RE: [xmca] about emotions

[Achilles Delari Junior <achilles_delari@hotmail.com>]

Jay, thank you, once more.
Best wishes.

> From: jaylemke@umich.edu
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotions
> Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:41:42 -0800
> 
> 
> Achilles and all,
> 
> You emphasize some important points in this last message (below).  
> Especially useful to know about a history of fear, and of course we  
> have many histories of love.
> 
> And what gets called a "basic" emotion is rarely all that basic in the  
> sense of being uniform and universal. Yes, these feelings, and perhaps  
> most feelings have physiological aspects and evolutionary antecedents,  
> even survival-adaptive functions. But that does not mean that they do  
> not undergo differentiation in many different kinds of love, and many  
> different kinds of fear, in their integration with what we tend to  
> call more "cognitive" processes, and so in the development of "higher"  
> mental-emotional functions.
> 
> Cultural difference therefore are to be expected, as in your example  
> of cultures where we might feel guilty about feeling guilt vs. those  
> where we feel noble or honorable because we feel guilt.
> 
> I have not yet reached the point of publishing my work in this area,  
> though I have given some talks at conferences and universities about it.
> 
> 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 28, 2009, at 11:10 PM, Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
> 
> >
> > You help me a lot, Jay. Thank you very much.
> >
> > I think that I understand your explanation, based
> > in heuristics needs - and I agree. I think a vision
> > that don't differentiate qualitative distinctions between
> > a number of process don't help us very much... My
> > guess is that Vygotsky's Chabrier-based hypothesis
> > can have a methodological contribution perhaps in
> > the sense of think relations between emotions, feelings
> > and affects in genetic and dynamic terms... But in
> > typological terms they are not very helpful. I understand
> > Vygotsky didn't conclude this project in that 1931-33
> > manuscripts, maybe because his focus justly was much
> > methodological one than strictly psychological. Maybe...
> > I don't know about the best interpretation too... but
> > seems to be interesting to think that cellos, for instance,
> > is not the same in different cultures... as LVS says in
> > the text about Psychological Systems... And the sample
> > of the Dante's love for Beatrice, is very interesting too,
> > the impossibility to reduce all to the perception of
> > a silhouette - the role of philosophy, theology, and other
> > cultural conditions in that love... Even the concerns to
> > the different king of love in different historical period
> > seems to be reasonable, if we search about "History
> > of emotions" for instance, including there is "History
> > of Fear" (Jean Delumeau, and others). Perhaps, ever perhaps,
> > a problem in Vygotsky text is that non-differentiation in
> > the use of the terms "affect", "emotion", "feeling". I
> > could not check word by word in Russian... but even so,
> > I didn't find any very explicit definitions for each term
> > yet. This is a problem. But I understand to be interesting,
> > for instance, to think that even something like "fear" have not
> > so definite boundaries in my consciousness, because in my personal
> > experience I had many kinds of fears, since the more
> > basic, in process of military repression to me and my
> > comrades from marxist social movement, until the more
> > subtle: fear to lost my father because his cancer... Then
> > we can search different definitions to this two kinds of
> > fear... we can give different names for the "basic fear"
> > (a emotion) and the "subtle fear" (a feeling), but... I don´t
> > know... If we try grasp the concrete historical cultural situation,
> > both in Class Struggle and in family affective relations, the
> > systemic and inter-functional relations are very singular, really...
> > And have any kind of cognition involved, as well as any kind
> > of peripheric (vasomotor, visceral) process involved too.
> > Can I say that the own very polissemic nature of the words
> > that we use to define emotions, feelings and affects, can turns
> > a little problem in this area too? And can exist some kinds of
> > ideological problems in this too? Sometimes guilt like a higher
> > process, sometimes like a lower process, and so on? Well, I
> > must to ask if a man/woman in a culture in what guilt is sawed
> > as lower process (guilt to be guilt?) have the same guilt
> > that in a culture in which the guilt is a higher process
> > (honor to be guilt?)?
> >
