[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?

[Andy Blunden]

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.
>
>   
>