Sunday 1 August 2010

Popperian epistemology

I have several times been advised to consider Popperian epistemology when discussing autonomous education. This happened again a couple of days ago when somebody commented here;

' I would suggest that it might help if you understood the basics before attempting a critique; in which regard, I would highly recommend a little reading on the subject of Popperian epistemology as it makes huge sense and is where much of the thinking springs from.'


Perhaps then it is time to look at Karl Popper and his philosophy and see what it can tell us about knowledge, with particular reference to home educators. Before I go any further I should make it clear that I am not proposing a refutation or even a critique of Sir Karl Popper's work. Even my hubris has some limits!

One of the first things one notices when home educators are talking about Popper is that they do not very often quote things like;

'Vs(a)=CTv(a)-CTf(a), where Vs(a) is the verisimilitude of a, CTv(a) is a measure of the content of truth of a, and CTf(a) is a measure of the content of the falsity of a.'

They far prefer snappy sound-bites from his autobiography, things like;

'“...we were wasting our time shockingly, even though our teachers were well-educated and tried hard to make the schools the best in the world.'

At most, they will waffle on a bit about the idea of intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic motivation in learning. Now almost forty years ago I actually ploughed my way through Conjectures and Refutations; a book which makes Kant's Critique of Pure Reason seems as light and frothy as an airport novel. Any home educating parent able to struggle through this while looking after and educating small children has my wholehearted admiration! I think though that Popper's popularity with autonomous educators is less because they have all read works such as Die Zukunft ist offen and agree ardently with the theses expressed in them and more because Popper has been touted by Jan Fortune-Wood, who coined the very expression 'autonomous education', as being the boy to listen to as far as education goes.

Jan Fortune-Wood is of course a priest and one can quite see why a Cartesian dualist like Popper would appeal to her. He did after all believe in an incorporeal and immaterial mind or soul. The only problem is that you would be hard pressed to find any scientist these days who believes that the mind is an entirely separate entity from the brain. Come to that, not all that many theologians believe it either. My daughter and I went to a lecture at St. Paul's Cathedral last year and when Sir John Polkinghorne and Keith Ward were asked about the existence of immaterial souls, they both smiled indulgently! This means that those who follow Popper's ideas about learning have to adhere to a belief which hardly any educated person holds today. It's all a bit embarrassing.

Popper's Three Worlds notion is what we need to understand if we want to know how he thought that humans intereact with and acquire knowledge. Anybody wanting to know more about this should try reading the book he wrote with Sir John Eccles - The Self and its Brain. The book that Eccles wrote without Popper's assistance, The Wonder of Being Human, also explains Popper's ideas about this very lucidly. Anybody familiar with Plato's metaphor of the prisoners in the cave should be able to get it at once; the idea of knowledge and ideas having a separate existence in a realm of their own with which we can interact only via the immaterial mind. The problems with this idea have been obvious for many centuries; namely how an immaterial entity can possibly affect the material world. Since the brain is itself made of matter, then the mind must be linked to it in some very strange and unknown way. I do not say that no neurologist or brain expert in the world subscribes to this theory, but I would be interested if any readers can name me one since Eccles died. Most people today think that 'mind' is simply an aspect of 'brain' and not a thing in itself.

This then is why I have not before examined Karl Popper's ideas as they relate to education and the acquisition of knowledge. Like all stupendously intelligent men and women, Popper thought and wrote about a huge range of subjects. Many of his ideas are still held in just as high a regard as they were fifty years ago. His ideas though about the interactions between brain and mind have mostly been dropped. For autonomous educators to cling on to them is absolutely fine, it's nothing to do with me, but they do need to ask themselves if they are really claiming that Cartesian dualism is true and that the interactions of the World 1 brain with the World 3 realm of ideas via World 2 can be the basis for a modern educational theory. Learning after all has a good deal to do with remembering things. Most scientists today, probably all scientists except one or two mavericks, believe that memories are stored in the brain as physical traces. Eccles and Popper thought that at least some memories are stored in World 2, the mysterious zone which the mind or soul inhabits. Straight away, we can see that if we are following the educational theories of a man who thought that memories are not all to be found in the brain but also floating round in some kind of limbo where souls are also to be found, then this puts us in opposition with practically everything known about the brain.

