Selected discussion forum contributions.
Each week, we were asked to incorporate what we were reading into a discussion post of varying types. Sometimes it was a piece of writing or analysis, other times it was a task of some kinds that we were asked to create. Please see some of the samples I created in the gallery below.
1 - What is knowledge in philosophy?
In this forum, I created an infographic describing the initial few chapters of Duncan Pritchard’s 2018 book, What is this thing called knowledge?. I connected the concepts about knowledge as a philosophical construct to our class’ opinions on the nature of knowledge from an earlier discussion.
2 - Movie review
In this forum, I reviewed the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to uncover connections between the themes of the film and our readings on introspective knowledge, transcendental idealism and testimonial & memorial knowledge. I included section of dialogue as well as still images in the forum post to clarify and illustrate my ideas.
Movie Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
In my previous teaching job, I worked as an instructor with the Vancouver Film School and I used to teach this movie as part of my curriculum on film lighting. It was shot by the inestimable Ellen Kuras as Director of Photography and I’ve seen so many stills of the film but somehow never saw it all the way through in one go with the narrative. It was so worth it! I've picked out three concepts and three scenes to focus on with this film: Introspective knowledge (abduction), transcendental idealism, and memorial knowledge (backed up by testimony).
Abduction & Transcendental Idealism
The plot centers around Joel Barish, played by Jim Carrey, a morose sort of man who is introverted and thinks he lives a very dull life. He meets and falls in love with Clementine Kruczynski, played by Kate Winslet, a free-spirited, spontaneous woman with a lot of whims and wisdom. The relationship eventually hits a rough patch and the two begin to notice each other’s flaws, begin to bicker, and finally have such an argument that it leads Clementine to erase Joel from her memory. Joel discovers what she’s done and reacts by deciding to erase her right back. During his procedure, the (doctors?) place Joel into a medicated sleep and begin erasing his memories. He experiences this almost as a dream until he realizes that he is having his memories erased. He decides to try and stop the procedure as he understands the value of his memories with Clementine.
Script excerpt of key dialogue and context for Joel's realization that he was losing his memories of Clementine:
INT. VOID - DAY
Slowly, a fluorescent orange sweatshirt comes into being. It gets filled by Clementine, who now has orange hair and is modeling the sweatshirt for Joel in his living room, which comes into focus around them.
CLEMENTINE
You like? I matched my sweatshirt exactly.
She twirls.
JOEL
I like it. You look like a tangerine.
CLEMENTINE
Clementeen the tangerine, I like that.
JOEL
How did he know to call you that?
CLEMENTINE
How did who know?
Joel looks at Clementine, something's beginning to click.
JOEL
Oh, God... (Kaufman, 2003, pp. 69-70)
Clementeen the Tangerine (Gondry, 2004).
I think this is an example of abductive inference since Joel realizes what's happening to him based on an event he experiences and reasons that the best explanation for this event is that his memories are being tampered with (Pritchard, 2018). In a way, he remembers after being triggered by the name 'tangerine', that he asked for the memory procedure to be done, otherwise the conclusion Joel reaches would seem unusual and not the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation might be that he is in a dream, but since his prior experiences tell him that memory tampering is possible, he reaches for this instead.
This scene might also demonstrate transcendental idealism. Up until this point (there is another scene earlier on where Joel exclaims that he is erasing Clementine, but I think he's too angry yet to make the connection between the memories he's in and the procedure), Joel hasn't worked out that the memories he's perceiving aren't happening in real-time. In other words, he he knows that the external world is causing sensory experiences that he (so far) is interpreting as reality. But, the realization Joel reaches occurs when he uses reason to work out that what he is sensing is not in fact the real external world. He understands that his perceptual experience was a deception in this case through reason.
Memorial (and a bit of Testimonial) Knowledge
Arguably, most of the film deals with memories as sources of knowledge. I'm going to perhaps offer a bit of a half-baked idea here about memorial knowledge. Pritchard (2018) argues that memories are only knowledge if it can be supported independently. This introduces a dilemma - how can memory by independently supported without further memory-based beliefs? I think this movie makes it clear that our memories are shared with those around us and that testimony (with its own epistemic issues) can also justify our memorial knowledge. In one of the saddest moments in the movie, Joel and Clementine while in Joel's memory find themselves back at the night they met. Joel is intimated by Clementine and leaves her alone. In the memory, they co-construct an analysis of this memory as they each remembered it and then re-create it together.
