Thursday, March 29, 2007
Concrete and generalized ideas
NUMBER TWO
Concrete situation and generalization
A time ago I argued that the term „island“and „kitchen-island“are similar in the general idea of „something being surrounded by something else“. The same general idea is hidden in the terms “language island”, “political island” or “economical island”.
I had to mention this to be able to continue with the next idea. In this paper neuroeconomics it is written that many subjects have problems solving the problem of four cards, where the cards show sign “X”, “Y”, “1” and “2”, and being asked which cards will have to be turned over to test the rule: ”If there is “X” on one side there is “1“on the other side.” Funny, some cannot make this out, but if this is given as a task of two schools and two counties, then basically everybody understands that it is necessary to check the child address. This is commented as that they can understand the problem better when set into “cheating-defecting” frame; meaning that people feel that somebody who is in one county and going to the other county school is cheating.
Well, this might be correct but I suggest that this assumption of “cheating-defecting” frame is wrong. I think that it is not the “cheating-defecting” frame that makes people to understand the problem easier and give fast and proper solution but the fact that it is concrete case from lived reality, whereas the “X”, “Y”, “1” and “2” system is highly generalized and many people cannot compare the concrete situation with the generalized situation, spite the fact they are logically absolutely the same.
And now let’s get back to my argument about “islands”. Most probably we did not realize that island is in fact “something surrounded by something else” but we knew that island is a piece of land surrounded by water. That means we could see only real facts and not the generalized rule; most probably we had not been able to see this for many millennia; now we already understand the “substance” of the word “island” as “something being surrounded by something else” and therefore we can make “new” meanings to the term “island”. “Language island” is a piece of land where certain language is used and people living around speak some other language etc. So the general idea of “something being surrounded by something else” is true. One specific language is surrounded by some other language.
So the problem is not the cheating-defecting frame but the difference between “touchable” facts strictly correlated to reality, lived and experienced reality and “untouchable” highly generalized symbols.
Actually, there is another example from my tutoring experience. Students have mostly problems to understand if their teacher tells them some kind of theory in its highly generalized wording. If, on the other hand, teacher knows that and explains the new stuff based on something real, students usually get that immediately, which again shows that the problem is not cheating-defecting frame but the difference in the ability of grasping highly generalized rules. Mostly people cannot do that, mostly people need something real they can “touch”, then they understand even the most difficult stuff.
In some other words this idea was written by Comenius some 350 years ago, in his work “Didactica Magna”, where he teaches the teachers to proceed from “known and easy” to unknown and difficult”.
And “known and easy” is always concrete, and it is obviously easier to understand by all people. Only few human brains are capable of thinking in new and highly generalized terms, mostly we need to “translate” the generalized idea into a representation of real touchable and old known system. Then we can even understand Einstein. The more real and “normal” the representation is the easier it is to understand it and via this known representation we can easily understand whatever complex and highly generalized idea.
This goes hand in hand with the idea I described in my previous paper on neuroeconomics about relatively closed groups of people being a good subject to genetic as well as memetic research. The fewer changes in real life the smaller the ability to understand generalized ideas and so relatively isolated groups of people (Czechs and Chods among Czechs, e.g.) perform worse on generalized tasks, as their brain have had no or only few chances to develop this system of generalizations. This is valid not only for Czechs but all people living life with only few changes, like country people compared to city people who are subject to many changes every day and so have also developed higher level of understanding of generalized ideas.
Concrete situation and generalization
A time ago I argued that the term „island“and „kitchen-island“are similar in the general idea of „something being surrounded by something else“. The same general idea is hidden in the terms “language island”, “political island” or “economical island”.
I had to mention this to be able to continue with the next idea. In this paper neuroeconomics it is written that many subjects have problems solving the problem of four cards, where the cards show sign “X”, “Y”, “1” and “2”, and being asked which cards will have to be turned over to test the rule: ”If there is “X” on one side there is “1“on the other side.” Funny, some cannot make this out, but if this is given as a task of two schools and two counties, then basically everybody understands that it is necessary to check the child address. This is commented as that they can understand the problem better when set into “cheating-defecting” frame; meaning that people feel that somebody who is in one county and going to the other county school is cheating.
Well, this might be correct but I suggest that this assumption of “cheating-defecting” frame is wrong. I think that it is not the “cheating-defecting” frame that makes people to understand the problem easier and give fast and proper solution but the fact that it is concrete case from lived reality, whereas the “X”, “Y”, “1” and “2” system is highly generalized and many people cannot compare the concrete situation with the generalized situation, spite the fact they are logically absolutely the same.
And now let’s get back to my argument about “islands”. Most probably we did not realize that island is in fact “something surrounded by something else” but we knew that island is a piece of land surrounded by water. That means we could see only real facts and not the generalized rule; most probably we had not been able to see this for many millennia; now we already understand the “substance” of the word “island” as “something being surrounded by something else” and therefore we can make “new” meanings to the term “island”. “Language island” is a piece of land where certain language is used and people living around speak some other language etc. So the general idea of “something being surrounded by something else” is true. One specific language is surrounded by some other language.
So the problem is not the cheating-defecting frame but the difference between “touchable” facts strictly correlated to reality, lived and experienced reality and “untouchable” highly generalized symbols.
Actually, there is another example from my tutoring experience. Students have mostly problems to understand if their teacher tells them some kind of theory in its highly generalized wording. If, on the other hand, teacher knows that and explains the new stuff based on something real, students usually get that immediately, which again shows that the problem is not cheating-defecting frame but the difference in the ability of grasping highly generalized rules. Mostly people cannot do that, mostly people need something real they can “touch”, then they understand even the most difficult stuff.
In some other words this idea was written by Comenius some 350 years ago, in his work “Didactica Magna”, where he teaches the teachers to proceed from “known and easy” to unknown and difficult”.
And “known and easy” is always concrete, and it is obviously easier to understand by all people. Only few human brains are capable of thinking in new and highly generalized terms, mostly we need to “translate” the generalized idea into a representation of real touchable and old known system. Then we can even understand Einstein. The more real and “normal” the representation is the easier it is to understand it and via this known representation we can easily understand whatever complex and highly generalized idea.
This goes hand in hand with the idea I described in my previous paper on neuroeconomics about relatively closed groups of people being a good subject to genetic as well as memetic research. The fewer changes in real life the smaller the ability to understand generalized ideas and so relatively isolated groups of people (Czechs and Chods among Czechs, e.g.) perform worse on generalized tasks, as their brain have had no or only few chances to develop this system of generalizations. This is valid not only for Czechs but all people living life with only few changes, like country people compared to city people who are subject to many changes every day and so have also developed higher level of understanding of generalized ideas.
# posted by Dalibor @ 12:41 PM 
