Learning > Knowledge

Streetlight

The question of epistemology has frequently been spoken of in terms of knowledge: how do we come to know such and such? But perhaps this is the wrong question, and the whole field of epistemology ought to start not from the question of knowledge, but of learning. The original paradox of knowledge is set out in Plato's Meno; Here is the question Meno asks Socrates: "And how will you inquire into a thing when you are wholly ignorant of what it is? Even if you happen to bump right into it, how will you know it is the thing you didn't know?"; In other words, if you didn't have a knowledge of the thing already, how would you know what you're looking for?

Socrates solution is to invoke Plato's theory of reminiscence: our souls, being immortal, already have knowledge of everything prior to our birth, and to come to know something is to recollect this prior knowledge which we already have. Famously, the Meno ends in a kind of aporia, with Socrates voicing doubt about this theory after being pressed by Meno.

It is arguable that Meno's paradox remains the basic problem of epistemology today. Even the famous Gettier cases are, in some sense, a restatement of Meno. In all cases however, what is left out - or at least given short shrift - is the question of learning. At best, learning is here an 'empirical' problem: knowledge is something we will attain (or not), and learning is just the 'means' by which we attain knowledge. Knowledge is a question of principle, learning a matter of 'facts'. But what if this is exactly the wrong way to look at things? What if the true question is not how we come to know something, but how we come to learn something?

In a striking passage in his Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze speaks of "a new Meno", one which remains to be written but in which "knowledge ... is nothing more than an empirical figure, a simple result which continually falls back into experience; whereas learning is the true transcendental structure" in which "the whole pedagogical situation is transformed". At stake here is a reconfiguration of knowledge as something that is never arrived at once and for all: knowledge as something continually in process, something that never 'sits still' as with the traditional image of knowledge according to which we either know or not-know.

The advantage in thinking of epistemology in terms of learning (rather than knowledge as such) is that it allows us to approach knowledge in terms of it's coming-into-being; unlike the Platonic theory of reminiscence, in which learning is always a matter of recalling an already-constituted knowledge, to treat learning on it's own terms is to understand how we come to know something in the first place. Knowledge, in this sense is not what is important: knowledge is an end-result, a surface effect of a more primary process.

In learning to swim, for example, we do not simply either know or not-know how to swim. If this were the case we would either drown, or never begin to swim to begin with. Instead, learning to swim is a matter of learning to move differently, a 'degree' of movement continuous with our walking on land. Swimming is in fact a particularly apposite example, because - especially in the case of swimming in the sea - even when we 'know' how to swim, it's still a matter of 'learning', moment by moment, how to comport ourselves depending on the movement of the currents as they drift across our bodies.

There can be no formula for swimming: it must be practiced. The learning never stops: to 'know' how to swim is to be learning it, moment to moment, at an incredibly 'contracted' rate. All knowledge, in this sense, is a matter of 'contracted learning', at every point.

apokrisis

↪StreetlightX

So is there some important difference from pragmatism here?

Streetlight

What do you mean?

Wayfarer

I don't think that does justice to what Plato is after, which is knowledge of the real. The theme in many passages is, how do you know what you think you know? Taking virtue as an example, what is about 'virtue' that really defines the concept of virtue, as distinct from this or that instance of virtue. In asking that question, the aim is to find what is essential, what virtue really is, as distinct from its appearances. The passage about how you know what to look for - if you knew it, you wouldn't need to look, if you don't know it, you wouldn't know what to look for - are in my view all allusions to higher knowledge, not knowledge of practicalities, or even knowledge of the arts, and so on. In the rationalist tradition, the reason the soul has all knowledge before birth, is because the soul is microcosm of creation (although that sentiment was made explicit in hermeticism.)

But I think much of idea of higher knowledge, of philosophy as a spiritual pursuit culminating in the vision of the One, has been generally redacted out of Platonism, as it is out of keeping with today's naturalism.

Streetlight

Sure, but the Platonic understanding of knowledge still bears it's rather considerable influence over epistemology today. Whether it be knowledge of the Ideas or knowledge of the sublunary, the same model tends to be at work in both, one in which learning remains a matter of contingent realization. The problem isn't that people have forgotten the Platonic problematic - it's that they still remained far too governed by it. There's still a lot more work that needs to be done before we twist ourselves free of the Platonic legacy.

apokrisis

What do you mean? — StreetlightX

Don't pretend that's a difficult question.

