Re: arievitch/leontiev

[Peter Moxhay <moxhap@portlandschools.org>]

MIke and all:

Though I don't have ACP in the Russian, it seems to me there are a
couple of interesting points related to Igor's commentary on
the words of the English translation:

> "Moving ahead somewhat, we must say at once that the mutual transitions
> about which we are speaking form a most important movement of objective
> human activity in its historical and ontogenetic development. These
> transitions are possible because external and internal activity have a
> similar [In the original: IDENTICAL ! - I.A.] general structure.

Here, of course, "identical" [tozhdestvennyi??] may be being used by
Leontiev in the sense of "dialectical identity," or dialectical unity. 
This would
be consistent with how he discusses external and internal activity 
elsewhere.
I can walk away from reading such a passage and still believe that
Leontiev holds that external and internal activity are bound together 
dialectically
but are not "identical" in the formal sense.

> The
> disclosure of the common features of their structure [In the original:
> GENERAL STRUCTURE]

As is well known, the Russian "obshchii" can be translated as either
"common" or "general." In contemplating Mike's question:

> 1. What is meant by "general structure" of external activity?

this question changes completely for me if I think of it as, "What is
the common structure of external activity and internal activity?"
I'm led back to the dialectical unity of the two forms of activity.

And if a "dialectical identity" or unity is meant, doesn't this 
naturally
result in a "spiral of development"?

So, I guess I'm unconvinced that there is anything in such passages
that shows a contradiction with Steve's formulation:

“Part of the solution may be seeing mental actions not as identical to
physical, but as emergent “internal” realities – following the operative
objective laws of nature and activity that spawned them – that indeed
“appropriate” and “think,” and then act back upon these “external” 
realities
as the person(s) involved interprets and reacts to them.”

Are there any other passages where there is a clearer case for 
Leontiev's
espousing a copy theory?

Peter