[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Wed Aug 6 05:12:24 PDT 2014
Since the writer was in the process of converting from Marxism to
Catholicism while writing that book it would not be surprising if there
were some eccentricities of style.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
Ed Wall wrote:
> Peter
>
> I was the one who made the incorrect inference (although I questioned myself at the time) re the apprenticeship of observation. In any case, I would be interested in reading a pdf that complicates the notion.
>
> I was not assigned After Virtue, but read it thoroughly on my own and found it quite insightful and the argument reasonably pointed. Was your label of meandering a criticism of style or content? In any case, what seemed blunt and extraneous?
>
> Ed Wall
>
> On Aug 6, 2014, at 6:34 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> I read After Virtue in grad school, assigned by Philip Jackson (and it was Lortie, not Jackson, who made the apprenticeship of observation a common term among teacher educators--someone posted earlier on this question. In case anyone's interested, I've got a forthcoming study of apprenticeship of observation that complicates Lortie's conclusions based on interviews from a different era, and would be happy to send the pdf to anyone who's interested).
>>
>> Anyhow, on MacIntyre: I remember discussing at the time that the book seemed like a rough draft that really would have benefitted from a thorough revision to cut out the meandering and make a more pointed argument.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2014 8:55 PM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>
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