Streetlight

Given your idiosyncratic 15 word vocabulary, I dont want to make any presumptions about what you're asking.

apokrisis

↪StreetlightX

Which word is giving you trouble?

Streetlight

Pragmatism.

apokrisis

↪StreetlightX

Such a drama queen.

Cavacava

↪StreetlightX

I think Plato's emphasis in his Meno is on the (necessary) relationship/roles between the teacher and the student. Is there really a choice in what the slave boy answers, only in the sense that he can submit or not submit to the necessities of his own thinking. I think this is what Plato means by recollection, the active search for the necessities that comprise thinking, it is unlike memory; Aristotle (I think) also makes this distinction.

wuliheron

A newer argument is that authenticity is the issue rather than knowledge. Without authenticity the brightest lights can be left on because nobody is ever actually home. All the knowledge in world cannot do anyone a damned bit of good if its wielded by the next Adolf Hitler or Three Stooges. All of which reflects the fact one of the current areas of intense research is figuring out how memory works. Without memories there's nothing to discuss and nothing to be done about it, but the same is true for when you rely too heavily upon memory and have no real awareness of your situation. Without a personal truth you might as well be talking to the nearest wall, hence, Socrates urged everyone to "Know thyself".

WiseMoron

↪apokrisis

So is there some important difference from pragmatism here — apokrisis

Not sure how this is relevant, but try to be more pragmatic.

There can be no formula for swimming: it must be practiced. The learning never stops: to 'know' how to swim is to be learning it, moment to moment, — StreetlightX

I like this part because it is possible to forget knowledge, which is also important to consider as well when thinking about how we gain knowledge. If you don't practice a certain activity well and long enough, you will forget the very things you have previously learned. It's the same with muscles as well. Our muscles connect to our brains in a sophisticated way in which the brain remembers and memorizes complex muscle movements; for example, batting or throwing a ball or even running in a certain way. (why do you think physical therapy exists?) Thus, if we don't train our muscles enough, both in quantity of time and quality of training, they will become lazier and forget how to operate previous complex muscle movements well. The same principles on our muscle movements can be applied similarly to how the brain learns knowledge I believe.

Thank you for the swimming analogy, StreetlightX. I don't fully understand the analogy, but at least I feel like I grasp a big part of it. I don't know anything about Plato's theories anyways.

_db

↪StreetlightX

Didn't Quine want to naturalize philosophy, and transform psychology into a sort of epistemology? In that knowledge would not be the only aspect of epistemology, but also how we come to know such knowledge, i.e. learning as you said, which of course would have important consequences for theories of knowledge.

Janus

The question of epistemology has frequently been spoken of in terms of knowledge: how do we come to know such and such? But perhaps this is the wrong question, and the whole field of epistemology ought to start not from the question of knowledge, but of learning. The original paradox of knowledge is set out in Plato's Meno; Here is the question Meno asks Socrates: "And how will you inquire into a thing when you are wholly ignorant of what it is? Even if you happen to bump right into it, how will you know it is the thing you didn't know?"; In other words, if you didn't have a knowledge of the thing already, how would you know what you're looking for? — StreetlightX

"How do we know that we know?" That's the essential question of epistemology. "How do we come to know such and such" really has this more central question at heart. This is also equally a question about how we define knowledge. We understand ourselves to be in possession of knowledge, the question is. what it means to be in possession of knowledge. If we could be certain of the definition of 'knowledge', then we would know what is meant when it is said that we possess it. Meno's Paradox is only an apparent paradox in an analogous way to how Zeno's Paradox is merely an apparent paradox. We never start from a position of being wholly ignorant, just as we never start from a position of absolute rest, these paradoxes are generated by the absolutist character of rational analysis and theorizing. In practice we always already know, just as we are always already arriving and departing; moving. But how can we be certain of what we know. certain that we know it, and certain of what it is that we know?

So, the question is really the question of certainty. How can we be certain we have learned something? When it comes to knowledge of facts there are stock answers, and if we know these stock answers then we can be certain that we have learned, and that we know, but this certainty only prowls within the limited ambit of the stock. When it comes to skills like writing, painting or playing a musical instrument, we know we have learned when we can perform the activity in question. We can always learn more, and become better.

