Stephen Downes presented a Venus Seminar recently - Toward a Future Knowledge Society. In the presentation, he explores many of the concepts I presented in Knowing Knowledge...and that others (notably Dave Snowden and Dave Weinberger) have long advocated - namely that the structured view of knowledge has given way to more diverse ways of organizing, categorizing, and knowing. Slide 44 sums up Stephen's views on knowledge, initially presented in his essay on Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. See also his earlier article on Connective Knowledge.
After an initial criticism of hypothetico-deductive model of knowledge, Stephen explores networks as the new model of understanding knowledge. The breakdown of order and the prominence of chaos (in all aspects of complex phenomenon, but here, particularly in relation to the structures assigned to information) requires a different view of what knowledge itself is. The shift is one from the old model of rules and categories, to a new model of patterns and similarities. In this model, concepts are distributed entities, not centrally held or understood...and highly dependant on context. Simply, elements change when in connection with other elements.
While I agree with this assertion generally, something important happens that is a property of the networks themselves - something that is beyond simply knowledge and moves into the domain of understanding. I depart from Stephen's views with regard to his assertion of where understanding, and thereby meaning, is found in networks.
Stephen asserts (in this paper) that network learning is meaning-less:"what a sentence ‘means’ is the (truth of falsity of) the state of the world it represents. However, on a network theory of knowledge, there is no such state of the world to which this meaning can be affixed. This is not because there is no such state of the world. The world could most certainly exist, and there is no contradiction in saying that a person’s neural states are caused by world events. However, it does mean that there is no particular state of the world that corresponds with (is isomorphic to) a particular mental state. This is because the mental state is embedded in a sea of context and presuppositions that are completely opaque to the state of the world."
This departure may be a by-product of conversations Stephen and I have had in the past about the objective nature of things, so it is entirely possible that I'm seeing his comments through the lens of those conversations, and not exclusively on what he's saying here.
In contrast with Stephen's statement in the above quoted paper, on slide 23 of his Venus presentation he presents what, in my eyes, is an accurate reflection of the "thisness" of items. Items in and of themselves possess characteristics that are objective, clear, concise - outside the scope of our interpretation. The "thisness" of an entity is what permits it to connect with other entities that have complementary characteristics, hence the basis for connection. Stephen posits this broadly under the umbrella of "self-organization". Again, I agree. But I see a conflict with the fluid notions of subjectivity and that items are what they are only in line with our perceptions...and what items are when they connect based on defined characteristics (call them basic facts, if you will). In my view of knowledge, I still see a role for many types of knowledge to hold value based on our recognition of what is there, rather than our interpretations or perceptions. The networked view of knowledge may be more of an augmentation of previous categorizations, rather than a complete displacement. In fields where information is rapidly changing, the adaptive nature of networks would appear to be more relevant and valuable than
At this point, I think Stephen confuses the original meaning inherent in a knowledge element, and the changed meaning that occurs when we combine different knowledge elements in a network structure. Knowledge, in many instances, has clear, defined properties and its meaning is not exclusively derived from networks (though increasingly today, this is the case). The meaning of knowledge can be partly a function of the way a network is formed (for example, the presence of "c" changes the meaning of "a" and "b") and partly our interpretation. With regard to interpretation, we see an entity based on what it is - it's "thisness" and we value and interpret it based on the existing networks of understanding that we hold. Political discourse provides much insight into what this looks like. Two or more parties can observe the same event, and how they situate the ideas in their personal network of understanding, drives how they interpret the event. It's not that, as Stephen asserts, knowledge networks have no meaning, but instead that knowledge networks have a meaning that exists as a network entity, but the meaning is altered based on how we personally situate the network in our larger world views. The node through which we enter the network determines how we see the network. The fact that the meaning of an entity changes based on how it’s networked does not eliminate its original meaning. The aggregated meaning reflects the meaning held in individual knowledge entities.
This then raises the importance of context. Lynne Redder in a recent conference on learning and memory states that “Concepts and percepts are nodes in a network of interrelated nodes...Nodes and links vary in strength – a function of frequency and recency of exposure...availability of a node depends on its current level of activation”. Concepts are influenced by the context in which they exist. But context is not something that envelops nodes and provides meaning. Context is a node itself (namely the particular sequencing of nodes present when new knowledge is added). Knowledge meaning is adjusted, not created, by context exclusively. The “thisness” of an entity also contributes to the aggregate meaning.
Tags: connectivism downes
