[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?
Huw Lloyd
huw.softdesigns@gmail.com
Wed Aug 6 05:37:17 PDT 2014
I was wondering whether this was necessary to the process itself, akin to
the locomotion of snakes or caterpillars.
The best authors I have read have been circumlocutionary (in a good way).
I recall Bateson's daughter saying that in offering explanations, he would
not say what something is but where to put it.
Best,
Huw
On 6 August 2014 13:12, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> 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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