Socrates solution is to invoke Plato's theory of reminiscence: our souls, being immortal, already have knowledge of everything prior to our birth, and to come to know something is to recollect this prior knowledge which we already have. Famously, the Meno ends in a kind of aporia, with Socrates voicing doubt about this theory after being pressed by Meno.

Anamnesis is not necessarily only understandable as the soul's recollection of things known from before birth. Amnesis is forgetting or dispersing yourself, which is a reflection of the fragmenting character of rational analysis. Anamnesis is the re-collecting of yourself, the synthesis of your intuitive knowledge, a synthesis which may undoubtedly be sharpened and informed by the analysis which has previously been carried out, but which transcends the possibilities of any analysis. So certainty is the certainty of synthesis, but this certainty is itself unanalyzable, just as truth and meaning are. Analysis wants to get its nasty little beak in there in order to swallow certainty for itself, but it never can. Knowledge and certainty only really come into fullness with faith; the faith in one's own experience of knowledge and certainty. It can never be guaranteed by any analysis no matter how comprehensive.

In summation: certainty cannot ever be more than a feeling.

Streetlight

I like this part because it is possible to forget knowledge, which is also important to consider as well when thinking about how we gain knowledge. If you don't practice a certain activity well and long enough, you will forget the very things you have previously learned. It's the same with muscles as well. Our muscles connect to our brains in a sophisticated way in which the brain remembers and memorizes complex muscle movements; for example, batting or throwing a ball or even running in a certain way. (why do you think physical therapy exists?) Thus, if we don't train our muscles enough, both in quantity of time and quality of training, they will become lazier and forget how to operate previous complex muscle movements well. The same principles on our muscle movements can be applied similarly to how the brain learns knowledge I believe. — WiseMoron

Yes, thinking of things in terms of forgetting is quite a useful way to approach things too. If we move to valorize learning instead of knowledge, forgetting no longer becomes something 'external' to knowledge, as if a defect or a blemish on an otherwise perfect thing, but part and parcel of what it means to know to begin with. If, in swimming, we 'learn' all the time, then in a similar manner we forget all the time too. Indeed there is no learning without forgetting, to the point where learning and forgetting basically become two inseparable sides of a single coin.

To use a more technical vocabulary, neither learning nor forgetting are merely 'empirical' matters, contingent events that occur 'on the way' to knowledge, but become properly transcendental structures of all knowledge as such. Deleuze, who I cited above, speaks for instance of forgetting as a "positive power", rather than a negative one, one which is necessary for any instance of knowledge at all. (In this he basically follows Nietzsche, who also esteems the power of forgetting:

"Forgetting belongs to all action, just as both light and darkness belong in the life of all organic things. A person who wanted to feel utterly and only historically would be like someone who was forced to abstain from sleep, or like the beast that is to continue its life only from rumination to constantly repeated rumination. For this reason, it is possible to live almost without remembering, indeed, to live happily, as the beast demonstrates; however, it is generally completely impossible to live without forgetting." (On The Use and Abuse of History for Life).

In every case it's always a matter of knowledge being something constitutively 'on the move', a matter of continual, unstillable learning. Knowledge, understood in the old way, as static 'pieces of information' which we come to either know or not-know (and in which forgetting is wholly negative), would be entirely impossible, an untenable idea of what knowledge is.

Streetlight

I think Plato's emphasis in his Meno is on the (necessary) relationship/roles between the teacher and the student. Is there really a choice in what the slave boy answers, only in the sense that he can submit or not submit to the necessities of his own thinking. I think this is what Plato means by recollection, the active search for the necessities that comprise thinking, it is unlike memory; Aristotle (I think) also makes this distinction. — Cavacava

What's interesting though is that the reflection on the necessity of thought directly and explicitly excludes any consideration of teaching and learning. The lines right before the slave is introduced in the dialog say exactly this:

Meno: Yes, Socrates; but what do you mean by saying that we do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection? Can you teach me how this is?

Soc: I told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and now you ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that there is no teaching, but only recollection;... — Meno

And then further down, in discussion with the slave:

Soc: Mark now the farther development. I shall only ask him, and not teach him, and he shall share the enquiry with me. — Meno

(my emphasis).

