You wrote, perhaps feeling that I would disagree:
>I apologize for jumping on your faith in the cognitive guys <snip>
>The brain is *not* a computer, or any other kind of machine. <snip> The
>brain is *alive* and
>*organic* and exists at a level of organization which includes the
>biological, psychological and, yes, cultural. There is no generic
>*brain* we can study, only the particular brains of particular people
>with specific personal and cultural histories. Organisms inevitably have
>histories, and unique ones at that. For living things, time is indeed
>unidirectional.
I agree completely; and that is why I am profoundly disinterested in the
stuff that passes for "brain-based" learning. While I know that there are
folks who give connectionism a similar spin I think that is the sort of
poor interpretation that truly innovative theories attract. (See the sad
history of implementing Dewey's work in some of education's most painful
moments.) A connectionist framework implies is a radical break with
"generic" models and a thorough-going adherence to affirming the history of
experience as formative of what we call mind. History and the particular
are crucial in all such explanations.
The "past tense debate" that I cite in my previous post on this topic is
evidence that many connectionists understand the political implications of
adopting an experientialist as opposed to an innatist position-Fodor/Pinker
types argue that the rules are innate and cannot be taught only activated;
by implication some folks just lack quality and that is why they do not
learn. The connectionist position is that it is the dynamic history of
experience that accounts for difference; not innate ability. Technical
details aside that is what was at stake in the past tense debate. (I call
this political, though some may object, because it has become so: recall
the "30 linguists" who opposed whole language instruction. Then check out
the overwhelming cast of their intellectual commitments in this area. I
highly recommend a recent NY Times overview of the "east coast/west coast"
divide in cognition & neuropsychology at:
http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/sci-brain-debate.html )
Later you remark on how much we have left to learn about the material basis
for even so "simple" a concept as pain. Leaving aside whether the
interpretation of sensation as pain is actually more basic than the
elemental architecture of learning that connectionists explore, you are
right; there is a huge amount still not understood. But I wonder if the "we
don't know enough" objection will stand the ethical test? That is, do we
know enough to begin to make considered educational judgements about what
learning is _not_? I am trying to be careful here. I would suggest that if
the "west coast" interpretation is right then the kind of context-free
facts that we find in geometry (and upon which we built our curriculum) and
the kind of innatist (if hidden) hierarchical rules that govern in
Chomskyian generative grammers are a formalist delusion--the formalizations
of an observer with an incorrect set of assumptions rather than insights
into the nature of mind. And that would have real political consequences
for the lives of actual children. In a moment when I for one am feeling
overwhelmed by the formalist demands for a list of facts to substitute for
agenda setting standards and for high stakes fill-in-the bubble testing to
discipline children's futures based on such standards I find the
connectionist opposition to the concepts upon which these instrumentalities
are based one of the few hopeful features of the intellectual landscape. My
own conviction is that this family of work is firmly enough grounded for me
to take up the limited conviction that the formalist assumptions are wrong
and should be opposed on factual as well as ethical grounds.
>Any suggestions for new avenues of approach to the issue?
I look toward experiential, practice-based theories. But I don't believe
such theories can have much influence in the long run unless they directly
confront the formalist assumptions about knowledge and learning built into
our institutions. Our political situation is such that we need to be able
to argue from first principles (however formalist that may be) and I don't
see anything other than connectionist research that grounds such a claim.
Thanks, John
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
John St. Julien (stjulien who-is-at udel.edu)
Department of Educational Development
University of Delaware