> > Do you already publish something about this heuristic distinction,
> > that you exposes to us? Can you indicate something to me?
> > I appreciate your contributions.
> >
> > Thank you very much.
> > Achilles.
> >
> >> From: jaylemke@umich.edu
> >> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> Subject: Re: [xmca] about emotions
> >> Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:28:06 -0800
> >>
> >> Achilles, and friends --
> >>
> >> I am not sure of the best interpretation of LSV's position on these
> >> matters, but it seems to me to be in the spirit of his work and the
> >> later CHAT tradition that we imagine a culturally informed
> >> "development" (probably with phylogenetic antecedents) in which the
> >> "higher" functions develop out of the earlier ones by a progessive
> >> layering or refinement, specialization, and differentiation -- both
> >> for higher feelings as well as higher cognitions.
> >>
> >> Indeed I don't think we want to separate affect and cognition, or
> >> feeling and meaning, emotion and reason, too much. A little
> >> distinction is useful to give us purchase on understanding their
> >> integration. I would assume that in the developmental and  
> >> evolutionary
> >> sequence, these two aspects of our adaptive operating-with-the-world,
> >> are initially less separable and less distinguishable, aspects of a
> >> single functional process. And that later in the sequence we LEARN to
> >> MAKE a distinction, and perhaps even to FEEL a difference between  
> >> them.
> >>
> >> But it is their functional integration which is of the greatest
> >> importance, not their difference (in my opinion). So to the higher
> >> mental functions viewed cognitively (and it is not at all clear that
> >> LSV did view them ONLY cognitively in our modern sense) there must
> >> correspond also "higher feelings", what we might call culturally
> >> refined or culturally differentiated and functionally specialized
> >> feelings, which function as part of the whole engagement in activity
> >> that enables us to sometimes get a bit ahead of our semi-predictable
> >> environments. Insight. Intuition. A feeling for the organism. Good
> >> hunches. Good judgment. A nose for useful lines of research. And so  
> >> on.
> >>
> >> Of course once we are immersed in a complex world of highly  
> >> culturally
> >> differentiated feelings, we realize that their functions are not
> >> simply practical, not simply dictated by evolutionary fitness. Or at
> >> least not in very obvious ways. And so I have taken to making a
> >> heuristic distinction of my own in terminology among emotions (the
> >> more classical ones, triggered by environmental events, with obvious
> >> adaptive significance, like those listed by Darwin and borrowed by
> >> James, such as fear, anger, disgust, desire, etc.), affects (which I
> >> use to mean the "higher" feelings, the more culturally specific and
> >> "refined" ones, like feeling noble or feeling guilty), and feelings  
> >> as
> >> such (the general category, of which emotions and affects are
> >> subclasses, and which also includes the more auto-perceptual feelings
> >> like feeling tired or feeling dizzy).
> >>
> >> Again it is not so much the distinctions here that I value
> >> theoretically, but getting a sense of the scope of the whole domain  
> >> of
> >> feelings, and how to make sense of any particular feeling-type within
> >> it. (Distinguishing again between the uniqueness of a particular
> >> feeling on a particular occasion and the more generic feeling-types
> >> recognized or recognizable culturally across instances.)
> >>
> >> Whew!  A lot to chew on ...
> >>
> >> 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 27, 2009, at 10:45 PM, 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  
> >>> affective
> >>> world, 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  
> >>> understood
> >>> as 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  
> >>> too
> >>> in neurofunctional terms... But Vygotsky proposed the question of
> >>> a systemic inter-relationship in that the lower can turns higher,  
> >>> and
> >>> vice versa... I don't know what we can thing about this... In this
> >>> case, distinction between feelings and emotions are useful, but if
> >>> we 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 -0800
> >>>> CC:
> >>>>
> >>>> 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
> >>>>> helpful
> >>>>> reminder of its continued importance.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Seems like one of those many areas in psychological research where
> >>>>> we cannot
> >>>>> keep from murdering to dissect.
> >>>>> mike
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>>
> >>>>
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