Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

At the end of last year several of us were trying to figure out whether
'reflection' is a good term to translate the way Vygotsky and leontiev wrote
about 'mental' activity. Michael Roth pointed out that the German word that
Marx used was Widerspiegeln rather than Reflektion (see below). I don't
think anyone identified the Russian word that was used. I still haven't
found time to trace the word in Vygotsky's texts, English and Russian. But
an article by Charles Tolman suggests that the Russian term was
'otrazhenie.'  Online translators don't like this word: can any Russian
speakers suggest how it might be translated?

Reflection (German: Widerspiegelung; Russian: otrazhenie)

Tolman, C.W. (1988). The basic vocabulary of Activity Theory. Activity
Theory, 1, 14-20.

Martin

On 10/25/08 12:40 PM, "Wolff-Michael Roth" <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:

> Hi Martin,
> 
> Marx does indeed use the term "widerspiegeln" in the sentence you cite.
> 
> Das Gehirn der
> Privatproduzenten spiegelt diesen doppelten gesellschaftlichen
> Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten nur wider in den Formen, welche im
> praktischen Verkehr, im Produktenaustausch erscheinen - den
> gesellschaftlich
> nützlichen Charakter ihrer Privatarbeiten also in
> der Form, daß das Arbeitsprodukt nützlich sein muß, und zwar für
> andre - den gesellschaftlichen Charakter der Gleichheit der
> verschiedenartigen
> Arbeiten in der Form des gemeinsamen Wertcharakters
> dieser materiell verschiednen Dinge, der Arbeitsprodukte.
> 
> 
> But the Duden, the reference work of German language says that there
> are 2 different senses. One is reflection as in a mirror, the other
> one that something brings to expression. In this context, I do not
> see Marx draw on the mirror idea.
> 
> For those who have trouble, perhaps the analogy with mathematical
> functions. In German, what a mathematical function does is
> "abbilden," which is, provide a projection of, or reflection, or
> whatever. You have the word Bild, image, picture in the verb. But
> when you look at functions, only y = f(x) = x, or -x gives you what
> you would get in the mirror analogy. You get very different things
> when you use different functions, log functions, etc. Then the
> relationship between the points on a line no longer is the same in
> the "image", that is, the target domain.
> 
> We sometimes see the word "refraction" in the works of Russian
> psychologists, which may be better than reflection. It allows you to
> think of looking at the world through a kaleidoscope, and you get all
> sorts of things, none of which look like "the real thing."
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 25-Oct-08, at 9:01 AM, Martin Packer wrote:
> 
> Michael,
> 
> Here's one example from Marx, and several from Leontiev, if we can
> get into
> the Russian too.
> 
> "The twofold social character of the labour of the individual appears to
> him, when *reflected* in his brain, only under those forms which are
> impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of
> products." Marx, Capital, Chapter 1, section 4.
> 
> " Activity is a non-additive unit of the corporeal, material life of the
> material subject. In the narrower sense, i.e., on the psychological
> plane,
> it is a unit of life, mediated by mental *reflection*, by an *image,*
> whose
> real function is to orientate the subject in the objective world."
> Leontiev,
> Activity & Consciousness.
> 
> " The circular nature of the processes effecting the interaction of the
> organism with the environment has been generally acknowledged. But
> the main
> thing is not this circular structure as such, but the fact that the
> mental
> *reflection* of the objective world is not directly generated by the
> external influences themselves, but by the processes through which the
> subject comes into practical contact with the objective world, and which
> therefore necessarily obey its independent properties, connections, and
> relations." ibid
> 
> " Thus, individual consciousness as a specifically human form of the
> subjective *reflection* of objective reality may be understood only
> as the
> product of those relations and mediacies that arise in the course of the
> establishment and development of society." ibid
> 
> Martin
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