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Re: [xmca] On metaphysics: origin of the term

I think a "crowd" is too loose a concept to investigate such a process.
Firstly, the category of "crowd" lumps together fundamentally different actions and activities. A lynch mob or a mass concert obviously has a different developmental logic than a political demonstration or a strike.
Secondly, I rather study the relation between collaborative actions and collaborative activities than between "individuals" and "groups". Individual bodies are not entering actions as individuals, but because they are already a part of existing collaborations which are drawn into a new activity/project. So the "seeds" of any "crowd" already exist before its formation as a "crowd". For example, the first demonstrations on 25 January 2011 in Cairo mobilized (1) existing "networks" of activists that had been built slowly since the last decade, both "real" (organizations) and "virtual" (internet-based); (2) non-organized people from popular neighborhoods who "spontaneously" joined the smaller protest marches towards Tahrir. But even these people joined the action (concrete demonstration) as part of an already existing project (neighborhood, workplace, community, etc.).
Thirdly, instead of "individuals" constituting a "crowd", the mass mobilizations rather represented a coming together of different projects into a joint action, which then "organically" gave rise to a new project of "revolution". I say organically and spontaneously, because the goal of revolution emerged from the coming together of these various projects and the development of their joint action - no organized political force had dreamed of moving forward the call for an end to the regime. There was a dual developmental process: A. the goals of the activity developed from a vague and soft critique of the regime to the radical demand of overthrowing the current order; B. the actions that comprised the activity changed from mass demonstrations, over small-scale "guerrilla warfare" in the streets against the police at night, to occupation of public spaces. This dual developmental process was determined by, on the one hand the internal relation between actions and activity, and, on the other, the external encounter between the actions and organized state power. For example, internally, from the occupation of Tahrir emerged the need for grassroots forms of governance (tents, food, doctors, art and songs, prisoners, etc.), which, in turn, strongly encouraged the feeling that a societal revolution was taking place. Externally, the withdrawal of the police from the streets stimulated the formation of popular committees to protect neighborhoods from thugs and criminals (who were often set loose by the regime...), which, in popular and working class neighborhoods, became pillars of revolutionary self-organization.
Fourthly, this touches upon activity as a developmental process where moments of "movement" that bring together individual bodies in new forms of collaboration has to be grounded by instances of "institutionalization" (or systematization) if it is to become a stable social form. And this is where the Egyptian revolution has largely failed, up until now. Only a few of the spontaneous movements of the insurrection have been crystallized and developed as stable and coherent "systems of activity". But that's another discussion. 

Best,

Brecht


Quoting Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>:


What an interesting investigation, Brecht!
You write of a relationship of 'constitution' that runs both ways between individual actions and group activity. Years ago I read Elias Canetti's book Crowds and Power, and the memory I have of that book (probably distorted by the passage of time) is that Canetti was exploring the way a crowd has an existence that is more than the sum of its parts: when individuals 'constitute' a crowd this really gives rise to something emergent, new. Do you see that in Egypt? 

Martin
On Mar 25, 2013, at 11:01 AM, Brecht De Smet <Brechttie.DeSmet@UGent.be> wrote:
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Activity Theory to engage in a detailed criticism; during my brief encounter with CHAT I immediately "jumped" to Andy's concept of project collaboration (PC) (which is of course partially rooted in AT). Likewise, because my research focus is more on the "meso"-level of groups, movements, and organizations, I can't really say much about ethnographic descriptions of micro-activities such as opening windows on election days.
The advantage of PC for my research is that the object of an activity is conceived of as emerging within the developmental process of the activity itself. As I'm studying the revolutionary process in Egypt, such a perspective allows for an understanding of the real transformations of actions and activities involved. A concrete activity obviously constitutes concrete actions (e.g. the broad activity of protesting on 25 January constituted the actions of meetings, demonstrations, etc.), but the development of actions has the potential to reconstitute the activity (the demonstration on Tahrir turned into an occupation, which, in turn, created a space for alternative politics; the mass character of the demonstrations reconstituted the object of the protest towards "an end to the regime", i.e. revolution; etc.). In abstract terms: the relation between individual protesters and the activity of protesting (the project) is mediated by particular actions (their collaboration), and, vice versa, the relation between individual protesters and their particular actions is mediated by the "overarching" activity of protest.
This neat scheme becomes much more complex when you take into account the relations between various projects, both "horizontally" and "vertically". Horizontally, the spontaneous revolutionary project arises in contradiction /solidarity to a bunch of other projects (e.g. Islamism, the state, etc.). Vertically, and "from the bottom-up" this project is part of such historical systems as the Egyptian social formation and global capitalism; and "top-down" it is constituted by and reconstitutes a series of smaller projects (students' movements for better education; workers' movements for better wages; villages demanding water and electricity, etc.).
Added to this - and against the notion of the "omniscient" scientist-observer - the social researcher him/herself is a constitutive/constituted actor vis-à-vis the project, in the sense that his/her actions (publishing papers, doing fieldwork, writing books, attending conferences, conducting interviews, etc.) plays a potential mediating role, for example in the understanding of the project of itself, in crafting intellectual tools to achieve (or undermine) the goals of the project, etc.
I do not know if this amounts to a critique of AT, but this is the way "actions" and "activity" have been productive concepts for my research. 

Best,

Brecht



Quoting Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>:


Hi Brecht,
Yes, a rational critique of ontology is possible, and indeed necessary. I was trying to engage in such a critique of activity theory, which it seems to me departs considerably rather the admirable (though not unquestionable) ontology that Marx proposed. (And yes, as you suggest, the claim to be "purely empirical" seems to me a return to the outdated and simplistic notion that there is on the one hand 'metaphysics' and on the other hand 'genuine science.' But let that pass.) Activity theory, in my view, essentializes a particular organization of human activity and in doing so obscures the historical character of that organization. Would you agree? 

Martin
On Mar 25, 2013, at 4:00 AM, Brecht De Smet <Brechttie.DeSmet@UGent.be> wrote:
Martin, I obviously agree with your presentation of the historical lineages of the "word" metaphysics. However, with regard to the current discussion on the "terms of the debate", it is quite obvious that Andy's original remark: "So there is no metaphysics here. No hypothetical "states of mind", or intelligent infants, etc" clearly deployed metaphysics in the critical (derogatory?) sense of a "false ontology", i.e. the domain of fantastic "a priori" speculation. Retorting that everyone uses metaphysics, a.k.a. an ontology-epistemology, paradigm, Weltanschauung, etc. obscures the fact that a rational critique of particular ontologies is possible and even a necessary part of the scientific project.
With regard to the "concept" of metaphysics, the Marxian critique is important because at the time it did not only posited its "own" metaphysics against the dominant paradigms, but, instead of analyzing the social relations and politics that emerged from a certain philosophy, it studied the concrete historical social relations and politics that gave rise to shapes of metaphysics. In this sense it constituted a "Copernican revolution". Superficially, yes, "the materialist method" as Marx calls it in the German Ideology has an "ontology", in the sense that it is based on a number of premises, but, in contradistinction to the theories that came before: "The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way." (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm)
Of course we can make a lot of fuss about the supposed empiricism of this passage, but its essence amounts to a call for an emancipatory project with at its core real, historical humanity. Within the history of this project, the "insult of metaphysics" has taken on many forms, from a rational critique of a-historical, idealist, or anti-humanist ontologies to the sectarian attacks by the ideologists of (ironically the extremely "metaphysical" ossified doctrine of) "Marxism-Leninism". We may deem such insults as unfortunate, but they are perhaps unavoidable when the domain of ontology is as much penetrated by politics as politics is by metaphysics. To conclude: if anything, Marx subverted the "neutrality" of the philosophical "category" of ontology/epistemology and its "constitutive" position within society. 

Best,

Brecht





Hi Brecht,
Yes, of course you're correct, Andy is reading Hegel from a Marxist point of view, therefore upside down, so to speak. But Marx's materialism is still an ontology, still a metaphysics.
Your confusion comes from the fact that there have been two uses of the word 'metaphysics.' One use is to label some kind of talk as having no basis in reality, as completely speculative and unverifiable. The logical positivists, for example, wanted to eliminate metaphysics in this sense from science - for them any notion was metaphysical if it was not verifiable. They realized that Newtonian physics contained unverifiable concepts, and they believed that Einstein's physics had eliminated metaphysics by defining everything in terms of operations of observation and measurement.
We know now how narrow, unfruitful, and inconsistent the positivist view of science turned out to be. The second use of the word 'metaphysics' helps us understand why: "'metaphysics' refers to accounts of what truly exists, and to accounts of relationships between 'existences' (e.g. reduction relations, and perhaps other forms of dependence or priority)" (Kreines, 2006). That is, metaphysics is the brach of philosophy that deals with ontology (and sometimes epistemology is included), as well as the assumptions that any science makes about the entities that it studies.
One person's ontology is another person's metaphysics. That is, when someone disagrees with another's ontological claims, a quick and easy insult is to label them "metaphysical." But the word itself simply came from the sequence of titles in Aristotle's texts: the text which dealt with what we would now call ontology and epistemology was simply next in the traditional list of titles after the 'Physica,' and so was called 'Meta-physica.'
Did Marx make ontological assumptions? Certainly! For example, as you point out, for Marx the "essence of man" is "in reality,' "the ensemble of social relations." In this passage Marx states one of his core ontological assumptions. Much has been written about the ontological assumptions of Marxism (e.g. Gould, 1978). In the same passage Marx himself confuses things by using the term metaphysics in its first, derogatory sense. Unsympathetic readers of Marx's writings have also at times judged them merely metaphysical. Others, sympathetic readers, have also often referred to them as metaphysical, but in a positive sense. The negative use of the term is falling into disuse, with good reason. As the importance of ontology is now understood, it no longer makes sense to reject all talk about ontology as speculative and unscientific, or unphilosophical. 

Martin
Gould, C. C. (1978). Marx's social ontology: Individuality and community in Marx's theory of social relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kreines, J. (2006). Hegel's metaphysics: Changing the debate. Philosophy Compass, 1(5), 466-480.
On Mar 24, 2013, at 5:16 AM, Brecht De Smet <Brechttie.DeSmet@UGent.be> wrote: 


Because I do not want to derail the current thread, I start a new one:
My point was that Hegel is hardly the person to turn to if one wants to avoid metaphysics! Individual, Universal, Particular - there's a whole metaphysics here.
Well, if you look how Andy appropriates Hegel in his various writings I think you can hardly call what he does a form of metaphysics. On the contrary, he turns Hegel upside down, reading his logic in a materialist and non-metaphysical way.
In this regard I think the philosophical implications of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach are still grossly underestimated. In a few lines he summarizes the deficiences of both idealism and materialism, subjectivism and objectivism, finishing off a few centuries of philosophical thought (of course the theses were but the end product of a whole project). After the theses Marx largely moves on from philosophical critique to developing his "materialist method". http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm
Thesis 1: with regard to "ontology": Marx criticized classical materialism because it conceived of the actual world not as human practice (subjective), but as merely objective. Whereas for Hegel the world consisted merely of thought-objects, for Feuerbach the world was constituted by sensuous objects. In both perspectives human practice was absent, as either an objective or subjective activity. As such both were forms of metaphysical thinking, i.e. a form of thinking and activity that did not place human practice at its core. (Also see thesis 5)
Thesis 2: with regard to "epistemology": "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."
This is almost a Copernican revolution with regard to epistemology. True knowledge, "truth", is not derived from either formal or dialectical logic, but from the encounter between human thought and human practice. The reality of any phenomenon outside this encounter "is a purely scholastic question" or an exercise in metaphysics. Cf. snare theory, dark matter, etc. Thesis 8 reasserts this premisse: "All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice." Real human practice or activity is the only base for gaining true knowledge about humanity.
Thesis 3: with regard to "emancipation": classical (mechanical) materialism pointed out that humans are the product of their environments. Changing their environments resulted in changed humans. Of course, who changes their environments? Humans themselves. So transformation of circumstances + human activity = self-change = revolutionary practice.
Thesis 4: with regard to the position of a critical or emancipatory science: It is insufficient to just deconstruct oppressive ideological concepts, "after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done". The reverse movement should be explained as well: how real social relations are the basis for these ideological forms. Of course, this means that the contradiction cannot be resolved in thought, but has to be overcome in reality, in practice. This is the core meaning of thesis 11: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
In this sense, metaphysics was also a way of resolving real contradictions in the realm of thought.
Thesis 6: with regard to the "essence" of humankind: "...the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations." Taking "the individual" as the unit of philosophy/social sciences is an a-historical and atomizing abstraction which "belongs in reality to a particular social form" (Thesis 7). A social science basing itself on the actions, intentions, emotions, etc. of discrete individuals takes a metaphysical and abstract view of humanity as its departure point. See also thesis 9 and 10. 

--
Brecht De Smet
Assistant Professor at the Department Conflict and Development Studies
Researcher at MENARG (Middle East and North Africa Research Group)
Department of Political and Sciences
Ghent University
www.psw.ugent.be/menarg
Universiteitsstraat 8 / 9000 Gent / Belgium



Citeren Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>:
Oh! (he exclaims). My point was that Hegel is hardly the person to turn to if one wants to avoid metaphysics! Individual, Universal, Particular - there's a whole metaphysics here. Take a look at the Stanford Enc of Philosophy entry on Hegel (link below) for a sense of the debate over this. There has been an "orthodox or traditional understanding of Hegel as a ?metaphysical? thinker in the pre-Kantian ?dogmatic? sense. This was followed by a view by some that "particular works, such as the Phenomenology of Spirit, or particular areas of Hegel's philosophy, especially his ethical and political philosophy, can be understood as standing independently of the type of unacceptable metaphysical system sketched above." (But Andy hates the Phenomenology!) And then there are people who are "appealing to contemporary analytic metaphysics as exemplifying a legitimate project of philosophical inquiry into fundamental ?features? or ?structures? of the world itself."
Myself, I'm closest to the last of these views. I don't think we want to *avoid* metaphysics (ontology and epistemology) ; indeed I don't think that is possible. rather, we need to adopt the *right* metaphysics. We can debate what the criteria of that need to be. But to claim of a position, in philosophy or the social sciences, that there is "No metaphysics here!" is a tad naive. 

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/>

Martin
On Mar 23, 2013, at 12:36 PM, Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com> wrote:
I thought that what he said was avoiding it: back up your exclamation Martin 
Carol

On 23 March 2013 16:48, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:


I though you wanted to *avoid* metaphysics, Andy!

Martin

On Mar 22, 2013, at 8:17 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:


Thank you Manfred for that clear explanation, and for correcting my

typing mistake! :(
This might be an occasion to mention how my own development of Activity 
Theory differs from yours and that of ANL.
I do not work with duality of "the publically assigned meaning and the 
personally felt sense". Rather I use Hegel's approach in which the
Individual and Universal are mediated by the Particular. This is a relation which is applicable not just to motives, but any concept. It allows the meaning of the situation to be something which is *realised*. This word 
"realised" is what Wiulliam James would have described as a
"double-barrelled word" (following Charles Dickens' "double barrelled
compliment), in that it means both "realised" in the objective sense of "made real", as in "The plan was at last realised when the judge delivered 
his verdict," and subjective in the sense of "woke up to", as in "I
realised that my efforts to reconcile with my wife were doomed to failure." 
I believe that this resolves certain problems which arise in Actvity
Theory, but remaining within the Activity approach as outlined in your 
excellent paper.


Andy

Holodynski, Manfred wrote:


Dear colleagues,
thank you very much for all your valued comments on my article. There
are a lot of aspects already discussed and I have some difficulties to follow all lines of argumentation. Therefore, I would like to answer to the 
following:


1. Emotions as psychological function within the macrostructure of

activity.


As Andy claims it I get my Activity Theory from AN Leont'ev and I
focused especially on his concept of macrostructure of activity and its levels of activity that is related to motives, actions that are related to goals and operations that are related to the conditions under which an action is given. And Andy gets precisely to the heart of it when he stated that my article needs to be read with attention to motivation and how the macrostructure of an activity is related to the motives and goals of an individual. One activity can be realized by different actions, and one 
action can realize different activities.


May I quote Andy's words:
" Because motives are not given to immediate perception; they have to
be inferred/learnt. Emotional expression and experience signal the success, 
failure, frustration, expectation, etc. of goals and motives for both
participant/observers and the individual subject themself, emotion is tied up with motives and goals and therefore with the structure of an activity. One and the same action could be part of different ??actions activities (!) (MH)??. It is the emotions which signal (internally and externally) the success, etc., etc., that is, in an action's furthering an activity, and it is this which makes manifest and actual that connection between action and activity, for both the observer/participant and the individual subject.
So there is no metaphysics here. No hypothetical "states of mind", or 
intelligent infants, etc."
a) Take the example of the opening of the window. That's the behavior. 
What's the goal?


b) Imagine the person is a leader and opens the window in order to
greet his followers and to hold a speech. That's the goal. What is the 
activity?
c) If one look at the circumstances one can derive that the speech is a
part of a political activity in order to celebrate the election victory. So, if the leader also feels pride and enthusiasm about the victory there is coincidence between the publically assigned meaning and the personally 
felt sense of the situation. However, it may also be possible that he
doesn't feel pride but a great burden and he personally feels to be
overloaded with the duties and future expectations. Then the societal
meaning assigned by the followers to this situation and the personal sense assigned by the leader himself are not congruent. The leader framed this situation under an achievement perspective whether he is able to fulfill 
the leadership.
But, note when we talk about actions and activity, then we speak about 
an advanced level of activity e.g. in children or adults, but not in
infants who start to have intentions but still not a mental image of a 
future state of affairs.


2. Differentiation between the basic level in infants and advanced

level in older children:


- A young infant has not already established a goal-driven level of

actions. In the first weeks one can observe the acquisition of first
operations and of first expectations what should happen. But these
expectations are not yet represented as a mental image about the desired future states. This is the product of the acquisition of a sign system which enables the person to evoke and imagine a future state in the here and now and to start to strive for it. And for this starting point, not only to imagine different future states, but also to select one of them and to start to strive for it, emotional processes come into play that color one of the imagined future state e.g. in a state worth striving for and 
that mobilize the executive power to start striving for it.


However, the ability to form such notions of goals and to transform
them into actions is not something that occurs automatically. It emerges in a long-drawn ontogenetic learning process in which the attainment of goals 
through actions is tried, tested, and increasingly optimized. Older
children are
So, for an understanding of my emotion concept the macrostructure of an 
activity is very decisive because I embedded emotions as a specific
psychological function within the macrostructure of an activity.


Best

Manfred

Prof. Dr. Manfred Holodynski

Institut für Psychologie in Bildung und Erziehung

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

Fliednerstr. 21

D-48149 Münster

+49-(0)-251-83-34311

+49-(0)-251-83-34310 (Sekretariat)

+49-(0)-251-83-34314 (Fax)

http://wwwpsy.uni-muenster.de/Psychologie.inst5/AEHolodynski/index.html

manfred.holodynski@uni-muenster.de

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
Gesendet: Freitag, 22. März 2013 04:13
An: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: Holodynski, Manfred
Betreff: Re: Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice
Mike, Manfred gets his Activity Theory from AN Leontyev, rather than 
Engestrom's "systems of activity."
So actions and activities are defined by their goals and motives. So
Manfred's article needs to be read with attention to motivation and how the structure of an activity is related to motives and goals. Because motives are not given to immediate perception; they have to be inferred/learnt. 
Emotional expression and experience signal the success, failure,
frustration, expectation, etc. of goals and motives for both
participant/observers and the individual subject themself, emotion is tied up with motives and goals and therefore with the structure of an activity. 
One and the same action could be part of different actions. It is the
emotions which signal (internally and externally) the success, etc., etc., that is, in an action's furthering an activity, and it is this which makes manifest and actual that connection between action and activity, for both 
the observer/participant and the individual subject.
So there is no metaphysics here. No hypothetical "states of mind", or 
intelligent infants, etc.


It's all in there.

Andy

mike cole wrote:
Hi Andy - and here I was wondering why operation/action/activity were
not prominent in Manfred's article. Where does he lay out the views in
this note? Am I reading too superficially as usual? Seems important 


for me to get clear about!



Mike







On Thursday, March 21, 2013, Andy Blunden wrote:







Think of your illustration,Martin, about whether, in opening the



window, you were acting as a technician or moral leader. I.e., the



meaning of the action lies in the activity of which it is a part,



which is not immediately given. Manfred does not refer this to



"intention" or "belief". Manfred is quite specific that the



signalising and self-perception of an action in relation to an



activity - i.e., an action's being of this and not that activity -



is a function played by emotion. Concepts like internal state and



intention are derivative from operation/action/activity, not



fundamental.







Andy








--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden

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Carol A  Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
Developmental psycholinguist: EMBED
Academic, Researcher, Writer and Editor
Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
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