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Re: [xmca] On metaphysics: origin of the term



Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Activity Theory to engage in a detailed criticism; during my brief encounter with CHAT I immediately "jumped" to Andy's concept of project collaboration (PC) (which is of course partially rooted in AT). Likewise, because my research focus is more on the "meso"-level of groups, movements, and organizations, I can't really say much about ethnographic descriptions of micro-activities such as opening windows on election days.
The advantage of PC for my research is that the object of an activity  
is conceived of as emerging within the developmental process of the  
activity itself. As I'm studying the revolutionary process in Egypt,  
such a perspective allows for an understanding of the real  
transformations of actions and activities involved. A concrete  
activity obviously constitutes concrete actions (e.g. the broad  
activity of protesting on 25 January constituted the actions of  
meetings, demonstrations, etc.), but the development of actions has  
the potential to reconstitute the activity (the demonstration on  
Tahrir turned into an occupation, which, in turn, created a space for  
alternative politics; the mass character of the demonstrations  
reconstituted the object of the protest towards "an end to the  
regime", i.e. revolution; etc.). In abstract terms: the relation  
between individual protesters and the activity of protesting (the  
project) is mediated by particular actions (their collaboration), and,  
vice versa, the relation between individual protesters and their  
particular actions is mediated by the "overarching" activity of protest.
This neat scheme becomes much more complex when you take into account  
the relations between various projects, both "horizontally" and  
"vertically". Horizontally, the spontaneous revolutionary project  
arises in contradiction /solidarity to a bunch of other projects (e.g.  
Islamism, the state, etc.). Vertically, and "from the bottom-up" this  
project is part of such historical systems as the Egyptian social  
formation and global capitalism; and "top-down" it is constituted by  
and reconstitutes a series of smaller projects (students' movements  
for better education; workers' movements for better wages; villages  
demanding water and electricity, etc.).
Added to this - and against the notion of the "omniscient"  
scientist-observer - the social researcher him/herself is a  
constitutive/constituted actor vis-à-vis the project, in the sense  
that his/her actions (publishing papers, doing fieldwork, writing  
books, attending conferences, conducting interviews, etc.) plays a  
potential mediating role, for example in the understanding of the  
project of itself, in crafting intellectual tools to achieve (or  
undermine) the goals of the project, etc.
I do not know if this amounts to a critique of AT, but this is the way  
"actions" and "activity" have been productive concepts for my research.
Best,

Brecht



Quoting Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>:

Hi Brecht,

Yes, a rational critique of ontology is possible, and indeed necessary. I was trying to engage in such a critique of activity theory, which it seems to me departs considerably rather the admirable (though not unquestionable) ontology that Marx proposed. (And yes, as you suggest, the claim to be "purely empirical" seems to me a return to the outdated and simplistic notion that there is on the one hand 'metaphysics' and on the other hand 'genuine science.' But let that pass.) Activity theory, in my view, essentializes a particular organization of human activity and in doing so obscures the historical character of that organization. Would you agree?
Martin


