[Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

Sat Jun 20 00:07:22 PDT 2020

David, and venerable others,

Something is lost in this discussion of Spinoza's passions.

David, might you actually post the quoted text from which you cite from Spinoza on "passions"?

I found this on a wiki page on passions:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passions_(philosophy)*Spinoza__;Iw!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jiuTj9DRg$ 

The seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Spinoza contrasted "action" with "passion," as well as the state of being "active" with the state of being "passive." A passion, in his view, happened when external events affect us partially such that we have confused ideas about these events and their causes. A "passive" state is when we experience an emotion which Spinoza regarded as a "passivity of the soul." The body's power is increased or diminished. Emotions are bodily changes plus ideas about these changes which can help or hurt a human. It happens when the bodily changes we experience are caused primarily by external forces or by a mix of external and internal forces. Spinoza argued that it was much better for the individual himself to be the only adequate cause of bodily changes, and to act based on an adequate understanding of causes-and-effects with ideas of these changes logically related to each other and to reality. When this happened the person is "active," and Spinoza described the ideas as adequate. But most of the time, this does not happen, and Spinoza, along with Freud, saw emotions as more powerful than reason. Spinoza tried to live the life of reason which he advocated.

----
And from here:
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinozism__;!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jiFrGwuxA$ 

"...when Spinoza wrote 'Deus sive Natura' ('God or Nature') Spinoza meant God was Natura naturans not Natura naturata, that is, 'a dynamic nature in action, growing and changing, not a passive or static thing.'"

If Spinoza rejected Descartes's dualism, and he did, then what you are missing from your description of Spinoza's passions, David, is the substance that united the body and the mind. This substance was in the world, not just "in" people. Unless I am mistaken, Spinoza saw this substance as God making humans a part of, yet unified with, the immanent world (nature and God being the same), because all things within the universe are attributes and modes of the substance. I am cautiously writing that, as I can't check my Spinoza books right now.

When someone says, "You can call me David or Dave" the words are not referencing different people. Isn't this "or" in "God or Nature" referencing different names for the same entity? When Spinoza says "God or Nature," either of these words reference the same substance.

This superimposition of God upon Nature was metonymical, to illustrate that God manifests from itself, as we observe nature generating itself within nature itself.

Interestingly, Spinoza's monism isn't so far from the Advaita (Sanskrit for "non-dual") model.

But listen to that --> [  >!!<  ] <-- It's the sound of splitting hairs, with an important distinction:

Monism is to say there is one, but in order to have one, one must have the ability to have an inside and and outside to count "one." In contrast, non-dual is to mean "one without a second." meaning there is no inside nor outside; there are no edges, no limits, no distinctions. It's all Brahman (which is Sanskrit for "the big").

I do not recall where time and space reside in Spinoza's model, but in the non-dual model, time and space are contained inside the non-dual, meaning the "one without a second" is outside time and space, and therefore limitless.

It seems for Spinoza's definition of this substance, it relies upon self-conceiving. There is a teaching illustration in Vedanta of the spider that creates a web from itself. I think this is what Spinoza had in mind when he discusses self-conceiving. In other words he rejected a conception of God that was likened to Zeus throwing thunderbolts from the heavens and making the earth like throwing donuts into hot oil. God in that conception was separate from nature, like the watchmaker is separate from the watch. This is definition of an immanent God was, why he was called an atheist. Go figure.

Anyway, in this unified vision of the immanent world, if Spinoza saw the body as partaking in physical activity, he also saw ideas as a different kind of activity, mental activity.

Passions were e-motions untempered and could lead one astray. His view was one should monitor these passions with reason. In addition, practicing virtues would reduce the passions. (It's not that different from anubandha)

Cause and effect. In that way Spinoza was deterministic, and maybe that is why Vygotsky was a shade that too.

To reply to your question why we have more violence out there than sex? I'd say that it's sensationalism.

