[Xmca-l] Re: Unity of cognition and affect

[Larry Purss]

I am going to attempt to re-situate *experience* as key to understanding
the unity cognitive and affective processes.
However, I will stay closer to the way these themes are presented in
Jennifer and Rebecca's article. I agree with Philip that this article has
the potential to anticipate future directions for exploring and
re-searching human nature.
I chose to put section 2 [Returning to Vygotsky's framework] to one side to
highlight section 1 which situated the article as asking "Where do we
locate or place social emotional learning in school environments.
I am now wondering if that opening may have shifted the conversation to a
concrete example [SEL] and if Vygotsky's framework should have been the
opening move? I believe the topic is central to understanding and
developing schooled environments that show or express *concern* that I will
try to engage others on the topic of section 2 - Vygotsky's framework.

On page 205 Jennifer and Rebecca situation the framework by weaving
together two subsections:
1] unity and analysis by units
2] consciousness AS a unity of intellect and affect.

Vygotsky's framework embraces unity as grounding his central theoretical
concepts in a dialectical relationship.
Now, I want to draw out and highlight the concept of *experience* as also
central to the notion of unity. I will add this word *experience* to the
multiple phrases & sentences Jennifer and Rebecca wrote on p. 205 to make
my point.
" unified psychological functions in human relationships and experience"
" the unity of social experience and cognitive experience and emotional
experience"
"the unity of speech experience and thinking experience"

The use of the grammatical conjunctive *and* to highlight the processes
linking experience AS unity. The central theme is that *experience* as
unity cannot be distorted by cutting the *elements* of this unity. For
example speech experience and thinking experience cannot be decomposed into
separate granular elements without destroying the unity [analogy to water
loosing its unity when researchers decompose and describe the elements
 hydrogen and water through an analytical separation into granular
fragments]

Jennifer and Rebecca are calling our attention to experience as dynamic
processes in contrast to analytic fossilized static frameworks which reify
experience.

Therefore experiences must retain the properties that are characteristic of
the whole [including intellectual experience and affective
experience]rather than experience being reduced to elements within
dissected  fragmentary *discrete* notions of  experience as *intellectual
experience* OR *affective experience*

In this amplification of the concept/word *experience* I want to keep
centrally in the foreground Dewey's questioning and regret at his using
this concept *experience* as biased towards idealism and encapsulated
subjectivity. Jennifer and Rebecca's article is operating within a
different and distinct *zone* of proximal development. Zone can also be
imagined as *horizon* or *space* or *place* as experiential *zones*.
*Experience* within THIS Vygotskian *zone* is unified and experience does
not exist within an interiorized *mind* ITSELF.
In addition to experience retaining unified properties of the whole
[gestalts?]  the units can be analyzed [with caution to not reify elements
as static]  to explore the tensions of the elements within the unity. This
tension which allow the units [notice the grammar of *the* units reifies]
to change and transform.
Jennifer and Rebecca write [p.206]
to BE "a LIVING part of the whole" [reference to Zinchenko.]

THIS changing unity [both parts and wholes are changing] can be researched
by focusing on distinct *units of analysis" [which are not discrete units
of analysis] This analytical dynamic process also is developing WITHIN
*experience* which is always exceeding the horizon of any framework of
conceptualization.
Experience exists within temporality [analepsis & prolepsis] and historical
*consciousness* but that is for another conversation.

I hope my shifting to section 2 [frameworks and concepts such as *word
meaning* and *perezhivanie*] will generate further commentary. Other
frameworks are also exploring experience AS LIVING PROLEPSIS and ANALEPSIS
[as gestalts] but they all share a common passion for unity and questioning
where we locate social emotional learning.
School environments is one *arena* or *stage* but the questions touch [as
social experience, cognitive experience, emotional experience] all levels
and realms of aesthesis as living experience.
Jennifer and Rebecca are opening wider zones of proximal development and
I'm enjoying the expansiveness of the *view* [privileging ocular perceiving]
Larry


