Qualia a uczenie się / Qualia and learning

Introduction: On Reflection, Intrapersonal Interaction, and Qualia ...

In the discussion of Kolb's cycle, I noted that learning can be considered as a process of reflection, or more precisely, reflection on a perceived phenomenon (object) that can trigger the learning cycle. Referring to John Dewey's concept of learning through action, let us note that learning occurs not so much through action as such, but precisely through reflection on action. By action, I also mean, or perhaps even primarily, intellectual activity. For learning to occur, action should trigger reflection on what we do.

Before reading this article, it is worth reading the articles: Kolb's Cycle and Qualia in Constructing Knowledge.

During my literature studies and considering the learning process issues, I concluded that there are four areas in which the activity undertaken can initiate reflection leading to new knowledge.

It is worth explaining the concept of intrapersonal interaction understood as "a conversation with oneself". Although we only (or as much as!) have it in our mind, by confronting various elements and aspects of what we already know in our deliberations, we can formulate new thoughts, and hypotheses, "come up with" brilliant ideas, or by noticing the connections between elements of knowledge, generate new conclusions - new knowledge for ourselves.

Let us imagine Archimedes immersed in his thoughts and in a water bathtub, who suddenly jumps out of it with a cry of EUREKA! - This is exactly such a case. Archimedes reached new knowledge - "in the mind" and discovered what the force of buoyancy is, i.e. the law of physics later named after him.

When we think about something, we are aware of our thoughts. When we "shift" our attention to the emotions that accompany the thinking process, we become aware of, for example, the internal excitement we experience when we come up with a great idea. When we think about something we would like to buy or something we dream about, we are aware of our desires.
In cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy of mind, we say that awareness of thoughts, emotions, and desires (as well as various sensory experiences) is available to us through qualia, which constitute consciousness.
It is thanks to and through qualia that we are aware of what we are thinking about, what we see, what hurts us, and what lilies of the valley smell like. Qualia are always first-person. I am the one who experiences them. I cannot "pass on" "my qualia" to anyone. For someone to know what lilies of the valley smell like, they have to smell them themselves, to know what the pulp of a lychee or a strawberry tastes like, smells like, and what its structure is, they have to eat them themselves. You cannot learn the smell of lily of the valley by reading about it in a book, nor learn the taste of strawberries from someone else's story.

The model of spheres of reflection

Let us therefore try to look at the learning process in the following four dimensions - areas of interaction, which I have defined as spheres of reflection.

Learning can therefore be initiated through an encounter with: oneself, a media message, or another person (other people). and the external world of objects and phenomena (excluding: oneself, other people, and media messages, which belong to separate areas of encounters).

Therefore, I distinguish the spheres of interaction:

intrapersonal - an encounter with oneself;
media - an encounter with a media message;
social (interpersonal) - an encounter with another person/people;
with the external world - an encounter with the world of objects and phenomena of nature and technology.

The sphere of intrapersonal interaction

First, a small (old?) joke. Let us imagine an old shepherd sitting in the shade under a tree. A tourist comes up and asks: "Shepherd, what are you doing?" And the shepherd says: "When I have time, I sit and think, and when I don't have time, I just sit".

Just sitting and thinking - meeting - conversation with oneself.

In the sphere of intrapersonal interaction, we deal with introspective reflection. You "look" deep into yourself, into the depths of your mind. The starting point is what you already know, some thought that initiating thinking triggers intrapersonal reflection, the effect of which may be new knowledge.

Something "comes to your mind", you become aware of some thought and it becomes the starting point for further considerations - this is the first stage of Kolb's cycle. You become aware of a new situation, and from further considerations (subsequent stages of Kolb's cycle) something new may "be born", a new association and connection with each other of what you already know, facts already known to you, maybe a new poem, a new idea, an invention, or simply new knowledge.

You also go through this stage when the learning process is initiated in one of the spheres of reflection discussed below. You always confront, or at least interpret, what is new to you through what you already know. You build new knowledge on pre-knowledge, i.e. on the knowledge with which you "enter" a new learning situation. (About the concept of pre-knowledge - read the fragment about Lev Vygotsky in the article and the presentation - Educational constructivism.)

In the sphere of intrapersonal interaction, through qualia (which I define as internal) you are aware of your mental states: thoughts, and feelings, you can activate qualia internalized in cognitive schemes related to e.g. previous sensory experiences, thoughts, emotions, etc. (cf. the table of qualia categorization).

