[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?

Wed Aug 6 05:51:56 PDT 2014

Ed, I probably read it 30 years ago, so all I've got is a general recall of conversations among students that it seemed like a first draft that needed a lot of revision so that points were made more straightforwardly. I suspect that style and content are inextricable--that is, the meandering style resulted in meandering content--but as I said, it's been awhile. p

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Ed Wall
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2014 7:58 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic motivation?

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
> 
> 