LSW CW v. 3, p. 152-3.Reading this together with the preceding 3 sections, I take it that "traditional psychology" means introspective, or subjective psychology, and the view that introspection provides direct access to a distinct part of reality (soul, spiritual beings, something nonphysical, above matter). Vygotsky is saying that this view is mistaken.
Andy Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
Please Andy, Please if you are with the text about Thonrdike, The passage is in the part 2, paragraph 4th - The paragraph immediately above has te following reference (N. N. Langue, 1914, p 42)... "The psyche and any its delicates and complex mechanisms, is inserted in the general system of the human behavior, each one of its manifestations is totally impregnated by this mutual relation. Do not appears isolated nor separated from the rest of the world an from the process of organism even a millesinum of a second, that is the time that psychologists calculate to the psychic process. Who sustains in their investigations the contrary, willbe studying an unreal configuration of the own intelligence, chimeras in the place of facts, terminologicals constructs in the places of real authentic facts"....He is discussing methodological problem of definition of the psyche... Just trying to posing about what king of things psychologist want make his questions. And stating that a psyche without orgnism is not a real thing about what make questions... because if you ask for something that doesn't exist, you can find answers that can not exist too. Its what I understand about that formulation. And I guess that in "The teatching about emotions" the problem is methodological too. Let me say, about the own conditions to you make a good question related to emotions, at that time, and even in our time, I can conclude... I will see a manner to type the Russian, for any adictional checking about this quoting. Because there are two problems: 1) How it was translated from Russian to Spanish. 2) How, of course, I translate from Spanish to English... (this very worse, of course) Thank you Andy. Again. Sorry about my persistence. Achilles._________________________________________________________________Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:57:19 +1100 From: ablunden@mira.net To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotionsAchilles, I am looking at the English version in LSV CW v.3. I can't find the passage you quote, but I see on p. 155 that Vygotsky puts "other somatic reactions that form the basis of emotion" in the same category as "the first component of an organism's perception of this environmental influence."Personally, I don't think emotion has anything to do with instinct or higher vs lower mental functions. We perceive the reaction of our body and that affects our thinking and our whole process of perception, just like our vision does. Vygotsky compares it to inner speech actually. :)Andy Achilles Delari Junior wrote:Andy, I think that Vygotsky was trying to solve the problem of dualism in theory of emotions. He worked with the principle of "psychophysical unit" - the "main principle of Soviet psychology"in the words from Rubinshtein. The difference between the cognitive and the instinctive is not because the cognitive have not physiological conditions, but the complexity of that conditions and it mediated character... Vygotsky said that "the psyche do not appears isolated from the world or fromthe process form organism neither for a 0,001 second" (1926/1991 - Prólogo a la versión russa del libro de E. Thorndike 'Principiosde enseñanza basados a la psicología - this is the Volume I of the Works in Russian and Spanish, I don't remeber the numberin English, because they do not follow the Russian numeration). You can see that psyche are not isolated from the organism and not isolated from the world. In fact human beens are constituted by the same substance that the world, we are not an "Impire inside the impire" - but to be the same substance do not means that weare in the same way... the same "mode" - I Spinoza´s words. Vygotsky fight against a dualistic approach to emotions. And tohim James is an "involuntary disciple of Descartes" because his especial emphasis in cultural feelings as spiritual process. Much common even today.I only don't uderstand why you say that there is a problem thatI am trying to solve. If cognition have not material support what kind of substance is cognition? This is not a problem, the problem is how to understand ideological, historical, conscious, cultural, constitution of human emotions in his/her whole personality without repeat a dualistic approach. I understand this problem is not onlymine... this is a problem posed by Vygotsky himself. And I only agree that is good question... I don't if Damasio already answer that.Can you tell me who did?Achilles._________________________________________________________________Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:56:10 +1100 From: ablunden@mira.net To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotionsBut you still need a distinction between a physiological reaction and a cognitive disposition, don't you, Achilles?What is the specific problem you are trying to solve? Andy Achilles Delari Junior wrote:Jay, Thank you very much. Something near to this distinction between feelings and emotions was posed by William James too, according Vygotsky, but James saw this distinction in