On the term "reflection" ...
anyone writing in the Soviet Union would know how political the word
"reflection" is, mainly because of Lenin's book "Materialism and
Empirio-criticism" and the position that book has had in disputes over the
years. Ilyenkov's defence of this book, published by New Park, is at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/index.htm and this
gives us the opportunity to see how someone of the same School as Leontyev
(more or less, as I understand it?) defends the use of the term.
Where "Reflection" is being used in the crudest manner as a metaphor for
sense perception, then of course it is nothing more than a barrier to
understanding the genuinely human relation, but it is nevertheless a
perfectly useful term which incorporates the idea that an objectively
existing natural world is the utlimately determining side in the
human-nature relation, and also expresses the way a host of processes find
their properties reflected in another process, including human society
reflecting aspects of the natural world it lives in. Surely?
Andy
At 22:02 11/10/2000 +0200, you wrote:
>Continuation to: on "ob-" and "subjective"
>
>Now, as to the concept of "reflection" it is entered into the scene
>in order to bridge between subject and object, and this in the
>direction from object to subject.
>
>In philosophy the term "reflection" covers an absolute and increasing
>mess ever since its reintroduction by Locke on the basis of
>Descartes' distinction between extended and cognizing matter. Whether
>it has avoided to improve on this with its introduction into
>psychology remains to be shown. In the German translation of
>Leontiev, Rubinstein and others "reflection" is usually rendered by
>"Wiederspiegelung", literally "re-mirroring". Now this is
>tautological which may have been invented in the intent to cover,
>i.e. hide the mess. It is obvious that Lenin's theory of perception
>as reflection in the sense of sensory imaging is sheer nonsense. The
>senses by their proper construction add a lot of their own -- color
>is not in the world, nor is sound or glare or bitterness etc.; all
>qualities etc. are relational rather than factual attributes of
>either the things / events or the mind. The sensory systems are
>transactional rather than reduplicating. In fact, I would even say,
>they are as much symbolic as their are iconic, in Peircean terms. But
>that's another story.
>
>It is clear from Leontiev's use of the word that "Wiederspiegelung",
>translation notwithstanding, is exactly not the meaning he is giving
>the term. This is a bit strange and may perhaps express some
>hesitation on part of the translator to bring Leontiev too close the
>Hegel since the latter in German used the term "Reflexion". I also
>think L. is not using the term in the sense of "reflection". i.e. as
>a sort of meta-cognition of conscious pondering again and inquiring
>this and that facet or relationship of what one is already aware of.
>In this sense of metaphor, the inner mirror, so to say, the term has
>originally been introduced into philosophy by Platon and Aristoteles.
>But in Leontiev's thought reflection in his sense should be a
>precondition to the possibility of this awareness-psychological sense.
>
>So the question is how and where Leontiev settles his notion between
>mirroring and pondering reflection, quantitatively or qualitatively.
>I must confess that I have great troubles understanding what Leontiev
>really has in mind. He touches many facets of the the field but does
>not state what he means. Similar troubles as I have had reading the
>German translation although I have a much better understanding of
>Vygotsky and the philosophical background back into the 18th century
>now than then. Sure, what happens in the brain-mind is to some extent
>dependent on that system of internal conditions, which is probably
>what L. calls "subjective" (p.33 et passim). But the same is true for
>the other part in the process, namely that part of the world actually
>having influence on the senses and merging with and distinguishing
>from memory; so the result is neither "subjective" nor "objective"
>but both or none. L. in this text has a lot of pertinent criticism
>towards the common conception of perception as passive, isolated,
>stimulus-bound etc. But his own picture remains dark. E.g. when he
>speaks of "the language of sensory modalities (in a sensory "code")"
>(p. 34), and then implies something akin to the Brunswikian lens
>model, i.e. impoverishment on the sense level and re-enrichment on
>the "psychic reflection" level, we do not learn how he thinks this is
>possible.
