. Dillon
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