[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Tue Aug 5 17:54:41 PDT 2014
Relevant references to MacIntyre's "After Virtue" are on pp. 7-8 of
"Collaborative Projects. An Interdisciplinary Study," which I know you
have a copy of, Greg. He uses the expressions "internal reward" and
"external reward."
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
Greg Thompson 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 <mailto: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
> <mailto: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/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
> 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
More information about the xmca-l
mailing list