24 october 2000
from peter jones, sheffield hallam university
dear friends and colleagues
(sorry, folks, this is a long message - i intended it to be brief and then got
carried away..).
it seems we're about ready to go for chapter 4 now. i will try to outline some
important issues raised in this chapter but will hold off on critical
commentary for the moment. the chapter deals directly with consciousness and
meaning and the relations of these to the analysis of activity presented
earlier. it therefore has to do with some of the most difficult and
philoophically nuanced problems in psychology, but not only psychology - and
therefore touches on the broader issues of alienation, ideology and social
consciousness and the relationship between individual and social consciousness,
not to forget the concept of the 'ideal' (one of our perennials). the polemics
with rubinshtein do not resurface in this chapter. indeed there is reference
(positive) to rubinshtein's contribution and to brushlinksy's (one of the
leading exponents of rubinshteinian activity theory) as well as positive
reference to and use of the philosophical work of ilyenkov and mamardashvili,
to the (controversial) work with deaf-blind children of meshcheryakov (which
ilyenkov was involved in), to the empirical studies of a number of different
psychologists etc. the ideas are presented in dense, elliptical form and, once
again, we are badly served by a completely appalling translation.
section 4.1 deals squarely with consciousness. consciousness is always
self-consciousness since consciousness 'is a picture of the world ...in which
[the subject] himself, his actions, and his conditions are included'. what L
calls 'the essence of the phenomena of consciousness' are 'conscious images,
conscious representations' by which he means Ilyenkovian 'ideal forms': forms
in which the goal of productive activity is represented in a thing which is
separate from and independent of the object to be produced. Such goal-directed
production, he argues, involves activity being guided and directed towards a
product 'which does not yet exist. For this reason it can direct activity only
if it is presented to the subject in a form that allows it to be compared with
the original material (the object of work) and its intermediate
transformations'. This comparison 'requires that my representation should
appear for me as if it were on the same plane with the objective world but not,
however, merging with it'. L explains that such 'conscious representations'
have their origin in the 'circular' (or 'spiral like', better) dynamic of
(objective) activity - 'in that system of objective relations in which a
transition of the objective content of activity into its product takes place'.
activity produces a product (first cycle); activity is renewed in order to
reproduce (produce again) the product (second cycle); but this second cycle is
directed by an 'image' of the product initially produced - the product is
transformed into an 'ideal form' (embodied in some material, eg linguistic)
which serves to guide the renewed activity to the reproduction of the desired
product. thus consciousness is the 'transformed form [here L draws on
Mamardashvili who develops Marx's concept of 'transformed form' - 'Verwandelte
Form' in contrast with Ilyenkov's 'ideal'] 'of a manifestation of those
relations, social in their nature, that are realized by the activity of man in
an objective world'. This 'transformation' takes place, L argues, 'through the
functioning of language': 'Thus food, of course, appears as a material object;
the meaning of the word food, however, does not contain in itself even a gram
of nutritional substance. here even language itself has its material existence,
its material; but language, taken in relationship to the signified reality, is
only a form of its being, just as are those material brain processes of
individuals that realize its perception' (this is a direct quote from ilyenkov
but badly translated).
section 4.2 returns to issues of perception but relates them to consciousness.
L claims (on the basis of considerable empirical as well as theoretical work)
that human (self-)consciousness brings with it the possibility of
differentiating between 'the phenomenal field' (ie visual or other data as they
immediately present themselves) and 'objective, 'meaningful' images', implying
that 'man is liberated from the slavery of sensory impressions when they are
distorted by incidental conditions of perception'. however, he also warns
against falling into the trap of thinking that 'we could not perceive the
object world if we did not think it'. to which he responds: 'how could we think
this world if it did not initially disclose itself to us specifically, in its
objectivity, sensually perceived?'
section 4.3 deals with linguistic meaning amongst other things. language
'appears to be the carrier of meaning' and yet 'behind linguistic meanings hide
socially developed methods of action (operations) in the process of which
people change and perceive objective reality. In other words, meanings
represent an ideal form of the existence of the objective world, its
properties, connections and relationships, disclosed by cooperative social
practice, transformed and hidden in the material of language'. L refers to the
work of Piaget, Vygotsky and Gal'perin on the development of language and
meaning in the child. he stresses, however, that linguistic meanings per se are
not the subject matter of psychology - they are only such if taken within the
context of the 'internal relations of the system of activity and
consciousness'. L goes on to contrast the notion of 'meaning' with that of
'sense' or 'personal sense' - to do with the 'movement of meanings in the
system of individual consciousness. in this context they function 'in
establishing real life connections' which 'necessarily presupposes their
relatedness to sensory impressions'. hence the emphasis placed by L on the
relationship between 'personal sense' and immediate, sensory experience for the
individual.
section 4.4 carries the discussion of personal sense further into the realm of
ideology, alienation, stereotypes etc. L argues that (abstract, 'social')
meanings and (individual) 'personal sense' necessarily diverge (due to the
'partiality of human consciousness') but in class society this takes the
special forms of alienation and ideological domination where the meaning of
activity and its sense not only do not coincide but are contradictory and
antagonistic. further, the separation of 'mental' production through the
division of labour in class society creates the possibility for the imposition
on individual consciousness of meanings and images which have 'no basis in his
real practical life experience'. L develops the argument that these
considerations lead to the need for scientific psychology to deal with the
'concrete subject' , ie the person - leading us to personality.
there are many contentious issues here aren't there?? will come back into the
discussion later
all best wishes
P
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