In my recent post I objected to construing preparation for
effort as "negative." I try to view
preparation for effort as just that -- and then try to hold that
preparation for effort diminishes as
one (1) finds a cognitive structure which will integrate the stimulu, or
(2) eliminates the source of the stimulus."
Josh writes;
It seems to me that we may be understanding the dynamics of
counstruction for slightly different perspecitves. You appear to give to
the content of sources of imput more power to shape the organization of
meaning than I do.
I view kelly as arguing that the only value, the only meaning of an
imput is to be located in the relative success with which the person on
a multidimensionall level , finds basis of overall simiolarity between
than imput and his meaning system as a whole allowing for contrasts at a
suboridnate level). There is no such thing as stimulation that is
preconstrued, that is not already precieved in the context of an
attitude of relation, a mood, an interpretive stance. This could be
along a continuum ranging fro delighted understanding to terrrified
rejection, and including such ambivalent middle affects as boredom,
indifference, irritation. What is preparation for effort to the infant,
why does it have an relevance at all to her, if it odes not already
manifest some momentum of relation between child and imput.
Jim:
"I contend that the inputs associated with preparation for effort
must be construed, as all input must be construed. Then, I would
claim that all kinds of social constructions may be applied to those
inputs."
Josh:
"There is no such thing as pure stimulation; there is no such thing as
stimulation that is pre- construed, that is not already perceived in the
context of an attitude of relation, a mood, an interpretive stance.
This could be along a continuum ranging fro delighted understanding to
terrrified rejection, and including such ambivalent middle affects as
boredom, indifference, irritation. What is preparation for effort to
the infant, why does it have an relevance at all to her, if it does not
already manifest some momentum of relation between child and imput that
invovles the child's understanding as a whole?
Jim:
" Parents, generally, when observing signs of preparation for
effort in their infants assume that the child is experiencing
"displeasure."
Josh:
Again, my belief is that preparation for effort, or any other kind of
imput, is of absolutely no relevance to the child, it has no meaning or
value, except to the extent that the very instant of its being
experienced is already an attitude of insightful embrace or confused
withdrawal or something in between these extremes, which is as complex
an interpetive stand as any conceptualization.
Jim:
"Working with the social constructions that have been passed on through
hundreds of generations,"
Josh:
This may be the nub of the difference between our positions right here.
Are social constructions simply passed on through hundreds of
generations ? A social constructionist like Gergen would say yes. Kelly,
as I read him, would agreee with a hermeneuticist position like that of
Gadamer or maybe Mascolo. Cultural ideas aren't simply introjected into
me, I transform these traditions as I construe them in ways that are
consistent with my own goals, my own personal system of understanding. I
am not beholden to and shaped by some intrinsic content of imput
confronting me. There is no intrinsic content to imput, whether social
or physiological, that I have to reckon with even as I mediate it by
construing it. I understand that you're no Skinnerian, but aspects of
conditioning concepts appear to undergird your approach.
Jim:
"they construe the signs of preparation for effort as an index of the
infant "experiencing pain," "being hungry," etc. -- that is, as
something that might be life threatening. "
Josh:
Maybe not life-threatening, but surely exppressive of a statement of
personal affective orientation, unless we're taling about a nervous
twitch. Even in the case of a twitch , there is some attitude on the
part of the baby. Its simply a matter of degree or intenstity of the
infant's concern.
Jim:
"They then set about to bring about a cessation of the signs of
preparation for effort. (In doing so, caregivers often fail to note that
they are addressing the discrepancy situation.) If the infant is
trying to process input from the chemical (etc.) sensors that signal
lack of nutrients (inputs which are discrepant from the steady state of
'satiation' experienced in the months prior to birth) and the parent
supplies food (which is not delivered to the sensory apparatus until the
food is assimilated)
the parent also provides the "cover stimulation" of close body contact,
firm support, etc. while
delivering the food. The caregiver construes his/her action as
"reducing hunger." The main effect of the behavior -- that is, the
reduction of or the "covering" of the discrepant input -- does not take
center stage.
In this way, and in many other ways, the infant is "informed"
that when one is presented with preparation for effort, the object of
action can eliminate the input from preparation for effort."
Josh:
This sounds awfully like a chain of conditioned associations. The focus
here is on the power of the imput, as physiological or behavioral
feedback, to work its arbitary magic on one's constructions. A chain of
understandings are built up from a root which is left myteriously
underdefined. Why should the infant be motivated to eliminate the imput
from preparation for effort unless that imput is construed negatively by
that child? And this brings us back to our original question; how can an
imput that is suposed to exist in some form (any form!) prior to my
construction of it have any relevance to a person, how can it be called
a meaning, a stimulus, a behavior? A chain of causal associations
depending on an orignal homuncular-like stimulus is unnecessary when the
course of constuing is conceived in as a more wholistic and radically
self-consistent process.
Jim:
" Also, I would not speak of "the pleasures of touch." I
know many people who dislike being touched!!!!
Touching and close holding provide inputs which are very
readily assimilable. After all, the fetus was surrounded by a very
constraining, 98 degree F temp, etc., for about four months after its
neural system had been rather intact. It has had plenty of
opportunity to build very complete constructs regarding close contact."
Josh:
I did not mean for 'pleasures of touch' to be understood as
affectivities inherent in tactile stimulation. As I pointed out, all
sensory experience can be perceived as both painful or pleasuable, or
as an infinity of other qualities of aesthetic response. But to the
extent that a sensation is perceived as pleasurable, it is readilly
assimilable, as you say, not because it s arbitarily associated with
some prior source of stimulation whiose intrinsic content is
reinforcing, but because pain and pleasure are themselves constructs
through and through, meaning that all we need to know about a sitaution
of sensory pain is that it already consists of an organization in a
state of relative incompletion, interruption, impermeablility. It is
this and nothing but this. We do not then have to chain this to some
'real' prior negative stimulus event in order to legitimize and ground
the construction of pain.
Jim:
" I think that what I am doing is trying consistently to hold to the
position that ALL inputs MUST be construed before they have any effect
on the functioning of a person. "
Josh:
But would you be comfortable in saying that there is no such thing as
imput which is not already organized as a construction? This requries
that we see the environment, the 'outside' of our system of meaning, as
just as much organized by and beholden to our interpretive anticipations
as the other way around, that we do not simply match inside with
outside, but select from our environment , from what would be called
'imputs' , that which is compatible with the self-consistent nature of
our own functioning and that there is nothing negative or positive in
any sense, nothing substantive or meaningful in any sense, to be found
'out there' in the imput as treated separately from its relation to our
own organization,
Best Regards. Josh Soffer
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Josh Soffer: http://www.inergy.com/joshsoffer/welcome.html
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