Esteemed xmca'ers,
Chapter 2 of Leont'ev's "Activity, Consciousness, and Personality" seems
quite schematic to me, it appears to me to be almost a prelude to the more
substantive chapters that follow, one that situates the "space" of further
psychological inquiry within the framework of the basic psychological
element: psychic reflection. Leont'ev shows however, that perception, is
directly related to a psychological subject's activity which in turn can
only be understood in terms of practice. This argument then leads into the
following chapters where activity as conscious practice is directly
considered. Here I will outline what I consider to be the main thread of
the chapter. Since this is a "bridge" chapter, in my opinion, I have found
it difficult to immediately raise potentially important connections to the
theory of the ideal that we have discussed during the past few months
although I do feel that these issues are continuously just beneath the
surface of the presentation. Be that as it may, I want to get this
discussion of chapter 2 started so I offer the following:
Some philosophical background: At the outset Leont'ev stresses the
"philosophical and psychological importance of the category of reflection
and perhaps he presumes that his reader's have some knowledge of the terms
background in European philosophy. I do not know what the Russian word
used in the original is but am assuming that it corresponds to the German,
Reflexion. Interestingly, Lenin himself, whose comments about reflection
Leont'ev cites, had trouble with the translation, wondering whether Hegel's
use of the term could be translated as "reflectivity" or "reflective
determination" stating that one russian word (i don't have the ability to
produce cyrillic characters but it is roughly (Pe??ekc?) was "not suitable".
Maybe a Russian speaker can clear this up. I assume that the Russian term ,
like the English ":reflection", derives from the Latin reflectere and has
three basic meanings (a) to bend back or reflect, or mirror, but including
both the process of reflecting and the reflected image; eg, an echo; (b) to
reflect on or consider a matter, to think over something, (3) to turn back
one's thoughs or attention from objects to oneself as in Locke and Leibniz.
Hegel made Reflexion one of the central elements of his theory of logic,
knowledge, and consciousness. He criticized Kant's theory concerning the
reflection of the external world in the senses. For Kant this reflection
was accomplished by the unilateral action of the categories understanding;
that capable of being reflected was that which could be brought into
law-abiding conformity with these subjectively given categories. But Kant
himself was forced to introduce mediating concepts between the senses and
understanding: ie., the schemata of understanding, on one hand, and
reflective judgment, on the other. Hegel on the other hand insisted that
reflection is not an external activity that we apply to thinks and concepts,
it is immanent in things and concepts themselves." Our reflection of an
object is more or less adequate insofar as it conforms the the relction of
our object. Hegel achieves this by claiming that both we ourselves and our
activities are phases of the Absolute (spirit) [Inwood: 248]'
Hegel's proposal is given in the first section of Book Two of the Science of
Logic:
"At first, essence shines or shows within itself,or is reflection; secondly
it appears; thirdly it manifests itself. In its movement, essence posits
itself in the following determinations:
I. As simple essence, essence in itself, which in its determinations
remains within itself.
II. As emerging into determinate being, or in accordance with its
Existence and Appearance
III. As essence that is one with its Appearance, as actuality."
Whereas Hegel overcame the duality of the Kantian position on the basis of
the Absolute Spirit, Marx's contribution consisted in situating the
dialectic in practical human activity.
This background might help situate the chapter, as well as explain its
schematic quality insofar as Leont'ev might well have presupposed his
readers' familiarity with that background. It is from this perspective that
Leont'ev summarily dismisses the 19th century psychologists who maintained a
subject-object dualism in their accounts of psychic reflection. For
different reasons, he is similarly critical of the limitations of Pavlovian
reflexology and cybernetic inspired approaches. The critique of Pavlovian
reflexology stresses the impossibility of accounting for pscyhic reflection
(the formation of the sensorily based psychic image) solely in terms of
neurophysiology and will probably find only a few in disagreemtn. On the
other hand, I found the discussion of the limits of the cybernetic approach
very relevant to xmca discussions of Bruce Robinson's paper on dialectics
and Alfred Lang's proposals. While crediting cybernetic approaches, ie,
understanding reflection as an exchange of information between systems, with
"the introduction of quantitative methods into the study of the processes of
reflection", Leont'ev points out that in "giving a description of the
processes of regulation, [the cybernetic approach] turns away from their
concrete nature." His specific critique concerns the asymmetry of psychic
reflection in contrast to the symmetry (homomorphism/isomorphism) of the
model-modeled relationship. The following passage summarizes this position,
"A connection of the image with what is reflected is not a connection of two
objects (systems, multitudes) in mutual similar relations one to another --
their relationship reproduces a polarization of any living process at one
pole of which stand the active ("partial") subject, and at the other, the
object "indifferent" to the subject. It is this feature of the relation of
the subjective image to reflected reality that is not included in the
relationship 'model-modeled'". Further, he claims that the "partiality" of
the subjective, active pole "allows an active penetration into reality." As
such cybernetic models are inadequate to the task of providing a basis for
human psychology.
