The cosmology of topological approaches to cognition

I'm not sure this post will make much sense. But I want to start putting things together..

The things I'm putting together are a view of cognition which is consistent with positioning theory, inasmuch that it  emphasises relationships for thinking about cognition. The space between an illocutionary act and a perlocutionary effect is essentially a relational space. This means that we can abstract away details of complex mechanisms within an individual mind, and speculate on possible consistencies between inner and outer worlds: what is reflected in the inner world, is also available (and produced) in the outer world. The most obvious analogy to this is that of resonance (although I'm uncomfortable with Sheldrake's 'Morphic Resonance', maybe he's got something...?). A body resonates because it is in an environment which is sympathetic to the frequencies at which it resonates, and feeds back those resonant frequencies. I wonder if cognition is like this...

What if in the Viable System Model, the regulating layers were merely different frequency resonators? And some frequencies have an impact on others - both within the individual and socially? To what extent do 'higher' or lower frequencies 'regulate' other frequencies? I'm still thinking about this...

But the link between frequencies and the VSM means a number of things can be explored.. First of all, the work I am currently doing in social simulation, with different agents regulating each other like a big Ashby homeostat, can be thought of as a frequency spectrum. Then there is the issue of double description (or double-artitculation) in knowledge performances. A knowledge performance not only involves different frequencies of the different regulating mechanisms of an individual, but these frequencies are performed in a material context which determines that nature of performance: so we can have a content-focused performance, or a person-focused performance, or a tool-focused performance. Extending the 'frequency' analogy, I wonder if the different types of knowledge performance, and the resonance of individual VSM frequencies in a material context is rather like making sounds with different 'instruments': each instrument equates to a different context for a knowledge performance. Thus what happens is a very complex sort of 'orchestration': the regulating levels of an individual will be conditioned by the different sorts of resonant frequencies to be found in the environment: the same melody might be played by a tuba or by a violin; essentially they are the same, but have different properties.

The VSM categories, 'instruments' and a frequency spectrum all invite analysis of their symmetry... and that is one of the most interesting things about the social simulation... what it might reveal in terms of symmetrical diachronic patterns. And then of course, there's synchronic symmetry in terms of the relations between one frequency and another.

But then we have to think about topology too... Because diachronic symmetry and synchronic symmetry meet at some point, where synchronic structures are changed in response to a recognition of diachronic pattern. (this seems to be what Mezirow's pedagogy is all about - fascinating). What do these topologies look like? (maybe a Riemann surface like this). This point at which synchronic structures are changed seems to occur when we become aware that our knowledge of the topology of our being is wrong, or usually, a double-bind. At those points a new topology is mapped out. I think...

What's really fascinating me is that the topologies that we construct are very complex. I'm fascinated how similar this topology is to the cosmic topologies of the universe..  If they are toruses, knots, or Riemann surfaces of some sort, what does that all mean?? Or is that question just a new point on my own topology?

Walking the surface of time: the topology of learning

Time is the hidden factor in our thinking about learning; indeed, it is the hidden factor in our thinking about anything. I think the conception of time in learning processes is linear and individualistic and this is something that requires a deeper critique.

Lineally thinking, we conceive of time as "we do one thing, we do the next thing". In essence, "we progress". Yet linearity does not I think reflect our actual experience of time. For whatever we do next depends on what we might have done before: not even immediately before, but maybe the 'before' long ago (the 'before' may even be mystical). Indeed, when I think 'why' I am doing the thing I am doing now, the 'befores' seem multiple and complex, each one fading in and fading out as I anticipate my next move.

Individually, our obsession with time and the linear processes of action we take in it are conceived within the context of our individual selves. This despite the fact that whatever we do, we do to others, and that whatever we do is shaped by others.

My thoughts about learning outcomes yesterday hint at a critique of the learning outcomes as essentially belonging to this thinking about time and learning. The criticisms are:
1. learning outcomes are linear and cumulatively progressive;
2. learning outcomes are individualistic, not collective

As a way of dealing with these two problems with the conception of time, I want to suggest an alternative based on:
1. time as 'pattern', rather than process
2. time as collective, rather than individual

When I think "what does my time look like", I can conceive a pattern. I've been reading about Riemann surfaces (Weyl wrote a great book about it). This may be what time looks like...









And if time looks like this, it has pattern and symmetry. How does this relate to "what I do next"? How does it relate to the collective?

Personally, I find that what I do next is determined by perceiving an aspect of 'patterning' in my experience. I have some knowledge of where I stand on the surface of time, and some understanding of the local topology. My understanding of this pattern may be due to an appreciation of its symmetry. I also find that that this symmetry is not purely individual. The symmetry relates to my action, and the consequences of my action with others. Is my action to seek archimedian points which lie between my internal state and the social forces I am subjected to? Is the surface of time the output of continual plotting of archimedian points?