Societies can control its people by inciting the "passions." People are kept from their own counsel and inner/reflective dialogue if they are in constant stimulation of fight or flight, or to include sex into the equation we might group all of that (sex (and violence) and drugs and rock and roll) as "arousal."

That isn't our homeostatic baseline to be in perpetual arousal. If so, then why do we sleep? Why do all the poets talk about the sublime in nature?  Why even have the words "peace" or "tranquility" in a language at all? What do those words point to in our experiences?

Where you say:
...if negative emotion consistently debilitates rather than facilitates our capacity to act, why does tragedy have so much more currency in the verbal arts than comedy?  Why, for that matter, is violence so much more permissible in the visual-illustrative arts than sex?

If there is a prevalence of inciting negative emotions in any society to an extreme, I don't think the society and the people within it will last very long. Just consider where there are war-torn countries, famine, etc. Yet in places where positive emotions are more prevalent, the people are happier, live longer, have a better quality of life.

It's pretty obvious.

If you say that tragedy has more currency than comedy, it's because we want to understand tragedy so that we might know how to survive it. We do not want to be subject to tragedy. It is a threat to us. Laughter isn't a threat to our existence. It needs no understanding to overcome it.

Even watching Macbeth or King Lear has to happen in a quiet theater.

I'd add that violence is more permissive than sex because violence creates fear and "educates" the people about the levers of power. That isn't learning.

On the other hand, sex, being pleasurable, must be controlled in a society that trades in currency of violence, but also where gender roles are well-defined and there is no blurring of the lines within those "norms."

It's all about control.

In cultures where violence is not so prevalent, sex does tend to be more freely expressed, so it depends upon what society you are referencing. Both sex and violence are what Spinoza referenced as the passions because they have the power to disturb to the point of a person losing their reason, a highly undesirable state in Spinoza's estimation.

Regardless, I'm not sure that there is any "learning" in the way we want to talk about learning, when there is incitement of passions, whether sex or violence.

I maintain that the optimum learning environments are those that are peaceful and reflective with minimal distractions. The student and teacher must feel relatively safe in their interactions with one another.

Consider how academic freedom is being pilloried in our universities with so many non-tenured, contingent instructors.

The kind of learning that we are biologically hardwired to do cannot happen if the environment for learning is distorted and deformed (with unregulated passions, Spinoza might add).

Getting back to nature, plants simply cannot grow without water and fertile soil.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 2:40 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

  [EXTERNAL]

Iju (my co-author) was a sardonic, even satirical teacher, and her kids, sixth graders, would feed on, feed back and greatly amplify her critical attitude to the texts. I remember her presenting a lesson about shopping to her kids by pointing to herself and telling the kids that she was  a meandering, browsing, gatherer in the local shopping mall while her husband, alas, was a hunter who just goes for his kill and then scurries back to the lair. She then plaintively asked if the kids had time to go shopping with her, and the kids said something like "Teacher! Crisis! All bankrupt!". It was true--in the wake of the 2008 stock market collapse, the local shopping mall had gone out of business. Anyway, knowing her and her kids, I would not be surprised if the lesson on two boys arm-wrestling for the right to take a girl to an amusement park was presented to the kids as a parody of Korean rom-coms or a pastiche of Korean reality TV.

So what Spinoza says about the "passions" is that they are the "affections" (modes? manners?) of the body which increase or decrease the power of activity "or the ideas thereof". The word "or" suggests either/or--a kind of dualism that sits poorly with Spinoza's monism ("Deus Sive Natura"--"God, in other words, Nature"). One way of elminating that "or" and the finger of salvation it extends to dualism is simply to replace it with "and" or "with". .The Edelman version of this is that consciousness arises from preconcepts in animals which enable learning--the experience and or along with the experience of having had an experience. He explains this by re-entrant neurons: neural networks which appear redundant in animals and even in infants (where the pain that makes the infant cry is really not easily distinguishable from the experience of having had the pain) and occur only because neural networks are not parsimonious and do not evolve to be. These neural networks turn out to be non-redundant as soon as true concepts arise, and true concepts are defined as being able to have the experience and to define it in terms of other experiences. Not a bad definition of "perezhivanie", no?