Why do autonomous educators like to talk about 'Popperian epistemology'? Partly I suppose because it sounds so grand. The English are always impressed by some foreign-born boffin and it tends to baffle one's debating opponents to throw in names like Karl Popper. I do this myself of course by scattering references to Wittgenstein and Nietzsche in my writing. The only difference is that I do it tongue in cheek. I have a horrible suspicion that those claiming to be disciples of Popper, on the other hand, are deadly serious.

One curious circumstance is that Carlotta from the Dare to Know blog, she who urged me to consider Popperian epistemology in the comment quoted at the beginning of this article, lists atheism, humanism and rationalism as among her interests on her profile. I would have thought her the last person to believe in ghostly and immaterial spirits or the existence of souls! It just goes to show that you should never put people in neat pigeon-holes.

61 comments:

  1. "Since the brain is itself made of matter, then the mind must be linked to it in some very strange and unknown way. I do not say that no neurologist or brain expert in the world subscribes to this theory, but I would be interested if any readers can name me one since Eccles died. Most people today think that 'mind' is simply an aspect of 'brain' and not a thing in itself."

    Not the die-hard Wittgensteinians. See Peter Hacker on cognitive neurology.

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  2. This is quite true among certain philosophers. However among those who actually work with the brain, the idea that the 'self' is a separate and incorporeal entity, the so-called 'ghost in the machine', is almost universally rejected. I am quite happy for autonomous educators to believe this, but it is woth pointing out that hardly any scientists believe it likely and nor do many theologians. Founding a an entire theory of education upon this notion strikes me as hazardous amd likely to put one at odds with every piece of scientific research on the subject in the last fifty years or so.

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  3. But philosophers appear to have a disproportionate influence in education. What intrigued me about Hacker was that he appeared to be accusing the neurologists of dualism (the 'brain' does this that or the other), when he clearly knew next to nothing about neurology and was suggesting that instead of the brain, it was the 'self' that did things. He obviously didn't have a dualistic view of the 'self, but hadn't thought through the issues relating to how the 'self' works.

    There's significant resistance to biological explanations of learning in educational fields as it's seen as reductionist. This resistance gives plenty of scope for making up explanations as one goes along.

    I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest anyone is founding an entire theory of education on one facet of Popper's ideas.

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  4. "I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest anyone is founding an entire theory of education on one facet of Popper's ideas."

    Popper's name crops up again and again in discussion of autonomous education. This is not just 'one facet' but the very crux of the matter. This is the way that the human mind supposedly interacts with ideas and acquires knowledge. Popper did not suggest that this ghostly spirit was merely an intellectual construct and not to be taken literally. he and eccles constructed an entire theory of how the interactions were mediated between the material World 1 and the immaterial World 2. This was based upon the cascade of activity in neurones, possibly triggered at the quantum level.

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  5. I'm not entirely clear what you are saying. That specific people who have commented on AE have based their educational philosophy on ideas set out by Popper and Eccles? On all the ideas set out by them? Some of them?

    I found Popper's ideas on the falsification of hypotheses very useful, and would recommend them to others. That doesn't mean I subscribe to all his beliefs, any more than my appreciation of Newton's work means I'm a Rosicrucian.

    Some quotations, in context, or some links might help to get your meaning across.

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  6. Simon wrote,
    "Popper has been touted by Jan Fortune-Wood, who coined the very expression 'autonomous education', as being the boy to listen to as far as education goes."

    I believe Taking Children Seriously were the first to link Popper with home education, Jan was a member of their forum/group (probably an influential member).

    Simon wrote,
    "This means that those who follow Popper's ideas about learning have to adhere to a belief which hardly any educated person holds today. It's all a bit embarrassing."

    It's possible to agree with some aspects of a persons theories without agreeing with them all. One of the founders of TCS was a scientist.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Children_Seriously

    It was founded in 1994 as an email mailing-list by the libertarians Sarah Fitz-Claridge and David Deutsch. Deutsch is also a theoretical physicist at Oxford University.