On Mar 25, 2013, at 4:00 AM, Brecht De Smet <Brechttie.DeSmet@UGent.be> wrote:
Martin, I obviously agree with your presentation of the historical lineages of the "word" metaphysics. However, with regard to the current discussion on the "terms of the debate", it is quite obvious that Andy's original remark: "So there is no metaphysics here. No hypothetical "states of mind", or intelligent infants, etc" clearly deployed metaphysics in the critical (derogatory?) sense of a "false ontology", i.e. the domain of fantastic "a priori" speculation. Retorting that everyone uses metaphysics, a.k.a. an ontology-epistemology, paradigm, Weltanschauung, etc. obscures the fact that a rational critique of particular ontologies is possible and even a necessary part of the scientific project.
With regard to the "concept" of metaphysics, the Marxian critique  
is important because at the time it did not only posited its "own"  
metaphysics against the dominant paradigms, but, instead of  
analyzing the social relations and politics that emerged from a  
certain philosophy, it studied the concrete historical social  
relations and politics that gave rise to shapes of metaphysics. In  
this sense it constituted a "Copernican revolution". Superficially,  
yes, "the materialist method" as Marx calls it in the German  
Ideology has an "ontology", in the sense that it is based on a  
number of premises, but, in contradistinction to the theories that  
came before: "The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary  
ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only  
be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their  
activity and the material conditions under which they live, both  
those which they find already existing and those produced by their  
activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical  
way."  
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm)
Of course we can make a lot of fuss about the supposed empiricism  
of this passage, but its essence amounts to a call for an  
emancipatory project with at its core real, historical humanity.  
Within the history of this project, the "insult of metaphysics" has  
taken on many forms, from a rational critique of a-historical,  
idealist, or anti-humanist ontologies to the sectarian attacks by  
the ideologists of (ironically the extremely "metaphysical"  
ossified doctrine of) "Marxism-Leninism". We may deem such insults  
as unfortunate, but they are perhaps unavoidable when the domain of  
ontology is as much penetrated by politics as politics is by  
metaphysics. To conclude: if anything, Marx subverted the  
"neutrality" of the philosophical "category" of  
ontology/epistemology and its "constitutive" position within society.
Best,

Brecht



Hi Brecht,

Yes, of course you're correct, Andy is reading Hegel from a Marxist point of view, therefore upside down, so to speak. But Marx's materialism is still an ontology, still a metaphysics.
Your confusion comes from the fact that there have been two uses  
of the word 'metaphysics.' One use is to label some kind of talk  
as having no basis in reality, as completely speculative and  
unverifiable. The logical positivists, for example, wanted to  
eliminate metaphysics in this sense from science - for them any  
notion was metaphysical if it was not verifiable. They realized  
that Newtonian physics contained unverifiable concepts, and they  
believed that Einstein's physics had eliminated metaphysics by  
defining everything in terms of operations of observation and  
measurement.
We know now how narrow, unfruitful, and inconsistent the  
positivist view of science turned out to be. The second use of the  
word 'metaphysics' helps us understand why: "'metaphysics' refers  
to accounts of what truly exists, and to accounts of relationships  
between 'existences' (e.g. reduction relations, and perhaps other  
forms of dependence or priority)" (Kreines, 2006). That is,  
metaphysics is the brach of philosophy that deals with ontology  
(and sometimes epistemology is included), as well as the  
assumptions that any science makes about the entities that it  
studies.
One person's ontology is another person's metaphysics. That is,  
when someone disagrees with another's ontological claims, a quick  
and easy insult is to label them "metaphysical." But the word  
itself simply came from the sequence of titles in Aristotle's  
texts: the text which dealt with what we would now call ontology  
and epistemology was simply next in the traditional list of titles  
after the 'Physica,' and so was called  'Meta-physica.'
Did Marx make ontological assumptions? Certainly! For example, as  
you point out, for Marx the "essence of man" is "in reality,' "the  
ensemble of social relations." In this passage Marx states one of  
his core ontological assumptions. Much has been written about the  
ontological assumptions of Marxism (e.g. Gould, 1978). In the same  
passage Marx himself confuses things by using the term metaphysics  
in its first, derogatory sense. Unsympathetic readers of Marx's  
writings have also at times judged them merely metaphysical.  
Others, sympathetic readers, have also often referred to them as  
metaphysical, but in a positive sense. The negative use of the  
term is falling into disuse, with good reason. As the importance  
of ontology is now understood, it no longer makes sense to reject  
all talk about ontology as speculative and unscientific, or  
unphilosophical.
Martin

Gould, C. C. (1978). Marx's social ontology: Individuality and community in Marx's theory of social relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kreines, J. (2006). Hegel's metaphysics: Changing the debate. Philosophy Compass, 1(5), 466-480.

