[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [xmca] Classical German Philosophy(Ideal/practice)
Interesting shrapnel of the original thread!
During the practice there is indeed the "truth" of the activity, there is
no disputing this. But measuring the "truth" is a different matter. In
my mind what is the point of talking about social activity leading
development if there aren't measurements? I believe the answer to this
goes back to LSV's "concept" that instruction/teaching &
appropriation/learning have two different measures.
what do others think?
eric
Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca>
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
03/08/2010 09:19 AM
Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
To: lchcmike@gmail.com
cc: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Classical German Philosophy
Mike,
Heidegger does so in Being and Time, in the section on the tool, and in
the section on the way signs function. In these pages, Heidegger also
points out that for the person using tools and producing something, the
ultimate product and its use are important mediating moments in the
awareness/consciousness of the producer. This is precisely what we later
find in Leont'ev, and in the right-hand part of Yrjö's triangle, where you
go from obect --> outcome, and the latter is going to be taken up again in
this or another activity system. So perhaps Heidegger goes even further in
not limiting himself to the orientation toward the outcome but goes right
to the way in which future users incorporate this material thing (which
could also be a written text) in their activity.
What matters to Heidegger is not how a tool, object. . . whatever looks to
the detached theoretician, including a Hegelian, but to someone caught up
in praxis, coping (this is H. Dreyfus' word in his reading of Being and
Time, at least, he read the first half).
For many on this list who find Heidegger hard to read, H. Dreyfus' reading
Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time is probably
a very good introduction. Phil Agre in his early work at least bases a lot
on his reading of Heidegger (via Dreyfus, I believe) (Agre, Computation
and Human Experience) And I think David Chapman, too, was doing
"Heideggerian AI"
Cheers,
Michael
On 2010-03-07, at 5:48 PM, mike cole wrote:
Michael-
Right, mutual constitution. But the problem of saying everything about
everything remains. Its kind of like Kenneth Burke who has a pentad as a
basic unit of analysis for human activity (approximately), but carries out
his analyses in terms of various
"ratios".
Can you give us references to the parts of Heidegger and Holtzkamp in
English so that us non-German readers can get connected with what have
written? The Leontiev reference was very helpful. There is so much to
read!!
mike
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:
Hi Mike,
the issue I want to highlight is the mutual constitution. It makes no
sense to talk about tools as if they could be isolated and talked about
independent of the concrete practical object/motive oriented activity. You
cannot talk about subjectivity/identity independent of activity, and yet
people do it all of the time. Take, for example, all those scholars who
use interviews to get at "identity," and do not make thematic the fact
that the interview is the activity, and its object/motive is the
production of the interview/text. Whether the text has anything to do with
the activity of a teacher at school, or a student at school, never (hardly
every) is asked.
The same, we observe scholars who are looking for and writing about the
tools, as if the nature of the tool could be identified independent of the
activity---
This is precisely the point Heidegger makes, and ? sorry Andy, you are NOT
right on this point in your commentary ? Heidegger says precisely in many
instances what Leont'ev also says, and Heidegger did it a few years before
Leont'ev.
((And again, sorry Andy, Heidegger works out precisely the issue of
consciousness in activity, and the relation of the subject to the tool,
which is at the heart of Leont'ev))
Mike, what we are getting to, then, is cognition separate from life,
cognition that makes no sense because it is not connected to the senses in
sensual practical activity.
Precisely when we substantialize the things that are part of the activity
--- for Leont'ev, only those things are relevant that are relevant to the
subject, and this point is brought out by Klaus Holzkamp ---- not the kind
of stuff outside researchers bring to the situation when they take the
triangle as the grid through which they look at situations, at activities.
For the subject it is totally irrelevant what the researcher sees and
thinks, and this is another form of breaking things out of an integrated
and dynamic whole.
Cheers,
Michael
On 2010-03-07, at 8:28 AM, mike cole wrote:
Thanks Andy, and Michael for the section ref to Leontiev.
Could I repeat a second part of my question which appears to have gotten
lost in the multiple threads?
Michael wrote: "you have been breaking out individual (constitutive)
moments
of activity and treated them as elements, much like others take the YE
triangle and then break out the object, the subject, the division of
labor,
the tools..."
I asked about how one talks about how one breaks out "moments of activity"
(that is how I phrase the matter when I am thoughtful enough to do so),
and,
having highlighted them, given the impression that they are
elements in a static sense. What sort of language does one use to be able,
for example, to talk about a particular division of labor, without at
least
deep backgrounding, say, the tools being used or the web of social rules
that are recruited in this instance?
Even to say that "everything is connected to everything else" implies some
notion of "things/processes" that are connected. How to avoid
misunderstanding and distinguish it from disagreement?
mike
On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 2:50 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> If anyone is interested in exploring the German Idealists, and the roots
of
> Activity Theory and Cultural Psychology in their writings, I have put
> together a page :
> http://www.marxists.org/subject/philosophy/german.htm
> where you can browse as you wish ...
>
>
_______________________________________________
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