Are Internet discussion forums the answer?

When asked about the origin of consciousness it appears to be conventional wisdom to respond, “Language did it”.

“I believe it is legitimate to take the phrase “I know” and deduce from it the presence of a nonverbal image of knowing centered on the self that precedes and motivates that verbal phrase…The idea that self and consciousness would emerge after language, and would be a direct construction of language, is not likely to be correct.”

Our sluggish ability to adapt quickly to changes in our environment severely endangers the longevity of the human species: it takes generations for new human science theories to migrate into mass common sense comprehension.

Internet discussion forums are the answer.

What is the question?

How can we dramatically enhance the speed of the social osmosis of new human science theories?

Quotes from The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio

"Internet discussion forums are the answer."

I have to say that I find, by and large, that internet forums are a waste of time, apart from some very useful hobby related forums. The fact that I return time and again to SAGG says more about my perception of some of the users present than the value of the ideas and information that I gain or contribute. By that, I don't mean to put anyone down - the obstacle is the medium itself.

So, enhanced social osmosis? I don't believe so. What we have here on SAGG, for example, is - from the entire world - a tiny active group who indulge in an exchange of view points on a limited range of issues which we tend to recycled perpetually. I find it no substitute, and no match, for live face-to-face chatter, as in coffee break at the work place. Conversing directly and efficiently with people who are more than vague ideas on forum pages, who can communicate in real time, non-verbally too, is worth infinitely on the social osmosis scale.

I am suggesting that the discussion forum is a vehicle that can be very useful if we were to use it in a more sophisticated manner than it is now used. The forum does not have to be confined to idle chit chat. If we were to begin to use it in a sophisticated manner we could attract sophisticated individuals or individuals who wished to grow into sophisticated thinkers. It could grow to be a very important means for intellectual discourse.

rede-- So true!!

coberst- Would not consciousness in fact precede language -- rather than the other way around?

There is no subsitute to face to face discussion. Some of our most valuable cues are non-verbal. New-born babies study faces and can recognise familiar ones soon after birth. Even video inhibits the interaction that occurs between people in a conversation.

It's a slow process for us individually and for society as a whole. Why do you want to speed it up coberst? Discussion and review may be slow, but perhaps they ensure the 'new' is good enough to survive.

Look up the meaning of sophistry-- the original source of the word sophistication which you use three times!

The Reverend has an idea about dialogue being a certain way, so I would imagine you both have something in common by projecting an ideal of personal value.
There's a passage in the Bible: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine...
I would imagine you could find a willing and deserving audience in which to share your valued ideas, lest they whom you cast your words at random, trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.

Then there's this other piece of Scripture: Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, looked down from the peaceful celestial realms upon the suffering and confusion in the worlds of illusion. He was filled with such intense compassion that his thoughts, desiring the liberation of all beings, expanded his head into a thousand heads. From his body sprang a thousand helping hands. In each palm an eye appeared.

This allegory represents that compassion is not a blind emotion, but love combined with wisdom. The wisdom of compassion is knowing the inner oneness of all life. This leads to the capacity to recognize the suffering of the world and of others without losing internal stability. Once one has developed this ability, the energy of love can move to heal the suffering.
Compassion does not mean suffering with another; true compassion means recognizing the suffering of others without being affected by it. Only from this platform of stability does the ability to heal manifest.

Ellis

I think that you misread my post.

When asked about the origin of consciousness it appears to be conventional wisdom to respond, “Language did it”.

“I believe it is legitimate to take the phrase “I know” and deduce from it the presence of a nonverbal image of knowing centered on the self that precedes and motivates that verbal phrase…The idea that self and consciousness would emerge after language, and would be a direct construction of language, is not likely to be correct.”

Darwin informs us that the species that cannot adapt to the changing environment will quickly become toast. We presently cannot keep pace with our technology driven environment.

Sorry coberst- I must read things more carefully in future.

The development of language both historically and in each individual is something that interests me, and its study was in fact a large part of my life before retirement.

Can anything else be more fascinating than the different ways we have devised to communicate and express our ideas?

Internet forums, properly organized, are a powerful tool with many uses.

The Ubuntu forums offer hints about the possibilities. The brainstorming forum is a feedback loop. As of this date, users have generated 15,540 ideas for developers to improve the product. They vote on the merit of the ideas offered.

We are likely to see more example of forums used in this way. The open source concept motivates people to share ideas, whereas the profit motive discourages it.

Once well-organized, with advanced software tools, I expect Internet forums to drive advances in education and technology.