    Taking Children Seriously (TCS) is a parenting movement and educational philosophy whose central idea is that it is possible and desirable to raise and educate children without either doing anything to them against their will, or making them do anything against their will.
    TCS begins with the observation that most traditional interactions between adults and youth are based on coercion. The TCS model of parenting and education rejects this coercion as infringing on the will of the child, and also rejects parental or educator "self-sacrifice" as infringing on the will of the adult. TCS advocates that parents and children work to find a common preference, a solution all parties genuinely prefer to all other candidate solutions they can think of.[2]

    The TCS philosophy was inspired by the epistemology of Karl Popper. Popper was a professional educator himself before he started to do philosophy. In fact, philosophy was only a second option for him at that time, to be able to emigrate to escape the imminent Anschluss. He was active in the Wiener Schulreform (Vienna school reform) movement,[3][4] and there are connections between the psychology of learning, on which he did his doctoral thesis,[5] and his philosophy.[6] However, as a philosopher, he did not advocate any concrete pedagogy, although he had some general views on the issue.[7] TCS views Popper's epistemology, as Popper himself, as a universal theory of how knowledge grows, and tries to work out its profound implications for educational theory.

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  7. Thank you, AnonySue.

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  8. Hi Suzyg,

    If you are interested in a more detailed description of the beginnings of TCS (which began as a paper jornal rather than an email list as detailed in the Wikipeadia quote) you may find this article by Sarah Fitz-Claridge interesting:

    How did TCS start?

    Simon, Popper's book Objective Knowledge was the book that influenced them rather than his autobiography (according to the article).

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  9. "It's possible to agree with some aspects of a persons theories without agreeing with them all."

    True, but when I am urged to examine somebody's ideas on epistemology, then the supposed processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge are crucial. In this case, knowledge and ideas exist only in a transcendent Platonic realm and can only be accessed by the immaterial spirit existing in World 2. I can't see how it is possible to discuss epistemology of this sort without confronting head-on the problem of Cartesian dualism.

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  10. Simon said:
    "I can't see how it is possible to discuss epistemology of this sort without confronting head-on the problem of Cartesian dualism."

    Popper argued that dualism was untenable without his World 3, so it would be pointless simply arguing for dualism; in his own words "it is the grasp of the world 3 object which gives world 2 the power to change world 1".

    I'm not arguing for Popper's three worlds; in fact, I once described myself as a hardened monist or physicalist. These days, I'm open minded, given that all scientific theories and hypotheses are abstractions that merely describe a model of the world or universe.

    So, dismissing autonomous educators because of questions over Popper's ideas here is somewhat shallow. As suzyg alluded, Newton had some very odd ideas - certainly much less rigorous than either his own work in calculus, mechanics and gravity or Popper's three worlds; nevertheless, his laws of motion and gravity turn out to be an excellent abstraction for most of our everyday experience (apart from SatNav systems), but break down when pushed too hard.

    Ironically, if one pushed Popper hard on falsifiability of his worlds, he'd probably fail by his own standards, but so would other embryonic hypotheses that are now tried and tested theories.

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  11. "So, dismissing autonomous educators because of questions over Popper's ideas here is somewhat shallow."

    I have been asked several times to discuss Popperian epistemology and have now done so. Those urging me to do so evidently thought that Popper's work provided sound grounds for their practice of autonomous education. I am just pointing out that anybody who follows Popperian epistemology is really obliged to believe in discarnate entities. That is not to say that such things as disembodied spirits and souls do not exist, but it is also worth remembering that hardly any neurologists or psychologists believe in a mind which is separate from the brain.

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  12. "I am just pointing out that anybody who follows Popperian epistemology is really obliged to believe in discarnate entities."

    So, if you agree with a single comment a person makes, does this mean you agree with everything they say?

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  13. "So, if you agree with a single comment a person makes, does this mean you agree with everything they say?"

    Why no, that wasn't my point at all. I have many times been told how wonderful Popperian epistemology is and of its relevance to home education. I am pointing out that if you accept this epistemology then an inescapable conclusion is that you must believe in Cartesian dualism. Since very few people who think about these matters are dualists, it is worth thinking about why this should be.

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  14. Simon said,
    "Jan Fortune-Wood is of course a priest and one can quite see why a Cartesian dualist like Popper would appeal to her."

    Wikipedia's view
    The theory of interaction between World 1 and World 2 is an alternative theory to Cartesian dualism, which is based on the theory that the universe is composed of two essential substances: Res Cogitans and Res Extensa. Popperian cosmology rejects this essentialism, but maintains the common sense view that physical and mental states exist, and they interact.