Necessity here is reserved only for recollection. What would be interesting though is to rethink necessity on the basis of learning: that pedagogy imposes it's own necessity, as when, to go back to swimming, one is forced to 'learn', at every moment, the sway of the current and the way in which to compose oneself among it in order to stay afloat. In a formula, the idea would be to 'keep' the emphasis on necessity, but displace the the field of it's functioning: not knowledge already constituted (residing in some mythical past), but knowledge in the process of coming-into-being.

Thus, in an implicit critique of Plato, Deleuze, for example, will argue: "Do not count upon thought to ensure the relative necessity of what it thinks. Rather, count upon the contingency of an encounter with that which forces thought to raise up and educate the absolute necessity of an act of thought or a passion to think." - One learns in relation to an encounter with that which must be learned from - the current of the wave, a language, the grain of wood out of which one sculpts, etc.

Streetlight

↪darthbarracuda

I'm afraid my Quine is limited to a couple of essays here and there, and not on this subject. Would be interested in any particular readings you'd have to recommend though. Prima facie I'm suspicious of treating learning as a psychological, rather than properly ontological property however.

Cavacava

↪StreetlightX

Necessity here is reserved only for recollection. What would be interesting though is to rethink necessity on the basis of learning: that pedagogy imposes it's own necessity, as when, to go back to swimming, one is forced to 'learn', at every moment, the sway of the current and the way in which to compose oneself among it in order to stay afloat. In a formula, the idea would be to 'keep' the emphasis on necessity, but displace the the field of it's functioning: not knowledge already constituted (residing in some mythical past), but knowledge in the process of coming-into-being.

Thus, in an implicit critique of Plato, Deleuze, for example, will argue: "Do not count upon thought to ensure the relative necessity of what it thinks. Rather, count upon the contingency of an encounter with that which forces thought to raise up and educate the absolute necessity of an act of thought or a passion to think." - One learns in relation to an encounter with that which must be learned from - the current of the wave, a language, the grain of wood out of which one sculpts, etc.

In the Meno the slave boy's lesson involves recollection, memory and images (to best of my knowledge it's the only place in 35 dialogues that Socrates writes anything). Socrates notes that the boy is in the right frame of mind to learn [unlike Anytus or Meno himself for that matter), and after going from one stage of the problem to the next the boy finds himself perplexed.
At 84d

"Now notice what, starting from this state of perplexity [aporia] he will discover by seeking the truth in company with me, though I simply ask him question without teaching him. Be ready to catch me if I give him any instructions or explanation instead of simply interrogating him on his opinions [doxa]"

Note how categorical Socrates is "...he will discover the truth" and note that Socrates uses the word 'doxa' (from my old notes) for the 1st time in this dialogue, which may tie into your statement that

In a formula, the idea would be to 'keep' the emphasis on necessity, but displace the the field of it's functioning: not knowledge already constituted (residing in some mythical past), but knowledge in the process of coming-into-being.

I think this is why math is the paradigm case for learning. It forces students to work their way through a series of steps in the course of a proof, to judge that what is concluded following from each step along the way. Where each step in itself is contingent (like the breath stroke vs the crawl) and taken as a whole, the truth of proof lies in understanding how these contingent steps lead to an noncontingent conclusion. What is very interesting here is that the proof Socrates choose as an example involves the square root of 2, which he would never be able to explain in speech to the boy.

Socrates implies that knowing starts with aporia and ends in knowledge and not true opinion, which is what the equally as famous last part of this dialogue discusses. So if I am following Deleuze, true opinions are contingent, it is only through our encounters in the world that we find what we must necessarily know, and it is only be working our way through the math or swimming that we can progress, getting somewhere.

apokrisis

The dichotomy is not between knowledge and learning but hinges on the distinction between constraint and construction.

So in Pragmatic thinking, minds come to know the world by forward modelling - creating states of expectancy. And that Bayesian probabilistic reasoning then sets the mind up for discovering what is new, surprising, hoped for, or otherwise can count as a difference that makes a difference, a signal among the noise.

So the mind forms a state of constraint. It has a positive view about future probabilities. And that is why the improbable sticks out.

But then construction also plays its complementary role in building knowledge, or habits of interpretance. Every difference that makes a difference is a new fact. Facts add up. New habits of expectancy can be learnt as a result. Minds become more skilful at constraining their uncertainty about the course of the future and so more "knowledgable".

