Adam's Peak
All Life Is Problem Solving: Learning and Knowledge Making in an Evolutionary and Critical Perspective
I've
named this blog after a statement from a lecture of Karl Popper's,
delivered in 1991 near the end of hislong life. "All Life is Problem
Solving" also became the title of a book of his essays published
posthumously in 1999 by Routledge. I love the phrase because it sums
up his wonderful work in epistemology, ontology, philosophy of science,
and political theory performed over a period of nearly 70 years -- his
general theory about how new knowledge is made, or, if you like, how
learning occurs. The Theory of Knowledge Making
Knowledge
is made, he thought, through a simple three-step process found in
evolution, in individual psychodynamics, and in social interaction.
That process is:- the problem
- the attempted solutions
- the elimination.
Living things have expectations. Problems have their origin in events
that run counter to those expectations. The response of life, however
primitive, to a failure of expectation is to search for another way
around. Living things engage in search behavior and testing to "replace
the wrong expectation with a new one." We "make" solutions whose
successful application would create new expectations. And we "match"
those solutions against aspects of our subjective reality, that, in
turn, if we are to be successful in action, must have some
correspondence with actual reality. We
see this three-step pattern in Darwinian evolution, where a failure of
expectation caused by environmental change creates problems of survival
for species which are solved through genetic recombination and mutation
(attempted solutions) producing individuals that are better adapted to
the changed environment than individuals of the old species were. The
old species, along with most mutations and recombinations are
eliminated by the environment. They are errors. The species that
survive embody genetic knowledge -- encoded information with adaptive
value relative to the changed environment. We
see the three-step pattern again in the area of learning resulting in
cognitive knowledge. Changes in the environment of living creatures
result in failed expectations (problems). Search behavior leads to the
discovery of new solutions, which if they match the changed environment
are then encoded into the memories of living creatures. In humans this
pattern is seen in the development of changes in synaptic structures
and changes in beliefs as we discover new solutions, test them, and
then encode the successful ones in our brains, and, we think, in our
minds, as well. So, for living individuals, the three step pattern, the
learning process, produces biological, and in some species, mental
knowledge (beliefs). Humans
are unique, or at least, close to unique, on earth in enjoying
evolution's gift of language. Through language we can and do create
sharable encodings that help both ourselves and our societies and
cultures to adapt. The process of creating such sharable, adaptive
encodings, or cultural knowledge again fits the three- step pattern. We
recognize problems, we formulate tentative solutions (but now with the
aid of language we can formulate and consider many and much more
complex solutions than can animals who are not able to "objectify"
their thinking), and we attempt to eliminate errors in those solutions
so we can arrive at the solution that is the strongest in the sense
that it has best survived our tests, i.e. our matching of it against
those aspects of reality we think are important for its evaluation. Of
course, our attempts at error elimination are also much stronger
because of the gift of language. We can take the stories we tell about
tentative solutions, write down those "stories", or knowledge claims,
or "theories", or "models" and do a much better job of comparing them
and evaluating them because language is the handmaiden of our
comparison. The Unified Theory of Knowledge The solutions that survive error elimination constitute, once again, our cultural knowledge. As Popper pointed out this knowledge is objective
because (a) it is sharable among those who have language, and (b) once
made by us, it is autonomous, in that its continued existence can
effect our future mental states, and through them our behavior. In
contrast, mental knowledge is subjective
because we cannot directly share it. However, this in no way dminishes
its importance, since it is our mental knowledge which we use in order
to behave, make decisions, and act, and since we create our cultural
knowledge through action, it is also true that we use our subjective
knowledge to create objective knowledge. So mental knowledge, while
subjective, and also influenced by cultural knowledge, is also partly
autonomous and responsible for the occurrence of cultural knowledge. By
now it should be plain that Popper used his three-step learning process
(see Figure 1) to explain how three different kinds of knowledge are
made: adaptive encodings in the material world (e.g. genetic encodings
and synaptic patterns), adaptive encodings in the mind (attitudes,
values, beliefs, etc), and adaptive encodings in cultural products
(stories, arguments, theories, models, knowledge claims, propositions,
etc.). Though Popper never used this term, this is a unified theory of knowledge
(thanks are due to Art Murray of Tel-Art Technologies for the name),
because each type of knowledge identifies encodings that are adaptive
for the systems that use them relative to their environments. At the
same time, the unified theory of knowledge acknowledges that
"knowledge" is diverse in chraracter, and suggests that the ambiguities
and variations we experience in using this term are due to this
diversity.