I agree, but I expect it will take a fair amount of work. The Internet tools available today are staggeringly impressive compared to those we used in its infancy, before it was marketed to the masses; however, the more advances we make, the more we find out that we need to know.

Also we have to think not about forums, but about the entirety of the web. These are very simple bulletin boards, but there are numerous very different fora that need to be unified. We're still not where we need to be.
Most people just come to the net and learn what they learn and think, well this is the way it should be done!

Can you open a can with a hunting knife? Certainly you can! Done it many times! Vast improvement over using a rock or a screw driver! Imagine you've never seen a can opener. A hunting knife seems like the ultimate tool for opening cans, until someone shows you a P-38.
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There are many axes of interest, many ways to communicate, many ways of addressing those types of communication. Success along one axis does not necessarily translate to success along another. Example: Youtube. Brilliant idea, successfully marketed. But it's actually a basic tool. Ideally, one should not see YT. It should be hidden away behind some other interface. I don't know what that interface looks like, but I know it needs to be different. It needs a tool to fit over the top of it. YT is probably not inclined to build this; outsiders may have some legal issues in building on top of YT.

YT, Bulletin boards (what the OP calls internet discussion forums), wikis, twits, blogs, vlogs, rss feeds, chats - right now it's a random mess with very weak linkages. (That's actually kind of good for now, because it allows each feature to evolve rapidly independently.)

Currently, the vast majority of YT videos are a waste of bandwidth. (That's not quite true. They're a waste for most viewers, not for all viewers.) Same for blogs, and so forth. Even if you're looking in a very narrow domain, searching for the good stuff is irritating. Example: Until recently, if you tried to look up thermodynamics and evolution and you would have had to wade through an interminable amount of utter stupidity to get to anybody who actually knew what they heck they were talking about. (That's not true any more - I just checked and the top sites are from people who actually know the stuff. Don't know what happened there, but you get the idea.)

YT is a basic level tool that COULD in principle BE built upon - and probably eventually will. If not, there will be some competitor that will replace it - eventually. So I'm not really talking about YT, but the function that YT serves - sharing and discussing videos.

I'm not saying YT or discussion fora or anything else is bad. I'm saying they're in their toddlerhood. Kinda like the internet chat programs of 25 or 30 years ago - very primitive stuff, but they were the precursors of what we have today.

Challenges:
Improved methods of actually communicating instead of just talking back and forth
Finding relevant information in a pile of crap (I'm not opposed to having the net full of crap, I just want a way of not wasting my own time on it).
Locating authoritative sources other than self-proclaimed experts. Any time you have an open discussion forum, obscurantists are going to set up a soap box and megaphone, because, you know, like, everything they have to say is, like, you know, all wise and stuff.
Methods of cross-checking or otherwise verifying information
Improved pedagogical delivery and environments
Instrumentation (i.e. measuring stuff, real data means we don't have to accept the obvious revealed "truths" proffered by the philosophical pontificators)
Better HCI (human-computer interfaces)

It's not clear to me that we need to look at these as missions, per se. The kinds of activities that these things support are things that people have always tried to do, but it was always more difficult. The technology is just enabling stuff that we have always wanted to do.

A noble thought if one can rise above their own prejudice when communicating to actually listen and be open to the idea. Often, those that propose the ideal have in mind their own agenda that may not be as universal as the plan idealizes.

One mans garbage is another mans treasure. In this, if one has no tolerance for the other idea, he closes himself off from possibility and sequesters himself behind self made walls of personal idealism.
Often the listener has proclaimed the speaker as a self proclaimed expert and has himself proclaimed his expertise in making the determination in who is qualified and what an expert looks like.
Any time opinion and belief exists in an egoic dialogue someone is going to disagree. If one decides to spend their time highlighting everything they disagree with then one ceases to be productive.

Sometimes experience and answers aren't found via google or Wikipedia, and so if one is frustrated by their inability to verify the content of dialogue by sitting in an armchair staring at an electronic screen, they might actually have to do something other than banter opinion and cast dispersions of personal belief in disgust of another's contribution regardless of what they think .
This is a clear statement.Such as express theyself without fear of condemnation, and the need to attach ones self to everything that is either of interest or disinterest and to become objective rather than subjective and close minded.

Internet tools today probably compare to the automobiles of 1920. They were advanced enough to see clearly that they were the future in transportation, simple under the hood, but unreliable and difficult to drive.