CLEMENTINE
No, it's our house! Just tonight -- (looking at envelope on counter) -- we're David and Ruth Laskin. Which one do you want to be? I prefer to be Ruth but I'm flexible. (opens cabinet) Alcohol! You make drinks. I'm going to find the bedroom and slip into something more Ruth. I'm ruthless at the moment.
She runs upstairs, giggling. The room is drying out, turning into a husk.
JOEL
(calling after her) I really should go. I really need to catch my ride.
JOEL VOICE-OVER
I didn't want to go. I was too nervous. I thought, maybe you were a nut. But you were exciting. You called from upstairs.
CLEMENTINE (CONT'D)
(flat)
So go.
JOEL
I did. I walked out the door. I felt like a scared little kid. I thought you knew that about me. I ran back to the bonfire, trying to outrun my humiliation. You said, "so go" with such disdain.
CLEMENTINE
(poking her head downstairs)
What if you stay this time?
JOEL
I walked out the door. There's no more memory.
CLEMENTINE
Come back and make up a good-bye at least. Let's pretend we had one (Kaufman, 2003, pp. 141-142).
Joel and Clementine in the beach house in Montauk, saying good-bye (Gondry, 2004).
Finally, I wanted to offer some ideas on what this film is asking us to reflect on:
How do you (non-philosophically) verify your memories? What methods can we use to justify true beliefs about what we remember?
How could our co-constructed memories with others change if the other person's recollection of the memory were to disappear or be erased?
References
Gondry. M. (Director). (2004). Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind [Film]. Focus Features.
Kaufman, C. (2003). Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: A screenplay. https://stephenfollows.com/resource-docs/scripts/eternal_sunshine_of_the_spotless_mind.pdf
Pritchard, D. (2018). What is this thing called knowledge? (4th ed.). Routledge.
3 - Vantage points discussion.
IFor my discussion post this week I chose to grapple with "Analyzing Social Knowledge" (Corlett, 2007). In thinking about a group project for example, I wanted to know whether Pritchard's (2018) analysis of the conditions that are required to have knowledge would apply at a group level. As in, can a group have collective knowledge? I don't think Pritchard specified that knowledge can only be held by an individual in the chapters we read (though does make brief mention of co-constructed social knowledge) and it begs an interesting question about whether such knowledge can be held collectively and still satisfy conditions such as true justified belief by an epistemically responsible agent (or agents) if we analyze these theoretical components line-by line. Corlett discusses quite a lot of what Pritchard covers so for length, I'm reducing my analysis to a few key comparisons.
Pause here. In thinking about what we know about the conditions that make up whether an agent possesses knowledge, can we apply those conditions to say that a collective can have knowledge, and why or why not?
Collective propositional knowledge
As in Pritchard (2018), Corlett (2007) focuses on propositional knowledge, or statements of fact that are attributed only to humans as sophisticated thinkers. While Pritchard spends time articulating the differences between propositional knowledge and ability knowledge, Corlett takes this difference as a given by defining propositional knowledge merely as "knowledge that". What is more interesting to Corlett is the nature of the agent holding propositional knowledge. As in, what qualifies as a group that can have propositional knowledge.
Pause here. Think about what you know about groups (all kinds of groups). What kinds of groups can hold collective knowledge and which likely don't?
According to Corlett, propositional knowledge can only be held by conglomerates, or those groups motivated by shared goals and that try to form shared beliefs that might lead to decision that guide a group's actions. So, the agents in Corlett's view are groups that make decisions motivated by a shared belief toward a mutually held goal. We should also consider that groups form and disband periodically as is normal. So, any knowledge possessed by a collective needs to be indexed against the time and context in which the group operated together. Pritchard doesn't make a time distinction for individual agents possessing knowledge and maybe that's a useful idea. I used to know many more words in Estonian than I do now since I lived there 10 years ago. I don't know what I used to know as an individual considering time and context as much as a collective might disband and cease to hold collective knowledge past its time and context. But, actually just because a collective disbands, does it necessarily lose its collective knowledge? I've got questions.