    Also, Popper's Three World Theory of Mind-Brain Relationship

    The three-world theory is so different that reviewers misrepresented it, perhaps because they could not overcome their own beliefs about the mind and brain. Reviews were casual and slipshod, and, especially in the artificial intelligence literature, the three-world theory was disparaged as rehashed Cartesian dualism. Perhaps it didn't help that Sir John Eccles, who wrote the second part of the book (on neurophysiology and the three-world theory), expressed his hope that World 2 survives bodily death. But in the third part of the book - a discussion between Popper and Eccles - both authors make clear their differences of opinion on the spiritual nature of World 2. Popper's opinion is that World 2 is a product of Darwinian evolution, and that it ends with the death of the brain.

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  15. "Wikipedia's view"

    Very kind, but I actually have the Self and its Brain and also The Wonder of being Human in my bookshelf!

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  16. Simon said:
    "I am just pointing out that anybody who follows Popperian epistemology is really obliged to believe in discarnate entities. That is not to say that such things as disembodied spirits and souls do not exist"

    This is gross distortion or, more likely, misunderstanding. Popper's position was that his "World 2" entities are thought processes and "World 3" represents thought contents; nothing ghostly or mystical about any of this. They are real in the sense that they have influence on other entities.

    This is most certainly in the realms of philosophy rather than cosmology or physics. Nevertheless, it may be useful from an epistemological standpoint.

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  17. Simon wrote,
    "He did after all believe in an incorporeal and immaterial mind or soul."

    Popper wrote,
    So we have world 1, the physical world, which we divide into animate and inanimate bodies, and which also contains in particular states and events such as stresses, movements, forces and fields of force. And we have world 2, the world of all conscious experiences, and, we may suppose, also unconscious experiences. By world 3 I mean the world of the objective products of the human mind; that is, the world of the products of the human part of world 2. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, contains such things as books, symphonies, works of sculpture, shoes, aeroplanes, computers; and also quite simple physical objects, which quite obviously also belong to world 1, such as saucepans and truncheons...

    These three world are; the physical world 1 of bodies and physical states, events and forces; the psycological world 2 of experiences and unconscious mental events; and the world 3 of mental products.


    Quoted from, In search of a better world: lectures and essays from thirty years
    By Karl Raimund Popper.

    I can see no mention of a soul, Simon. Can you quote the section in the book you mention that covers this? Popper's quote above sounds reasonable to me - world 2 is where learning (via conjecture and refutation) occurs and it dies when we (or our brain) dies. Doesn't sound like a soul to me.

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  18. "Popper's position was that his "World 2" entities are thought processes and "World 3" represents thought contents; nothing ghostly or mystical about any of this."

    "Quoted from, In search of a better world: lectures and essays from thirty years
    By Karl Raimund Popper.

    I can see no mention of a soul, Simon. "

    The books to read are, as I said, The Self and its Brain and also The Wonder of being Human. The World 2 entities certainly are ghostly! They are completely separate from this Universe of matter and energy. Sir John Eccles discusses at length how they might conceivably interact with the material world. His tentative conclusion is that they might be able to trigger a csacade of neuronal activity. These minds or spirits inhabit a completely different spehere from the Universe which we know and some of our memories are located there rather than in the brain. This is not a philosophical idea at all, but a scientific hypothesis.

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  19. "Sir John Eccles discusses at length how they might conceivably interact with the material world. His tentative conclusion is that they might be able to trigger a csacade of neuronal activity. These minds or spirits inhabit a completely different spehere from the Universe which we know and some of our memories are located there rather than in the brain. This is not a philosophical idea at all, but a scientific hypothesis."

    You did read the bit where Popper disagrees with Eccles on this issue, didn't you?

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  20. Simon said,
    "I can see no mention of a soul, Simon. "

    The books to read are, as I said, The Self and its Brain and also The Wonder of being Human. The World 2 entities certainly are ghostly!"

    I've just read Popper's chapter on World 2 in The Self and its Brain. It is the same as previous Popper quotes - nothing ghostly about it at all. He summarises world 2 as, "the world of mental states, including states of consciousness and psychological dispositions and unconscious states." Are you sure you're not confusing Eccles with Popper?