It was probably impossible then to imagine what cars would look like in 2009, but they evolved with far more complexity under the hood, but more reliable and easier to operate. I think we will see the same with the Internet.

Being objective requires more than speaking in third person.
Making a contribution requires more than sputtering evocative language devoid of content. Obscurantists are not without agendas. Progress - even living - requires filters. Humans are not capable of receiving, let alone analyzing, all data. Every kook thinks his own ideas are just as good or even better than as Einstein's and Newton's and Galileo's and no matter how many times you look at them and determine its utterly vacuous they don't want to accept that answer. Their logic circuits are broken and they have no filters on their data. Of course they demand proof that their logic circuits are broken. Sadly, when one's logic circuitry is broken and one doesn't filter data, the concept of proof is meaningless. When evidence is ignored and logic is misapplied, any conclusions are possible.

However, back to the point of the OP. If every single thing that is posted on the internet is useful to someone it does not mean that it's useful to everyone - and finding the nuggets one needs is a difficult procedure. I'm not talking about the case of obscurantists who don't actually have to produce anything useful and wouldn't recognize it anyway. I'm talking about the people who do produce to whose methods, reasoning, etc. the other sort are happily and smugly oblivious.

A fair analogy. The basic idea is there, but we have a lot to fill in: seat belts, shatterproof windshields, air bags, disc brakes, anti-lock brakes, computer control, etc., as well perhaps as rules of the road.

Obviously since need is often personal rather than absolute.

New theories in the natural sciences are quickly integrated into our society because these theories often lead to new business practices that put money into our pockets. Such is not the case with new discoveries in the human sciences.

New theories in the human sciences often take generations to trickle down to Tom and Jane because Tom and Jane pick up these new ideas normally through a process of social osmosis. Such new theories are not generally taught in our schools.

Our educational system prepares us to become good producers and consumers. However, in the name of efficiency, our educational system leaves us ignorant of many domains of knowledge that are vital to our comprehension of matters that seriously affect the political health of our culture and of the world. Cognitive science is just one example of such a domain.

Popularizer is a word I heard historian William Norton Smith use when discussing American Presidents on C-Span. He did not elaborate significantly but it was apparent to me that he used the word to describe individuals who make popular the theories of authors who write about significant concepts that are seldom disseminated throughout the public educational system.

Mr. Smith and I agree that it is essential that someone carry to the people these vital concepts that I mention. I think of myself as being a popularizer. I try to introduce to my readers new and important ideas recently introduced to the world by the human sciences.

Do you have any desire to be a popularizer?

Isn’t the Internet discussion forum an ideal medium for popularizers to perform their function?

That's probably true, but not the main point. Need is domain specific. We are attempting to solve some problem, learn some fact, understand some issue. We investigate. How do we investigate? We can use traditional methods and we can use modern tools like the internet. The internet supplies us with vastly more raw data than we can possibly make sense of. The data are corrupted, disjointed, incomplete, incompatible, irrelevant, and in some cases nonsensical. Though it may have political undertones, this is not a political statement. Though it may have profound philosophical implications, it's not a philosophical point. It's a FACT - and obvious FACT - recognized by anyone who has actually done, for example, mathematical data analysis.

As individuals we are constrained by our humanity. We have lives - the purpose of life is not to analyze data (or have debates or build things). None of us has an infinite amount of time. We would like to assimilate or make sense of something in some amount of real time, hopefully somewhat less than a human lifespan. To do this, we need tools. Now we COULD do without tools or we COULD do with primitive tools (as we are now), but it makes the effort of solving those problems incredibly difficult.

Some problems actually have a freshness date on them. If you don't put a time limit on their solution, they can transmogrify into problems of an entirely different nature.

There is an immense amount that technology has yet to offer up. But it's not just a matter of connecting a bunch of junk together. Someone has to think through the connections. On the good side, there are people who are doing this. On the bad side, most of them are trying to sell us something in the process.

I really hope you like this new challenge! Best of luck, everyone!

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Some think and are lost in the ideas of what should be an answer, missing the obvious within the conflict of definitions. Life is this but it isn't that. This is real and that is illusion by such and such a reason, and reason having a freshness date can transmogrify into something other being that reason is projected from theories (thinking) rather than things that do not transmogrify or change and evolve with human awareness.

The internet is yet one more reflection of human thinking. It is diverse and it will continue to evolve as a reflection of mans need to find meaning in life.

The internet is a means of entertainment.

I think that life only has the meaning which each of us give it

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

Ellis

Thanks.

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?

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.