On Mar 24, 2013, at 5:16 AM, Brecht De Smet <Brechttie.DeSmet@UGent.be> wrote:
Because I do not want to derail the current thread, I start a new one:

My point was that Hegel is hardly the person to turn to if one wants to avoid metaphysics! Individual, Universal, Particular - there's a whole metaphysics here.
Well, if you look how Andy appropriates Hegel in his various  
writings I think you can hardly call what he does a form of  
metaphysics. On the contrary, he turns Hegel upside down, reading  
his logic in a materialist and non-metaphysical way.
In this regard I think the philosophical implications of Marx's  
Theses on Feuerbach are still grossly underestimated. In a few  
lines he summarizes the deficiences of both idealism and  
materialism, subjectivism and objectivism, finishing off a few  
centuries of philosophical thought (of course the theses were but  
the end product of a whole project). After the theses Marx  
largely moves on from philosophical critique to developing his  
"materialist method".  
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm
Thesis 1: with regard to "ontology": Marx criticized classical  
materialism because it conceived of the actual world not as human  
practice (subjective), but as merely objective. Whereas for Hegel  
the world consisted merely of thought-objects, for Feuerbach the  
world was constituted by sensuous objects. In both perspectives  
human practice was absent, as either an objective or subjective  
activity. As such both were forms of metaphysical thinking, i.e.  
a form of thinking and activity that did not place human practice  
at its core. (Also see thesis 5)
Thesis 2: with regard to "epistemology": "The question whether  
objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a  
question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove  
the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness  
[Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over  
the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from  
practice is a purely scholastic question."
This is almost a Copernican revolution with regard to  
epistemology. True knowledge, "truth", is not derived from either  
formal or dialectical logic, but from the encounter between human  
thought and human practice. The reality of any phenomenon outside  
this encounter "is a purely scholastic question" or an exercise  
in metaphysics. Cf. snare theory, dark matter, etc. Thesis 8  
reasserts this premisse: "All social life is essentially  
practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find  
their rational solution in human practice and in the  
comprehension of this practice." Real human practice or activity  
is the only base for gaining true knowledge about humanity.
Thesis 3: with regard to "emancipation": classical (mechanical)  
materialism pointed out that humans are the product of their  
environments. Changing their environments resulted in changed  
humans. Of course, who changes their environments? Humans  
themselves. So transformation of circumstances + human activity =  
self-change = revolutionary practice.
Thesis 4: with regard to the position of a critical or  
emancipatory science: It is insufficient to just deconstruct  
oppressive ideological concepts, "after completing this work, the  
chief thing still remains to be done". The reverse movement  
should be explained as well: how real social relations are the  
basis for these ideological forms. Of course, this means that the  
contradiction cannot be resolved in thought, but has to be  
overcome in reality, in practice. This is the core meaning of  
thesis 11: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world  
in various ways; the point is to change it."
In this sense, metaphysics was also a way of resolving real  
contradictions in the realm of thought.
Thesis 6: with regard to the "essence" of humankind: "...the  
essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single  
individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social  
relations." Taking "the individual" as the unit of  
philosophy/social sciences is an a-historical and atomizing  
abstraction which "belongs in reality to a particular social  
form" (Thesis 7). A social science basing itself on the actions,  
intentions, emotions, etc. of discrete individuals takes a  
metaphysical and abstract view of humanity as its departure  
point. See also thesis 9 and 10.
--
Brecht De Smet
Assistant Professor at the Department Conflict and Development Studies
Researcher at MENARG (Middle East and North Africa Research Group)
Department of Political and Sciences
Ghent University
www.psw.ugent.be/menarg
Universiteitsstraat 8 / 9000 Gent / Belgium



Citeren Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>:

Oh! (he exclaims). My point was that Hegel is hardly the person to turn to if one wants to avoid metaphysics! Individual, Universal, Particular - there's a whole metaphysics here. Take a look at the Stanford Enc of Philosophy entry on Hegel (link below) for a sense of the debate over this. There has been an "orthodox or traditional understanding of Hegel as a ?metaphysical? thinker in the pre-Kantian ?dogmatic? sense. This was followed by a view by some that "particular works, such as the Phenomenology of Spirit, or particular areas of Hegel's philosophy, especially his ethical and political philosophy, can be understood as standing independently of the type of unacceptable metaphysical system sketched above." (But Andy hates the Phenomenology!) And then there are people who are "appealing to contemporary analytic metaphysics as exemplifying a legitimate project of philosophical inquiry into fundamental ?features? or ?structures? of the world itself."
Myself, I'm closest to the last of these views. I don't think we  
want to *avoid* metaphysics (ontology and epistemology) ; indeed  
I don't think that is possible. rather, we need to adopt the  
*right* metaphysics. We can debate what the criteria of that  
need to be. But to claim of a position, in philosophy or the  
social sciences, that there is "No metaphysics here!" is a tad  
naive.
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/>

Martin

On Mar 23, 2013, at 12:36 PM, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com> wrote:
I thought that what he said was avoiding it: back up your exclamation Martin
Carol

On 23 March 2013 16:48, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

I though you wanted to *avoid* metaphysics, Andy!

Martin

On Mar 22, 2013, at 8:17 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

Thank you Manfred for that clear explanation, and for correcting my
typing mistake! :(
This might be an occasion to mention how my own development of Activity
Theory differs from yours and that of ANL.
I do not work with duality of "the publically assigned meaning and the
personally felt sense". Rather I use Hegel's approach in which the
Individual and Universal are mediated by the Particular. This is a relation
which is applicable not just to motives, but any concept. It allows the
meaning of the situation to be something which is *realised*. This word
"realised" is what Wiulliam James would have described as a
"double-barrelled word" (following Charles Dickens' "double barrelled
compliment), in that it means both "realised" in the objective sense of
"made real", as in "The plan was at last realised when the judge delivered
his verdict," and subjective in the sense of "woke up to", as in "I
realised that my efforts to reconcile with my wife were doomed to failure."
I believe that this resolves certain problems which arise in Actvity
Theory, but remaining within the Activity approach as outlined in your
excellent paper.
Andy

Holodynski, Manfred wrote:
Dear colleagues,

thank you very much for all your valued comments on my article. There
are a lot of aspects already discussed and I have some difficulties to
follow all lines of argumentation. Therefore, I would like to answer to the
following:
1. Emotions as psychological function within the macrostructure of
activity.
As Andy claims it I get my Activity Theory from AN Leont'ev and I
focused especially on his concept of macrostructure of activity and its
levels of activity that is related to motives, actions that are related to
goals and operations that are related to the conditions under which an
action is given. And Andy gets precisely to the heart of it when he stated that my article needs to be read with attention to motivation and how the
macrostructure of an activity is related to the motives and goals of an
individual. One activity can be realized by different actions, and one
action can realize different activities.
May I quote Andy's words:

" Because motives are not given to immediate perception; they have to
be inferred/learnt. Emotional expression and experience signal the success,
failure, frustration, expectation, etc. of goals and motives for both
participant/observers and the individual subject themself, emotion is tied up with motives and goals and therefore with the structure of an activity. One and the same action could be part of different ??actions activities (!)
(MH)??. It is the emotions which signal (internally and externally) the
success, etc., etc., that is, in an action's furthering an activity, and it is this which makes manifest and actual that connection between action and
activity, for both the observer/participant and the individual subject.
So there is no metaphysics here. No hypothetical "states of mind", or
intelligent infants, etc."
a) Take the example of the opening of the window. That's the  
behavior.
What's the goal?
b) Imagine the person is a leader and opens the window in order to
greet his followers and to hold a speech. That's the goal. What is the
activity?
c) If one look at the circumstances one can derive that the  
speech is a
part of a political activity in order to celebrate the election victory. So, if the leader also feels pride and enthusiasm about the victory there is coincidence between the publically assigned meaning and the personally
felt sense of the situation. However, it may also be possible that he
doesn't feel pride but a great burden and he personally feels to be
overloaded with the duties and future expectations. Then the societal
meaning assigned by the followers to this situation and the personal sense assigned by the leader himself are not congruent. The leader framed this situation under an achievement perspective whether he is able to fulfill
the leadership.
But, note when we talk about actions and activity, then we  
speak about
an advanced level of activity e.g. in children or adults, but not in
infants who start to have intentions but still not a mental image of a
future state of affairs.
2. Differentiation between the basic level in infants and advanced
level in older children:
- A young infant has not already established a goal-driven level of
actions. In the first weeks one can observe the acquisition of first
operations and of first expectations what should happen. But these
expectations are not yet represented as a mental image about the desired
future states. This is the product of the acquisition of a sign system
which enables the person to evoke and imagine a future state in the here
and now and to start to strive for it. And for this starting point, not
only to imagine different future states, but also to select one of them and to start to strive for it, emotional processes come into play that color
one of the imagined future state e.g. in a state worth striving for and
that mobilize the executive power to start striving for it.
However, the ability to form such notions of goals and to transform
them into actions is not something that occurs automatically. It emerges in a long-drawn ontogenetic learning process in which the attainment of goals
through actions is tried, tested, and increasingly optimized. Older
children are
So, for an understanding of my emotion concept the  
macrostructure of an
activity is very decisive because I embedded emotions as a specific
psychological function within the macrostructure of an activity.
Best

Manfred

Prof. Dr. Manfred Holodynski

Institut für Psychologie in Bildung und Erziehung

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

Fliednerstr. 21

D-48149 Münster

+49-(0)-251-83-34311

+49-(0)-251-83-34310 (Sekretariat)

+49-(0)-251-83-34314 (Fax)

http://wwwpsy.uni-muenster.de/Psychologie.inst5/AEHolodynski/index.html

manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Gesendet: Freitag, 22. März 2013 04:13
An: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: Holodynski, Manfred
Betreff: Re: Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice

Mike, Manfred gets his Activity Theory from AN Leontyev, rather than
Engestrom's "systems of activity."
So actions and activities are defined by their goals and motives. So
Manfred's article needs to be read with attention to motivation and how the structure of an activity is related to motives and goals. Because motives
are not given to immediate perception; they have to be inferred/learnt.
Emotional expression and experience signal the success, failure,
frustration, expectation, etc. of goals and motives for both
participant/observers and the individual subject themself, emotion is tied up with motives and goals and therefore with the structure of an activity.
One and the same action could be part of different actions. It is the
emotions which signal (internally and externally) the success, etc., etc., that is, in an action's furthering an activity, and it is this which makes manifest and actual that connection between action and activity, for both
the observer/participant and the individual subject.
So there is no metaphysics here. No hypothetical "states of mind", or
intelligent infants, etc.
It's all in there.

Andy

mike cole wrote:

Hi Andy - and here I was wondering why operation/action/activity were
not prominent in Manfred's article. Where does he lay out the views in
this note? Am I reading too superficially as usual? Seems important
for me to get clear about!
Mike
On Thursday, March 21, 2013, Andy Blunden wrote:
Think of your illustration,Martin, about whether, in opening the
window, you were acting as a technician or moral leader. I.e., the
meaning of the action lies in the activity of which it is a part,
which is not immediately given. Manfred does not refer this to
"intention" or "belief". Manfred is quite specific that the
signalising and self-perception of an action in relation to an
activity - i.e., an action's being of this and not that activity -
is a function played by emotion. Concepts like internal state and
intention are derivative from operation/action/activity, not
fundamental.
Andy
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden

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--
Carol A  Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
Developmental psycholinguist: EMBED
Academic, Researcher, Writer and Editor
Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
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