Leont'ev readers,
I found Bill Barowy's characterization of Ch3 as "meaty" very apropos and
totally consistent with Ana Stetsenko's comment that the book "book is more
about general foundations for a marxist psychology than about any specific
research. It is also more directed into the future than it addresses the
past ." It also seems to me that Bill Blanton's brief comments might be too
synoptic although his conclusion about the need to restructure the schools
and not retool the teachers certainly fits the overall direction Leont'ev
presents. But I have the feeling that the material covered through Ch3
doesn't really provide answers to specific questions as much as outline a
framework within which psychological research needs to be pursued. At
central focus, as far as I can determine, is the threefold distinction
between activity, action, and operation and how these are related in a
dialectic of interiorization (reflection as formation of psychic image or
representation?) and exteriorization (independent existence 'subordinating
to itself and transforming the activity of the subject ). In its totality,
it seems that chapter 3 is dedicated to describing these processes in such a
way that "laboratory" experiments might be designed to further research into
them.
At times it Leont'ev seems to present seemingling opposing (this isn't the
right word but I don't have a better one) perspectives in consecutive
sentences as in:
"The main point, however, is not the circular structure in itself but that
the psychic reflection of the object world is generated directly not by
external forces . . . but by the processes through which the subject enters
into practical contact with the object world, and which for this reason, are
necessarily subordinated to his independent properties, connections, and
relations. This means that the 'afferentator' that directs the processes of
activity initially is the object itself and only secondarily its image as a
subjective product of activity that fixes, stabilizes and carries in itself
its objective content."
On the one hand the psychic reflection is subordinated to the subject's
"independent properties, etc." and on the other hand "the object itself"
directs the processes of activity primarily, while the image that "carries
within itself the objective content (of the object) does so only
secondarily. There is an interplay surrounding object as it appears at
different levels of the evolution of activity. The object to which human
action is subordinated is clearly not some emprically given, e.g.,
physically determined element of the environment but conditions that have
been produced as part of the process of human activity as given in a
division of labor in which only the entire system of socially acting
individuals directly interacts with the material environment itself.
Leont'ev describes the process in which objects are given as a "double
transfer" which seems to be exactly the kind of process that could be
investigated experimentally. This relation to an object precedes all other
"directing and regulating" activity; e.g., needs only are capable of
directing and regulating activity insofar as their (satisfaction?) is met
with in an object that is given within (at our stage of historical
development) in highly complex and multiply mediated systems..
Probably the best interpretation I can make of the chapter in general
without attempting (with uncertain success) to unravel the details of the
relations between activity/actions/operations and motives/goals/conditions,
is to draw a parallel between Leont'ev's description of the cat on the fence
and his description of shifting the gears of a car with manual transmission.
The former he uses to discuss "an ever more complete subordination of effect
or processes of activity to objective [which translation?] connections and
relations of the properties of the objects with which the animals interacted
. . . Thus the movement of an animal along a fence is subordinated to the
"geometry" . . . the movement of a jump is subordinated to the objective
metrics of the environment." For the animal whose goal is "reaching point
N" encounters the fence as something to which its action must be
subordinated. For the human with a similar goal, "reaching point N"
requires subordinating action not to this immediate encounter with "the
objective metrics of the environment" but to the object that was
interiorized ("learning to shift the gears") and which through that
interiorization actually comes to exist as an exterior object in a new way.
What was interiorized comes to exist as part of the objective world that
simultaneously subordinates and enables action (in the same way that the
fence subordinates the action of a cat and also enables it to do other
things like jump on the roof of the garage). Clearly the conditions of
operations for humans supplant the "objective metrics" of the "object world"
for the acting individual.
Methodologically it seems that Leont'ev's interest in this process focuses
on the "internal systemic systems" that determine{??} the non-arbitrary
manner in which systems of activity can be fractionated into actions and
successively operations--with the focus from the psychological perspective
on how the structures of psychic reflection are determined. He gives
several examples, a child copying a text, etc. I personally think of
learning the Morse Code, of those "critical points" that are universally
experienced at around 25-35 characters/minute where one learns to fluidly
hear each letter without having to consciously remember it, 55-75
characters/minute where one begins to hear groups of letters, anticipate
them, and 100+ characters/minute where one no longer even hears individual
letters and the code simply becomes a continuous communicative flow (with
its own special "words" that only mimic the written word).
It also seems to me that Leont'ev is very specifically stating that these
psychological parameters are determined through social activity that can be
studied just as well from the perspective of sociology, political science,
economics, as from psychology, and in fact cannot be analyzed in their
totality without this broader integration of perspectives. But at the same
time he is always insistent that "eclecticism" leads nowhere and has never
produced anything. So one of the major questions for me is "what are the
features of the description of activity that enable the integration of the
various approaches to its study." In this sense, while I am very much in
agreement with Bill Blanton's statement that we need to restructure the
schools not retool the teachers in order to "attain the desired end", I'm
left wondering whether "the desired end" (I see GWBush waving a stack of
Scantron forms and shouting "higher scores! higher scores!) can be
determined arbitrarily--this even more so since I've been reading Bowles and
Gintis' "Schooling in Capitalist America" which makes the very convincing
case that the schools in America are not institutions (i.e., integrated
systems of activity systems) intended to promote "learning" at all.
Paul H. Dillon
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