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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence — NASA Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence






NASA AstronautIn the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing. These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor.

But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1,000 years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old.

Sanskrit - XML Generator




First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian Grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical implications of this equivalence will be given.



Semantic Nets
For the sake of comparison, a brief overview of semantic nets will be given, and examples will be included that will be compared to the Indian approach. After early attempts at machine translation (which were based to a large extent on simple dictionary look-up) failed in their effort to teach a computer to understand natural language, work in AI turned to Knowledge Representation.

Since translation is not simply a map from lexical item to lexical item, and since ambiguity is inherent in a large number of utterances, some means is required to encode what the actual meaning of a sentence is. Clearly, there must be a representation of meaning independent of words used. Another problem is the interference of syntax. In some sentences (for example active/passive) syntax is, for all intents and purposes, independent of meaning. Here one would like to eliminate considerations of syntax. In other sentences the syntax contributes to the meaning and here one wishes to extract it.

Sanskrit Semantic Net System

I will consider a "prototypical" semantic net system similar to that of Lindsay, Norman, and Rumelhart in the hopes that it is fairly representative of basic semantic net theory. Taking a simple example first, one would represent "John gave the ball to Mary" as in Figure 1. Here five nodes connected by four labeled arcs capture the entire meaning of the sentence. This information can be stored as a series of "triples":

give, agent, John

give, object, ball

give, recipient, Mary

give, time, past.

Note that grammatical information has been transformed into an arc and a node (past tense). A more complicated example will illustrate embedded sentences and changes of state:

John Mary

book past

Figure 1.

"John told Mary that the train moved out of the station at 3 o'clock."

As shown in Figure 2, there was a change in state in which the train moved to some unspecified location from the station. It went to the former at 3:00 and from the latter at 3:O0. Now one can routinely convert the net to triples as before.

The verb is given central significance in this scheme and is considered the focus and distinguishing aspect of the sentence. However, there are other sentence types which differ fundamentally from the above examples. Figure 3 illustrates a sentence that is one of "state" rather than of "event ." Other nets could represent statements of time, location or more complicated structures.

A verb, say, "give," has been taken as primitive, but what is the meaning of "give" itself? Is it only definable in terms of the structure it generates? Clearly two verbs can generate the same structure. One can take a set-theoretic approach and a particular give as an element of "giving events" itself a subset of ALL-EVENTS. An example of this approach is given in Figure 4 ("John, a programmer living at Maple St., gives a book to Mary, who is a lawyer"). If one were to "read" this semantic net, one would have a very long text of awkward English: "There is a John" who is an element of the "Persons" set and who is the person who lives at ADRI, where ADRI is a subset of ADDRESS-EVENTS, itself a subset of 'ALL EVENTS', and has location '37 Maple St.', an element of Addresses; and who is a "worker" of 'occupation 1'. . .etc."

The degree to which a semantic net (or any unambiguous, nonsyntactic representation) is cumbersome and odd-sounding in a natural language is the degree to which that language is "natural" and deviates from the precise or "artificial." As we shall see, there was a language spoken among an ancient scientific community that has a deviation of zero.

The hierarchical structure of the above net and the explicit descriptions of set-relations are essential to really capture the meaning of the sentence and to facilitate inference. It is believed by most in the AI and general linguistic community that natural languages do not make such seemingly trivial hierarchies explicit. Below is a description of a natural language, Shastric Sanskrit, where for the past millenia successful attempts have been made to encode such information.

Shastric Sanskrit

The sentence:

(1) "Caitra goes to the village." (graamam gacchati caitra)

receives in the analysis given by an eighteenth-century Sanskrit Grammarian from Maharashtra, India, the following paraphrase:

(2) "There is an activity which leads to a connection-activity which has as Agent no one other than Caitra, specified by singularity, [which] is taking place in the present and which has as Object something not different from 'village'."