    <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J5Tf_-Jt3ZIC&dq=The+Self+and+its+Brain&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=hkZXTKzyM4ii0gTVydT-Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false>The Self and its Brain</a>

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  21. "Are you sure you're not confusing Eccles with Popper?"

    Eccles and Popper wrote the book together.

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  22. "Here's the link again, The Self and its Brain "

    Unfortunately, the chapter you need to read is Chapter 4 and it is not included in this online version. You might actually have to buy a book.

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  23. "You did read the bit where Popper disagrees with Eccles on this issue, didn't you?"

    Yes, of course. You have actually read Chapter 4, I take it?

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  24. "Eccles and Popper wrote the book together."

    But this doesn't mean they agreed completely with what the other wrote. Certainly at least one reviewer (quoted above) mentions that "in the third part of the book - a discussion between Popper and Eccles - both authors make clear their differences of opinion on the spiritual nature of World 2. Popper's opinion is that World 2 is a product of Darwinian evolution, and that it ends with the death of the brain."

    It's clear from the third section of the book that they do not agree on everything. Certainly, 'cascades of neuronal activity' sounds as though it is from Eccles' section on neurophysiology.

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  25. "Yes, of course. You have actually read Chapter 4, I take it?"

    Of course not, why else would I be quoting sections from Googlebooks and asking you for relevant quotes from the book? By the time I've read the book this discussion will be long forgotten.

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  26. Besides , the 3 worlds model of knowledge and learning stands on it's own without ghostly explanations. Why do you say above that if autonomous educators believe that knowledge is gained through conjecture and refutation, and that the 3 world model (world 1 = physical, world 2 = thought processes, world 3 = mental products) fits with their experience of the world that they must necessarily also accept an explanation for this process that involves a disembodied spirit or soul even if Popper himself makes this claim?

    I see no need for a soul or any ghostly explanation at all, the conjecture and refutation process along with the suggested model dividing physical from process from mental products fits with my experience of learning and my observations of my thought processes whilst learning. It's perfectly possible for part of a theory to be right and part wrong (and of course, as we are all fallible, it might all be a load of rubbish).

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  27. As I recall, Popper disagreed with Eccles over the idea that free will arose from random events induced by quantum effects; however, I think he later came around to Eccles point of view.

    In any case, Popper's world view was an alternative to Cartesian dualism and it certainly didn't depend on it. Popper's view was not spooky or spiritual in the way that Simon attempts to suggest and then disparage.

    Some of the concepts at issue here - particularly related to quantum effects in the brain - are both highly speculative and depend on physics that may appear bizarre; it was sometimes described by its creators as "spooky". One should not assume that this is connected with anything spiritual, related to magic crystals or any other such nonsense.

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  28. "and that the 3 world model (world 1 = physical, world 2 = thought processes, world 3 = mental products) fits with their experience of the world that they must necessarily also accept an explanation for this process that involves a disembodied spirit or soul even if Popper himself makes this claim? "

    Beacuse the supposed World 3 of knowledge and ideas is completely inaccessible from our physical world, World 1. It can only be reached from World 2.

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  29. As one of the Anonymouses pointed out, what we are talking about is abstractions. Entities can be abstracted at many levels of complexity. The abstractions can be categorised in many different ways. And can have different labels applied to them.

    It's important to bear in mind that someone could identify a perfectly valid abstraction, but could categorise it and label it differently to other people.

    This is a significant issue with emergent properties. Take flocking behaviour in birds or fish, for example.

    A simple heuristic on the part of an individual bird or fish (keep x distance from each adjacent bird or fish) can lead to what looks like highly complex group behaviour. This doesn't mean that we cannot talk about flocks, or their complexity.

    In the same way, Popper, or Plato, or Aristotle, or anyone else, could correctly identify a relationship between entities (an abstraction) but how they categorised that abstraction would depend on the information available to them at the time.

    I understand what is meant by 'the dark night of the soul'. I think it's a valid abstraction of the emergent properties of a group of entities. But how it is categorised is constrained by the information available to the person doing the categorising. Recognising its validity doesn't mean I have to believe in the existence of souls.