Much as I'm fascinated by the metaphysical implications of all this, I think it's useful to be practical. I've been looking at Jack Mezirow's emancipatory pedagogy recently. It strikes me that he's doing something quite similar to the identification of 'double-binds' I did with the computing students the other week. I think that to see your way through a double bind is precisely to get a bigger feel for the topological landscape you inhabit. Unpicking a double-bind is to identify an archimedian point, and by so doing, the topology and symmetry start to reveal themselves.

Learning outcomes need to be seen as part of the double-bind, an aspect of the social forces that shape agency. If we use them like this, then we might be able to leverage something both rational and deeper in the learning processes of teachers and learners.

Beyond Learning Outcomes

I've been thinking about the examination and assessment of musical performances. Much depends on being 'convincing', 'correct', 'accurate', 'fluent' in the style and manner of performance. Indeed, in the rubric of music examinations will often use these sorts of words. But of course, these aren't (and can never be) objective assessments. It depends on creating a relationship with an examiner; it depends on communication. When we say "this is a convincing performance" what are we saying? Are we saying "what I experience on hearing this is a feeling which I associate with the feeling that I have had when listening to performances which I know to be good"? There is the whole question of 'family resemblance' that Wittgenstein was so fond of pointing out... "This performance feels like one of the family of the 'good and true' performances which I know..."  How does a skilled performance become 'one of the family'? How does a radical performance define itself and gain acceptance outside the 'received' family, but starting a new one of its own? To me, these questions highlight the deficiency in our current thinking about 'learning outcomes'.

The organisational benefits of learning outcomes are significant: they have contributed to the educational institution having a conversation within itself about how to organise education. They have also become embedded in the inspection regimes of government authorities who audit public expenditure on education. However, the important question to ask is "what have they done for learners?" This question will I believe become more important because understanding the learner's problem is going to be central to institutional survival as the new fees regime comes into place.

Learning Outcomes are basically a behaviourist take on education: that the black box of the learner, through conditioning, can be shown to have acquired new behaviours which can be objectively measured, and which can be the basis of assessment of the aptitude of the learner, and the effectiveness of the teaching. The confusion which has surrounded the issues of "what has gone on in the learner?", and "was the teaching any good?", together with the utility of learning outcomes for organising curricula into modular units so that learning can be organised across institutions more easily, has in effect shrouded the fundamentally behaviourist ontology which lies behind it.

If we look at the issue of learner needs, and what the best teaching can do, then I think there is something going on which relates to unpicking double-binds. Indeed, the worst teaching can reinforce the double-binds of the learner, whilst maintaining a stable relationship - and adhering to the rhetoric of learning outcomes. Often the most fundamental question a teacher can ask of a student desperately trying to meet a learning outcome is "why are you doing this?". By organising our system around learning outcomes, we've created an organisational structure where that most basic of questions is not only a challenge for the learner, but also risks putting the teacher at odds with the policy of the institution. Increasingly it takes a brave teacher to ask such a basic question.

The problem seems to be that however useful learning outcomes are for the internal conversation of the institution, they may be pretty useless as a measure of learning in terms of freedom from double-binds. They tend to be at the heart of the autistic conversation in the institution. Worse, they can make it increasingly difficult for teachers to ask the powerful questions that are necessary to really help learners. They can be a barrier to empathy. They lead teachers to judge that a skilled performance is or is not 'one of the family' on shallow criteria without allowing them to really consider what being 'one of the family' means.

Is there a way forward?

What if you could pin learning outcomes to learners' double binds in some way? Obviously this is a bit ambitious, but I'm thinking about extending my questionnaire of computing students (http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com/2010/12/programming-freedom-from-therapy-to.html) in a way which might help the process move forwards. The issue seems to be the transparency and objectivity of the process,  which makes itself available to inspection, and the meaningfulness to learners. Maybe in this way the meaningfulness of learning outcomes might be more evenly distributed between learners and the institution than they are now....

Marketing double-binds: educational conversations with businesses and learners

I've been wondering if educational institutions (maybe all institutions) develop a sort of 'cultural autism' where their internal conversations become incomprehensible to outsiders. With educational institutions, this is particularly problematic, because they are constantly seeking to 'engage' with learners, businesses, community leaders, etc, but these engagements are often framed by internal conversations of the institution, rather than the real needs and problems of learners, business, the community, etc. It is certainly very hard to find the grounds for having a conversation with businesses or community leaders where there is a deep level of mutual understanding and empathy and where ways forward address everyone's needs.