Justified, true, belief
Just as who holds propositional knowledge gets messier in thinking about a collective, so do ideas around the conditions a collective needs to satisfy to hold knowledge. Let's start with belief. Unique to groups Corlett argues, groups possess beliefs that vary by strength depending on how many group members believe it and by how much each member believes it. The collective imagined as a group of individuals might not understand the belief equally, nor be equally or similarly motivated in their belief. I think this shows a difficulty of the collective knowledge theory since Corlett is straddling two different levels of agent moving between an individual and a group. If I wanted to test the theory, I'd have problems applying individual level criteria to group-level data. Individual and group level methods are usually considered separately. Corlett argues that belief has to be strong enough to merge some members' motivations without requiring everyone is a group believe the same thing. Which begs the question: How many members with like motivations are required for weak, moderate, or strong belief? Pritchard might avoid this threshold problem by staying in the lane of a purely individual agent. Corlett calls these levels of belief sophisticated summativism, but I struggle to imagine how we would know which level of belief a group reaches.
Pause here. Applying this logic to truth and justification, are there other issues when moving from the individual to the collective knowledge level?
The truth condition, according to Corlett is the same to that considered by Pritchard. Knowledge is either true or false but because we might get lucky in arriving at a true belief, it's not a sufficient condition for knowledge. Collective justification also follows similar reasoning as described by Pritchard as well. Collective justification is still subject to infinite regress with similar responses to never-ending linear justifications such as coherentism, or webs of networked knowledge. What did get interesting in Corlett's discussion is whether or not externalism theories of collective knowledge were really just internalist theories in hiding since both individual and collective knowledge/ higher order reasoning occurs inside our heads as opposed to externally to us. Pritchard defined these two opposing theories very distinctly. Internalism supposes that one has control over one's epistemic standing, while externalism supposes that sometimes our epistemic standing is dependent on outside influences (Pritchard, 2018). Corlett is arguing that in the case of collective knowledge, in order to be reliable, is justified when the belief is produced by reliable means (like higher order reasoning which includes appropriate epistemic virtues). If that's true, then a belief is always justified by by means of the process we come to it, meaning that all reliable justification occurs internally. Corlett concludes by saying that if all this is true, then collective justified belief is both social (produced and accepted by the group) and internal (also produced and accepted by the group).
Pause here. Given both Pritchard and Corlett's arguments about internal and external epistemic justification, do you think all rationally or reliably formed beliefs are internally epistemically justified?
In this discussion, we were asked to read an additional article related to epistemology from a choice of articles on different topics. We needed to connect the ideas presented in the article to those of Pritchard (2018).
Epistemic responsibility
Okay, last one. This article had lots to chew on. This is the largest section of Corlett's article but I'm only going to touch o it for space. Basically, as epistemic responsibility relates to groups, there are additional criteria for responsibility. These are that the group as the author of the belief via its virtuous (open-minded & self-reflective) reliable higher order reasoning process honestly 1. agrees clearly to the belief, 2. voluntarily, 3. because it wants to, and 4. to a strong degree. Each of these criteria acts independently of the other and can be held individually. The combination of these criteria held by the collective determines the level of collective responsibility or degrees of its strength. This gets us into the tall grasses of groupthink and brainwashing where groups are not responsible for their beliefs as these criteria (remember voluntary) are not met. In relation to Pritchard's discussion of epistemic responsibility, I find the idea of voluntarily accepting a belief with intent as an individual equally as interesting on that level as it is for a collective.
Last question. If we consider education as having an epistemic goal to promote understanding via developing intellectual character, can our increasing reliance on technology in education contribute to cultivating collective knowledge that is true, justified, and reliably derived?
References
Corlett, J. A. (2007). Analyzing social knowledge. Social Epistemology, 21(3), 231-247. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691720701674049 (Links to an external site.)
Pritchard, D. (2018). What is this thing called knowledge? (4th ed.). Routledge.
4 - Constructivism across the lifespan
In this discussion forum, we collected together our final set of readings in order to come up with three elements for constructivist teaching. We were then asked to re-create a section of a previous post from mid-way through the course in order to include one of the new concepts we developed and an e-learning resource to exemplify how it would be applied. Images and other media were encouraged.
