[xmca] RE: A Vygotskian view of emotions

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

Andy, thank you very much - this is a great reference.

Thanks for the link to Sheff's site too. I was looking today.
Excellent page, contemporary and polemic subjects, 
many full-version papers, and so on.
Best wishes.
Achilles.

> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:21:00 +1100
> From: ablunden@mira.net
> To: achilles_delari@hotmail.com
> Subject: A Vygotskian view of emotions
> 
> Achilles, I noticed this:
> 
> John-Steiner, V. & Mahn, H. (in Press 2002). The gift of 
> confidence: A Vygotskian view of emotions. Learning for life 
> in the 21st century: Sociocultural perspectives on the 
> future of education.
> 
> Maybe Vera could let you see a copy?
> mailto:vygotsky@unm.edu
> 
> 
> Andy
> Achilles Delari Junior wrote:
> > 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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