The present discussion of Gordon's paper has started to fascinate me.
That you take up doubts and profferences, Gordon, from the 1995
dialogues on the list with contributions among others from Arne
Raeithel reminds me of discussions Arne and I had at around that
time. There were then in mostly personal and a few e-mail
discussions ideas about how we could evade -- to say it simplified --
the conceptual prison constructed by the Greek and Romans, amplified
by the Christians and the Enlightenment philosophers and still
effective at the base of all of modern science. To hint at that
prison in some terms of the present discussion: conceptions of
subject, object, knowledge; matter/concrete and signs/abstract;
individual, group, and the question of primacy; and so on and on.
Activity theory, in whatever version I know does not evade the
prison. Vygotsky obviously suffered from that problem and had started
to search ways out shortly before he died.
I don't know whether I can find a place in the discussion now with my
ideas. I may come too early or too late. Only those readers similarly
discontent with the common conceptualities may be interested to try
to grasp things in entirely different perspective. But let me try
(once again).
On the negative side: I have no idea how to understand terms like,
for example, subject and object or how to differentiate between signs
and tools. These refer to entities defined either each for itself or
as something opposed in a pair. None of these definition strategies
at the base of inquiry can allow for realistic understanding. For
these terms are class concepts. They have lost connection to concrete
reals independent of our conceiving them and it is uncertain what
they refer to and may include or not. A subject, e.g., is always an
object, for an observer, from outside or from inside; an many objects
are subjects on one occasion and not on another. This is all very
fluent, to say the least. An object, in general, is something a
subject has taken out of its context. Which disallows objectivity
because the subject selecting the object cannot be cancelled out. A
subject, originally, was something subjected to something of larger
extent (as in subject matter) or power (as in, e.g., a British
subject); to recycle the term and making it the master of knowledge
and forgetting about its particular and manifold perspectivity has
barely been a good idea..
For more examples, look at the AT triangle, original or extended
version: all terms there are abstract class concepts. They refer to
something that has to be and is interpreted in any real instance in a
particular way. These are not concepts that clearly refer to concrete
entities which do really interact, interoperate, the relations among
which can be real events. Such interaction at best happens in the
head of the theoretician. They may be practical guides for people to
see things in a certain way. But whether they really pertain to
concrete things or not in how they are interpreted in this or that
case is uncertain.
CHAT, AT, ANT or whatever are not the only conceptions imprisoned in
that type of class concepts. All theorizing, I think, in practically
all (except some clearly historical) scientific fields is victim of
that confounding of symbols with reality. Symbols (except names)
mostly refer to classes; and general statements valid for all x is
the intent of science. This does not do much harm when dealing with
mass and forms of energy or with elementary particles such as atoms
or small molecules. For those are occurring in instances where
singularities do not matter: atoms have no individuality, they are
fully exchangeable by any one of their kind. With living entities,
with psychic entities, with cultural entities you have to accept that
all members of a supposed kind are in fact singular, are
individualities. Treating of them in terms of class concept may be
comfortable, but it is unrealistic; it misses, indeed it violates the
real character, yes the dignity, of singular entities.
The sciences, the human sciences in particular, are quite despotic an
endeavor insofar they attempt to reduce singularities to general law.
Their error cannot really be amended by a practice that must be
concerned with the singular. Abstract theory and concrete practice is
contradictory in itself if the theory in principle excludes
singularities. Modernity's belief in rational reduction and
simplification to principles has probably become a if not the major
force furthering instrumentalizing humans for some particular purpose.
Like Steve Gabosch, I think we are all "wrestling with several
traditional problems in philosophy and scientific methodology", alas
for hundreds, if not thousands, of years without success. His and my
examples could be multiplied ad libitum. Many if not most of these
eternal unsolved problems are artefactual problems, i.e. they exist
only because we have started our conceptual constructions from
pre-sumptions that have no good ground. Or would you like to think
that one hundred or so generations of wise men and women did not
solve them, but we clever guiys are at them next moment? Let them,
concepts and problems, pass away, without regret. If we can gain
better ones.
The moment some humans have invented something named spirit, mind,
esprit, Geist etc. and turned their immediate experience into some
self-contained entitity called consciousness they had imposed
themselves the task of bringing that construction into an acceptable
connection with what they could observe, touch, etc. They failed in
doing that, instead started endless quarrel about their order of
primacy between matter and mind. You are aware that all these words
used to designate that realm are not clearly translatable among the
major European languages. All these words differentiate separately in
each language. And even worse so in view of other languages. But such
separation was politically a first class technique to enforce power
upon people.
Matter and Mind/Geist are fictions. Reified abstractions. None of the
two (or more: add soul) can exist without the other. The task of
uniting the two major realms is insolvable. But they need not be
separated in the first place. Rather a conception embracing both
phenomena is due. And possible, I think.
Yet I am not so much interested in criticizing the conceptions of the
traditions which I have come to believe we should leave behind.
Radically. Because these concepts were all made for grasping objects
selected as they are supposed to be in themselves.
For ours is an evolutive world. All we can discern is involved in
becoming, it is part of chains or nets of becoming and it may play a
role in further becoming. So the basic question we have to find
answers is how do the structures we can discern or infer come about.
Real and possible structures.
We should not make advance definitions of anything. How could we
reasonably do that? If we think things are essentially based on
relationships -- all things we can discern -- then we cannot define
things, each one by itself. We must understand them from their
relatedness. Both from the relations of their origin, in their
modification etc., and in view of relations they can engage in with
the effect of generating new and modifying existing structures.
I find it's absolutely uninteresting to know what a thing is. That
want is taking ourselves much too important. For our knowledge is
inseparable from our means of knowing. What's crucial for its
environment, for (parts of) the world, for us, is what a structure we
can discern can do in connection with other structures. In following
the paths of effects of structures upon each other we can possibly
minimize those self-produced distortions in our knowledge.
With Semiotic Ecology I am developing a set of conceptual tools to
deal with evolutive systems. On the positive side, thus, I try to
give an idea of them in forthcoming posts. I think these tools allow
new views on questions such as Gordon has presented and that have
been discussed here these days. So we may, at suitable places, build
relations to traditional theorizing about humans in culture and more.
Alfred
--Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland http://www.langpapers.net --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch
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