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Originally Posted By: coberst
This effort must be self-learning. Adults must begin a concentrated effort toward developing an intellectual life far beyond that which now exists
Your're right, modern people just parroting textbooks and massmedia without true understanding of the fact presented. They're oriented to consumption and they've no motivation to learn deeper. What's worse, they refute explanations even at case, such explanation is quite simple.

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Personally I think it takes a lot MORE effort to learn the way to be tech. savvy than it is to enjoy books, discuss ideas face to face with real people--- and enjoy each day as it arrives without worrying if I have informed 42 other people that I had porridge for breakfast or if I have missed Tuesday's trend of the day!!

But I am a well-known Luddite and getting older every moment.

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Originally Posted By: Andist

I think that life only has the meaning which each of us give it
And as we evolve we find greater meaning and understanding with experience.


I was addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but then I turned myself around!!




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coberst Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: Tutor Turtle
Originally Posted By: Andist

I think that life only has the meaning which each of us give it
And as we evolve we find greater meaning and understanding with experience.


I agree comprehension and meaning track side-by-side. Meaning begins with first awareness and grows through knowledge; understanding uses knowledge to create a stronger meaning and in some cases to create new meaning.

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I agree coberst!!

Comprehension and meaning are two sides of the same coin. I have always thought that comprehension usually has some elements of broad understanding of, maybe , concepts or ideas, and meaning is more of a particular, restricted or individual area. But the two overlap each other. Perhaps that's what understanding, with all its complexity, is.

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coberst Offline OP
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Comprehension is a hierarchy, resembling a pyramid, with awareness at the base followed by consciousness, succeeded by knowing, with understanding at the pinnacle.

I have concocted a metaphor set that might relay my comprehension of the difference between knowing and understanding.

Awareness--faces in a crowd.

Consciousness—smile, a handshake, and curiosity.

Knowledge—long talks sharing desires and ambitions.

Understanding—a best friend bringing constant April.


I am a retired engineer and my experience in the natural sciences leads me to conclude that these natural sciences are far more concerned with knowing than with understanding.

Understanding is a long step beyond knowing and most often knowing provides the results that technology demands. Technology, I think, does not want understanding because understanding is inefficient and generally not required. The natural scientists, with their paradigms, are puzzle solvers. Puzzles require ingenuity but seldom understanding.

I would say that understanding is the goal of intellection. To create meaningful knowledge one is advised to construct a sound foundation. The sound foundation for learning is derived from studying what the best minds in history can teach us.

Good judgment is required for all aspects of life; it is especially useful in determining who the “best minds” are. CT (Critical Thinking) is the art and science of good judgment. It is advisable to study CT so that one can make better judgments in all aspects of life.

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Coberst and Ellis, I assume that wisdom--the moral, ethical, loving and best use of knowledge, or learning--is part of the mix.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/10400.html

We need to dialogue about wisdom--depth of knowledge, or learning.


G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org
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Originally Posted By: Revlgking
Coberst and Ellis, I assume that wisdom--the moral, ethical, loving and best use of knowledge, or learning--is part of the mix.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/10400.html

We need to dialogue about wisdom--depth of knowledge, or learning.



I have tried in the past to start a dialogue in several forums, not on this forum however, and found no one interested. The following was my OP:

Talking Circles

I am posting this on this forum but request that this OP is also posted on the Social Sciences forum so that we can get as wide an audience as possible.

I suspect that, like me, many members find only frustration when trying to engage in a serious discourse on the Internet. I wish to solicit volunteers who will join with me in an effort to learn-by-doing. The domain of knowledge that I would like to learn about is the matter of dialogical reasoning as a means for solving some of societies many problems.

Talking Circles is a technique used in colleges to teach dialogical thinking. This technique has evidently proved effective when decisions are required about issues wherein there is no right or wrong answer; such matters as social and moral concerns can be discussed within a non-judgmental climate.

