Signs, reasons, emotions: A Vygotskian perspective
Join this event to hear Kyrill Potapov explore the dominant view in affective computing that emotions are innate internal states with distinct physiological markers.

To register for this webinar, please email Yuxin Su before the event to receive joining instructions.
This dominant view that emotions are innate internal estates discounts the development and meaning of emotions. Following Lev Vygotsky, Kyrill will propose an alternative framework.
Emotions cannot be reduced to individual physiology because they extend beyond the individual and are structured by social practice. Emotions allow us to orient our environment, but human environments have affordances constituted through learning, play, and everyday interaction. Objects can embody our motives and practices as signs. Signs can interrupt the closure our sensorimotor functions form with the environment, restructuring the whole dynamic system.
This event will be particularly useful for philosophers of education and educators.
PESGB seminar series
This event is part of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) seminar series. PESGB is a learned society that promotes the study, teaching and application of philosophy of education. Its London Branch hosts seminars every Wednesday in conjunction with the Centre for Philosophy of Education. These seminars are led by national and international scholars in the field, covering a wide range of issues of educational and philosophical concern.
All are welcome to attend.
Related links
Kyrill Potapov
PhD student in Human-Computer Interaction
the UCL Interaction Centre
His thesis focuses on how teens interpret data they collect about their own lives. He is also a research associate on two projects: the first, exploring how video games influence teens’ emotions; the second, exploring a technology which uses music to support the movement of people with chronic pain.