I'm so individually oriented with respect to learning that I find it
very hard to reorient to the activity level with respect to learning.
I keep wondering, How does a collective subject learn? [I lean rather
fuzzily towards collective learning as the emergence of individual
subjects' interactions (of course, historically and culturally
situated), but since collective and individual subjects are on
different levels, their behaviors and learning processes are
different.] And even if the collective subject learns, the new
activity eventually becomes an old activity for later subjects. Does
this mean that later subjects, collective and/or individual, are at
Level II learning, because they are not facing (have not faced)
double binds? Or, if there is a new type of learning emerging, as YE
asserts, does it mean that later participants will inherit the models
and methodologies of earlier subjects, and so will be more easily
able to find double binds and transcend them? Or ...?
Charles
Mike wrote:
>Diane-- I have been experiencing unparlleled purturbations in my mail
>system with new messages disappearing and hundreds of old messages reappearing
>and perhaps for this reason, I did not perceive anyone as assuming LBE
>unquestionable. I took Paul's example be responding directly with a
>relevant example.
>
>I personally continue to think about the implications of moving the zoped
>concept to the level of activities themselves which is what I take Yrjo
>to be doing not only in ch3 but in the whole developmental work research
>strategy. His redefinition at this level removes the possibility of a
>"more knowledgable other" but it also emphasizes both the risk and
>the creativity involved.
>
>One other source of continuing puzzlement for me is that I have long
>interpreted Bateson somewhat differently than Yrjo.... which is not to say
>better or worse, but simply from a different starting point/angle. I
>think the differences arises because my own background was initially
>in
>American learning theory, which afforded a diffent way of considering level
>1-2-3 distinctions (one that is clearly more individualistc and hence not
>appropriate to Yrjo's project in LBE.
>
>Yrjo/Bateson write (taken from the ms):
>According to Bateson, Learning I comprises the forms of learning
>treated by various versions of connectionism: habituation, Pavlovian
>conditioning, operant
>conditioning, rote learning, extinction. "In Learning I, every item
>of perception or behavior may be stimulus or response or
>reinforcement according to how the total
>sequence of interaction is punctuated", Bateson (1972, 292) notes.
>On the other hand, Learning II or learning to learn
>(deutero-learning) means the acquisition of the
>context or structure of some type of Learning I. Thus, common
>descriptions of a person's 'character' are actually
>characterizations of the results of Learning II. "It
>follows that Learning II acquired in infancy is likely to persist
>through life." (Bateson 1972, 301.)
>
>The outcomes of Learning II, the habits or the 'character', save the
>individual from "having to examine the abstract, philosophical,
>aesthetic, and ethical aspects of
>many sequences of life" (Bateson 1972, 303). Learning III, on the
>other hand, is essentially conscious self-alteration: it will "throw
>these unexamined premises open
>to question and change" (Bateson 1972, 303). Learning III is a rare
>event, produced by the contradictions of Learning II. On Level III,
>the individual learns to
>control, limit and direct his Learning II. He becomes conscious of
>his habits and their formation. "Certainly it must lead to a greater
>flexibility in the premises
>acquired by the process of Learning II - a freedom from their
>bondage." (Bateson 1972, 304.)
>
>
>The difference arises at level 2. Listening to Yrjo speaking about this with
>students at UCLA on Tuesday morning (we hope to be able to start streaming
>those interactions soon) he emphasized how level 2 involves a reiorinetation
>to the context of learning. Now I had not made that interpretation because
>the phrase "learning to learn" I associated with the work of Harlow on others
>where monkeys were given hundreds of discrcimination learning (level 1)
>problems of the same kind and gradually "learned how to learn" such problems
>so that after a lot of experience, they would solve novel problems "of the
>same type" in a single trial. This seemed to provide a bridge between slow,
>arduous acquisition of habits and insight, or so I interpreted it.
>
>In this way of looking at level 2, level 3 becomse something like
>"metacognition". Now, as a result of the discussion with UCLA and
>here on MCA I am re-
>mediating my own understandings. Will the result be expansion or
>schizophrenia?
>stay tuned;.
>mike
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