This week I read Curran et al., (2019), “Adult Learners’ Perceptions of Self-Directed Learning and Digital Technology Usage in Continuing Professional Education: An Update for the Digital Age,” as well as having read prior weeks’ literature from the other discussion fora that I haven’t contributed to. I really wanted to keep up with the course readings during the café weeks even if I was concentrating on contributing to the café discussions. These were Module 10’s Shute et al., (2019), “Games, Learning, and Assessment,” and So, W. W. M. (2002), “Constructivist Teaching in Primary Science.” Additionally, I read module 11’s chapter 9 in Fosnot on disability studies (Reid & Valle, 2005) and the other single-page required resources there.
The three elements for constructivist teaching I’ve identified from the set of readings I explored are:
Self-directed learning (Curran et al., 2019). In the context of continuing professional development/education, that learning be self-directed is a shred view with key differences in how self-directed learning is defined. It can be related to the internal characteristics of the learning and their external environment (curran, 2019). That external environment considerations both inform self-directed learning and are informed by such learning seems aligned with Fosnot & Perry’s description of constructivist learning being influenced by the surrounds and influencing the surrounds (Fosnot & Perry, 2005). Self-directed learning might also be construed as control over one’s own learning, or the choice of what to focus on for specific professional reasons. There is overlap here between self-directed learning and gameplay. Control is also key in game-based learning as players ought to be able to influence gameplay, the game environment, and the learning experience (Shute & Ke, 2012). In So’s (2002) examination of student teachers’ approaches to teaching, learner suggestion for their own learning was non-existent among student-teachers. The context of professional development may provide more opportunities for self-direction as opposed to public school.
Problem-based learning (Curran et al., 2019; Shute & Ke, 2012; So, 2002). In So’s (2002) study some of the lowest scoring items in their battery of teaching items are directly related to problem-based learning. For example, while posing questions seems commonly implemented, going further into expanding on questions with reasons is not. Likewise, engaging in scientific inquiry, testing out learners’ own ideas, and the role of the teacher as facilitator were very low-scoring frequencies of implementation. If a key tenet of constructivism is that learning be active, goal-oriented, and contextualized (Shute & Perry, 2012) then problem-based learning might be an under-utilized element of constructivist teaching that is instrumental in motivation for learning (Curran et al., 2019).
Learner identity as socially constructed (Reid & Valle, 2005). The two elements above are often reserved for able learners (Reid & Valle, 2005). The very idea of difference or impairment is in itself socially constructed. As it pertains to epistemology, who gets to define truth in education is more often not the differently abled but those abled people in decision-making positions who make choices for the differently abled population (Reid & Valle, 2005). In this case, the idea of self-directed learning is immediately taken out of the hands of differently abled learners. Likewise, the social framing of disability as impairment perpetuates teacher-led approaches to teaching and learning, ultimately denying learners the opportunity to participate fully in educational experiences such as problem-based learning experiences. The lenses through which we view our learners and their identities informs a normative dynamic in which we may be teaching to what we think should be, rather than what is best for our actual learners (Reid & Valle, 2005. We need to construct all learner identities as able in order to re-frame our pedagogical choices.
For my recreation of a section of the earlier Statement on Constructivism, I re-worked my second body paragraph to reflect the importance of self-direction in continuing professional education. I also took this opportunity to re-work what I’d said about objective truth in education as not just a pedagogical idea but as a problem for how we understand learner identity.
Here is the original paragraph for reference:
Which leads me to my viewpoint: An extreme of anything is a pitfall. Constructivism as a pedagogy does not have to be taken to such an extreme as to become a minimum guidance pedagogy (Taber, 2020). This was very popular in language teaching for a while and I think it just allowed errors to become fossilized. It was much more straightforward to tell the learners a way that was correct (maybe not the only correct way) and give direct error correction. Scaffolding can be provided that doesn't lead the learners down a strict pre-determined path if such a path isn't canonical to a discipline (Fosnot, 2005). I think that the context of the learning and the (perhaps) socially constructed way the discipline has formed should inform to what degree the teaching strategy is constructivist as opposed to say, cognitivist. Constructivism might also find support in other pedagogic perspectives such as information processing theory and cognitive load theory, which support Taber's (2020) ideas around the brain as a sense-making apparatus. These theories, in turn, are supported by empirical evidence from experimental data, addressing another dichotomy refuted by Taber (2020), that constructivism sits opposite objectivism as opposed to alongside.
And the new construction:
