Re: [xmca] Dewey and Prolepsis

Mike:

Dewey has been on my mind a lot lately, the text I have been studying is
"Nature and Experience". Rereading it has been an attempt to understand
the 'unit' of study for psychology. I like Vygotsky's use of" word" as a
unit of measure but others have not, so I have tried a different approach
by turning to Dewey. ON page 318 of "Nature and Experience": When it is
denied that we are conscious of events as such it is not meant that we are
not aware of objects. Objects are precisely what we are aware of. FOr
objects are events with meanings. . .so intimate is the connection of
meanings with consciousness that there is no great difficulty in resolving
"consciousness". . ."

However, I am still unclear as to what Dewey views as a method for
knowledge? I do know he refutes the dualism of realism but other than that
. . .

eric

                                                                                                                               
                      "Mike Cole"
                      <lchcmike@gmail. To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      com> cc: Reijo Miettinen <reijo.miettinen@helsinki.fi>
                      Sent by: Subject: [xmca] Dewey and Prolepsis
                      xmca-bounces@web
                      er.ucsd.edu
                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                               
                      04/29/2007 03:49
                      PM
                      Please respond
                      to mcole; Please
                      respond to
                      "eXtended Mind,
                      Culture,
                      Activity"
                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                               

Dear colleagues--

We have often stumbled over the notion of object in our discussions of
activity. Yesterday, reading
in Dewey's Logic I came across the following passage that I found
particularly interesting because it
relates the notion of object to prolepsis, a term I did not know Dewey
used,
but which has been important
in my thinking. Here is the passage (p. 119).

The name objects will be reserved for subject-matter so far as it has been
produced and ordered in settled form by
by means of inquiry; proleptically, objects are the objectives of inquiry.
The apparent ambiguity of using "objects"
for this purpose (since the word is regularly applied to things that are
observed of thought of) is only apparent. For
things exist as objects for us only as they have been previously determined
as outcomes of inquiries. When used in
carrying on new inquiries in new problematic situations, they are known as
objects in virtue of prior inquires which warrant
their assertibility. In the new situation, they are means of attaining
knowledge of something else. In the strict sense, they
are part of the contents of inquiry as the word content was defined above.
But retrospectively (that is, as products of prior
determination in inquiry, they are objects).

This way of expressing the temporally double sided, or double
directionality
of action in activity seemed useful.
On a Sunday afternoon.
mike
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Received on Mon Apr 30 10:58 PDT 2007