Dear Jerry,
Yes, I like David Brooks - I watch him weekly on PBS - I read his books and sometimes, his articles. He is a serious man.
I also like Damasio - I am ok with his being gentle,
Both provoke my interest and both irritate me - I want them to go further.
I am happy to treat affects as "things" because, as a poet, affects mark experiences as integrations of current cognitive events, and as triggers for subsequent cognitive events. Lipstick on the collar, like Desdemona's hanky, potentiates a disruption in consciousness that must be attended to, as a thing in itself. Sure, there is a continuous flow of experiences but the turbulence promoted by obvious affects deserves other terms like "torrent" or "whirlpool" or "rapid". Not all flows are just flows in terms of the experience of experiencing.
Call these affects meta-affects if you wish - they require valorisation which is what we do with such meta-affects as rage and hate and anger and love and awe and joy.
I saw a neighbour's new front fence this morning, on a walk with my grandchildren's dog. In the flow of experience I experienced intense dissatisfaction with my viewing of the fence. I had to pause to address this affect - the dog wanted to keep flowing. (He has his own set of dog affects that make him stop and reflect before moving on.)
The fence was the wrong colour and did not "go" with the house. There was a collision of styles. But, this was not the real source of my irritation.
What annoyed me was the lack of care taken in aligning the bottoms of the fence panels - it was like a skirt with four levels of hem.
This lack of attention to design detail caused affects that I had to attend to and it caused irritations in my fingertips.
The awareness of these affects may be part of my Aspergers but regardless, they arise in the flow.
So, for me, affects are frequently things inasmuch as they cause affect-effects that must be dealt with.
Cheers
keith
On 29/1/19, 10:41 am, "PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design on behalf of diethelm" <[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:
So right, yes, “Affects are the bindings of cognitive events and, as such, they require their own attention.” Except maybe they need to be characterized less as “things,” as Mark Johnson says, and more actively as an integral ingredient in the conative, affective, cognitive processing of qualitative situations in the flow of experience.
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