Dear Chuck, (and Terry, Fil, Klaus and others),

Like Ranulph, I've been enjoying the thread, and had difficulty staying 
out of it. For better or worse, here are some thoughts on the topic of 
social vs. individual phenomena, particularly in response to Chuck's 
message. This may or may not be Klaus' take on these issues, but I feel 
it is worth weighing in.

I think the difference between social and individual phenomena is best 
understood through an appreciation of language as a social, collective 
entity, and not an individual (private) form of description. I would 
highlight two senses in which language is social. For one, ordinary 
conversation is not played out in advance 'in our heads' before we 
speak—studies of conversation e.g. (Atkinson and Heritage, Structures 
of social action) reveal that the relevance of utterances and gaps of 
silence within conversation is determined in astonishingly short 
periods of time (sometimes 0.2 seconds). This isn't to suggest that 
people never have any idea what they are going to say in advance, but 
it strongly suggests that the interactive construction of conversation 
is largely ad hoc and improvisational—what we say, when we say it, how 
we say it etc. is just as much (and is frequently more so) a product of 
that selfsame interaction as it is of anything we knew in advance.

Secondly, when we use words in a language we are not simply describing 
the states of our brain or our 'private' experiences. Emotion is a 
terrific case in point. Whenever I may say (for instance) that I am 
proud of my daughter, I am not describing some physiological or somatic 
state. Indeed, I may not *feel* anything when I report that I'm proud 
of my daughter, and it does not necessarily need to be marked by any 
somatic or physiological change in order to be true. This is also the 
case when I say that I am ashamed of my actions, I hate the war, I fear 
losing my job etc. The criteria for the correct use of terms such as 
these is not in any way dependent on or limited to somatic changes, 
though certainly somatic changes may in some cases accompany and/or be 
characteristic of certain emotions and their expression. There is, in 
nearly every sensable use of emotional terms, an intrinsic relation 
between the emotion word (fear, shame, pride) and the object of that 
emotion (my daughter, the war, my job), and that if there were no 
external, public object we would have no criteria to discern between 
private 'feelings' of different emotions, such as fear, guilt, grief 
etc.—for these are given their sense by certain social (public) 
contexts. It makes no sense to 'feel' love about nothing, and if 
someone did report such a thing we would certainly not consider it 
love.

What Pinker speculates about is the evolutionary origins of emotions; 
but this is a drastically restricted sense of 'emotion', where emotion 
is equated to somatic, physiological changes. This is, I am arguing, a 
conceptual confusion. Words such as 'emotion', 'thought', 'imagination' 
etc. do not neatly circumscribe physical (neural, phsyiological) 
phenomena, but depend for their sense and correct use on many various 
human, social contexts, as I have argued above. This should highlight 
the senselessness of ascribing emotions or intelligence to machines, 
who share naught of our lives.

Of course, this is not to suggest that certain hypotheses about 
emotions (such as Damasio's 'somatic marker') cannot serve as fruitful 
models for designing systems that operate on a principle similar to the 
understanding of emotion expressed in the hypothesis. But it is vital 
to underscore that our criteria for the intelligible use of 'emotion' 
words stems not from physiological states, thus any understanding of 
emotion that presumes that emotions can simply be mapped to body or 
brain states is not explaining what we understand by 'love', 'fear' or 
'hate' when we ordinarily and intelligibly apply those terms. Whatever 
such hypotheses are explaining, they are not the emotions we are 
familiar with.

Kind regards,
Ben


On 16 Jan 2006, at 03:21, Charles Burnette wrote:

> On 1/15/06 1:13 PM, "Klaus Krippendorff" <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> i think you overvalue models of emotion and feelings in processes of 
>> design.
>> surely emotions and feelings are essential in human responsiveness to
>> anything, especially in the evaluation of alternatives.  but what this
>> assertion misses is the ability to create spaces of possibilities 
>> without
>> variables.  in my analysis these spaces are created largely in 
>> language,
>> which is a social phenomenon, not in a notion of cognition as an
>> individualistic phenomenon.  in language we have metaphors, generative
>> vocabularies, and we test them out in conversation and dialogue, not 
>> in any
>> one individual's head.
>
> On what evidence do you assert an ability  to create spaces of 
> possibilities
> without variables? Especially if "these spaces are created largely in
> language" which is the means by which variables are identified and
> ultimately defined.
>
> I totally disagree with your last sentence and agree with Terry (I 
> assume)
> that language is tested out in the head of an individual - and their
> interpretation of it is thrust out, so to speak, into social 
> communication
> to determine (and often change) the meanings that others take away 
> from a
> conversation - every bit as much as the individual's interpretation of
> meaning might be ratified or changed by the social response their 
> expression
> engenders.
>
> Also, in support of Terry's position,  Pinker (1997:373)  suggests that
> emotions motivate purposeful thought. We have emotions because we 
> cannot
> pursue all goals at once. The emotions are mechanisms that set the 
> brain's
> highest level goals. Once triggered by a propitious moment, an emotion
> triggers the cascade of goals and subgoals that we call thinking and
> acting=8ABecause the goals and means are woven into a multiply nested 
> control
> structure of sub-goals within sub-goals within sub-goals, no sharp line
> divides thinking from feeling...." I submit that emotionally triggered
> feelings are essential operators in design.
> I enjoy a lively (social) conversation but cherish my individual 
> rights of
> interpretation.
>
> Looking forward to your reply.
> Chuck
>