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  30. "But how it is categorised is constrained by the information available to the person doing the categorising. Recognising its validity doesn't mean I have to believe in the existence of souls."

    But since Popper's epistemology is rooted in his view of cosmology, anybody following or accepting the validity of his ideas on the acquisition of knowledge must accept that this takes place within the Three Worlds framework. These are not abstractions at all; the World 2 is an actual place where feelings sensations and so on take place. It can only be reached by the physical world of World 1 via what Eccles described as the liason brain. This is neither metaphysical not metaphorical; it is a real place where the 'self' dwells. According to Popper and Eccles it is only from this World 2 that knowledge and ideas may be reached. they are not available to the material world except in manifestations such as physical objects like books. The ideas contained within them exist in another realm entirely.

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  31. As far as I can tell, the three worlds model was describing successive levels of abstraction (although I think I'd prefer to call them levels of complexity because 'abstraction' can refer to simplifications).

    Whether Popper or Eccles or both, believed the worlds were an 'actual place' is irrelevant to the use of the model in education.

    I'm beginning to detect shades of Hacker's objections to 'the brain' having attributions made to it.

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  32. Simon said:
    "These are not abstractions at all; the World 2 is an actual place"

    "Actual place" will get you into deep hot water; at the very least it seems to be a misrepresentation of Popper's view without understanding that such things may have to be abstractions; much of our understanding of modern physics and cosmology is based on things and places that we deal with as mathematical abstractions.

    Consider wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics or dimensions of five and above in string theory. We routinely use and apply (in science and engineering) abstractions of infinite dimensionality in the form of Hilbert spaces. Perhaps the problem we see here is the similar to the one that Simon has with multiverses (I'm not a proponent but they are valid as hypotheses with tentative predictions and tests). The reality is that we can't move forward if everything has to be concrete and tangible in a "common sense" way.

    Things have moved on from Popper and you might also consider that his World 3 entities may be made manifest in man-made systems, particularly as computer programs. These certainly have an influence on the world. Consider the models of market behaviour that are used by financial traders; they may not represent a "reality" as originally intended but the create a new reality which matters more than the original because the ideas - implemented as algorithms - are what drives the markets in many circumstances.

    Again, I'm not arguing for Popper, merely saying that he cannot be dismissed so casually; other areas of his work (e.g., his proposed experiment to disprove the Copenhagen interpretation of QM) have been shown to be fallacious but only after rather more thought that reading a few of his books and pondering over a blog.

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  33. "I'm not arguing for Popper, merely saying that he cannot be dismissed so casually"

    I am not dismissing him at all. Indeed, I have expressed no opinion whatsover of my own about the idea of souls or dismebodied selves. I am just pointing out that such beliefs are an inevitable consequence of following Popperian epistemology. I have no idea whether Popper's cosmology is true or not.

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  34. "Beacuse the supposed World 3 of knowledge and ideas is completely inaccessible from our physical world, World 1. It can only be reached from World 2."

    It seems sensible that you would need to think about ideas (world 2) before you can access them or produce them in their finished form if you are the originator. Just reading through a text that discusses theories isn't going to plant them in your brain, you have to think it through, connect them with existing knowledge, check that it makes sense and make any necessary changes - conjecture and refutation. Why would this process require a 'real' place?

    We know we think, we know we connect new information to existing information, we know that to really understand say a scientific theory we need to do more than just read it through once, we have to think about it. Popper says this happens in his 'world 2', but where this thinking happens is possibly irrelevant if we just want to enable this process. Once we accept that there is a process between the physical world and the world of completed theories, we can experiment with (say) autonomous v. directed and see that the process (wherever or however it happens) works more efficiently with one than the other. I know that I learn better if I have chosen to study something than if I am directed to study it and I have observed the same in children.

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  35. Simon said:
    "I am not dismissing him at all. Indeed, I have expressed no opinion whatsover of my own about the idea of souls or dismebodied selves. I am just pointing out that such beliefs are an inevitable consequence of following Popperian epistemology."

    Again, this is evasive, misleading and vacuous; there really is no point in trying to discuss this with you.

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  36. I have long been aware that many quarrelsome and ill natured people comment here. To enter a discussion on epistemology though and call my opinions, ' evasive, misleading and vacuous', is exceptionally rude even mb the low standards of debate which one habitually encounters here.