>
>Indeed, perception, or to be more general "reception", is a
>relational process and so are the structures spanning parts of an
>individual and parts of her environment the sensory system and what
>can influence them, excitatory and stabilizing (adaptive, constancy,
>idealizing, valuation, etc.) factors or tendencies. L. knows and says
>some of that, but he stops much too short for he does not seem to
>acknowledge the enormous part of the sensory systems' proprieties
>constituting the majority, in some way all of the qualities in which
>the process results (for the nervous process has non of the qualities
>the phenomena have nor of the potentials the things may have. Neither
>does he acknowledge the part played by the ground without which and
>without sufficient contrast to which no stimulus can bring forth a
>reasonable perception. And it is a process in time where what's
>coming in and what's already there, from processes on a time scale
>reaching both back to early until recent ontogenesis and to older and
>more recent phylogenesis. The notion of a sensory image has simply
>misleading. And there is mutual influence of these two components
>from outside and from inside, if you want, on each other; and that
>process takes time and can go in quite different directions depending
>often on very subtle components or events of itself. John Dewey has
>wonderfully described this in 1896 in his critique on the reflex arc
>concept in psychology and said almost everything essential on the
>relational nature of the process. But a century and more of modern
>psychology did not listen. Has Leontiev known that article? He hints
>at the basic idea with the example of the activity of the touching
>hand (p. 36) but does not elaborate.
>
>Leontiev, in particular does not explicitly acknowledge what you
>might expect first from somebody propagating the crucial role of
>activity in understanding psychological functioning. For who says
>perception or psychic reflection must result in some representation
>of the world as it is or looks to some subject etc.? Could not much
>of what is happening in the mind-brain, elicited by the sensory
>systems attending to some particular part of the environment, be
>heavily tinged, and in the wool, so to say, by what it is gathered
>for, namely guiding activity or action? Who has proven or can prove
>that perception must have taken place before action can start? On the
>contrary, there is some evidence (little effort has been spent to
>research the question) that situation sensitive action can start long
>before the respective decision has become conscious. This possibility
>could go much beyond the regulation of sense organ behavior by the
>sensory input itself, which is mentioned by L. on p. 36 and 39.
>Altogether, here is another analytical distinction taken for
>something real and put at the base of researching and theorizing
>which might be quite unrealistic and indeed misleading. It is true
>that you can make anatomical distinctions between afferent and
>efferent nerves. But, of course, there is no clearcut distinctability
>of a center being so to say between the two or mediating. Large parts
>of the brain-mind are always active and involved when an individual
>is non-sleeping in the world, and to some extent even or more so in
>sleep when the afferent and the efferent periphery is somehow
>reduced. An instinct is obviously only analytically separable into
>elicitory and elicited parts. How come this should or could be
>different when a few end-brain structures are added and/or enlarged.
>Again, he hints at this perspective by giving a role to efferences in
>the perceptive process (p. 35); but he does not propose concepts
>covering the kind of role or of connection, too.
>
>Why does L. see primarily the barrier between the individual and its
>environment rather than the bridges that the specialized organs of
>receiving and of execution patterns of behavior constitute and that
>change not only the relation between the two but in addition induce
>change in each of the two themselves (one of the latter being his
>principal theme of the book!). He is so clever and keen in disclosing
>that psychology developed upon silly abstractions such as the one
>from the social and the one of the object (p. 41); why does he stick
>to and elaborate another one, that of reflection of something out
>there into in here? And in a way that at least this reader cannot
>differentiate between the extreme possibilities of re-mirroring and
>of free-wheeling imagination and symbolization?
>
>A nice special detail to end, if you want: I applaud the English (and
>the German) translators of speaking of "psychic reflection" rather
>than "psychological r.". Could somebody knowledgeable tell me whether
>the distinction between psychical and psychological is as easy and
>un-ambivalent in Russian as it is in German psychisch and
>psychologisch, the former referring to the phenomena, the latter to
>scientific concepts based more or less upon the former (however
>problematic that distinction lastly may be)? But I can barely
>suppress my impression that L.'s concept of "psychic reflection" is
>heavily psychological (or perhaps philosophical, as are his notions
>of objective and subjective) in a very particular sense and sort of
>misses enough phenomenology and careful observation both of inner and
>of outer kinds of being-aware of. I say this well aware of and
>acknowledging the fact that Leontiev has heavily contributed to
>directing attention of the scientists in the right direction: more of
>activity, more of culture, more of change in time.
>
>Alfred
>--
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch
>Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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* Andy Blunden, Teaching Space Support Team Leader
* Email ablunden@unimelb.edu.au or andy@mira.net
* http://home.mira.net/~andy/
* University of Melbourne 9344 0312 (W) 9380 9435 (H)
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