Re: [xmca] perception/conception etc

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Martin
Thanks for this article from Barsalou.  I want to reflect a little on my
experience when reading the article.  It certainly covered many of the
themes being discussed on CHAT and the constructs that he discussed as
central [ie coordination and anticipation].
 I happen to agree these concepts are central to our notions of being
human.  He also discussed mirror neurons, social interaction, motivation,
emotions, as well as cognitions.  He is clearly reading about many of the
same themes that others on CHAT are exploring.

However, when reading how he was linking up these various concepts I was
also left with an uneasy sense that something was missing from his
analysis.  That something is the topics that Kevin O'Conner was alerting us
to when he suggested we foreground values, moral agency, and our
teleological assumptions of where we ought to be going with our inquiry.
Jack Martin wrote a paper where he suggested three models of being human
that are currently alive forms of life or traditions.  He called the first
"self expression" and refers to Charles Taylor who has articulated this as a
relatively new way of constituting agency. The second tradition is "self
regulation or self control" and Jack puts cognitive science accounts in this
tradition.  Rationalism and its bias to ground our notions of being human in
how we "construct" and conceptualize agency are foundational for
self-regulative accounts of becoming human [and have an implicit value ]
 The third tradition he called the "communal self" and this account of
"constituted" moral agency values "we-ness" over "I-ness"  I put Barsalou's
article in the self-regulative account of becoming human.

In reading Barsalou's article I had a sense that I was reading an account of
various indepent COMPONENTS that were  existent and needed to be
COORDINATED.  Now I agree that development is centrally about coordination
and regulation [configurations] but my bias is to foreground our "we-ness"
and social inter-activity over intra-activity and coordinating cognitive
components.

Now I'm not sure where Vygotsky's bias was situated, but after reading
Barsalou's article I see that we as a community of inquiry can be exploring
similar concepts but how we link up and coordinate these concepts can
express different notions of agency as constructed or constituted.

I want to suggest you post the first 20 pages of your 1985 book where you
link up de Rivera's theory of emotions [as fundamentally a MOTION TOWARDS
AND AWAY from others] and Aristotle's notions of rhetoric.  You also
explored Heidegger's 3 ways of how we are situated in the world 1.
Ready-to-hand which is our taken for granted automatic form of relating to
traditions 2. The unready-to-hand which is when our anticipations are not
met or are frustrated and we INTERPRET the world and 3. the present-to-hand
when we are rational [not reflective] and logical and think conceptually and
theoretically.

Martin, how you link up de Rivera's notions of emotions [as movement] has
potential to further our current discussion on how foundational emotions are
for social interaction [and I would suggest intersubjectivity] Now I'm not
sure, 25 years later, how you position your current thinking in relation to
the younger Martin Packer.  But I personally "feel" more recognition of your
analysis of constituted MORAL agency and COORDINATION than Barsalou's
construction model of coordinating component internal processes.

{If people want references to Jack Martin's articles on "self-regulation"
and his article on the 3 forms of identity [self-expressive,
self-regulative, and communal self ] and their various notions of agency I
will send the detailed citations.

Larry
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> A few days ago Andy commented on a paper by Barsalou that Mike had sent
> around. I am attaching another paper by the same author, with the question,
> how similar is this analysis of cognition to what LSV was writing about in
> T&L?
>
> Martinfrom
>
>
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