    I have read through everything I wrote above and find nothing which is dismissing Popper's beliefs. Rather, I point out that those who follow his epistemology are inescapably drawn towards the cartesian dualism, an idea which is no longer popular with mainstream science. For instance, I said,

    'I am just pointing out that anybody who follows Popperian epistemology is really obliged to believe in discarnate entities. That is not to say that such things as disembodied spirits and souls do not exist, but it is also worth remembering that hardly any neurologists or psychologists believe in a mind which is separate from the brain.'

    'there really is no point in trying to discuss this with you.'

    I am inclined to agree with you anonymous.

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  37. Simon said,
    "Rather, I point out that those who follow his epistemology are inescapably drawn towards the cartesian dualism, an idea which is no longer popular with mainstream science."

    Why do you think others see Popper as proposing an alternative to cartesian dualism? The Wikipedia quote is below but I've read it elsewhere too.

    The theory of interaction between World 1 and World 2 is an alternative theory to Cartesian dualism, which is based on the theory that the universe is composed of two essential substances: Res Cogitans and Res Extensa. Popperian cosmology rejects this essentialism, but maintains the common sense view that physical and mental states exist, and they interact.

    Do you not think that mental states interact with the physical?

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  38. "Do you not think that mental states interact with the physical? "

    The problem here is that it is impossible to define what a mental state is. As far as we know, the brain is made of only matter and has electrical currents flowing through it. There is nothing in it which we can identify as a 'mental state'. As far as we can tell, mental states are a result of and indistinguishable from the physical state of the brain. This is unpalatable to many, because it results in a deterministic view of the world with no room for free will. This is the nature of the problem. As an alternative to dualism, the provisional name of trialism was coined to reflect the three world posited.

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  39. Does it matter if a model helps improve learning?

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  40. "Does it matter if a model helps improve learning?"

    I suppose that depends. I have written before about the Steiner theories. I would be a bit uneasy personally about following a model of education which was underpinned by a belief in gnomes and the idea that planet Earth is really a gint vegetable. Some might feel the same about dualism.

    ReplyDelete
  41. "The problem here is that it is impossible to define what a mental state is. As far as we know, the brain is made of only matter and has electrical currents flowing through it. There is nothing in it which we can identify as a 'mental state'. As far as we can tell, mental states are a result of and indistinguishable from the physical state of the brain."

    But a 'mental state' is an emergent property of the physical processes going on in the brain. It's at a higher level of complexity than the biochemistry. It's perfectly possible to define it, in the same way as it would be possible to define 'thought' or 'calculation'. These are products of the brain in the sense that they are properties of its operation, but they are not physical entities in the sense that the brain is. Nor are they made of some entity other than matter.

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  42. "I would be a bit uneasy personally about following a model of education which was underpinned by a belief in gnomes and the idea that planet Earth is really a gint vegetable. Some might feel the same about dualism."

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    1. We learn things more thoroughly and well if they are learnt through our own choice rather than imposed, and

    2. that we don't just read a scientific theory through once and 'know' it. We have to think about it in detail, compare new information to existing information and decide if/where it fits, if it makes sense? We have to analyse, organise and make sense of the new information, not simply see, hear or memorise. We need to connect new ideas with other ideas already in our heads. Popper calls the world 2, but does it matter what it's called or envisaged as? Isn't he just providing a model to aid understanding? If not, we can still use it in this way.

    We learn through conjecture and refutation whether it's electrical impulses firing across neurons in our brains or something else. Anything that improves the desire to consider ideas in enough depth to really understand them must be a good thing. Autonomous educators believe that this is achieved when people learn things that they choose to learn through intrinsic motivation. If you really want to understand something you will go out of your way to find any missing information you need to make sense of an idea or theory. You will fill in the gaps in your knowledge until the new theory makes sense. If you have been told to learn it you are more likely to just memorise the new information and not worry about any inconsistencies, a bit like the teachers you described who told the children to write down the experiment results they should have got rather than the true results. Why try and work out why it went wrong if you are not particularly interested, you've just been told to do it (teach it or learn it) and you've done it (though maybe an teacher or student with a genuine interest might be interested enough to try and find out why it didn't work later, even if the other parties are not interested).

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