Replying to LO28742 --
Some observations about things and ethics which I entirely sympathise
with. But, I'd like to get back to 'Act of Learning'.
I have been burdened with this term knowledge management and am finding
that this is still a debate and not necessarily knowledge. After have been
through the reductionist approaches, I have just within the last week or
so come across George Lakoff's Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. I found
it illuminating and credible.
Anyone interested can find the papers by searching the web, but here I
will describe my take on this.
GL seems to that all (or most) of our concepts are made up of metaphors
based upon some basic experiential concepts such as dark/light, near/far
etc. which we sense directly through our sensory apparatus. Everything
else is built on top of this.
Finally he goes on to describe, in a sense the relationship between this
mental world of concepts and metaphors and the physical reality out there.
I quote "Experiential bases and realizations of metaphors are two sides of
the same coin: they are both correlations in real experience that have the
same structure as the correlations in metaphors. The difference is that
experiential bases precede, ground and make sense of conventional
metaphorical mappings, while realisations follow, and are made sense of,
via the conventional metaphors. And as we noted above, one generations
realisations of a metaphor can become part of the next generations
experiential basis for that metaphor"
I think this sums up the act of learning. It involves, observing real
world phenomena (through our sense and the phenomena include hearing
language, reading text, viewing diagrams,...), then correlating the
patterns of experience with existing metaphors and perhaps building new
concepts. If the sensory experience is abstract rather than physical,
then in a sense the practical experience of reusing the new metaphor in
say problem solving, experimental testing, reviewing etc. will reinforce
that new concept. The more solid the concept becomes, the more it moves
to being experiential (Once we are past what can be sensed directly, we
get into the world of mental experiences).
So, I suggest (and I am probably wrong) that learning is this act of
correlating and solidifying through experience. Once learnt, we have
knowledge - a concept structure that can be re-applied in the form of
metaphor to correlate with new experience or to build new concepts.
So, people are wrong to split academic learning and experiential learning
- they are both aspects of the same thing along this continuum of tangible
to intangible. Why denigrate either? An experienced craftsman has
probably learnt by doing, but not without questioning! A person who has
been to engineering school has probably questioned, but not experienced
until he has experienced. The order is different, that is all. I think
there is a lot more here and it is an aspect of this debate about
knowledge and learning that people are forever saying - if this is right,
then that other is wrong. Perhaps it is that all these are useful
metaphors which partially map onto the physical reality of how our minds
work ( See how multiple metaphors partially map according to GL)
regards
Dileep Damle MSc, MBA
Knowledge Technology Manager
Abbey National plc
+44 (0)1908 345438
--"Damle, Dileep" <Dileep.Damle@abbeynational.co.uk>
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