Richard Hake asked:
Does anyone know how Peirce:
(a) defined "learning," and
(b) might have measured the "learning" that Universities induce in
students or contribute by faculty research?
For now just a word on (a). Peirce identifies learning with the third of
his three categories in several places. For example:
CP 1.377. It seems, then, that the true categories of consciousness
are: first, feeling, the consciousness which can be included with an
instant of time, passive consciousness of quality, without recognition
or analysis; second, consciousness of an interruption into the field
of consciousness, sense of resistance, of an external fact, of another
something; third, synthetic consciousness, binding time together,
sense of learning, thought
And at somewhat greater length, supporting the notion that "all learning
is virtually reasoning" Peirce writes:
CP 7.536 It remains to be shown that this element [of "continuity,
regularity, and significance"] is the third [of Peirce's three
categories]. All flow of time involves learning; and all learning
involves the flow of time. Now no continuum can be apprehended except
by a mental generation of it, by thinking of something as moving
through it, or in some way equivalent to this, and founded upon it. .
. [A]ll apprehension of continuity involves a consciousness of
learning. In the next place, all learning is virtually reasoning; that
is to say, if not reasoning, it only differs therefrom in being too
low in consciousness to be controllable and in consequently not being
subject to criticism as good or bad, -- no doubt, a most important
distinction for logical purposes, but not affecting the nature of the
elements of experience that it contains. In order to convince
ourselves that all learning is virtually reasoning, we have only to
reflect that the mere experience of a sense-reaction is not learning.
That is only something from which something can be learned, by
interpreting it. The interpretation is the learning. If it is objected
that there must be a first thing learned, I reply that this is like
saying that there must be a first rational fraction, in the order of
magnitudes, greater than zero. There is no minimum time that an
experience of learning must occupy. At least, we do not conceive it
so, in conceiving time as continuous; for every flow of time, however
short, is an experience of learning. It may be replied that this only
shows that not all learning is reasoning, inasmuch as every train of
reasoning whatever consists of a finite number of discrete steps. But
my rejoinder is that if by an argument we mean an attempt to state a
step in reasoning, then the simplest step in reasoning is incapable of
being completely stated by any finite series of arguments. . .
The process is similar whether the "learning" is biological (chance
sporting, firstness, leading to new habit taking, thirdness, resulting
in, say, the evolution of a new structural feature, secondness) or
"intellectual" as the result of an inquiry process (hypothesis
formation, firstness, leads to the analysis of what would necessarily
follow if the hypothesis were true, thirdness, in the interest of
constructing inductive tests to see to what extent the hypothesis is
validated in actual fact, secondness).
Gary Richmond
City University of New York
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