Re: [xmca] Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy, Martin

How one *reads* Manfred's article opens questions asking what is under
understanding?. In other words what does understanding stand on?

As I read the comments and responses in your dialogue I'm asking if Andy is
answering that under understanding is activity.
I then ask if Martin is answering that it is imagination which is under
understanding. In other words there are multiple ways to understand
activity and each particular understanding is an act of imagination, an act
of interpretation.

Andy, emotions and imagination are intimately related. Is your position
that emotions and imagination *emerge* as derivative from activity?
Martin, the same question. Is your position that interpretation
(imagination) is primordial and activity emerges within acts of imagination?

Imagination, and interpretation, and understanding as distributed phenomena
within particular historically constituted  cosmovisions that express
shared forms of thinking/being that posit notions such as *activity theory*
as a model?
As another example, Ifa divination as a cosmovision with its particular
forms of reasoning and differentiation of subjectivity as active
imagination (acts of interpretation)

I may be *reading* too much of my own idiosyncratic imaginings into your
different understandings, but the phrase *acts of interpretation* in
Martin's response sent me off in these directions?

Larry












On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Andy, the whole point of my previous posts was to make the case that
> internal states and intentions are not fundamental. I am glad that we are
> apparently in agreement on that issue.
>
> But as I was trying to say, Andy, there are multiple ways of understanding
> an action such as opening a window. In what sense can you say that "the
> meaning" of the action lies in the activity?  I agree that the way an
> action is understood is not immediately given. It requires an act of
> interpretation. But for that reason I don't see that we can say there is
> simply a meaning "in" the activity. First, how is "the activity" to be
> grasped? What (on earth) is "the activity" in which someone opens the
> window as a moral leader? And what emotion would I need to have in order to
> identify opening a window as being an action of a moral leader in this
> activity? Perhaps you will explain how an emotion locates an action in
> relation to an activity.  This is not how I read Manfred's article.
>
> Martin
>
> On Mar 21, 2013, at 6:45 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Think of your illustration,Martin, about whether, in opening the window,
> you were acting as a technician or moral leader. I.e., the meaning of the
> action lies in the activity of which it is a part, which is not immediately
> given. Manfred does not refer this to "intention" or "belief". Manfred is
> quite specific that the signalising and self-perception of an action in
> relation to an activity - i.e., an action's being of this and not that
> activity - is a function played by emotion. Concepts like internal state
> and intention are derivative from operation/action/activity, not
> fundamental.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > Martin Packer wrote:
> >> Hi Mike,
> >>
> >> Yes, I'm not clear how exactly Manfred is proposing that emotions
> regulate an activity system. I can see that they can regulate an activity
> in the everyday sense.
> >>
> >> Martin
> >>
> >> On Mar 21, 2013, at 2:45 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> My reading is very similar to yours, Martin. I wonder though, in both
> your
> >>> quotation from Manfred and elsewhere in the article about how
> consistently
> >>> the word, activity, is used. In your quoted example, is activity the
> word
> >>> of choice, or action? This question relates to Andy's earlier
> invocation of
> >>> operation/action/ activity.
> >>>
> >>> Mike
> >>>
> >>> On Sunday, March 17, 2013, Martin Packer wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Perhaps it's helpful to add that emotions are classic System X
> processes,
> >>>> especially at the start of ontogenesis. As Holodynski says, "emotions
> have
> >>>> an activity regulating function." What he then offers, on my reading,
> is a
> >>>> detailed account of how over the course of ontogenesis System C comes
> to
> >>>> play a role in emotionality. Key to this at the start of ontogenesis
> is
> >>>> that the dependence of an infant on adult caregivers means that the
> link
> >>>> between need and satisfaction must pass through the adult. The adults'
> >>>> interpretations of the infant's emotion signals thus mediate the
> outcome.
> >>>> This provides the (social) condition for (individual) development.
> >>>>
> >>>> At the other end of the ontogenetic trajectory - well, we had a
> discussion
> >>>> recently about LSV's analysis of the way a cultural artifact -- a
> play. for
> >>>> example - can educate the emotions.
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>>
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> > --
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> > Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> > http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
> >
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