SemEco - function circle in ecosystems / I-E coordination --
development vs. evolution; observations vs. conceptions; effects of
things upon us observers vs. effects of things upon each other by way
of comparison. All more or less about realism.
Nate, your question re development hits something that has struck me
very early in my study years, when I found out that the majority of
people, psychologists included, had some normative concept of
development, targets or schemes to attain and coaching to attain that
clearly in the time schedule of some norm. Psychologists have
downplayed that a bit in the meantime. Yet on nearer sight I have the
impression it's more in speaking only while the normative keeps its
influence below threshold and so is perhaps even more difficult to
keep in limits. Accordingly, at present the most widely observable
use of the term is probably no longer in school settings, but in
industry: in the formula "research and development". And that is one
more strange reversal of the original word sense with the older
biologists that you mention: un-folding what is hidden in nature. For
the activity of developers consists on the contrary in the "folding"
of plans and programs, others will have to unfold in the industrial
process bringing the thing folded onto the market. So development
really has taken on the character of programming the world. Surely
not in everybody's best interest.
I tend to avoid the term. I know the the term "evolution" also has
its strings attached, but at least not much of planning and
programming to be executed (by others!) attitude. It appears possible
to decontextualize "developmental" issue to quite an extreme.
Piaget's theory is a case in point. Whereas evolutions stop without
context, without a real environment; and a theory of this without the
real context is idle. So my emphasis is certainly, as I tried to
point out, on co-evolution. On two levels by the way: (a) among the
two parts of the ecosystem, and (b) with two or several ecosystem
(these imply different individuals) sharing in their respective
environments much ground common to all. If their co-evolution should
have or show to some extent a common direction what might be often
desirable, then this should also be the outcome of their interactions
rather than a plan imposed upon them from the outside.
> So, is there an organism in a SemEco framework, or would it be more
>similar to the notion of cyborg. Organism - however its defined
>individual, context, culture, society etc - would imply a closure
>that would interact with other organisms-non organisms.
No, Nate, if I understand you correctly, the cyborg appears to me to
be misleading. The individual organism in SemEco is a reality, no
matter whether simple as in one-celled beasts or complex as in
humans. We can observe much of it even if we dn't know in advance and
in general where its boundaries are and what will be included and
what excluded in its life course. Interaction among two or more
organisms is not direct, as you will shortly see; it needs an
environmental mediation: an external structure produced by one person
(in an ExtrO-process) and received by another (in an IntrO). This is
what an observer can also see and the semiosic threads winding
through the individual and through this or that part of the
environment can be followed even when there are dark spots. But is it
necessary for theory to picture what is specious in observation ?
My point is this: should we conceive a process or a structure as we
do perceive it? Are we so important and anthropocentric that in
understanding things we investigate what effects they have upon us
rather than on each other. I do not say it is not important to
understand how things effect us; but this does not really lead to an
understanding of things, rather of our relation with them and of the
appratus we have to perceive. (Here Kant had grasped the right
problem (he was not the first); it's his "solution" that is fiction.)
So I think, we have to distinguish between two approaches: one is a
conceptual reconstruction of how things we can discern or infer
operate among each other -- another is when we observe things in
order to find out how they operate on each other. The former is
common, the latter is desirable. Here we are involved -- how could we
avoid to be involved?! what a crazy idea of doing science to be good
without involvement?! --, at least in the first instance. Here
figure-ground and other principles describing our own operation are
unavoidable. But there is a way out of this limitation while keeping
the involvement. It is not, I think, to do as if we could take
observations gathered under standardized conditions as "objective";
they remain "subjective" if standardized, namely the impression upon
us multiplied with the type of standardization chosen, quite
arbitrarily, as everybody informed knows. This may sometimes or
mostly in matters of concern make things worse.
But on the empirical side, there is a wonderful trick: If we make two
or more observations under varying conditions, we can focus on the
differences only, i.e. forget about the content codetermined by our
apparatus, whether machinery or perception etc. For it is reasonable
to assume that there is small risk that our apparatus has
fundamentally changed from the first to the second observation. So in
the difference our possible role is largely divided out of the
observations. The difference will really covary with the things
changing and not depend on how we look snf describe.
To be sharply separated from the empirics is the conceptual. When our
conceptual reconstructions of a process is guided by difference
observations rather than by direct observations, we increase chances
that we describe something about the world rather than of ourselves'
organization.
> Speaking personally, the lines are not as easily defined as is
>often assumed. Would affinity help here in that while there maybe
>are not straight lines there are dotted ones (affinity maybe) in
>which certain relationships can be explored. Actually Paul's
>instructional unit comes to mind, although it is of course theorized
>differently, pointing toward the relationship the instructional unit
>plays in the teacher and student's activity systems. My take, Paul's
>maybe different of course, is that the activity systems are open,
>but we need need a "concrete universal", "affinity", "boundary
>object" in which to explore various relationships. I
>realize correlating these three may provoke certain reactions and
>while there are of course differences I find interesting
>similarities between them.
I remind that affinities is a concept of potentials. If you want to
draw the affinities out, you may get in troubles. Nice to draw a lot
of dotted lines, as a reminder that the actualities also depend on
contingencies: actual presence and readiness of this or that affine
structure. But empirics in reality, in contrast to laboratory
fiction, is hard work. You have to wait being ready until potentials
turn into actuals eventually. I never forget that our research
funding agencies were ready to pay a chimps' researcher many years in
spite of the fact that he did not even see a chimp for a full year in
the rain forest. Whereas they would refuse to or pay so little on
short notice to gather observations of real human people with their
things in their rooms. And heavens, is it not important to understand
why humans build and build, destroying much of their environment for
centuries and adding to human misery by hygienic but antisocial
architecture? Of course they paid for administering questionnaires to
collect prejudice about dwelling. Why should we need "concrete
universals"? Those must be linguistic symbols; concrete is only the
words; their content will be abstract and either force-shaped
according ot interest or vary at discretion of those using the words.
Would you think it is different in instructional settings?
>Putting aside if are [our?] night time prayers are directed toward
>Kant, Hegel, or Marx, for me interesting affinities emerge.
Maybe you need to elucidate this for me. Night time prayers? You mean
Angst-prayers? But on daytime we can ask Herder or Dewey, can we?
What about Weekdays and Sunday? What affinities shall emerge? For
Kant and Fichte I am sure theirs is a secularized religion; re Hegel
and Marx I abstain. Herder, by office, was the Lutheran equivalent of
an Archbishop. When Fichte, accused him of being an atheist, declared
that, if anybody in Sachsen-Weimar was an atheist, it certainly would
be Herr Herder. Everybody informed agreed in private that Fichte was
probably right; but it was Fichte who lost his job. Because he had
the wrong, the secularized religion. Whereas Herder was with the
people rather than in the clouds.
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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