Chapter 5: Activities of the Subject’s Self-Positing

Abstract

Consider the famous schoolboy’s dilemma: “Is the Lord omnipotent?” “Yes, omnipotent!” “Then can He create a stone that He cannot Himself lift?” (If God cannot create such a stone, then He is not omnipotent; but if He can create a stone that He cannot Himself lift, then He is also not omnipotent.) It is difficult to say whether the creation of such a stone could have been in the interests of the Most High, but what is remarkable is that it seems that people constantly pose and solve this problem, thereby discovering a paradoxical property of their own activity: its nonadaptivity. . . . There are two girls in the room. The first girl is of school age. She has to perform a very simple task: to reach an object lying in the middle of the table at such a distance from the edges, fenced off by a low barrier, that it is impossible to reach it directly with her hand; it would work to use a stick that is lying here. The girl walks around the table, tries one thing and then another, but the problem is still not solved. A younger girl, about five years old, at first watches quietly, and then begins to give one suggestion after another: “jump up” (this tip is clearly unsuccessful), “use the stick” (the only thing that can will work). Finally, she takes the stick herself and tries to reach the object. But the older girl quickly takes this “tool” away from her, explaining that it is not hard to reach it with the stick, “anyone can do that.” At that moment, an experimenter enters the room, to whom the test subject declares that she cannot reach the object on the table. How should this phenomenon be interpreted? Does the schoolgirl perhaps simply misunderstand the task (for example, assuming that she is “not allowed” to use the stick)? . . . No, as it turns out. What if we slightly change the conditions of the experiment? Without eliminating the objective significance of the goal to be achieved (the object lying on the table), we artificially change the subject’s attitude to how it can be achieved (for example, we explain to her that she may use the stick). The subject, of course, does not refuse to act as instructed, but tries to avoid the reward