Quote:
Originally Posted by TimMason
A quick aside on kinds of knowledge. Psychologists distinguish between two kinds of knowledge: declarative and performative. This first is made known through language, the second through performance. One of the questions that they wonder about is the relationship between the two. Some thing that, in the end, all human knowledge is declarative, others say that, no, you can learn without spelling out the rules, through guided performance.
What Beppe was arguing for is that Plato or his slave could be taught how to ride a bike through guided performance. However, observations of parents teaching their children how to ride bikes suggest that this may be a simplified vision: in fact, parents do guide the child through modeling and physical interventions - hanging on the back of the saddle, for example. But they also give a lot of verbal advice, telling them how to hold the handle-bars, and how to turn them at the right moment, when to push and with which foot, and so on. They also, of course, give lots of advice about how to ride on roads where there may be other traffic (the Highway Code is declarative).
This kind of consideration has led some of them to conclude that *all* knowledge is, in fact, declarative, only the learner may have forgotten the specific declarations. If this is the case, then the learner should, with perhaps a lot of trouble, be able to restore his or her knowledge to its declarative form - thus enabling the construction of an expert system.
If this is so, Beppe will not be able to simply show Plato or his slave how to ride a bike, but will have to give instructions. Perhaps he had better bring his wife with him to the meeting on the Champs Elysée.
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Very nice. As things are, I taught to ryde bicycles to a number of kids. I usually start with, what the Americans call, a scooter. Once equilibrium is learned, there they go on the bicycle. But giving a scooter of Plato would have been too much.
There is a big difference in knowing, and knowing how to do something. So you might know the name of the days in the week, but you might have difficulties in computing the next conjunction of Mars and Jupiter. (computing, mind you not asking to somebody or looking it up on the Net), because you do not know how.
So there is also the factor exercise. A declarative approach to piano playing could be very MontyPithonish.
Trough the time, I came to the conclusion that, in first approximation, most of real quality learning is by yourself.
It would be difficult to keep my wife away from Paris and from Plato. Her absolute preferred philosopher of that time is Aristotle, but he was sent in the Gulf of Mexico.