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Consciousness
Either means
1.Awareness or Experience
itself, or
2.Knowing of such awareness
or experience
(via the self)
Consciousness
Seems to have no objective material qualities
(having instead subjective “qualia”) in itself, so it
either
1.derives from the objective material (matterenergy) world – materialism – or
2.it is already present everywhere and creates the
material world – idealism – of particular brains
and minds.
Consciousness, if materially based,
derives from the brain, so it either is
1. unique to the biology of the brain, and thus
cannot be reproduced anywhere else, or
1. a function of the brain’s complex processing
produced by the interactions of the neurons
& synapses in its wetware, so theoretically
can be reproduced via microchips in
computing hardware.
Consciousness, if not limited
to the brain, is either
1. universal, present in some manner in all
things, though particularized according to the
form of its container, or
1. culturally constructed, an effect of symbolic
interaction & intersubjectivity (though this
may itself be a reflection of experience back
upon itself) – thus amenable to learning.
Consciousness has basically been
ignored by psychology since the
time of William James and the
psychoanalysts, so Learning
Theories have followed suit & stuck
to an objective materialist (hard
science) viewpoint:
Learning, then, is objectively viewed:
“Learning, in contrast with maturation, is an
enduring change in a living person that is not
heralded by genetic inheritance. It may be
considered a change in insights, behaviors,
perception, motivation, or a combination of
these. It always involves a systematic change
in behavior or behavioral disposition that
occurs as a consequence of one’s of one’s
experience in some specific situation.”
Bigge & Shermis (2004) add:
“A learning theory … is a systematic integrated
outlook in regard to the nature of the process
whereby people relate to their environments
in such a way as to enhance their ability to use
both themselves and their environments in a
most effective way.”
(Quotations from Bigge & Shermis, Learning Theories for
Teachers, 6th ed, Pearson Education, pp. 1, 3)
Learning is either an unconscious
behavioural adaptation, as in
training or mimesis, or an increase
in conscious awareness & volition
nd
st
(or both, 2 following the 1 ).
Learning Theories are often
divided into these categories:
behaviourist
humanist (romantic or cultivated)
cognitivist
social or environmental
constructivist (social or cognitivist)
Today we may add
critical
Neuroscientific (interactionist or determinist)
Bigge & Shermis
Sample Learning Theories
I. Mental Discipline – theistic or humanistic
II. Natural Unfoldment (romanticism)
III. Herbartianism or Apperceptive Mass
IV. Behaviourism or stimulus-response conditioning
V. Gestalt or insight
VI. Narrativism (cultural interaction)
VII. Linear Cognitive Interaction
VIII.Cognitivism (cognitive-field situational interaction)
Constructivism as a Learning Theory
•Constructivism may be social or personal
(cognitive), or both – like the hermeneutic
circle, where one creates other.
•However, social or cultural constructivism
alone is most common as a learning theory.
•Social constructivism is mimesis and is the
basis of mythic consciousness.
•Individual self-construction (autopoiesis not
cognitivist) cannot escape its cultural or physical
roots but is the key to conscious agency.
Mimesis may be the original & animal
form of learning to be conscious, just
as accepting the beliefs of of others –
mythic consciousness – may be the
original human form of conscious
cognition, but both of these forms of
conscious experience are learned
passively, that is,
unconsciously.
Mimesis may play a necessary role in
making us social beings, but its inherent
ambiguity makes it unreliable as an
automatic pilot. We even learn our desires
and fears through mimesis and myth.
Clinging to mythic beliefs in oneself or the
world keeps one as dependent on others for
self-identity as does the mimetic capacity.
Is there a learning theory that encourages
the burden of
self-creation & conscious agency?
Robert Kegan’s “Evolving Self”:
Kegan divides developmental learning
into five stages, beginning when subject &
object are one. In each stage, what is
presumed to be subjective is creatively
objectified & understood, until one’s own
self-concept is seen as yet another
construction and one is freed from it.
Conscious volition increases at each level.
Kegan’s Creative Learning Stages
Stage 0: Incorporative stage
Subject: reflexes / Object: nothing
Stage 1: Impulsive stage
Subject: impulses, perceptions / Object: reflexes
Stage 2: Imperial stage
Subject: needs, interests, desires / Object: impulses,
perceptions
Stage 3: Interpersonal stage
Subject: interpersonal relationships, mutuality / Object: needs,
interests, desires
Stage 4: Institutional stage
Subject: authorship, identity, ideology / Object: interpersonal
relationships, mutuality
Stage 5: Inter-individual stage
Subject: creative silent core self / Object: authorship, identity,
ideology
C.G. Jung considered the first half of
life to be one in which the ego (selfconcept or image) is fortified &
assured. During the second half of life,
however, the ego may be decentered
as one unites consciously with one’s
source in the collective unconscious
through the process he called
individuation.
What does it matter if one learns to be
more conscious or more consciously
learns?
Beyond the fact that free and responsible
individuals are the foundation of an active
democracy, there might be larger purposes
stirring here
Eugene Webb: “Evolution takes place as the
impersonal effect of environmental pressures, but
the development of a differentiated consciousness
can only take place through an exercise of freedom,
and when it does, one of its effects is to increase
the degree of freedom — and hence also of
responsibility — on the part of the individual who
enacts it. At a certain point in development, one
might say, autopoiesis is challenged to become
conscious and voluntary. It is in this sort of free
pursuit of rational and responsible personhood that
I think we find the essential human task.”
Jung (among others) has suggested the
purpose of life is to become conscious.
“The man who has attained consciousness of
the present is solitary ... for every step towards
fuller consciousness removes him further from
his original, purely animal participation mystique
with the herd, from submersion in a common
unconsciousness. Every step forward means
tearing oneself loose from the maternal womb
of unconsciousness in which the mass of men
dwells, … He has come to the very edge of the
world, … he stands before the Nothing out of
which all may grow.” (C.G. Jung, The Spiritual
Problem of Modern Man)