My Friday classes on Communication tend to be rather like Iju's: I put on a sardonic, satirical, and somewhat self-deprecating persona and my students play a lively bunch of wise-cracking gym-rats and self-parodying mall-rats (and yes, the roles are largely self-cast by sex and by gender). Yesterday one of the liveiest mall-rats was missing because her grandfather had died (mourning is taken very seriously here). This was an "affection" that did not increase the power of the activity of the class body to act, and some of the usual wise-cracking of the class was obviously a somewhat forced compensation. But if negative emotion consistently debilitates rather than facilitates our capacity to act, why does tragedy have so much more currency in the verbal arts than comedy?  Why, for that matter, is violence so much more permissible in the visual-illustrative arts than sex?

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jjWInoNyg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Xf95FeVXta6Ev1a7tffa_sN6YaOIeTDyZ_D88QCnGdqlhAtReA1oY_kMjerse25ZW6viHg$>
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jg6D9q4JQ$ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Xf95FeVXta6Ev1a7tffa_sN6YaOIeTDyZ_D88QCnGdqlhAtReA1oY_kMjerse25ljFMnRQ$>

On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 4:05 AM Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
Hello Phillip, Peg, Mike, and welcomed others,

A Juneteenth federal holiday would be marvelous. I'm sure it could be as marvelous if not more than to have something as grand as a Thanksgiving Day Parade in every city.

I like the idea of calling it Freedom Day (or even Liberation Day) as well, because that is a concept that everyone can value as something worth having. Apparently it used to be called Freedom Day once upon a time.

---
Getting back to the original topic, I would like to voice my skepticism about negative and positive emotions and their role in learning.

I believe that just emotion (whatever the quality) isn't something that "aids" learning. I think positive emotions are far more powerful in the registry of learning than negative ones.

What I think is likely of consequence with negative emotions that accompany a "situation" for learning, likely has to do with trauma and survival.

In other words, negative emotions do have a role and influence, but will wire into memory in a different way than positive ones would. This makes sense in terms of what we understand about PTSD and how it is that certain somatic reactions "bypass" conscious thought of the afflicted person after having suffered a traumatic experience (i.e., flashbacks).

I think I understand more why Mike and Phillip have indicated the coupling of emotion and learning can be misused by fascists, etc.
I don't exactly agree with this, but perhaps I'm not fully understanding the reference.

There is something deeply different going on with learning that maps with negative vs positive emotions, though we might not yet be able to determine the "mechanics" of these processes and how they are different.

I'm thinking about another article I read at the Intercept about facebook moderators. These are the digital turks of the Internet (No offense I hope to any Turks by using that phrase).

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://theintercept.com/2020/06/18/facebook-moderator-ptsd-settlement-accenture/__;!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jhZYtBxpQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://theintercept.com/2020/06/18/facebook-moderator-ptsd-settlement-accenture/__;!!Mih3wA!XNTLGP4ko664qvzSyLs_cSQbCpJ6cjYSRXd-a8S1tTYir12Z7Kjok9JZT38ScSksDu_DMA$>

Being exposed to negative imagery (that generates negative emotions) doesn't transform learning, it makes people unwell. If it were a neutral input (that it didn't matter if it were positive or negative), then people wouldn't be getting sick just from exposure to images.

Something very different is going on.

I sense that the next decades we will be learning more about the effects of trauma. That would be a good thing because it might also be instrumental in forging the means to prevent wars and other forms of group violence (genocide, refugee encampments, homelessness, other forms of deep, human suffering).

Maybe we can also defund the Pentagon and put some of that money into diplomacy. Or even start that US Department of Peace that Congressman Kucinich had proposed once upon a time.