On the other hand, the position that "perception represents an active
process" is widely accepted in modern psychology. Sensory organs do not
receive images, rather "man" receives them with the help of the sensory
organs and what is received are not aspects that are pieced together through
the activity of the mind, rather an objective world is directly encountered
in perception. Perceptive activity "finds the object there where it realy
lives, . . ., in the external world, in objective time and space" and this
fact, "objectivity", is "the most important psychological feature of the
subjective image." The sensory psychic image exhibits "the property of
objective relationships already at the moment of its formation."
Nevertheless insofar as psychological theory ignores the fundamental
relationship of sensations to an external world, all subjective-idealistic
theories that portray perception in the classic scheme "candle => its
projection onto the retina of the eye => image of this projection in the
brain emitting some kind of 'metaphysical light'" are one sided and
consequently untrue presentations of psychic reflection. Objectivity cannot
be reduced to the experience of the individual, the action or 'activity' of
the individually perceiving subject.
The preceding discussion leads to the presentationn of the "question of the
role of practice" in the formation sensory subjective images as central;
thereby preparing the bridge, it would seem, to the major chapters of the
book. Having accepted that "the subjective image of the external world is
the product of the activity of the subject in that world", we cannot
understand activity "as anything other than a realizing of the life of a
physical subject" but "the fact of the matter is that the basis for
cognitive processes is not the individual practice of the subject, but 'the
totality of human practice'".
An important thread moves through this entire discussion, one that refers
back in terms of the philosophical theory of reflection to Kant's
"perceptive judgment" through Hegel's presentation of the three stage
process of reflection to Marx's statement that the "human organs are
theorists" and has important points of contact with Peirce's difficulties
with the relationship between "firstness" and "thirdness". While reading
this Husserl's discussions of apperception, filling-in, continually also
came to mind. . . The lengthy discussion of experiments with the
pseudo-scope, experiments that dfemonstrate that the "pseudoscopic image"
appears only when it is plausible -- "It is understood that man must already
have a picture of this world [ie, that appearing in perception]. this
perception, however, is accumulated not only directly at the sensory level
but also at higher cognitive levels -- as a result of the individual's
experience with social practice reflected in the form of language in the
system of knowledge." The "operator" of perception, by which I undestand
Leont'ev to mean the concretely active aspect of perception, is not the
subjective stream of accumulated associations of sensation, but social
practice. This is precisely because the "most significant aspect of psychic
reflection, its "objectivity", consists of "extracting from 'real' activity
its properties, relationships, etc. their fixation in short-term or
long-term states of the receiving systems, and reproduction of these
properties in the acts of forming new images, in the acts of recognizing and
remembering objects." The REAL is extracted from social activity. The
image does not exist as a "thing" inside the head of the subject.
In closing the chapter, Leont'ev introduces distinction between
"representation" and psychic images, the former being traditionally
considered to be "generalized images" registered in the memory, the result
of "a superimposition of one senosry impression on another." In contrast to
the prevailing "substantive" theories of representation, Leont'ev states
that representations thesmelves contain movement and contradiction.
Consequently no sensory impression is a "set impression." "not only
concepts but also are sensory representations are dialectical", ie, they are
historical and dynamic.
Leont'ev states that the introduction of the theory of reflection outlined
in the chapter "cannot be taken outside the internal connection with the
other basic Marxist categories" and that its introduction into scientific
psychology requires " a reconstruction of the whole system of categories" to
which the "further exposition" will be dedicated.
Well I'm going to send this out and hopefully some others will have some
insights, background, or extrapolations to continue the discussion.
Paul H. Dillon
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