From: jaylemke@umich.edu
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotions
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:28:06 -0800
Achilles, and friends --
I am not sure of the best interpretation of LSV's position on these
matters, but it seems to me to be in the spirit of his work and the
later CHAT tradition that we imagine a culturally informed
"development" (probably with phylogenetic antecedents) in which the
"higher" functions develop out of the earlier ones by a progessive
layering or refinement, specialization, and differentiation -- both
for higher feelings as well as higher cognitions.
Indeed I don't think we want to separate affect and cognition, or
feeling and meaning, emotion and reason, too much. A little
distinction is useful to give us purchase on understanding their
integration. I would assume that in the developmental and
evolutionary
sequence, these two aspects of our adaptive operating-with-the-world,
are initially less separable and less distinguishable, aspects of a
single functional process. And that later in the sequence we LEARN to
MAKE a distinction, and perhaps even to FEEL a difference between
them.
But it is their functional integration which is of the greatest
importance, not their difference (in my opinion). So to the higher
mental functions viewed cognitively (and it is not at all clear that
LSV did view them ONLY cognitively in our modern sense) there must
correspond also "higher feelings", what we might call culturally
refined or culturally differentiated and functionally specialized
feelings, which function as part of the whole engagement in activity
that enables us to sometimes get a bit ahead of our semi-predictable
environments. Insight. Intuition. A feeling for the organism. Good
hunches. Good judgment. A nose for useful lines of research. And so
on.
Of course once we are immersed in a complex world of highly
culturally
differentiated feelings, we realize that their functions are not
simply practical, not simply dictated by evolutionary fitness. Or at
least not in very obvious ways. And so I have taken to making a
heuristic distinction of my own in terminology among emotions (the
more classical ones, triggered by environmental events, with obvious
adaptive significance, like those listed by Darwin and borrowed by
James, such as fear, anger, disgust, desire, etc.), affects (which I
use to mean the "higher" feelings, the more culturally specific and
"refined" ones, like feeling noble or feeling guilty), and feelings
as
such (the general category, of which emotions and affects are
subclasses, and which also includes the more auto-perceptual feelings
like feeling tired or feeling dizzy).
Again it is not so much the distinctions here that I value
theoretically, but getting a sense of the scope of the whole domain
of
feelings, and how to make sense of any particular feeling-type within
it. (Distinguishing again between the uniqueness of a particular
feeling on a particular occasion and the more generic feeling-types
recognized or recognizable culturally across instances.)
Whew! A lot to chew on ...
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093
On Nov 27, 2009, at 10:45 PM, Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
Jay,
Thank you very much.
Something near to this distinction between feelings and emotions
was posed by William James too, according Vygotsky, but James
saw this distinction in terms that these social dimension of
affective
world, the higher feelings, have almost nothing related to
biological,
physiological, material, body, conditions. And Vygotsky criticizes
this like a way of dualistic thinking - this dualism can be
understood
as based in ideological motivations too: "the human is not an
animal,
nor a material been, but a divine been, in his higher, superior
feelings..."
A distinction between feelings and emotions is present in Damasio
too
in neurofunctional terms... But Vygotsky proposed the question of
a systemic inter-relationship in that the lower can turns higher,
and
vice versa... I don't know what we can thing about this... In this
case, distinction between feelings and emotions are useful, but if
we want to understand the entire human been, his/her whole
personality,
the integration and inter-functional relations between feelings and
emotions turns relevant too, In my point of view.
Best wishes.
Achilles.
From: jaylemke@umich.edu
To: lchcmike@gmail.com; xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotions
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:28:26 -0800
CC:
I am certainly one of those people interested in emotion, or
feeling,
or affect, or whatever we choose to make of the phenomenon.
The topic seems to have historically accumulated a lot of
ideological
baggage. And while its expression may be more sophisticated today
than
in times past, there doesn't seem to be that much less of it (as
for
example in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy review noted by
someone earlier).
Emotion tends to be seen as bad in our philosophical tradition. As
the
enemy of reason, the motor of self-deception, etc. It links us to
the
animals, to our "baser" nature, etc. A bit of this in the pagan
tradition, a lot of it in christian asceticism, and tons of it in
Enlightenment rationalism and its successors.
Emotions are also associated with the unreliable feminine vs. the
cool
and collected masculine, with the passions of the mob vs. the
thoughtful elite, with peasants, workers, and children, and pretty
much every social category whose oppression needs some
legitimation.
Indeed one of the near universal legitimations of elite power is
"we
know what's good for you", not just because of what we know, but
because you can't be trusted to see your own best interests through
the haze of your emotions.
Useful as this is to elite interests, it combines further with the
cult of individualism to make emotions a purely individual, mental,
subjective matter. Non-material, non-social, non-cultural, and
universal (the easier to apply the stigma of emotionality to non-
European cultures). It is rather hard to crawl out of this pit of
mud.
As I've been trying to do for the last year or two. There would be
too
much to say for a short post on this list, but here are a few basic
suggestions:
Feeling is a broad enough category to get back to the phenomenology
of
affect/emotion, whereas "emotion" is too narrowly defined within
the
tradition of animal-like and universal.
There are a LOT of different feelings, and that is more important
than
efforts to identify some small number of basic emotions.
Many feelings are associated with evaluative judgments and this may
be
a key link to re-unify affective and cognitive.
Feelings do differ significantly across cultures, and are part of a
larger system of meanings-and-feelings specific to a community.
You can't make meanings across any longer term process of reasoning
without feelings and evaluative judgments.
It is likely that feelings have histories, both in cultures and in
individuals.
Feelings are often reliable guides to survival, to adaptive action,
and to finding ways to meet our needs.
Feelings are just as situated and distributed as are cognitions.
And
just as active and actively made and produced.
In short -- pretty much everything in our dominant tradition about
emotions and feelings is exactly wrong -- and for the worst
possible
ideological-political reasons, I believe.
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093
On Nov 26, 2009, at 8:08 AM, mike cole wrote:
With so much interest in achieving an integrated understanding of
emotion,
cognition, and development, Achilles, your focus on this topic
is a
helpful
reminder of its continued importance.
Seems like one of those many areas in psychological research where
we cannot
keep from murdering to dissect.
mike
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