On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 8:31 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been waiting to hear further reflections on this months article.
> I have noticed that as I am reading other articles I hear Jennifer's voice
> calling me to listen for distinctions within unities and not reify these
> fluid distinctions into discrete dichotomies.
> I would like to offer further reflections on my musings.
> Dewey wrote a book titled "Experience AND Nature* as conductive concepts.
> I have read Vygotskian commentary suggesting *nature* does not capture the
> centrality of tools and artifacts. Would the title "Experience AND
> Artifacts" be a useful working title?
> Other titles that came to mind were "Experience AND Mediation" or
> "Experience AND Activity".
> I am proposing that *experience* and the conjunctive concepts as
> distinctions can be played with in our models of human nature.
> I am also aware that Dewey re-considered [analepsis] the choice of the
> concept *experience* in his model. However, with the exploration of the
> unity of cognition AND feeling I wonder if *experience* can still be a
> concept which we can *live through* as a meaningfully shared concept to
> explore analytical distinctions WITHIN unities?
>
> The concept *word meaning* was proposed as a central concept used by
> Vygotsky which as an aspect of experience unifies cognition and affect
> WITHIN experience as situated.
> This insight is exploring the place of *concepts* within experience [as
> situated].
> Calvin Schrag has explored Merleau-Ponty's  theme of the centrality of the
> *visual FIELD* and proposes that M-P's insights exploring the visual field
> within experience can be extended to other *fields* such as the other
> perceptual fields [touch hearing, taste] AND conceptual fields, and
> valuational fields.
> The key insight M-P offers is that these multiple fields [perceptual,
> conceptual, valuational] WITHIN experience are neither "outer worlds* of
> re-presented or re-constituted objective properties and relations on the
> one hand, nor are these multiple fields [perceptual, conceptual,
> valuational]  an "abstracted inner world" as transcendentally accessed.
> The experiential world [as situated] M-P describes as a *lived-through
> world*.
>  Consciousness, [the theme Vygotsky was turning towards before his early
> death], is NEVER ENCLOSED WITHIN ITSELF. It is from the beginning lodged
> within the world as an intentional unity with figures [and con-figurations]
> positioned or located against backgrounds [Gestalts]. Gestalt has also been
> proposed on this xmca site as where Vygotsky was turning.
> Schrag suggests M-P privileged the *visual field* but his key insight can
> be expanded beyond the visual to multiple fields. Schrag suggests the
> visual field is not *truer* or displays a *richer* structure than do the
> other multiple fields. The visual field of sight does have the advantage of
> providing more direct conditions for objectification. I would add that the
> conceptual field also has this distinct benefit of distanciation of figure
> and ground. Schrag points out that this benefit however, by virtue of the
> distant and disembodied potential of the visual sense [I would add
> conceptual field as sense] is prone to become separated from the concrete
> *experiencer* and the dynamic fields [as Gestalts]
>
> Schrag highlights a word [aisthesis] which points to the phenomena which
> MEDIATES all the senses. THIS full bodied is most overtly displayed and
> manifested particularly WITHIN the perceptual field of touch AS tactile
> sensation.
>
> This is Schrag's key point [and may also be put in conjunction with the
> unity of cognition and affect].
> Full-bodied aisthesis CONTINUES TO BE OPERATIVE in the visual [and
> conceptual] fields, and by virtue of aisthesis retains a unity WITHIN
> experience.
> This insight not does mean an inversion of visual and conceptual fields to
> the nonvisual tactile or auditory fields. Touch and hearing are neither
> truer or richer in structure than sight or concepts. No sense should be
> elevated above the others. Sight and concepts without the full bodied
> aisthesis of the other senses divests *experience* of its vibrancy, as the
> other senses without the visual and conceptual which provide distance tend
> to enslave experience within immediacy.
>
> Schrag and the current article are emphasizing unity and the
> multidimensional texture of experience as cognition AND affect. As Schrag
> writes,
> "The multidimensional texture of experience is displayed not only in the
> plurality of perceptual fields, but also in the variegated deployment of
> conceptual and valuational fields. Conceiving and valuing, as assuredly as
> perceiving, occur WITHIN a figure-ground context. Experience is always
> broader in its reach than perceptual fields."
>
> M-P's privileging the visual sense is not his central insight. His central
> insight is that the multiple fields of sense DISPLAYS a figure-ground
> relation AND an intentional structure REVEALING its intended figures at
> EVERY level of experience.
>
> Jennifer, I enjoyed crisscrossing your insights and extensions of the
> unity of cognition AND affect with Schrag's descriptions within a
> phenomenology of experience.
>
> I apologize if this is going off topic but your article is *in my mind* as
> I am  reading Schrag's  theme of unity of the senses.
> Larry
>
>