It is all part and parcel of a Pragmatic or enactive understanding of mentality.

Pragmatism also emphasises the role of abduction and evaluation in the business of coming to know the world. Embodiment is what is important.

Meno was about the ability to see the rightness of mathematical/logical truths. Deduction was a big thing when it was first a new trick. But it's just inverse induction. So again it is about understanding the constraints-based thinking that the laws of thought encode.

So the OP appears to set up a view of knowledge as a library-like accumulation of dead, disembodied, facts. I don't see the Meno even being about that. But anyway, if we are talking about the full psychological arc that is about coming to know the world in a useful fashion through bootstrapping reasoning, that just is standard issue pragmatism. (Look it up in a dictionary near you.)

Streetlight

Socrates implies that knowing starts with aporia and ends in knowledge and not true opinion, which is what the equally as famous last part of this dialogue discusses. So if I am following Deleuze, true opinions are contingent, it is only through our encounters in the world that we find what we must necessarily know, and it is only be working our way through the math or swimming that we can progress, getting somewhere. — Cavacava

Yeah, exactly: the idea is to recognize the incredibly precarious nature of thought - there is no guarantee that thought will take place: it is only ever takes place under the aegis of an encounter by which it is forced to be exercised according to singular circumstances in singular occasions. Interestingly, Deleuze implies that what is encountered in the Meno (by the boy) is precisely Socrates himself: "Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering."

One could say that what Socrates doesn't take into account is his own position as a interlocutor, his own being as one who is encountered, fortuitously, and from which the necessity of thought follows. And there's also a very interesting discussion to be had about the epistemic status of math itself, which is far less ideal that is usually thought - it's no accident, despite it's singularly anomalous appearance in the dialogues - that Socrates has to resort to drawing a geometric figure in order to explain what ought to be ideal. The realm of the sensory cannot be excluded from even math.

Metaphysician Undercover

The original paradox of knowledge is set out in Plato's Meno; Here is the question Meno asks Socrates: "And how will you inquire into a thing when you are wholly ignorant of what it is? Even if you happen to bump right into it, how will you know it is the thing you didn't know?"; In other words, if you didn't have a knowledge of the thing already, how would you know what you're looking for? — StreetlightX

There is an inverted form of this paradox which is central to Plato's Theaetetus. What happens is that Socrates, with his group, seek to define "knowledge". What happens though, is that they already have amongst them, a preconceived notion of how "knowledge" ought to be used. This is, that it ought to be used to refer to something which excludes falsity. So they go through many examples, different descriptions of what knowledge is thought to be, and find them all to be incapable of fulfilling this condition. At the end, they are ready to give up, and concede defeat in there quest to find knowledge, when Socrates suggests, perhaps we have been looking for the wrong thing.

This takes the opposing extremity to the position stated in the quote from Meno. In that quote, if you don't have an idea of what you are looking for, you can never find it. In the Theaetetus, the condition is that if you have a description of what you are looking, but the description is somehow wrong, then again, you will never find what you are looking for.

What is at issue here is the nature of identity. And what is exposed by these two extreme examples, is two distinct approaches to identification. In the case of Meno, it is necessary that we have within the mind, some sort of description, or even just an image of what "X" refers to, in order that we can proceed with our senses to identify an occurrence of X. In the example of Theaetetus, we must rid ourselves (forget) of any such preconceived description, or image, of what "X" refers to, and proceed to observe how "X" is used by people, to formulate an understanding (learn) of what X refers to. The latter is the basis of Platonic dialectics.

So here we have two sides of the coin. There is the claim from Meno, that we must know what X is, prior to being able to identify any instances of X. But this creates the problem of infinite regress in reminiscence, such that the Idea of X necessarily would precede each and every instance of using "X" as an identifier. That implies an eternal Idea. The position in Theaetetus, and what is proper to Platonic dialectics, is that the Idea of X is learned, and developed from observing the use of "X". Such "learning" is beautifully explained in Plato's Symposium. This principle, exposed by Plato, that the Idea is produced by learning, is what allows Aristotle to refute Pythagorean Idealism. The Idea is now understood as coming into existence, a type of becoming, which is dependent on the human mind. Any existence of the Idea prior to being "discovered" by the human mind, is not actual existence, it is determined by Aristotle to be potential only.

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