Philosophy: books and discussion

[Ea]

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.

I wonder how this relates to what has become known as learning styles. Declarative knowledge seems closely tied with learning through hearing and thinking, while performative knowledge appear more closely tied with learning through doing and perhaps seeing.

To use myself as example, I've always needed 'performance' of some kind to take in knowledge.

*I know there's different approaches to learning, my examples was just from one that takes four different styles into account.

Originally Posted by TGS

It may be that the notion of "image schemas" is useful here. Image schemas are the basic elements structuring of the world - the basic way in which we carve the world up. For example, force-dynamic schemas structure our experience of the relationship between events. The explanatory advantage of a image schemas is that they are taken to be universal and pre-linguistic and, as such, there is no reason why non-linguistic animals such as macaques might not deploy them, and thus might well be able to represent some kind of declarative knowledge, (without of course being able to declare it).

That was an interesting point. As far as I understand it (and you), it will make one able to 'side-step' the more dualistic understanding of declarative and performative knowledge.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TimMason

Attempts to argue that some animals possess something like human culture - patterns of behaviour that are not built-in, and that are passed on from one generation to the next

That's already been demonstrated in the case of certain groups of chimpanzees in the wild. There has been some dispute, but I think that when one group is displaying behaviors that are not shared by other members of their species, and passing that knowledge to their offspring via teaching, what else can it be called but culture? Primitive, perhaps, but cultural learning, nontheless.

http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/The%20Scientist.html

[beppe]

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.

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.

[TimMason]

Obviously knowledge which remains declarative is simply that: I can run through the notes of the scale, but if I want to sing, I have to practice. I can model bike-riding in a computer lab, but although that may give me some idea of what happens when you throw your leg across the bar, it won't get me to the Col de Tourmalet. Similarly, I can read a book on how to be a Yanomamo warrior, but until I've sliced someone's ear off with an axe, I won't be a happy camper in the Amazon Basin.

I don't think anyone would claim that all *learning* is acquired simply through reading books or listening to lectures. And I'm pretty much of Beppe's persuasion concerning the need to do it for yourself (I only wish my students were convinced as well). But that isn't the question I was looking at; I was wondering what *knowledge* is, and how it's stored, and how it's retrieved. And even if we do things *by ourselves*, that doesn't mean there is no linguistic account - remember the child who talks her doll through a tea party or putting her shoes on. When I do something for the first time - play a new piece of music on the piano, for example, I think I talk myself through it. As I get better, there's less vocalization, and in the end, I can do it without even looking at the marks on the page.

Doing that, I've brought to bear a whole series of *lessons*, some with a teacher, some in books or text-books, and some just doing the exercises. Those who argue that all knowledge is, ultimately, declarative, will say that at one point each of these subskills was expressed in words.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by TimMason

I was wondering what *knowledge* is, and how it's stored, and how it's retrieved. And even if we do things *by ourselves*, that doesn't mean there is no linguistic account - remember the child who talks her doll through a tea party or putting her shoes on. When I do something for the first time - play a new piece of music on the piano, for example, I think I talk myself through it. As I get better, there's less vocalization, and in the end, I can do it without even looking at the marks on the page.

Is what you are asking more to do with the question of what thought is rather than what knowledge is? What I mean is that some acquisition, practice and exercise of knowledge seems to be accompanied by thought of which we are, more or less, conscious, and when we are conscious of this thought it sometimes seems to have something like linguistic content.

[Sparrow]

I learn better if I talk to myself about whatever it is - but I just thought it was a way of concentrating better.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by TimMason

...
Those who argue that all knowledge is, ultimately, declarative, will say that at one point each of these subskills was expressed in words.

Then one could discuss whether we are talking about knowledge stored, or knowledge assimilated/learned.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I learn better if I talk to myself about whatever it is - but I just thought it was a way of concentrating better.

