Lisboa, 2008-03-30
Dear Thomas, Cas and all,
Your discussion about the
epistemological background of our common taxonomic work is, of course,
crucial. I suppose one need to develop it on going the Tom´s oriented
discussion about sociological definition of single emotions.
I wonder if my approach
to the epistemological problem would help to clarify issues and each one
positions. I hope my English writing does not betray my thinking, as I
am a Portuguese language sociologist. Any way, I can offer you three
English papers on the subject you can download at
http://iscte.pt/~apad/novosite2007/ingles.html (Damasios´s
errors - homage to a source of inspiration;
Two Cultures and the
real thing;
Two Cultures and the real thing second version)
I came from noticing the
fact that 21rst century sociology has a biased relationship with
violence and instability of life. Mainstream sociology thinks it self as
a part of a larger scientific division of labour that splits violence
(especially state violence) and life instability (especially body and
emotional instabilities) from sociological playground. International
relations, political science, criminology, strategic sciences,
doctrinaire knowledge (as Law), for instance, are disciplines outside
and neglected by mainstream sociology and forgotten in sociology
courses. It was not the case within the works of Marx, Durkheim or
Weber. That means that sociology taboos did course mainstream sociology,
as Social State supporter, till its actual tinny speaker’s corner in
scientific division of labour. Sociologists are not aloud easily to talk
about, to refer to, to think about certain subjects, stigmatised as non
sociological, non ethical, ideological, non rational, and so on.
My empirical problem is
this: why should prisoners be treated – most of the time – as non people
or as if they do not live, as if they were already dead? Even Foucault
and Goffman did accept the idea of the non existence (or the abnormal
existence) of prisoners in social life. My task is to show how these
mainstream sociological conceptions reinforce ideologically exclusion
processes that produce excluded people, reinforcing social peace of mind
about human rights growing violations, both in the Third World and at
home (because sociology is not able – or willing – to denounce these
violations). Arguing that these denunciation goals are out of our
collective competence or goals, as sociologists, do not explain the way
mainstream sociologists become nervous about this kind of questioning.
That is why it is growing a new sociological speciality – the Human
Rights sociology – as a marginal development of social theory. It do not
feat within mainstream social theory. I hope, in the future, human
rights problems will match with the emphasis and concerns of mainstream
sociology and of mainstream sociological courses.
I am developing a
theoretical sociological approach to these problems around the concepts
of sociology of instability (meaning that each one of us are equal in
potential to every one else, even if we all depend on our body/mind
physics/chemestry developments during life, we all depend on social
institutional framework – the habitus of Bourdieu, for instance -, we
all depend on our will to face and organize change, both in our own
lives and in social live) social natures (see
http://iscte.pt/~apad/social%20natures) and state-of-spirit (meaning
a formalized theoretical and methodological approach, both
qualitative/inductive and quantitative/deductive - not at the same time,
of course -, to conceive and propose basic and common states-of-mind
present at all forms of culture knowned and feelled by human beings.
States-of-mind are a tuned and synchronized assembly all levels of
instable living reality producing an empirical state of some kind of
stability; the way of showing togetherness, social cohesion, as human
social nature requires from each one of us and for all together as
societies).
Empirical examples of
states-of-spirit are Marx´s revolutionary spirit, Durkheim´s social
consciousness, Weber´s spirit of capitalism. I did propose – under
different studies – prohibitionist spirit (a father beat a child if he
do not know – or do not want to know – how to change his own behaviour
facing child existence. The same qualities of state-of-spirit are
mobilised at intuitional and global levels of human existence when the
western leaders decide to organize the war against the people who live
on oil land). I propose submission spirit (displayed when dogs show
their defeat under its own social hierarchy, when dogs show theirs soft
parts to the leader. Children behave a comparable way facing adult
supremacy, incorporating any thing coming from them (as the equivalent
happens often to prisoners or captive people, when they identify them
selves with who whatever guide the captivity) and – as showed by
immigrants interviews in Lisbon – as immigrants accept supremacy of
authorities and national people in general at receiving countries, in
order to avoid looking back to the difficult and irreversible decision
of working and living abroad, and in order to concentrate on searching
the best way out of his/her challenge of changing life).
I have to present all
that to explain this: a) I did never work on sociology of emotions: I
just hope to be able to learn from you about it; b) I am not a
specialist; I need help from very different approaches, inside and
outside sociology, to develop my research inquiries, qualitative and
quantitative; c) I hope to join efforts to adapt (to open) social theory
to the new needs of social knowledge at the 21rst century, without
Social State, out of actual limitations of mainstream sociology; d) the
emergency of sociology of the body and sociology of emotions at the 80´s
represents to me the need of many sociologists to attach to social
theory new contributions out of mainstream sociology and, at the same
time, a trap: emotions and body lives together, they both embody: they
cannot be understood apart of each other.