As ever... I remain hopeful,

kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>>
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 10:40 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

  [EXTERNAL]

Its a Bakhtinian moment, Peg, when when repressed voices bring back a national memory
and the consciousness of a nation (consciousness as humans' relationship to nature and each other) has
undergone a qualitative shift. Will it be papered over by future forgetting? Too soon to tell.

If Juneteenth becomes a national holiday, it would be a very interesting shift in national memorializing and perhaps,
even, race relations.

For those like me who have inherited only a foggy notion of  Juneteenth , the attached link might be helpful.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/*inbox/WhctKJVrDFZHHxRlWkntMlVkVGGMxhnSmgMtqSjmJRWnZRpQjsxLHhpHTlPVtsZRbGvGkBv__;Iw!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jiIobV5Kg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/*inbox/WhctKJVrDFZHHxRlWkntMlVkVGGMxhnSmgMtqSjmJRWnZRpQjsxLHhpHTlPVtsZRbGvGkBv__;Iw!!Mih3wA!URjX7UEtEjKC9GjF4K7CtoTq6JHOljqil1jLajq7UdsEwHQHmq3v1ap9-GQC2cDEuPmgLQ$>

mike

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:07 AM Peg Griffin, Ph.D. <Peg.Griffin@att.net<mailto:Peg.Griffin@att.net>> wrote:

Phillip,

Your note on missing voices reminded me of Sandro Duranti once saying that he had gained ears.

And it seems a propos of a good Juneteenth Day.  So…

Long ago and far away (from me right now at least), before xmca,  even before xlchc maybe, in two funny temporary buildings in a little grove of a few trees with occasional ocean breezes and a picnic table and benches, there were a bunch of what some on the staff called “labbies,” with lots of differences in academic standing, community culture, family race, nationality, and short and long term motives.  We gathered and gave each other questions and occasional answers and lots of worrying and enjoying.

Along came Sandro as a post doc.  His family lived in LA and he stayed in San Diego for several days a week.  After a month or so, he told us about a party he went to over the weekend when he was back in LA.  As usual there were lots of local university faculty and students.  He said it felt different for him, though.  And he had finally pinned down what it was.

He was listening with extra ears – ears from black and brown people who constituted a large portion of the lab, its taken for granted history, its day to day goings on.  He heard things that needed to be countered, challenged, questioned, discussed – things that might have just passed by before but now seemed to be things that wouldn’t be said had he been a person of color from the Lab.  His extra ears gave him ideas, feelings, words and motives that he hadn’t experienced before.

Sandro is a gifted anthropologist, originally from Italy, with advanced degrees from the US.  And a dear sweet man.

Peg

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>] On Behalf Of White, Phillip
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 10:18 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Emotion as "Sputnik"

David - very contextualising background information - which i appreciate.  do you think that there is a thread here in the activity of resolving disputes that 'might makes right' -

reflecting on my initial response to Veresov, could have been an emotional sputnik - so much tension in the air these days here in denver - but i don't want to make excuses -

i'm reminded on Nina Simone's song:

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam

not just racism, but all isms have just gotten to me recently -  and i'm missing the voices of twenty years ago - to mention just a few: Suzanne De Castle - Mary Bryson - Kathryn Alexander - Eva Ekablad, to mention just a few - of course, we've still got Peg -

later -

phillip

--

Crush human humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit, according to its kind.  C.Dickens.

---------------------------------------------------
Cultural Praxis Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!SGJc5RblipQS4U_F8srduD0Khox8oYCflT2uL2w7adfAG4tgqXfcmjh4GaDF7jiawuansg$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!URjX7UEtEjKC9GjF4K7CtoTq6JHOljqil1jLajq7UdsEwHQHmq3v1ap9-GQC2cBclOLiRw$>
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Archival resources website: lchc.ucsd.edu<http://lchc.ucsd.edu>.
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