Part of the problem may be the premise for conversation and what it means to different parties. There is usually asymmetry between the needs for the conversation for each party: for example, businesses maintain their viability through doing other things than talking to people (they make and sell products, for example). Universities maintain their viability by awarding degrees, where this is the result of conversations of a different kind. Conversation for a business may be a way of marketing products or increasing productivity, but its core profitable activity will involve skilled performances beyond talk. Does business not sometimes perceive universities as 'all talk'??

More generally, education might be perceived by business as a 'good thing' - but the motivation for having the conversation on the part of a business may sometimes be more philanthropic than practical and strategic. The university, on the other hand, is having a conversation with business because it needs the conversation to continue into those conversations which it can charge for. It is, in short, marketing. But why should business be tempted? What skilled performances beyond words are valuable to it? Ideally, the University might have developed a fledgling product which the business might be enthusiastic about and take on. But these are rare cases.

Institutions are geared for conversations with individuals as potential learners. The institution markets a 'human good' and a status symbol which accompanies that good. The conversation with business often revolves around rather loose talk about 'skills' - but this is rarely well-defined; 'skills' so often disappoint. The marketing conversation with learners is more successful because learners perceive a need in themselves which the University offers to meet. I'm wondering if the needs that learners perceive in themselves is related to some double-bind that they find themselves in. It may be that this double-bind find some requisite variety in the double-bind presented by education: the two cancel each other out, the match is made.

There's a bigger topic relevant to marketing and double binds. I've been thinking that buying Christmas presents is an interesting experience! Maybe the variety of the double bind that we all find ourselves in at Christmas can only be matched by the double-binds of shopping brands and products. Does society position learners in a sort of 'Christmas state' which can only be matched by educational double-binds? Should the university be trying to unpick the double-binds of businesses to position them in a way where they too might see value in the double-binds of education? Is education becoming more aware of its own double-binds a step towards active awareness of the position of its customers? It's probably not a bad thing to do.

Ultimately, I think this is about educational institutions becoming rather more empathic - and smarter about the irrationalities of the world in which they operate. Difficult for an institution which fundamentally is built upon the principle of rationality!

Programming Freedom: From therapy to emancipation via computer science

I've recently spent some time helping struggling students to learn Java in my university. In the UK (as I guess elsewhere) many young people who struggle with the traditional academic curriculum find their way into studying technology courses: this is often driven by schools and colleges themselves, who see this as the best way the students can get 'a result', and consequently the league table score of the institution will also benefit. It's often justified by the students and their parents that learning a technology skill will help gain them employment. This is true in a sense - but it really depends on what we mean by 'skill'. In particular, it demands a distinction is made between 'easy' skills (from browsing the web, for example - to maybe creating a mashup - which is perhaps at the harder end of easy skills) and 'hard' skills. In computing, the hard skill is programming, and in my university - which is a university which focussed on giving life chances to these types of students - less that 15% of the year's intake typically develop anything like solid proficiency in the hard skill of programming. This inevitably impacts on their ability to find employment.

I conducted a little survey with these students: http://tinyurl.com/progquest.I was interested in how they approached 'hard' things. How did it make them feel? If it stressed them, how did they deal with this? How did their achievement of deeper goals in life depend on being able to deal with difficult things better? What opportunities might they see in learning to program which could help them to deal with difficult things in general? The responses were interesting.

One of the key things which leaps out from the responses I got was the sheer leap of faith that students commit to when embarking on education. When asked "how are you going to achieve what you want", a common answer was "through hard work". But it was also clear that 'hard work' stressed them out in a way which was not conducive to solving hard problems. This looks like a classic double-bind: "I can only achieve success in difficult things through hard work" vs "hard work will stress me out and stop me being able to solve difficult problems". There is a prohibition in being able to talk about failure because the reason why they're allowing themselves to be caught in this is "I need to get a degree".

In conversation (amd maybe only in conversation) I found that I could explore this more deeply. But the double-bind does seem to revolve around difficult things, hard work and the management of emotion when dealing with living.

In what way is it "all about sex"?

I was going to give this post a more pretentious title alluding to Luhmann's theory of intimacy, but I think it's better to be frank! My music professor once remarked that music is "all about sex really". It's easy to agree with him him when I'm listening to something like the 'liebestod' at the end of Tristan and Isolde (this performance with Isolde apparently bleeding to death!), or Scriabin's 'Prometheus'
or Debussy's Jeux (I could go on).  But I am tempted to agree with him more generally, and to say that it being "all being about sex" relates to more than just music. Learning and sex are no strangers. Radicalisation too has a strong hormonal content, which is worth bearing in mind in the light of the passion of yesterday's protests. If education is about politics, politics has got a lot to do with hormones!

