One is methodological or more properly, simply logical: why isn't partial
truth ok? what's wrong with admitting congeries of partial truths? Kathie
wrote, "i don't understand how partial truth (or perspective) becomes
incorrect (which seems to mean wrong, or false, in this context.)" Nate
wrote, "Your reference to partials is correct I think, which is why
fostering a diversity of approaches or meaning making is such an important
excersize." and Judy wrote, "I see the partial truth of difference to be
useful for the difficult
work of forging common ground. Two (or more) individuals "inundated" by the
proliferating differences of the post-modern world need in their
communication some way of marking the partiality of the understandings and
the biases of their positions. "
I think everyone has in mind a notion of "partial truth" characterized
by the "normal interpretation" of what nate briefly refers to as the "blind
men and the elephant." In that interpretation each of the characters is
grasping a part of something real and existent in the world that would
provide the unifying basis for all their apparently contradictory
descriptions. There is a subtle fallacy in the "normal interpretation" of
this fable that points directly to the falseness of partial perspectives:
that is the fallacy of presupposing that the blind men are in fact all
perceiving an elephant. The object of their perception has been posited in
advance by the narrative voice. This voice maintains that there is some
common object in the world called "elephant" that guides and orients the
perceptions of the individuals to a common basis for unifying there partial
perceptions. This common object, the standard interpretation would hold,
exists independently of the consciousness and activity of the perceiving
individuals. Traditional solutions to the elephant fable could be either
idealist or materialist.
This is clearly not the position of the epistemological ground upon which
activity theory is erected. The very first paragraph of the web page to
which nate referred me discusses Marx's ( ) Thesis on Feuerbach which
criticizes the idealist/materialist antinomy and states that the world that
is known is the product of human activity. Activity theory is described as
a development of this central insight in the work of vygotsky and his
colleagues and later cole and engstrom. In various places, Engstrom points
to Ilyenkov as providing the philosophical ground for third generation
activity theory. Ilyenkov's Dialectic of the Concrete and the Abstract is
pretty advanced for readers not already fully conversant with Marx but his
Essays (available at http://www.werple.net.au/~andy/essayint.htm ), while
deep, provide a sound introduction to the dialectical materialist theory
upon which activity theory rests. He expresses the dialectical materialist
conception of thought as follows:
"All general images, however, without exception, neither sprang from
universal schemas of the work of thought [idealism] nor arose from an act of
passive contemplation of nature unsullied by man [materialism], but took
shape in the course of its practical, objective transformation by man, by
society. They arose and functioned as forms of the social-man determination
of the purposive will of the individual, i.e., as forms of real activity."
Note: "the social-man determination of the purposive will of the
individual" is highlighted in the original but I have not used rich text
format since many email browsers produce junk upon receiving that format.
Thus the posing of the issue of partial truths in terms of the "elephant
fable" misses the theoretical framework of the relation between thought and
reality (truth) upon which activity theory.
I can see how a next step in the defense of relativism might be to state
that each of the different activity systems produces its own world, and
moving one step farther, as nate does when he quotes Wardekker's article,
that each individual in each activity system produces his or her own world.
Here we move into the realm of a hermeneutic (a la Gadamer) notion of truth.
That's really important to deal with but way beyond the scope of these
comments. I'd just like to point out to nate that Wardekker doesn't
understand Habermas very well. Habermas' "ideal speech situation", which
could also be called "institutionally unbound speech acts" following Thomas
McCarthy, is the basis for the possibility of a critique of ideology. It
isn't a "regulative societal ideal" for Habermas as Wardekker claims.
Actually, the possibility of "institutionally unbound speech acts" would be
essential for unifying the congeries of plurality that nate, Judy, and
Kathie seem to want to allow since they all agree that some kind of truth
exists (partial ones) and the conditions for the evaluation of these within
the particular activity systems (although not necessarily between them)
would need to be stated in any event.
But the unity of "the elephant" in activity theory is found elsewhere. The
second paper on the CHAT website to which nate referred me contains the
structure within which this unity is to be sought. Three fundamental
propositions contained in that paper point the way (notes in brackets are
mine):
1. "Collective activity is connected to object and motive [community
level], of which the individual subjects are often not consciously aware.
Individual action is connected to a more or less conscious goal . . . The
object [community level] determines the horizon of possible goals and
actions [individual level]."
2. "The activity system is constantly working through contradictions
within and between its elements." .
3. "The primary contradiction of all activities in capitalist
socio-economic formations is that between the exchange value and the use
value."
In other words, the horizon of possible goals and actions for any
individual is already given in the objects and motives that develop through
the working out of the contradiction between use value and exchange value.
Personally, I think the primary contradiction is between capital and labor
but that's a discussion within the general theory, not one that challenges
it.
Note that this is a unifying ground for understanding all partial
perspectives (pluralities of voices). The truth of the "partial voice" that
expresses an individual's "more or less conscious goal" is to be found in
its relation to the contradictions that determine the objects and motives of
the activity system. Of course, the only way to see the fullness of the
movement of the contradictions, the only way to get to the dialectical unity
of the objects and motives of the activity system is through attending to
the "partial voices". But that doesn't mean that they are fully understood
through any kind of assignation of an equivalent "truth value" to each of
them. In fact, the partial voices turn out to be contradictory and won't
admit of such a bestowal of equivalent, abstract truth. As the author of
the paper (Engstrom?) wrote, " . . . the essential task is always to grasp
the systemic whole, not just separate connections."
Paul H. Dillon
This response to nate, Judy, and Kathie is schematic. Perhaps the mistake
was mine from the beginning when I used the term "partial truth"