Abstract
The article analyzes contrasting theories about the role of emotion in learning proposed by Alfred North Whitehead and Jerome Bruner. I argue that Whitehead’s account of experience and emotion in his educational philosophy is best understood in the context of the philosophy of organism. Here he takes issue with the empiricists’ view that sensa are the core of perception, and conceives of emotion as the primary bodily experience reaching out to the world as “prehensions” that provide continuity to experience. Bruner gives priority to cognition and the mental models that make problem solving possible. While he does acknowledge emotions as part of the fabric of the mind, they are shaped by what we know, which fully determines both experience and emotion. And when he embraces narrative thinking, it also excludes emotion in favour of “metacognitive sensitivity.” A possible reconciliation is attempted by considering the relationship between consciousness and emotion, but this serves to underline the differences. Whitehead’s realism and Bruner’s constructivism also highlight the philosophical divide between the two thinkers. I conclude that Whitehead’s theory of emotion in learning is richer and more inclusive than Bruner’s.
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Notes
Bruner’s account of emotions in their cultural context resembles that of Bedford (1964).
For Whitehead, science presupposes metaphysical principles, which may or may not be warranted by empirical experience, and it assumes both modes of perception – causal efficacy and presentational immediacy. As he puts it (1961), “No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes” (p. 154).
Barrow and Milburn (1990) separate sensa from emotional feeling as follows: “the feeling itself is the aspect of an emotion least worth dwelling on, since we have no way of knowing whether the nature of our various sensations are similar” (p. 110).
This means that emotions are not reactions or responses to external stimuli, and they contrast with Gilbert Ryle’s (1966) account of emotion as “an unwitnessed event” to be subsumed “under a law-like proposition” requiring no reference to the “necessarily occult … occurrences … in your or my secret world” (pp. 81, 87).
Butler (2015) subscribes to a similar view: “The body,” she writes, “carries within it what remains enigmatic to consciousness and so exposes the insufficiency of consciousness: consciousness is not a term to which the body corresponds” (p. 48). Consciousness, then, is incapable of understanding the unfamiliar territory of the body, which does not correspond to its rhythmic pattern.
Collingwood (1961) makes a distinction between two kinds of presuppositions: relative presuppositions, which can be known by the historian and give meaning to the past and absolute presuppositions, which are not questioned in a particular era but are only known in retrospect and change from age to age. It is unclear which kind of presupposition underlies Bruner’s psychological, educational, and historical theories.
As one reviewer put it, “Perhaps Bruner’s subjects live too much in their heads and not enough in their bodies.”
Bruner’s early research began with an attempt to show that needs, which he equated with emotions, determine perceptions (Olson, 2007). But this is a category mistake; needs and emotions are quite different, as McMurtry (1998) shows: “N is a need if and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of N always leads to a reduction of organic capability… [where] ‘organic capability’ … mean[s] the agent’s organic capabilities to move, think, and feel” (p. 164). Where a subject is deprived of their needs (for potable water, clean air, habitation, sufficient food as well as publicly funded health care and education etc.), their capacity to think, feel, and act is reduced. Children who come to school without sufficient nutrition are unlikely to learn as well as those who are well fed. This familiar example suggests that the feelings and emotions that enable learning to occur depend upon how well the subject’s life-needs are satisfied and enhanced (p. 165).
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank members of the University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit—Mark Flynn, Bob Regnier, and Ed Thompson—for their valuable feedback and ongoing support. It was Mark (1995) who first alerted me to the contrasting views of emotion in Whitehead and Bruner. Both reviewers provided invaluable comments that improved the quality of the article.
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Woodhouse, H. Contrasting Views of Emotion in Learning: Alfred North Whitehead and Jerome Bruner. Interchange 48, 217–230 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-016-9299-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-016-9299-1