The author, Nagesha, is one of a group of three or four prominent theoreticians who stand at the end of a long tradition of investigation. Its beginnings date to the middle of the first millennium B.C. when the morphology and phonological structure of the language, as well as the framework for its syntactic description were codified by Panini. His successors elucidated the brief, algebraic formulations that he had used as grammatical rules and where possible tried to improve upon them. A great deal of fervent grammatical research took place between the fourth century B.C and the fourth century A.D. and culminated in the seminal work, the Vaiakyapadiya by Bhartrhari. Little was done subsequently to advance the study of syntax, until the so-called "New Grammarian" school appeared in the early part of the sixteenth century with the publication of Bhattoji Dikshita's Vaiyakarana-bhusanasara and its commentary by his relative Kaundabhatta, who worked from Benares. Nagesha (1730-1810) was responsible for a major work, the Vaiyakaranasiddhantamanjusa, or Treasury of dejinitive statements of grammarians, which was condensed later into the earlier described work. These books have not yet been translated.

The reasoning of these authors is couched in a style of language that had been developed especially to formulate logical relations with scientific precision. It is a terse, very condensed form of Sanskrit, which paradoxically at times becomes so abstruse that a commentary is necessary to clarify it.

One of the main differences between the Indian approach to language analysis and that of most of the current linguistic theories is that the analysis of the sentence was not based on a noun-phrase model with its attending binary parsing technique but instead on a conception that viewed the sentence as springing from the semantic message that the speaker wished to convey. In its origins, sentence description was phrased in terms of a generative model: From a number of primitive syntactic categories (verbal action, agents, object, etc.) the structure of the sentence was derived so that every word of a sentence could be referred back to the syntactic input categories. Secondarily and at a later period in history, the model was reversed to establish a method for analytical descriptions. In the analysis of the Indian grammarians, every sentence expresses an action that is conveyed both by the verb and by a set of "auxiliaries." The verbal action (Icriyu- "action" or sadhyu-"that which is to be accomplished,") is represented by the verbal root of the verb form; the "auxiliary activities" by the nominals (nouns, adjectives, indeclinables) and their case endings (one of six).

The meaning of the verb is said to be both vyapara (action, activity, cause), and phulu (fruit, result, effect). Syntactically, its meaning is invariably linked with the meaning of the verb "to do". Therefore, in order to discover the meaning of any verb it is sufficient to answer the question: "What does he do?" The answer would yield a phrase in which the meaning of the direct object corresponds to the verbal meaning. For example, "he goes" would yield the paraphrase: "He performs an act of going"; "he drinks": "he performs an act of drinking," etc. This procedure allows us to rephrase the sentence in terms of the verb "to do" or one of its synonyms, and an object formed from the verbal root which expresses the verbal action as an action noun. It still leaves us with a verb form ("he does," "he performs"), which contains unanalyzed semantic information This information in Sanskrit is indicated by the fact that there is an agent who is engaged in an act of going, or drinking, and that the action is taking place in the present time.

Rather that allow the agent to relate to the syntax in this complex, unsystematic fashion, the agent is viewed as a one-time representative, or instantiation of a larger category of "Agency," which is operative in Sanskrit sentences. In turn, "Agency" is a member of a larger class of "auxiliary activities," which will be discussed presently. Thus Caitra is some Caitral or instance of Caitras, and agency is hierarchically related to the auxiliary activities. The fact that in this specific instance the agent is a third person-singular is solved as follows: The number category (singular, dual, or plural) is regarded as a quality of the Agent and the person category (first, second, or third) as a grammatical category to be retrieved from a search list, where its place is determined by the singularity of the agent.

The next step in the process of isolating the verbal meaning is to rephrase the description in such a way that the agent and number categories appear as qualities of the verbal action. This procedure leaves us with an accurate, but quite abstract formulation of the scntcnce: (3) "Caitra is going" (gacchati caitra) - "An act of going is taking place in the present of which the agent is no one other than Caitra qualified by singularity." (atraikatvaavacchinnacaitraabinnakartrko vartamaanakaa- liko gamanaanukuulo vyaapaarah:) (Double vowels indicate length.)

