[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
I know, but it would be sad to discover that Vygotsky was drawing so heavily
from Lenin.
On 1/4/09 9:42 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> I might say as an aside, that "reflection" whatever it is in
> Russian, has a strong place in Russian Marxism. This is
> because Lenin made such a powerful attack on his
> philosophical enemies in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism"
> written in 1908. Ilyenkov still defends this books in the
> mid-1970s, though almost all non-Russian Marxists would say
> that it is a terrible book and was written before Lenin had
> studied Hegel, etc. In M&EC Lenin makes reflection a central
> category, a universal property of matter, etc., and bitterly
> attacks the use of semiotics of any kind.
>
> I have an ambiguous attitude to M&EC myself. Apart from
> "sins of omission" perhaps, Lenin is right, but did he
> really have to shout it that loud? Well, in the historical
> context of the wake of the defeat of the 1905 Revolution,
> probably he did. Did all Russian Marxists for the next 100
> years have to follow his lead? Probably not.
>
> I note that in Dot Robbins' book on Vygotsky and Leontyev's
> Semiotics etc., Dot defends the notion of reflection. The
> situation, as I see it, is that "reflection" has a strong
> advantage and an equally strong disadvantage in conveying a
> materialist conception of sensuous perception.
>
> On one side it emphasises the objectivity of the
> image-making - there is nothing in the mirror, or if there
> is, it is an imperfectionit which distorts the image. On the
> other side, mirror-imaging is an entirely passive process, a
> property of even non-living matter.
>
> Personally, I think "reflection" belongs to Feuerbachian
> materialism, not Marxism, but in historical context, the
> position of many Russians who use the concept, is
> understandable.
>
> That's how I see it anyway,
>
> Andy
>
> Ed Wall wrote:
>> Martin
>>
>> It appears the root is more or less
>>
>> отрaжáть (отрaзить)
>>
>>
>> and, at least according to my dictionary, has the sense of reflecting
>> or having an effect. However, my qualifications are dated.
>>
>> Ed
>>
>> On Jan 4, 2009, at 7:01 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>
>>> 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
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca