This is a very nice set of comments from Pat Parslow.
Negotiating meaning is not necessarily intentional nor is it necessarily the same as constructing meaning (of which I have never been particularly clear about the meaning). Negotiating meaning is the process of employing a feedback loop between participants in a conversation (spoken, written etc.) to iteratively refine the mutual understanding of the content of that conversation (or parts thereof). The intent is to minimise the error in communication of the concepts, not the construction of meaning, but the (consensual) meaning is uncovered and brought into relief by the process (discovering and defining that meaning, in a shared contextual space, whether that space is an overlap between individuals experience or a virtual context created by those individuals in order to be able to reach a consensus).
Intentionalism
To be a bit clearer, when I talk about ‘intentional construction of knowledge’, I am referring to a position known as ‘intentionalism’. Here’s a quick definition:
intentionalism - The thesis that all mental states are representational states. Specifically, raw feels and qualia, are said to have representational content.
Intentionalism supposes that our mental contents refect ‘intentional states’, that is, content-ful or propositional states. For example, from Byrne’s (2001) defense of intentionalism:
there is a basic claim that all these philosophers wish to defend. It is that the propositional content of perceptual experiences in a particular modality (for example, vision) determines their phenomenal character. In other words: there can be no difference in phenomenal character without a difference in content.11 So if two (metaphysically possible) visual experiences differ in phenomenal character, then they differ in content.
If you believe that mental states - and in particular, sensory perceptions (including motions, emotions, etc) - are representational states, and are expressible in propositions, then you can tell some story about negotiating the content of those representational states, such that there is a shared representation (specifically, a set of propositions) that can be held in common.
But I think there are some significant problems with that perspective. The most obvious is that, if the content of these perceptual states is the result of agreement, then it’s not clear that they are in fact representational. Second, it’s not clear that some mental states are representative of anything at all - that these mental states are epiphenomenal, and depend as much on their perceiver for
I think, in a process of communication, that there is a negotiation that takes place (and we are seeing a nice example in this thread with a positulated vocaublary and discussion of what it stands for) but that this negotiation is a negotiation of engagement, of a set of protocols for interaction.
Specifically, there is no requirement on the part of the participant to agree to any particular representation or to any putative state of affairs in the world. The negotiation, in other words, is not with respect to the meaning of the worlds (in the usual sense, or reference or representation), but rtaher, how they will be used - and even here, each participant in a negotiation may agree to use a term in a different way.
Associationism
I discuss this elsewhere, but it is important to draw out what I mean when I talk about ‘association’. Because the usual everyday sense of association is to think of contacts between people (as in the expression ‘guilt by association’).
At least, that is the sense I take Pat parslow to mean when saying “Some associations are entered into intentionally.” If not, fine, ignore these two paragraphs and start with the next.
‘Associationism’ is at heart a theory of inference:
Ideas, regarded rather as sensations or as mental images, were associated in the mind according to certain laws, mainly concerning contiguity and resemblance, and thereby led to further ideas, and to the functioning of mental life in general.
The position has resolved regarding the principles of association:
Aside from similarity and contiguity, other governing principles have been proposed to explain how ideas become associated with each other. These include temporal contiguity (ideas or sensations formed close together in time), repetition (ideas that occur together repeatedly), recency (associations formed recently are the easiest to remember), and vividness (the most vivid experiences form the strongest associative bonds).
I have advanced a position in my own work proposing four major principles of association:
With respect to the present discussion, I would like to observe that:
- None of these are intentional mechanisms, that is, they do not depend in any way on the content or meaning of the entities being associated
- Another way of saying the same thing is that none of these mechanisms are propositional in nature; the states being associated do not have truth value, and they do not embody linguistic or syntactic properties
- None of these result from an intellectual process or contruction - they are natural occurrances, completely dependent on the entities themselves
Meaning
From my perspective, and importantly: meaning is a property of language, and not thought or pereception. (When I say ‘Physical Symbol System’ I am referring specifically to the Physical Symbol System hypothesis, which is a cornerstone of intentionalist theories of mind, and which I reject, but I can apply my remarks to a wider conception of meaning).
That does not mean that one cannot ascribe meaning to mental states. You can ascribe meaning to anything you want; meaning is the result of the intentional, representational process, and as soon as you let something stand for something else, you have created meaning.
So, for example, you could be with some friends around a table, and you’re talking about basketball, and you say, “this rock stands for Karem Abdul-Jabbar.” You have thus created a representational system, and the meaning of the rock is its standing for Abdul-Jabbar.
And once you have done this, you can say things about the veracity of the representation. “Abdul-Jabbar would never position himself so deep,” a person might say, attempting to correct the representation.
But note: some such statements are irrelevant. You would not say: “this is a poor representation; Abdul-Jabbar is much taller and he is not make mostly of silicon composites.” Crucially, the properties of the ‘meaning’ do not allow us to make inferences about the properties of the rock.
In the same way:
We can let our mental and perceptual states ’stand for’ things, thus creating a representational system - but ‘meaning’ is a property of the representational system only and does not somehow become a property of our mental and perceptual states.
We use (descriptions of) our mental and perceptual states to talk about hypothetical systems, but these hypothetical systems have no logical or causal force with respect to the mental states we use to talk about them.
So - when we say, “Let this rock stand for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,” we are in no way committed to the belief that Abdul-Jabbar exists outside our representational system or that he has any properties beyond those we have explicitly ascribed. We are committed only to a way of talking - which, again, may be different for each of us - and not to some common or shared understanding about the nature of the world at all.
For more: see Quine, On the Indeterminacy of Translation.
Realism
Pat Parslow’s statement reflects a commonly held belief: “Without the consensual reality of negotiated meaning, the network has little or no basis for its foundation - whilst the negotiation of that reality cannot occur without the network. The two are part and parcel of the same overall system.”
Realism is essentially the thesis that these is some (external or underlying) reality to which all of our perceptions (statements, whatever) refer (or represent, whatever).
As you can see from the Stanford Enclyclopedia article, as soon as you try to cash out that belief into a set of constituent statements, it becomes very difficult not merely to believe but even to understand.
Essentially, the appeal to realism in our current discussion is an appeal to an external arbiter that will mediate disagreements about meaning. So that our statements about the nature of the world are based, not merely on agreement (a Davidsonian wholism, say) but on that world itself.
Disagreements about meaning, however, are disagreements about the nature of the world (they are not disagreements about our perceptions). And you cannot resolve disagreements about the nature of the world by appealing to one or another theory about the nature of the world.
To say the same thing another way: theories about the state of the world are abstractions of our experience and perception. We take some aspect of it, represent it in a symbol system (a language, say), and then assert that propositions within the symbol system are descriptive of the world in which our perceptions occur.
These abstractions are what I would call articficial. They are the result of choices we make. They are partial representations of what occurs naturally. By contrast, our perceptions are not abstractions. They are complete in an of themselves. They are not created through some process of abstratcion, some process of choice. They are what occurs, if you will, naturally.
As a general, methodological, principle, I hold that the abstractions are not more real - or more foundational - than the entities over which they abstract. Our theories - as the saying goes - must save the phenomena. Our theories - including those about the nature of the world, including even those about the nature of perception - are - necessarily - incomplete (just as the word ‘forect’ is a necessarily incomplete representation of a forest).
Learning
Pat Parslow says, ” Yes, learning is about growing our network, both internally in our brains (and bodies) and externally in terms of the connections we make through associating with others, but these are both intimately tied to negotiating the meaning of concepts with the external (and possibly internal?) networks.”
This is at odds with connectivism, as I see it.
If learning is “tied to negotiating the meaning of concepts with the external (and possibly internal?) networks” then learning is impossible without intentionality, and learning is impossible without representation. Learning, on such a statement, requires a committment to a set of statements about the existence and nature of an external reality.
I’ve addressed my objections to the content of that statement above; let me make some observations about how this impacts our understanding of learning.
If Pat Parslow’s statement is true, then learning is impossible if it is not something. That the aboutcontent of learning is essential to learning. That learning is, fundamentally, ‘knowing that‘ - and that, indeed, there can be no learning that is not an instance of ‘knowing that’.
This is a theory that presupposes a particular ontology of learning - and an ontology that does not accord with the phenomena, as Michael Polanyi and others have demonstrated.
There are many ways to cast doubt on this teory, but the most straightforward is to pose the question, “How does one know that one knows that P?” Logically, one cannot. If learning requires learning about, then logically, nobody can know that one has learned.
But - learning is not acquiring (in some as-yet undesignated way) some content. Learning is not ‘knowing that’. Learning, rather, is much more like ‘knowing how’. It is about developing an ability, a capacity, rather than placing oneself into a particular representative state of affairs with respect to the world.
Or - another way to say it - one can learn without having learned about something. Ind, indeed, this is what happens every minute of every day as we have new experiences, and as our mind grows and develops as a result of those new experiences.
Let me put it this way: how does one know that they have fallen in love? Is there some set of statements that, upon being true, and being known to be true, amounts to knowing that one is in love? That there is an object of love, that sees that person socially on certain occasions, that one carries out certain actions - is this what would amount to knowing one in love?
Knowing is not ’standing in a ceetain representational relationship with the object of the knowledge’. Knowing, rather, is a feeling. It is the having of a certain mental state, the growth of a certain capacity that, once having been obtained, cannot be abandoned.
It’s like - as Polanyi says - knowing how to ride a bicycle. And learning is like learning how to ride a bicycle - an even in which there is no set of propositions acquired, but rather, a set of skills or capacities achieved.
Conclusion
A lot of what I’ve tried to argue in this (admittedly long) post is that Connectivism is a non-intentional theory of learning and knowledge.
What this means is that, in connectivism, learning is not about content. It is not about entering a certain representational state with respect to the world.
Such an account makes the representational state - rather than our actual thoughts, perceptions and feelings - the arbiter of what it is to know, what it is to have learned.
But connectivist learning does not require representational states. It does not require on the part of the learner that they commit to a particular account of the external world.
It allows - indeed, encourages - the idea that people may have different, and individual, accounts of the external world.
Which means that what is negotiated is not some set of statements about the nature of that world - not representational states, not meanings - but mechanisms for communication, protocols for interaction (which may indeed be, and probably are, inderstood differently by each person engaged in communication).
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Why not? I want my homemade edupunk diploma!!!
