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

Hello All:

I have been enjoying this thread and at times have attempted a post but
then find myself unsatisfied with what I am trying to say.  The following
article I believe dovetails nicely into this topic.

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/653/1415

I particularly like the part about hemeneutics of decision making in
irreversible time.

Hope people enjoy.

eric


                                                                                                                            
                      Andy Blunden                                                                                          
                      <ablunden@mira.n         To:      "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>            
                      et>                      cc:                                                                          
                      Sent by:                 Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Kant and the Strange Situation                       
                      xmca-bounces@web                                                                                      
                      er.ucsd.edu                                                                                           
                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                            
                      01/19/2009 05:44                                                                                      
                      PM                                                                                                    
                      Please respond                                                                                        
                      to ablunden;                                                                                          
                      Please respond                                                                                        
                      to "eXtended                                                                                          
                      Mind, Culture,                                                                                        
                      Activity"                                                                                             
                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                            




Martin, surely we two (of the many) meanings of "objectify"
here.

(1) In "objectifying action has its dangers, such as
treating it as the output of a decision-making system" you
are using the word in the meaning it took on I think in the
1970s as "treating a subject as an object" following the
idea of Kant that one ought to treat all people as ends not
means.

(2) In "action is fleeting it must be fixed in some manner,
and although objectifying action transforms it" you are
using the word in its Hegelian sense of making a thought
into a material thing for others, a meaning which carries no
  implication of being unethical.

But Derek uses the word in yet a third sense, i.e., of being
"objective" which inheres in the action of the recipient of
action not the actor, i.e., objectify means (3) to regard
the thing as something objective, independently of one's own
subjectivity.

Isn't this so?

Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
> Derek,
>
> This is indeed such a huge topic that I hesitate to take it up. But
equally
> important; so here goes.
>
> Techniques of objectifying are certainly part of any science, but surely
not
> the whole story. And I don't see that objectifying people reduces them to
> biological phenomena, and their action to biological processes, any more
> than objectifying biological entities reduces them to physical phenomena,
> and their processes to physical ones. Certainly objectifying action has
its
> dangers, such as treating it as the output of a decision-making system,
or
> as a collection of factual events which can described without
> interpretation. But Paul Ricoeur (below) has argued convincingly that
since
> action is fleeting it must be fixed in some manner, and although
> objectifying action transforms it, these transformations can serve
important
> functions. The analysis of conversational action took steps forward when
> recording technology became widely available (without treating
conversation
> as a biological phenomenon.
>
> This is not to say that figuring out an appropriate science of action is
> easy. But surely it's easier to study action scientifically than it is to
> study a personal, private, inner mind to which by definition one can only
> have first-person access!
>
> Ricoeur, P. (1971). The model of the text: Meaningful action considered
as a
> text. Social Research, 38(3), 529-562.
>
> Martin
>
> On 1/17/09 6:09 PM, "Derek Melser" <derek.melser@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Martin, Steve:
>>
>> This is a big issue. I have written a bit about it. Chapter 11 ('Our
>> knowledge of actions') in *The Act of Thinking* is about it. And so are
the
>> last three paragraphs of the essay at
>> http://www.derekmelser.org/essays/essayverbal.html
>>
>> The primary interpersonal attitude is the side-by-side one, the attitude
of
>> fellow-participants in some shared activity. Our perception of others'
>> actions occurs under the aegis of this fellow-participant (or would-be
>> fellow-participant, empathic) attitude; it is the light in which we see
>> actions. Now and then we defect into an objective (distancing, reifying,
>> alienating) attitude towards others. Rigorously maintained, this
objective
>> attitude reduces a person to a biological phenomenon. But biological
>> phenomena don't perform *actions*, they merely exhibit derivative
biological
>> phenomena.
>>
>> Science is the rigorous maintenance of objective attitudes and
observation
>> methods. My paradigm examples of 'science' are the physical sciences:
>> chemistry, physics, biology... There are disciplined academic studies ­
of
>> history, law, fine arts, literature, education ­ in which the topic is
>> people's actions and in which objectivity and empathy alternate, in
roughly
>> equal measure. But these disciplined academic studies are not normally
>> thought of as sciences. The thing about sciences is that they stick
>> rigorously to objective methods. Why would you want to put psychology
>> alongside biology, rather than alongside, say, history or education? Of
>> course, you could call any disciplined academic investigation a
'science'.
>>
>> Anyway, it is impossible to write briefly on such a large topic without
>> pontificating, so I'll stop here.
>>
>> Derek
>>
>> *http://www.derekmelser.org*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2009/1/16 Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
>>
>>> Derek, I have been wanting to ask you about your thoughts about how
aspects
>>> of human behavior that can only be comprehended through empathy are
>>> therefore inaccessible to science.  Assuming, for the sake of
discussion,
>>> that you are right, that empathy is a necessary component of accurate
>>> observation and understanding, why does employing empathy exclude doing
>>> science?  Marx said (something like) "nothing human is alien to me."
That
>>> attitude isn't "empathy," strictly speaking, but it is certainly on the
way.
>>>  Not that it is an easy or automatic thing to do, but why do you seem
to
>>> feel that we **can't** learn how to use our powers of empathy in social
>>> science?
>>>
>>> - Steve
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 15, 2009, at 4:20 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>>>
>>>  Derek,
>>>> It depends of course on what one means by empathy. I've been arguing
for
>>>> years that all the social sciences draw implicitly on our human
capacity
>>>> for
>>>> *understanding* the actions of others (Einfühlung?), and that our
>>>> investigations can and should be interpretive, hermeneutic. Of course
many
>>>> others have made similar points. To say that genuine science is not
>>>> interpretive would be in my mind simply a false claim.
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 1/14/09 4:20 PM, "Derek Melser" <derek.melser@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, if mind/consciousness/thinking
is
>>>>> an
>>>>> action, then, because our perception of others' actions always
requires
>>>>> empathy, and because empathy is not an acceptable observation method
in
>>>>> the
>>>>> sciences, there will never be a genuine science of
>>>>> mind/consciousness/thinking. But at least we'll no longer be
bamboozled
>>>>> by
>>>>> the mind/body problem...
>>>>>
>>>>
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>
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm

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