[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?

[Huw Lloyd]

Evening everyone,

It's lovely to see the lively discussions going on.  Sorry I don't have
much time to chip in.

Here are some additional references which may make some more work for you.
But then, if you're trying to understand motive, it means you're not work
shy...

1) LSV's chapter on self-control does, I think, a great job in introducing
key technical factors pertaining to motivation, particularly with respect
to voluntary and involuntary processes.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1997) Self-Control.  In: R. W. Rieber (ed.) The Collected
Works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol. 4, The History of the Development of Higher
Mental Functions.  New York: Plenum Press

2) V. Repkin's article on Learning Activity, in which early on he positions
learning activity in relation to other kinds of activities and desicribes
how they can be distinguished

Repkin, V. V. (2003) Developmental Teaching and Learning Activity.  Journal
of Russian and East European Psychology.  41(5), pp. 10-33

I would say that there are numerous ways to "get at" motive but I'm
actually in the process of trying to "operationalise" and articulate some
of these.  I would expect that the scope of attention and the affect
pertinent to activity (e.g. stemming from interruption) are additional
means of determining the object of activity, in addition to looking at the
structure itself (goals).

On the point of motives (plural), the intellectual conclusion I have
reached is that motive as an involuntary thing is only discrete in a
pragmatic sense by which the motive shows itself in terms of ways to deal
with it, i.e. motives as discrete and different things is real to us only
as a manifest contradition of motives but that the contradiction pertains
to struggling with what method (plan) to choose in addressing the present
aggregate of motives (if considered distinct from a plan).

I am not entierly sure of this, but what seems practical to me is that one
can look over the nebulous affect of the motive and attend to the structure
of the motive (as an object of activity) to discern what the motive is.  I
think this is because we can say that the affect-need chooses (blindly but
with progressive accuracy) the structure that best fits its needs.  But
this might be more difficult to swallow on the part of those outside the
theory looking in.

For the people who like Bateson or those who like references to
experimental philosophy the Vygotsky paper is quite good too.  Its as close
as Vygotksy probably gets to saying "typological error in categorisation of
psycho-social process of a manifest illness" comparing, say, Bateson on
schizophrenia with Vygotsky on hysteria.

I have a copy of the Repkin paper, which I can send to our esteemed
moderatory for dispersal if he's able to negotiate the copyright minefield.

Best,
Huw


On 5 August 2014 19:19, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:

> And one more thing Andy (I realize given the hour down-under, you are
> probably slumbering - hopefully not dogmatically...), could you sell us on
> why we should look at MacIntyre on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
> Your suggestion that Cristina read MacIntyre on extrinsic and intrinsic
> motivation was less than convincing to me if only b.c. I know nothing about
> it!
> -greg
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Andy,
> > I'm a bit baffled by your response to Cristina. It seems fair enough to
> > try to recover Descartes as not necessarily a bad guy.
> > But I didn't take that to be Cristina's point.
> > It seems to me that she was arguing against Cartesian dualism - a
> > particular way in which we Westerners (and we aren't the only ones who do
> > this) divide up the world into various kinds binaries - subject/object,
> > mind/body, nature/culture, emotion/reason, and so on.
> > Are you advocating that these should be the governing categories of the
> > human sciences?
> > If so, then "real human language" will work just fine.
> > If not, then the "real human language" called English will pose some
> > significant problems for imagining things other than they are.
> > Confused.
> > -greg
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Cristina,
> >> There is far too much in your message to deal with on an email list.
> What
> >> I usually do in such cases is simply pick a bit I think I can respond to
> >> and ignore the rest. OK?
> >>
> >> I think *real human languages* - as opposed to made up languages like
> >> Esperanto or the kind of mixture of neologs, hyphenated words and other
> >> gobbydegook fashionable in some academic circles - can be
> underestimated.
> >> Sure, one must use specialised jargon sometimes, to communicate to a
> >> specialised collaborator in a shared discipline, but generally that is
> >> because the jargon has itself a long track record. Don't try and make up
> >> words and concepts, at least, take a year or two about it if you have
> to.
> >>
> >> Secondly, Descartes was no fool. He was the person that first treated
> >> consciousness as an object of science, and the many of those belonging
> to
> >> the dualist tradition he was part of wound up being burnt at the stake
> for
> >> suggesting that the world was not necessarily identical to how it
> seemed.
> >> So I'd say, better to suffer association with Descartes than make up
> words
> >> and expressions. The Fascist campaign launched against him in the 1930s
> was
> >> not meant to help us. He deserves respect.
> >>
> >> For example, my development is not the same the development some project
> >> makes. And no amount of playing with words can eliminate that without
> >> degenerating into nonsense. I must correct something I said which was
> wrong
> >> in my earlier post though. I said that the relation between projects was
> >> the crucial thing in personality development. Not completely true. As
> Jean
> >> Lave has shown so well, the relation between a person and a project they
> >> are committed to is equally important, their role, so to speak. Take
> these
> >> two together.
> >>
> >> Motives instead of motivation is good. More definite. But I don't agree
> >> at all that Leontyev resolves this problem. For a start his dichotomy
> >> between 'objective' motives, i.e., those endorsed by the hegemonic
> power in
> >> the given social formation, and 'subjective', usually unacknowledged,
> >> motives, is in my view a product of the times he lived in, and not
> useful
> >> for us. The question is: how does the person form a *concept* of the
> >> object? It is the object-concept which is the crucial thing in talking
> abut
> >> motives. Over and above the relation between the worker's project of
> >> providing for his family (or whatever) and the employer's project of
> >> expanding the proportion of the social labour subsumed under his/her
> >> capital. The relation between these two projects doubtless seems to the
> >> boss to be the difference between the worker's subjective, secret,
> >> self-interest, and his own "objective" motive. But his point of view is
> not
> >> necessarily ours.
> >>
> >> Have a read of Alasdair MacIntyre on extrinsic and intrinsic motives,
> too.
> >>
> >> That's more than enough.
> >> Andy
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> >>
> >>
> >> Maria Cristina Migliore wrote:
> >>
> >>> Greg and Andy,
> >>>
> >>> Thank you for your comments.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Greg, I absolutely agree with you about the difficulties of overcoming
> >>> our
> >>> western language and thoughts, so influenced by the Cartesian dualism.
> >>> Andy, I hope to be able to show a bit how I connect activities in what
> >>> follow.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> About my attempts to overcome a dualistic language: I tend to prefer to
> >>> talk about a) single development (as suggest by Cole and Wertsh)
> instead
> >>> of
> >>> individual and activity (or context or project) development; b)
> >>> dimensions
> >>> of a phenomenon instead of levels of a phenomenon (micro-meso-macro);
> c)
> >>> motives instead of motivation.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> However it happens that I need to swing between ‘my’ new language and
> the
> >>> ‘standard’ one, because I am living in a still Cartesian world and I
> need
> >>> to be understood by people (and even myself!) who are (am) made of this
> >>> Cartesian world.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Anthropology
> > 882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> > Brigham Young University
> > Provo, UT 84602
> > http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>