How to deal with Tom´s
problem of a scientific definition of emotions? My answer is: look at
neural sciences and Antonio Damasio “Descartes error”, “The feeling of
what happens” and “Looking for Spinoza”. He benefit of a very strong
investment of brain sciences in order
-
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the
Making of Consciousness,
Harvest Books, Outubro 2000 (ISBN
0156010755)
-
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling
Brain, Harcourt,
Fevereiro 2003 (ISBN
0151005575)
to develop artificial
intelligence. And he propose a very interesting set of definitions of
emotions, feelings and social feelings, as part of human regulatory
system at three different levels of reality, measuring/spliting these
levels on reaction time (shorter at emotion level and longer at social
feelings level). Different levels situate themselves at different
momentum deep inside the body (on emotion level), outside de body (on
social emotion level) and at the brain level (on feelings reflexive
level, having by mechanism the emotional level and by environment the
social emotions level).
It would be possible, one
day, to agree, between neural science and social science, at a common
definition of emotion? I hope so. I think we can run for this propose.
Dear Cas: yes, I hope to
be able to develop a chemistry like periodic table of simple
state-of-spirit, joining medical neural data and sociological data about
it. I cannot do it alone. This forum can be the opportunity to make it
happen.
I cannot agree more
with you when you wrote for the need of an “attempt
to map patterns and phases of emotion regulation.” This is a break
trough mainstream sociology that discards the instability of live, the
individual and social growing processes, and the genetical and
evolutionary methodological approach to social phenomena. It is clear to
me that state-of-spirit are socially constructed, at the same time every
culture needs to conform to social nature of human bodies and minds,
somehow equal at their genetic framework deeper level, comparing other
species and ways of living in earth, with different genetic supported
ways of organizing reproduction, individual and social lives. The
scientific efforts to look at the equality of mankind (as social
potential genetically framed) as a taxonomy of emotion construction do
not oppose the sociological empirical observation of diversity of
emotional phenomena at individual, institutional, global and other
specific social levels. Genetic approach of equality of mankind
potential at all continents does not oppose the very different local
evolution of cultures. One can join together the in deep research on
simplest and common worldwide emotions and, at the same time – probably
other research team – the phenomenological regards on how to make
objective science on empirical local observations and, finally, to
explain how they come (or not) together, considering that some deep
individual emotions are induced by social states-of-spirit (social
control) and, the other way around, some social emotions are induced by
politics and individual emotions at the centre of society network (political
work).
This theoretical view thinks emotions as
embodied regulatory outputs (biological, mind and social, all together
more or less synchronized and tuned) springing from social situations (be
them at individual, institutional or global level, most of the time all
together, eventually in contradictory ways) diffusing through social
tissue wherever the probability of communication of emotions can run (bottom
up, through the same social level, top down, normally using privileged
directions). Feelings are though as reflexive abstract symbolic
constructed behavior (as reasoning, institutional action or violent
organized action or threat, for instance) conditioning the emotional
states by strength of willing and manipulation of the environment,
changing state of spirit (standard cultural learned control response to
emotions) and supervising the results.
During the same stage of development, people,
institutions and global human kind become used to the some kind of
emotional results, whenever it mobilize the some kind of feelings (can
we call it the natural multilevel and tuned/synchronized control system,
result of historical evolution?). During the same stage of development
the natural instability of life and of mankind evolutes slowly,
eventually without the reflexive adaptative knowledge counterpart, till
when, for any reason, everything turns out differently of what was used
to be expectable. A new stage of development arises because people
become aware of the different consequences of old feelings at the
emotional levels (individual and social anomie problem). One learns how
to use better new feelings in order to obtain certain emotional
consequences one needs or wants. Old feelings becomes less used or
forgotten.
I am developing this
approach as much as I can. I look at the emotions taxonomic program as
an opportunity to do it better and to attract criticism and
contributions to it. For instance, I remember a Greek colleague to
mention on the list his work of detection of emotional states by
electronic measuring means. I think he could be a big help to
sociological approach to emotions and to scientific definition of simple
emotional states. This kind of work I am not prepared to perform. But I
need its results.
Sorry about the long
text. I hope my English writing do not inhibit your ability to read it
and to understand it.