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

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Martin:
 
This is exactly what I don't understand about our whole discussion on "reflection". As far as I can figure out, it began when I said that Kant used the word "reflect". Actually, he does use it; but only when he talks about how mirrors reverse left and right (and, if I remember correctly, how they also include an image of ourselves, which is not true of a normal visual purview).
 
This is clearly NOT a dualist view, although it does include a mirror and emphatically talks about reflection. The same thing is also true of Bakhtin's discussion, the nearest he ever got to writing his own pop song, about how when you and I stare into each other's eyes, different worlds are reflected there, for my eyes include an image of you and your eyes include an image of me. 
 
The meaning here is radically ANTI-dualist, because the image only makes sense if we see all the components (our eyes, my eyes, the images therein and the world withal) as part of the same stuff and linked in one system. No dualism here at all. A reflection is made of light, and light can be understood as an electromagnetic wave or even a particle; it's not made of some kind of spiritual phlogiston.
 
On the other hand, there was a VERY long quote from Kant (is there ever any other kind?) about how the mind creates logical categories as a result of the action of things-in-themselves upon the senses which I put up because I thought it was an almost pure example of philosophical dualism. But instead of seizing on what to me was an indubitable example of dualism, the quotation was dismissed as not relevant to the discussion because it didn't contain the word "mirror" or "reflect".
 
The reason why philosophical dualism keeps me awake at night is not because I am morbidly afraid of Christianity (we Jews take these things in stride; I even have goyish name to clap to this posting, thanks to my father). The reason is that dualism leads in a fairly direct way to Saussureanism, to the belief that a word is basically a banknote, with form printed on one side in black and "meaning" somehow printed on the other in green. 
 
This is the hundred year curse of linguistics; it has literally set us back at least a century in the way we teach languages. For example: since about 1978, the main dogma in applied linguistics has held that a learner's mind can attend to linguistic form and to meaning but can never really do both at the same time. So teaching methods ("audiolingual", or "communicative", or "task based" or "immersion") somehow have to develop a division of labour: the CONSCIOUS mind must attend to meaning, and the UNCONSCIOUS mind will attend to form.
 
Nothing could be further from Chapter Six of "Thinking and Speech" or from the view of language teaching we find in "Marxism and the Philosophy of Language". Yes, LSV accepts that children learn their first language without consciously attending linguistic form. But VNV (who uses "reflect" and "refract" a LOT) explains this easily:
 
"Only in learning a foreign language does a fully prepared consciousness—fully prepared thanks to one’s native language—confront a fully prepared language which it need only accept (81)" 
 
Neither LSV nor VNV accepts a Kantian view whereby "things in themselves" act upon the sense and this results in consciousness. For both of them, consciousness is, in practice, language: that's how we exist for ourselves and how we simultaneously exist (as social beings) for other people. That is, by the way, why the "social situation of development" can be empirically studied in talk rather than through the social science surveys that Zalkind was so fond of and about which LSV was more than a little scathing.
 
The reason the child cannot attend to form and meaning at the same time is simple: the child does not yet have a fully formed consciousness (a sense of meaning for myself). But for exactly the same reason, the foreign language learner, whose consciousness is now fully formed by the mother tongue, cannot but attend to form and meaning simultaneously; it is only through form that the foreign language learner arrives at meanings.
 
What mystifies me about this thread is that it sometimes appears that "dualism" is a kind of content, like melamine, which is carried by particular words, of which we must be wary. It's there in the word "mirror". There are toxic traces in the word "reflect", and they don't go away when we translate from Russian to German to English. But dualism is apparently not there in expressions like "form" and "meaning". This is a, when you think about it, itself a dualistic, and Saussurean, view of how meaning works. 
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Mon, 1/5/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, January 5, 2009, 6:51 AM

'Sad' because my sense is that if one wants to avoid dualism - crucial
for
Vygotsky - Lenin's writing about 'reflection' isn't the way to
go. I don't
know the details well, but from what I have read Lenin assumed a simple
dualism in which mental representations 'reflect' the real world. The
'image' may be reversed, but still it is in a realm quite different
from the
real. (Bakhurst discusses Lenin's philosophy in *Consciousness and
Revolution* if I remember correctly.)

I recently read through *Problems of the Development of Mind*, which Michael
and Andy generously made available (it fell down my chimney early one
morning) and was disappointed to discover how little Leontiev seems to have
avoided dualistic ways of thinking/writing. Here too the relation of psyche
to world is expressed in terms of 'reflection,' for example:

"The transition to existence in the conditions of a complex
environment formed as things is therefore expressed in or-
ganisms' adaptation to it taking on a qualitatively new form
associated with reflection of the properties of a material,
objective reality of things" (44)

The sense of reflection is not very clear in this excerpt, but the term is
used repeatedly in ways that generally suggest Leontiev sees the psyche
forming subjective representations of an objective reality. Perhaps this can
be saved by drawing on Marx's use of 'widerspiegeln,' which as
Michael
points out avoids the connotations of mirroring. But at least it invites
readings of CHAT which don't challenge the dualism in contemporary western
social science.

By the way, although the repeated presentations of the same notions in
Leontiev's book made me suspicious along the way, it wasn't until the
very
end that I discovered (from an endnote) that it is a compilation of articles
from very different dates. I'd recommend reading it in chronological order
to get a clearer sense of how his ideas developed. For instance, I need to
go back to see how his relative emphasis shifted between the child's
encounter with objects, and adult guidance of this encounter. At times the
latter is not mentioned, at others it is added on ("by the way..."),
and at
times it is highlighted. But since the chapters are out of order, I don't
yet have a clear sense of the chronology of these shifts.

Martin

On 1/4/09 11:50 PM, "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> The idea that always occurs to me about reflections is that in mirrors,
> left
and right are reversed.

Sad? Or a reason to pause to think?
Quien
> Sabe?

mike

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:43 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> wrote:

> Why sad?
>
>
> Martin Packer wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>
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<http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>+61 3
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