The sphere of media interaction

Very often we learn by reading a book, watching a film, listening to the radio, or what is most common today, searching for content that interests us, or simply browsing the Internet. Then, interaction with the media message takes place. Reading a book or watching a film, as long as it is done with understanding, is a process of active interpretation of the narrative of a text or film. Film or Internet resources are also so-called cultural texts. We read the meanings encoded by the author of the book or the creators of the film in the semantic and syntactic layers of the work. You have probably heard about the language of photography or film more than once.

Each form of media communication has its language, characteristic to it. Natural language (as well as any other form of media) is a code. Encoding meanings in natural language (e.g. in English) occurs through the selection of certain words (semantic layer) and their arrangement in specific sentence structures and their order in paragraphs or fragments of statements - this is the syntactic layer.

When reading a book on a more difficult subject for the reader (e.g. philosophy), we often have to re-read a paragraph and think longer about what the author wanted to tell us. Interpreting any text (i.e. in any media form), i.e. reading meanings from the code occurs by confronting what we read with our linguistic knowledge (the language layer of the message) and our knowledge of the world by using pre-knowledge to understand the meaning of the text. This is the process of media interaction.

Reading, understood here as conscious reading and interpreting meanings, can trigger the first stage of reflective learning, i.e. Kolb's cycle.

I will also include listening to a lecture in this sphere because a message in natural language is also a media message. Listening to a lecture solely as a receiver is no different from listening to the radio or receiving a lecture via television or YouTube. Except for the situation when we ask the lecturer a question "live" and receive an answer. We then enter into interpersonal interaction and interpret such a conversation with the teacher as taking place in the sphere of social interaction,

In this sphere, in which the inspiration that triggers the learning process is a media message, awareness of the content and form of the message constitutes qualia, which I define as media qualia. If I look at a photograph of a dog, I do not experience the sight, smell, touch, or voice of a live dog, but only perceive (see) a photograph of a dog. I am aware that I am not seeing a dog, but a photograph of a dog. Seeing a photograph can activate memory traces in the mind associated with a real, i.e. live dog. But a photograph of a dog is not a dog!!!

Often, we unconsciously show a small child, for example, a photo of a kitten, and ask: what is this? suggesting: this is a kitten! But this is not a kitten. The kitten from the photograph will not meow or scratch with its claws.

In education, unfortunately, we often encounter such situations at school. See the example of Magritte's pipe.

The sphere of social interaction

In the sphere of social interaction, we communicate with another person or several people. We are dealing here with interpersonal interaction. In a conversation during which we share our knowledge, there is also a negotiation of understanding of concepts (negotiation of their meanings).

By confronting with the interlocutor how I and how he understands a given issue, we have an opportunity to agree on positions. Explaining our interpretations to each other can lead to developing an understanding that we both agree on.
Knowledge is nothing more than a set of individual justified beliefs. The validity of beliefs comes down to their compliance with the beliefs of the majority of scientific authorities in a given field of knowledge.

During social interaction "face to face", we receive direct qualia relating to messages in natural language, but also those that allow us to read the emotional states of the interlocutor, interpret their facial expression, "body language" and non-verbal aspects of the voice, e.g. how convinced he is of the truth of what he says.

The sphere of interaction with the external world of objects and phenomena

Interactions with the external world are multi-sensory. In addition to objects and phenomena available for direct observation, we can also use, for example, a magnifying glass, microscope, binoculars, or telescope. In the real world, we can conduct not only observations but also various types of experiments (when we know the result) or experiments (when we do not know what the result will be). We can enter into direct sensory interactions with objects of the external world, for example by eating an apple - we learn its taste, smell, hardness, or structure of the flesh. They cut a pine board and then an oak board, we learn through the sense of proprioception, what are the differences in the hardness and structure of the rings. By preparing broth, we learn the anatomy of individual parts of the chicken's body, and by peeling vegetables (using a knife and/or peeler) we learn the differences in the structure of carrots, parsley and celery.

Have you ever realized that by preparing broth, you gain knowledge about the world?
Of course, during multi-sensory cognition of the world, we become aware of the features that characterize its objects and occurring phenomena through direct qualia.

Qualia in the reflection spheres model