Re: [xmca] Operations

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Michael, this is a fair point.
It may be I'm being rhetorical to persuade others of the centrality of
response in constituting various standpoints.
I notice in my work in schools I'm trying to participate in social
relations where response to the other is the awareness I'm trying to
highlight. The metaphor of *dancing* comes to mind. Victor Turner's
metaphor of "Social drama" also comes to mind.
I also wonder if Martin's distinguishing *construction* and *constituting*
may have relevance for knowing within acts AND responses?
These reflections can then return to Stetsenko and Sawchuk's threefold
dialectic of activity theory ( material dialectic, intersubjective
dialectic, and psychic reflection or Anna's term "human subjectivity")?
I'm privileging rhetorically the intersubjective dialectic within activity
theory AS central.

Larry



On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 4:16 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>wrote:

> Hi Larry,
>
> On one level I agree with you, but I hesitate to a develop a hierarchy
> here.  Perhaps this is somewhat political but I feel like those who give a
> response many times try to take a position of privilege in the act of
> knowing - that the response holds what is important, not the act.  And yet
> it is the act of actually reaching out into the universe beyond that,
> however that is done, that elicits the response.  I think maintaining a
> balance between the two in knowing is perhaps important.
>
> Michael
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] on behalf
> of Larry Purss [lpscholar2@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 1:07 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Operations
>
> Michael, your comment, "the knowing is in the act and in the act's
> relationship to response" indicates a balance between act and response. I
> question if the centrality of "response" may be more primary than the
> initial act?
> Manfred's notion of "expressive signs" may be interpreted as emphasizing
> "response" as the way we come to "know".
>
> Larry
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu
> >wrote:
>
> > Hi Andy,
> >
> > I think it is perhaps a jump to say that knowledge of the world, or
> > knowing, comes from a mental image. To act with purpose we first must
> think
> > about what we want to do or where we want to go, and then do it.  It
> seems
> > to me this places the individual as the point of origination for
> activity.
> >  I think, at this point, I would say two things about this.  The first is
> > that we can never know what images exist in the individual "mind" to
> begin
> > with.  This is especially true of the infant, the child without speech.
>  So
> > to conjecture about the infant's individual mind one way or the other
> seems
> > a difficult proposition.  But perhaps more important, do you want to
> place
> > knowing in the action that a human takes, or place it in the mind as a
> > "motivation" for action (I think, therefore I am?).  The knowing is in
> the
> > act, and in the act's relationship to response.  I always thought the
> > strongest part of Piaget's ideas was his notion of sensori-motor.  The
> > movements of infants, or even neonates, are driven by the pleasure it
> > affords them.  The body, the senses recognize the pleasure and reach out
> > for me, and more pleasure is given in response.  It is the start of our
> > life long "project" or projection.  Maybe it is not pleasure, but it is
> > something, and it is something the children is reaching out for, and an
> > image of what it is is not really needed, it seems to me, to establish an
> > aim, the knowing is in our senses.
> >
> > Michael
> > ________________________________________
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] on
> behalf
> > of Andy Blunden [ablunden@mira.net]
> > Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 9:28 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [xmca] Operations
> >
> > Michael, here is what Manfred said in his message:
> >
> >     "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."
> >
> > I make no claim to be a psychologist, Michael, but it always seemed to
> > me that ascribing a knowledge of the world to neonates would be a hard
> > position to sustain. We have to find some other way of understanding the
> > behaviour of neonates and infants other than presuming that they form a
> > goal and then take appropriate premeditated action to realise that goal.
> >
> > An "operation" is a form of behaviour which has the potential to be
> > transformed into an action, that is, for the subject to become
> > consciously aware of the behaviour and subject it to conscious control.
> > So at first I think we have to say that the neonate smiles, moves its
> > hands around, pouts, squeezes, etc, etc., without first forming the idea
> > "I think I will smile at this woman, and she might give me some more
> > food" or any such thing. But after the relevant stimuli have been
> > repeatedly accompanied by the various kinds of responses which adult
> > carers provide to the child and the successful satisfaction of the
> > stimuli, the child might begin to associate the behaviour with an
> > object, accomodate its behaviour to the social world around them, and
> > what began as an operation may be transformed into an action. Otherwise,
> > I think we are imply a hell of a lot about innate knowledge!
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > Glassman, Michael wrote:
> > > .... But I also I think disagree with Andy to some extent.  Do infants
> > simply engage in operations?  Is that possible? Isn't there an action
> tied
> > to every operation, or else why is the infant doing it.  I think infants
> > definitely do react to stimuli (feedback I think can be define through
> > information processing but it can also perhaps be defined through social
> > cognitive theory which is more behavior oriented).  But when they react
> > don't they have an aim of some type?  It might be very rudimentary but it
> > is an aim and the child is developing operations to meet those aims (it
> > also seems to me that there are much fuzzier boundaries between
> operations
> > and actions at this point).
> >
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