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Re: [xmca] Leontiev and Sign




Yes, I think related issues have come up before, and remain very important. I have not undertaken to analyze Leontiev's own view of the sign function or semiotic side of activity theory, but I think there is widespread agreement that:

The use of signs (symbolic representations, including language) is fundamental to the emergence of the so-called higher mental functions in a developmental model

A dynamic view of sign processes is needed in order to combine it with developmental theories and learning theories; a purely formal semiotic theory, such as Eco or most of Saussure (but see Thibault's re- analysis of Saussure), is not enough. Peircean semiotics is often suggested as one component of such a more dynamic model (semiosis as process).

Arne Raeithel did indeed have great insights on these matters, preserved in xlchc, the forerunner of xmca. His death was a great loss to our community. He and I had many productive exchanges on these topics online, but never met in person.

In my work in the 1990s I was concerned with issues of functional systems and building dynamic models of emergence that include sign- using processes. My basic statement on this is chapter 6 in my book Textual Politics, but there are also some important ideas in two related papers on semiosis and dynamic systems:

“Opening Up Closure: Semiotics Across Scales” In J. Chandler and G. van de Vijver, Eds. Closure: Emergent Organizations and their Dynamics (Volume 901: Annals of the NYAS). New York: New York Academy of Science Press. pp. 100-111. March, 2000. "Material Sign Processes and Ecosocial Organization." In P.B. Andersen, C. Emmeche, and N.O. Finnemann-Nielsen, Eds. Downward Causation: Self-organization in Biology, Psychology, and Society. Aarhus University Press (Denmark). pp. 181-213. 2000.

These in turn led to my paper in MCA on timescales, a slightly different turn.

Issues of "intellect - will" and "personality" take a different direction from my work, though I am now trying to more fully integrate "feeling", both in the Peircean sense and in the phenomenological- experiential sense. Combined with a notion of multiple timescales and the critique of notions of the individual (also in Textual Politics, chapter 5, I think), this could lead around again to these more psychological (sensu stricto) questions.

JAY.











Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke





On Oct 6, 2009, at 5:03 PM, mike cole wrote:

many of these issues are discussed by Gordon Wells in "The role of dialogue
in activity theory", Mind, Culture, and Activity, 9(1) . 2002.

Among other things, gordon reports on earlier discussions on a precursor to
XMCA that includes the ideas of Arne Raeithel and,.....
our very own Jay Lemke! (Hence, retrievable from lchc.ucsd.edu using google
search).

May Jay could comment from his current perspective?
mike

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Achilles Delari Junior <
achilles_delari@hotmail.com> wrote:





Thank you Tony, for both contributions, the reference, and reflection
about semiotics in Leontiev and Peirce. Very interesting and challenging.
Best wishes.

Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:32:54 -0400
From: twhitson@UDel.Edu
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
CC: achilles_delari@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [xmca] Leontiev and Sign

The questions L is asking make me think of the linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein. (Anybody here have views of his work?) A relevant collection, including some Silverstein, but also Wertsch, Holzman, and others is SOCIAL AND FUNCTIONAL APROACHES TO LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT, edited by Maya Hickmann, Academic Press 1987. There's only one Leontyev ref in
the index, which is in a string of citations incl. Vygotsky, Luria,
Leontyev, Scribner & Cole, LCHC 1981, and Wertsch. That appears in a
chapter by Elinor Ochs, with whom, if I'm not mistaken, David Kirshner
has
had some acquaintance.

L's conjecture (below) seems harmonious with Peirce, it seems to me,
except that Peirce would start not with perception, but with "feeling,"
which we can't really know directly because it is eclipsed by any
thinking
about it. But Peirce was very much concerned with how more advanced signs spring from and depend on such things as feeling and perception. Again, though, the caution that he wrote as a logician, not as a psychologist or
linguist.

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Achilles Delari Junior wrote:


Hi, XMCA.

In his letter to Vigotski, A. N. Leontiev wrote about a number of
theoretical
that he understood "fundamental". The fifth one touch the problem of
"sign".
He said, for instance that "my intuition here is that the sign is the
key!"
I think that is very important to recognize that Vygotsky's theory is
also
an activity theory, but is there some study that searchs Leontiev's
contributions
to "semiotic mediation" theory?

"5. In addition to these it is essential to work out theoretical
questions,
directly guiding specific research.
It seems to me that among them belong: (a) The problem of F[unctional]
S[ystems]: “possible” (i.e., something like quantum)
I[nter]f[unctional]
relations and “possible” functions of functions (after all a system is
not a
spring salad, but something presupposing only the possible, i.e.,
certain
combinations); (b) Determination of i[nter]f[unctional] relations (the
conditions
under which they arise, the process of their birth, factors (=
determinants);
here an experiment in their artificial formation is necessary,
that is, a “dynamic argument” is needed, an experiment along the lines
of
“ingrowth”). Here, it is necessary to think through the place, the role
of
the sign; my belief, or more precisely, my intuition here is that the
sign
is the key! Roughly speaking, the first operations with quantities
involve
perception, further, the f[unctional] s[ystem] of perception, an
intell[ectual] operation. What has transformed the perc[eption] of
quantities—
this simple operation, into a higher intell[ectual] function? The
inclusion of a unique sign—the concept of numbers, that is, the sign, a
medium of intell[ect] (thought!). If this concept is real, then
perception,
operations with quantities using it specifically, is also included in a syst[em] of conceptual thought. This is all very crude and the example has not turned out successfully (it seems—there is no time to think!); (c) The problem “intellect–will,” that is, the problem (figuring out
the
problem!) of intention (this is already a given!); and (d) personality
as a
syst[em] expressed in concr[ete] problems, that is, how it is
formulated."
(LEONTIEV, 2005, pp. 74-75)

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 43, no. 3,
May–June 2005, pp. 70–77.
© 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc.


Thank you.
Achilles
From Brazil.

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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
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 are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
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