A particular issue is defined in a short statement and every entry is directed only to that statement and no comment is directed at other comments. The group should be small, perhaps seven members or less.

This whole matter is described here:

http://www.saskschools.ca/~psychportal/Psych20/dialectical_reasoning.htm

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coberst wrote:
I am a retired engineer and my experience in the natural sciences leads me to conclude that these natural sciences are far more concerned with knowing than with understanding.

Very true- if generalised!

My background is teaching, but now I'm retired- I taught English and History (which explains the pedant in me!) I have also a masters degree in Special Ed because I became interested in this very subject-- ie -How do we learn? And specifically how do we learn language and then communicate? Or is it communicate and then learn language? This has to include non-verbal communication and is, I think, an area still not fully explored, or understood.

Thus when teaching children(or adults) with some learning difficulties it is indeed necessary to move from the specific to the general, from concrete to abstract and from the known to the unknown. There are some who will need to be taught tasks specifically because they cannot transfer skills from one area to another. In fact we all learn like this, but we do it so effortlessly we do not acknowledge it.

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coberst Offline OP
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Ellis

What is your opinion of 'conceptual metaphor' and its implication for teaching and learning?

Quickie from Wiki:

"In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "prices are rising"). A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience. The regularity with which different languages employ the same metaphors, which often appear to be perceptually based, has led to the hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains corresponds to neural mappings in the brain [1]

This idea, and a detailed examination of the underlying processes, was first extensively explored by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their work Metaphors We Live By. Other cognitive scientists study subjects similar to conceptual metaphor under the labels "analogy" and "conceptual blending."

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

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coberst- I had not heard of the term 'conceptual metaphor' though the description of it describes what happens when we extrapolate from the known to the unknown when faced with new learning. We do take that which we understand and reconfigure it within the terms of our own knowledge and perhaps a metaphorical approach would be another useful way to approach the task of absorbing new material. As to the neural mapping, I have no idea if it would be so, though at the moment there is a great deal of research being done in this field with many unexpected results.

At the moment I am particularly interested in the work of Prof. Susan Greenfield and her latest research describing the effect of video games and other media on the growing brain. Her conclusion seems to allow the possibility that the nature of such media, allowing as it does for instant gratification, is leading to a different mode of learning in the children exposed to it at a very young age. My own take on this is that it certainly could be so, though such media is actually helpful in the teaching of children with learning deficits. Maybe it's not all bad!

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coberst Offline OP
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Ellis

Thanks.

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coberst- I have spent rather more time than I wished reading and thinking about the 'conceptual metaphor' as a concept. I really feel it is an attempt to gather together the various theories of learning and their practical applications under one umbrella. I refer to analogy, concept maps, and such which seem to be contributors to the idea of 'conceptual metaphors'.

Teachers have always tried to find such linkages- I think that the conceptual metaphor is an attempt (and a fairly successful one) to combine such individual linkages into one comprehensive reference. It has overtones of the good old archetype, a device well represented in literature and life. I see this as so because the metaphors referred to have a similar universality.

What is your opinion of the usefulness of the theory with regard to learning?

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coberst Offline OP
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Ellis

I think that this new paradigm of cognitive science, when it becomes generally understood, will revolutionize thinking across all domains of knowledge. This new paradigm for understanding cognition, as it is now and how it has evolved, will change dramatically all aspects of human comprehension.

The book Moral Imagination by Mark Johnson and the book A Clearance in the Forest: Law, Life, and Mind by Steven L. Winter are both books written in response to this new paradigm and how these new theories completely revolutionize the domains of aesthetics, morality, and law.

I won’t try to speak about it as it regards learning and teaching because I am not prepared now to give it the consideration it deserves.

I suspect that one day, not too distant, some individual, who is grounded in such knowledge, will become conscious of this new paradigm and will issue a book about its place in education. If you have the time and desire to write such a book I would suggest that you first find a copy of the book by Winter and the book Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson in some college library near you and examine them.

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