Figure 1 -- Popper's Theory of Knowledge Making Evolutionary Epistemology and Complexity Theory
Popper's
Theory of learning and problem solving along with his associated
unified theory of knowledge emerge from an evolutionary persective. In
his later years, he was associated with a movement called evolutionary
epistemology; and it is important to recognize the connection between
Popper's epistemological work and modern Darwinian Theory. Popper's
perspective is also close to complexity thinking. He believed strongly,
as I do, in the emergence of complex systems from simpler ones as a
fact of life in the universe. And he believed, as I do, in the
importance of downward causation as a factor in the emergence and
maintenance of complex systems. Interesting work is being done today in
the area of merging evolutionary epistemology and the sort of
complexity theory that we find in the work of Maturana and Varela and
Fritjof Capra. That work (see especially Mark Bickhard's papers) will reinforce Popper's view that "all life is problem solving". The Critical Perspective and Fallibilism The
last of the three steps in making knowledge is error elimination or
"matching". This step is the gateway to knowledge. But it is, as Popper
pointed out, fundamentally negative in character. It is about eliminating mistakes and not about supporting any
of one's tentative solutions. In animals lacking consciousness,
mistakes are eliminated, when the animal receives negative
reinforcement from the environment for selecting the wrong solution.
That is, the animal in question can only learn by experiencing the
negative consequences of its mistaken expectation and ensuing decision.
Often the wrong choice means that the animal making the choice is
eliminated along with its mistake. Animals with consciousness and
especially sharing language have a great advantage over other
animals. We can eliminate errors and learn by testing our solutions
through the surrogate processes of criticism, controlled testing, and
comparative analysis, before we take a decision. We, unlike other
animals, can manage our knowledge making so that "our worst ideas die
in our stead", and our best ones inform our decisions and actions. But
to do so, we must use our gift of language and be diligent in
criticism, testing, and evaluation of our tentative solutions. So,
in problem solving and in life, the critical perspective is the key. It
is responsible for the elimination of errors, the growth of knowledge,
and for adaptation in individuals and society. But why is this so, why
has nature and biology relied on error elimination to get us closer to
the truth rather than a process of justification or proof of our ideas?
The answer is that all of our knowledge, including our biological,
mental, and cultural expectations, is uncertain, and no amount of
positive support can prove' beyond doubt, that any proposition or idea
is surely correct, or that any piece of genetic encoding, will allow us
to adapt to changes in environmental conditions that are yet to occur.
This idea, called fallibilism, also espoused by the founder of
Pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, before Popper, is skepticism, but it is not relativism. It
doesn't deny that we can find the truth, or that we ought to seek it,
but only that we can never know with certainty that we have found it.
Xenophanes expressed fallibilism in a wonderful way that Popper liked
to quote:
The Gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us; but in the course of time,
Through seeking, men find that which is the better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods,
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it;
For all is but a woven web of guesses. The
connection between fallibilism and error elimination is this. Since
justification and certain proof is not attainable, the obligation to
find a method that will produce certainty does not exist, and the
obligation to pursue certainty ourselves without such a method is also
gone. What remains is the problem of selecting among our tentative
solutions, "our guesses" according to a method that is open to us. This
method is error elimination through criticism of competing ideas and
beliefs in light of various critical perspectives (fallible ideas
themselves) we develop and use. This
whole perspective may be summarized by the concluding line of a brand
new article by Deborah Blackman, James Connelly, and Steven Henderson
called "Does Double Loop Learning Create Reliable Knowledge?" The Learning Organization, 11 (2004), 11-27. The line, which may take off from Xenophanes, by way of Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, is:
" . . . what a wonderful web we weave, when first we practice to critically believe."
This Blog and Me
In
future installments of "All Life Is Problem Solving" I will use the
perspective you've just read to treat a variety of subjects. Many of
them will be in the fields of Knowledge Management and Organization
Theory, where I do much of my work using an approach developed by
myself and my friend and close collaborator Mark McElroy called the
"The New Knowledge Management" and a normative model called The Open
Enterprise. Sometimes though, I will write about Politics and Open
Societies, and Physics, and Philosophy, and, as is appropriate for a
blog, anything that comes into my head. Whatever I write about is
likely to reflect the perspective of "All Life is Problem Solving" and
that's why I've given that name to my blog. If you'd like to learn more about me, what I do, Knowledge Management in general, my collaborator, and our organizations, Executive Information Systems, Inc., KMCI), and (Macroinnovation Associates),
please visit our web sites. There you'll find lots of information about
us, and lots of free papers and presentations about Knowledge
Management, Enterprise Information and Knowledge Portals, and Data
Warehousing. You'll also find information about our books, both printed
and electronic.
3:46:59 PM
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