terms that these social dimension of affectiveworld, the higher feelings, have almost nothing related to biological, physiological, material, body, conditions. And Vygotsky criticizes this like a way of dualistic thinking - this dualism can be understoodas based in ideological motivations too: "the human is not an animal, nor a material been, but a divine been, in his higher, superior feelings..."A distinction between feelings and emotions is present in Damasio tooin neurofunctional terms... But Vygotsky proposed the question of a systemic inter-relationship in that the lower can turns higher, andvice versa... I don't know what we can thing about this... In this case, distinction between feelings and emotions are useful, but ifwe want to understand the entire human been, his/her whole personality, the integration and inter-functional relations between feelings and emotions turns relevant too, In my point of view. Best wishes. Achilles._________________________________________________________________From: jaylemke@umich.edu To: lchcmike@gmail.com; xmca@weber.ucsd.edu Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotions Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:28:26 -0800CC: I am certainly one of those people interested in emotion, or feeling, or affect, or whatever we choose to make of the phenomenon.The topic seems to have historically accumulated a lot of ideological baggage. And while its expression may be more sophisticated today than in times past, there doesn't seem to be that much less of it (as for example in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy review noted by someone earlier).Emotion tends to be seen as bad in our philosophical tradition. As the enemy of reason, the motor of self-deception, etc. It links us to the animals, to our "baser" nature, etc. A bit of this in the pagan tradition, a lot of it in christian asceticism, and tons of it in Enlightenment rationalism and its successors.Emotions are also associated with the unreliable feminine vs. the cool and collected masculine, with the passions of the mob vs. the thoughtful elite, with peasants, workers, and children, and pretty much every social category whose oppression needs some legitimation. Indeed one of the near universal legitimations of elite power is "we know what's good for you", not just because of what we know, but because you can't be trusted to see your own best interests through the haze of your emotions.Useful as this is to elite interests, it combines further with the cult of individualism to make emotions a purely individual, mental, subjective matter. Non-material, non-social, non-cultural, and universal (the easier to apply the stigma of emotionality to non- European cultures). It is rather hard to crawl out of this pit of mud.As I've been trying to do for the last year or two. There would be too much to say for a short post on this list, but here are a few basic suggestions:Feeling is a broad enough category to get back to the phenomenology of affect/emotion, whereas "emotion" is too narrowly defined within the tradition of animal-like and universal.There are a LOT of different feelings, and that is more important than efforts to identify some small number of basic emotions.Many feelings are associated with evaluative judgments and this may be a key link to re-unify affective and cognitive.Feelings do differ significantly across cultures, and are part of a larger system of meanings-and-feelings specific to a community.You can't make meanings across any longer term process of reasoning without feelings and evaluative judgments.It is likely that feelings have histories, both in cultures and in individuals.Feelings are often reliable guides to survival, to adaptive action, and to finding ways to meet our needs.Feelings are just as situated and distributed as are cognitions. And just as active and actively made and produced.In short -- pretty much everything in our dominant tradition about emotions and feelings is exactly wrong -- and for the worst possible ideological-political reasons, I believe.JAY. Jay Lemke Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010) Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke Visiting Scholar Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication University of California -- San Diego La Jolla, CA USA 92093 On Nov 26, 2009, at 8:08 AM, mike cole wrote:With so much interest in achieving an integrated understanding of emotion, cognition, and development, Achilles, your focus on this topic is a helpfulreminder of its continued importance.Seems like one of those many areas in psychological research where we cannotkeep from murdering to dissect. mike _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmcaNovo site do Windows Live: Novidades, dicas dos produtos e muito mais. Conheça! http://www.windowslive.com.br/?ocid=WindowsLive09_MSN_Hotmail_Tagline_out09_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmcaAgora a pressa é amiga da perfeição. Chegou o Windows 7. Conheça! http://www.microsoft.com/brasil/windows7/default.html?WT.mc_id=1539_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, Ilyenkov $20 ea_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmcaNovo site do Windows Live: Novidades, dicas dos produtos e muito mais. Conheça! http://www.windowslive.com.br/?ocid=WindowsLive09_MSN_Hotmail_Tagline_out09_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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