RE: [xmca] Dewey and Prolepsis

Yeah, one of the difficulties I have is not objectifying inquiry itself, which really doesn't exist outside of the attempt to find a solution to the problem. And yet Dewey lays out the process of inquiry in a step by step process. By fact are you talking about the empirical fact that comes after the process of inquiry (and can we equate process of inquiry with the method of knowing) as a solution - so that solution and fact occur simultaneously? Fact then reflects back on the problem, and only exists as fact in reference to that specific problem (but really how could it be any way). There are those who claim that because Dewey claimed you could find empirical facts in solutions to problems that there was a knowledge - I don't think I agree with that. I think I agree more with what Armando said to a point, but instead of the object of activity being defined by the subject of activity it is defined by the problem of activity (or perhaps this is what he meant by subject of activity).
 
What I do think though is that Dewey always saw action as forward looking. It was always about the next problem and not about the last problem.
 
Michael

________________________________

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Mike Cole
Sent: Mon 4/30/2007 1:32 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Dewey and Prolepsis

Seems to me that inquiry is the method, Michael. No solution, until after
the "fact" just a method of inquiry.
mike

On 4/30/07, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
>
> That is helpful Michael. Knowledge is a process rather than an outcome?
>
> I will look into securing a copy of the suggested text.
>
> eric
>
>
>
> "Michael Glassman"
> <MGlassman@ehe.ohio To: "eXtended Mind,
> Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> -state.edu> cc:
> Sent by: Subject: RE: [xmca]
> Dewey and Prolepsis
> xmca-bounces@weber.
> ucsd.edu
>
>
> 04/30/2007 12:17 PM
> Please respond to
> "eXtended Mind,
> Culture, Activity"
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Eric,
>
> The way I read Dewey right now there is no method for knowledge, because
> knowledge is something of an illusion unless kept within its confines as
> instrument (rather than answer). Related to Mike's earlier post, I
> think he sees knowledge as something that occurred to solve a previous
> problem and must now serve as a jumping off point (and nothing more) for
> the next problem. In other words knowledge does not have a special
> place in the current problem beyond other possible instruments. I think
> Dewey might instead talk about a method of knowing, understanding how to
> solve the problem at hand - and of course that method is logical inquiry
> (I would argue without the positivist implications which change the
> whole tenor of the idea from how most people approach it). I think
> Dewey ties this all together best in his late book "The Knowing and the
> Known" with Bentley. I don't think it's something new he came to - in
> many ways I see his chapters in that book as a summing up, a chance to
> lay out a theory of knowing once and for all.
>
> Michael
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:58 AM
> To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: 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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