I don't think we should be coy or embarrassed if we really want to know what it is that propels our curiosity about things - particularly when we are young. Is the drive to learn something a sexual drive? Perhaps more importantly, is the difference between those who are educationally successful and those who are not the difference between those who can sublimate their desire and focus it on learning activity and those who can't?

A lot has to do with interest and curiosity. The visceral bodily effects of knowledge performances are a key part of educational engagement which excite our interest. How much of interest derives from the educational content? How much from sexual chemistry with fellow students or teachers? Surely its all in the mix: and sex is the common denominator in the interests of everyone. I wonder if online it is perhaps harder to talk about this than it is face-to-face. So much trust and confidence has to be gained before the long journey of making connections between our biological condition and our intellectual potential can be embarked upon.

So, in online learning, where are those connections made? Or is online learning inevitably going to skirt around the issue without making any deep connections to the biological condition of learners? I think we risk this, not just in education, but in our approach to technology generally: that technology drives a wedge between the intellect and those aspects of the body and perception which are simply too embarrassing to mention.

For Georges Bataille, such embarrassment is an expression of the fear of death. For to acknowledge sex and eroticism is to "assent to life even in death".

As an example of what Bataille means, we can look at Rodin's erotic sketches. The skilled performances of their execution have a visceral effect, complex, rich in double-description (all those lines!). What is communicated is not only the 'content' - a body - but the artist too, and at so many levels. But there is also something deathly about it: an objectification of a body. My interest lives through this deathly image, excited not just through what is represented, but through exploring the questions of its existence and my own. I know that the sexual feelings I feel on looking at it are at least comparable to those of the artist who created it - who himself is now dead, but who once looked upon this woman as I now do.

Such things are the baseline of the human goods of learning where the intellect connects to the body. Right now, the risks of a disconnected education are very great. But those students who are discovering their radical voice are also rediscovering these biological connections (although some risk forgetting their minds!). I'm tempted to think that the economic woes of education are a bit of a sideshow. The real challenge is to reconnect bodies and minds of everyone in what is going to be a rather cold, marketised, servitised educational environment.

What is 'class'?

Class divisions in society are often thought about as divisions between 'haves' and 'have nots', rich and poor, etc. This is too shallow a perspective. I think class is really a social dynamic where different sections of society, demarcated by the types of language game they play, do not look after each other. Their games become exclusive and detrimental to one another as they seek to continue to play their game knowing that its continuity is at the cost of others being able to continue theirs. In passing the legislation of student fees today, the government has set up such a social dynamic. This will no-doubt resurrect old-fashioned radicalism and the 'class war' discourse. But that discourse is deficient, and I believe the real challenge is to understand better the injustice in what has just happened so that we might do something constructive about it.

I have always been a bit sceptical of 'old-fashioned' radicalism. After all, we all seem to be 'middle class' now - aren't we? The events today are making me think. The image of the day is that of the shocked Charles and Camilla as their car is attacked by student protesters. There is little doubt that the legislation passed today is no 'skin off the nose' for the rich, and unfortunately for them, Charles and Camilla are the epitome of 'the rich'. The legislation will enslave the poor in financial arrangements over which they have no control.

In helping to solve the Universities' problem (actually, only the 'posh' universities' problem), the legislation creates huge problems for those learners who do not happen to have rich parents to bail them out in their education. I think the problem is basically one of 'positioning', and Rom Harré's work is very useful to help unpick it.

Universities and the government have 'positioned' learners as consumers of (reified) learning services. The inauthenticity of this position is probably its most debilitating effect. There's little learners can do to escape it. However much they know deep down that education is a human good (and as such is ultimately political), the positioning has been done in an authoritarian way, exploiting the controlling privilege the governing class (the language game played by those in power) has over everyone else in its effort to continue its existence unchanged. It is important to remember that such authoritarianism is what any government does at some level. The great Islamic political philosopher Ibn Khaldun's definition of government is instructive: "an institution which prevents injustic, other than such as it commits itself". But that's a definition which identifies the most unpleasant and the best regimes in history as forms of government. But the difference between good and bad governments lies in the way they 'position' what they govern.

In Harré's theory, authoritarian positioning robs the individual of that part of the self which establishes itself through social discourse: there is no discussion; you are told what you need. But the biggest surprise in all of this - and the fact which belies the category error at the heart of the government's thinking - is that suddenly students everywhere are finding their voice, and saying in unison what everyone knows deep down: education is political! Education is ultimately about how we should look after each other in a society. In that discourse, the social dynamic of 'class' really matters because it is precisely about looking after each other (or not...). It is about positioning each other well, leading a good life.

Maybe the category mistake of tuition fees has short-circuited politics back into education...