Ï need to take notes. It concentrates my thinking and I think the plain physical work (the little it is) helps my body to help my brain remember. Some people need to be physically active, and some need to visualise it. I've always been a little in awe of those who can sit through a lecture, just listening, and then after, remember all the salient points and be able to apply them directly. It's like magic.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by TimMason

...
And even if we do things *by ourselves*, that doesn't mean there is no linguistic account - remember the child who talks her doll through a tea party or putting her shoes on. When I do something for the first time - play a new piece of music on the piano, for example, I think I talk myself through it. As I get better, there's less vocalization, and in the end, I can do it without even looking at the marks on the page.

I think I tend to visualise - or "physicalise" myself through something. I might read a recipe, but I turn it into images in my mind - or I practise movements. I look for spices in my cupboard based on their relative placement as I remember it, and their colour and looks. I could probably vocalise it, but in my mind it's pictures and movements - at the most, it's language as in a whole scene taken in at once compared to a paragraph. That's also a kind of language of course, but I wonder if it's what's meant by declarative knowledge.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by TimMason

OAnd I'm pretty much of Beppe's persuasion concerning the need to do it for yourself (I only wish my students were convinced as well).

If you wish so we could exchange views and tricks via PM.

[beppe]

Let us distinguish knowledge from learning. In many cases they interact, in many other they are quite apart.

The detailed knowledge of the magnetic anomalies in Northern Finland is quite essential to the nickel industry. It is not something one learns.

An other slightly different example. There is much research going on in medicine. Knowledge is progressively conquered through different layers of scopes, applications and uses. After a while a more general picture will appear and maybe consolidate.

My impression is that whenever there is something new under scrutiny there are also new rules of the game (in an epistemological sense) that are taking shape and becoming necessary. And new behavioral, social, political, ideological, legal, economical implications.

In a way it is the old Pandora Vase Myth. The dialectic of Progress.

[beppe]

Let us distinguish knowledge from learning. In many cases they interact, in many other they are quite apart.

The detailed knowledge of the magnetic anomalies in Northern Finland is quite essential to the nickel industry. It is not something one learns.

An other slightly different example. There is much research going on in medicine. Knowledge is progressively conquered through different layers of scopes, applications and uses. After a while a more general picture will appear and maybe consolidate.

My impression is that whenever there is something new under scrutiny there are also new rules of the game (in an epistemological sense) that are taking shape and becoming necessary. And new behavioral, social, political, ideological, legal, economical implications.

In a way it is the old Pandora Vase Myth. The dialectic of Progress.

[Ea]

Beppe, I wonder how you get from there - to Pandora's box? Pandora accidentally let lose evils upon the world - do you really consider knowledge evil?

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Ea

Beppe, I wonder how you get from there - to Pandora's box? Pandora accidentally let lose evils upon the world - do you really consider knowledge evil?

Oh no. In my argument I do not compare good with evil, but a similar although completely different antagonism. Let me expand it. Everything new brings what was desired and unexpected and unavoidable effects. Countless examples. And the bigger and more "energetic" is the new, the bigger are the benefits that were sought and hopefully obtained and the bigger the new perils we are cast against.

We can do nothing about it. Can't stop progress.

Personally, I think that knowledge is the most valuable of all the things, second only to peace of the spirit. The two are somehow antagonist. Faust?

My reference to Pandora is to the inner meaning of the myth. A secret and well guarded knowledge is kept locked in the vase, when it is accessed all hell gets loose.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Ea

Beppe, I wonder how you get from there - to Pandora's box? Pandora accidentally let lose evils upon the world - do you really consider knowledge evil?

This doesn't refer directly to your question to Beppe, but I couldn't resist inserting this as an interesting aside to your reference to Pandora's Box. I have always heard the tale told with Hope being the one thing left to humanity that makes all the evils in the box bearable. Nietzsche, however, had an interesting contrary take to my understanding, which seems to have been more in line with the story's original meaning:

.....Precisely because of its ability to keep the unfortunate in continual suspense, the Greeks considered hope the evil of evils, the truly insidious evil: it remained behind in the barrel of evils.
..........— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher. The Antichrist (1888), translated by Walter Kaufmann.