If the sentence contains, besides an agent, a direct object, an indirect object and/or other nominals that are dependent on the principal action of the verb, then in the Indian system these nominals are in turn viewed as representations of actions that contribute to the complete meaning of the sentence. However, it is not sufficient to state, for instance, that a word with a dative case represents the "recipient" of the verbal action, for the relation between the recipient and the verbal action itself requires more exact specification if we are to center the sentence description around the notion of the verbal action. To that end, the action described by the sentence is not regarded as an indivisible unit, but one that allows further subdivisions. Hence a sentence such as: (4) "John gave the ball to Mary" involves the verb Yo give," which is viewed as a verbal action composed of a number of auxiliary activities. Among these would be John's holding the ball in his hand, the movement of the hand holding the ball from John as a starting point toward Mary's hand as the goal, the seizing of the ball by Mary's hand, etc. It is a fundamental notion that actions themselves cannot be perceived, but the result of the action is observable, viz. the movement of the hand. In this instance we can infer that at least two actions have taken place:

(a) An act of movement starting from the direction of John and taking place in the direction of Mary's hand. Its Agent is "the ball" and its result is a union with Mary's hand.

(b) An act of receiving, which consists of an act of grasping whose agent is Mary's hand.

It is obvious that the act of receiving can be interpreted as an action involving a union with Mary's hand, an enveloping of the ball by Mary's hand, etc., so that in theory it might be difficult to decide where to stop this process of splitting meanings, or what the semantic primitives are. That the Indians were aware of the problem is evident from the following passage: "The name 'action' cannot be applied to the solitary point reached by extreme subdivision."

The set of actions described in (a) and (b) can be viewed as actions that contribute to the meaning of the total sentence, vix. the fact that the ball is transferred from John to Mary. In this sense they are "auxiliary actions" (Sanskrit kuruku-literally "that which brings about") that may be isolated as complete actions in their own right for possible further subdivision, but in this particular context are subordinate to the total action of "giving." These "auxiliary activities" when they become thus subordinated to the main sentence meaning, are represented by case endings affixed to nominals corresponding to the agents of the original auxiliary activity. The Sanskrit language has seven case endings (excluding the vocative), and six of these are definable representations of specific "auxiliary activities." The seventh, the genitive, represents a set of auxiliary activities that are not defined by the other six. The auxiliary actions are listed as a group of six: Agent, Object, Instrument, Recipient, Point of Departure, Locality. They are the semantic correspondents of the syntactic case endings: nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative and locative, but these are not in exact equivalence since the same syntactic structure can represent different semantic messages, as will be discussed below. There is a good deal of overlap between the karakas and the case endings, and a few of them, such as Point of Departure, also are used for syntactic information, in this case "because of". In many instances the relation is best characterized as that of the allo-eme variety.

To illustrate the operation of this model of description, a sentence involving an act of cooking rice is often quoted: (5) "Out of friendship, Maitra cooks rice for Devadatta in a pot, over a fire."

Here the total process of cooking is rendered by the verb form "cooks" as well as a number of auxiliary actions:

1. An Agent represented by the person Maitra

2. An Object by the "rice"

3. An Instrument by the "fire"

4. A Recipient by the person Devadatta

5. A Point of Departure (which includes the causal relationship) by the "friendship" (which is between Maitra and Devadatta)

6. The Locality by the "pot"

So the total meaning of the sentence is not complete without the intercession of six auxiliary actions. The action itself can be inferred from a change of the condition of the grains of rice, which started out being hard and ended up being soft.

Again, it would be possible to atomize the meaning expressed by the phrase: "to cook rice": It is an operation that is not a unitary "process", but a combination of processes, such as "to place a pot on the fire, to add fuel to the fire, to fan", etc. These processes, moreover, are not taking place in the abstract, but they are tied to, or "resting on" agencies that are associated with the processes. The word used for "tied to" is a form of the verbal root a-sri, which means to lie on, have recourse to, be situated on." Hence it is possible and usually necessary to paraphrase a sentence such as "he gives" as: "an act of giving residing in him." Hence the paraphrase of sentence (5) will be: (6) "There is an activity conducive to a softening which is a change residing in something not different from rice, and which takes place in the present, and resides in an agent not different from Maitra, who is specified by singularity and has a Recipient not different from Devadatta, an Instrument not different from.. .," etc.

It should be pointed out that these Sanskrit Grammatical Scientists actually wrote and talked this way. The domain for this type of language was the equivalent of today's technical journals. In their ancient journals and in verbal communication with each other they used this specific, unambiguous form of Sanskrit in a remarkably concise way.

Besides the verbal root, all verbs have certain suffixes that express the tense and/or mode, the person (s) engaged in the "action" and the number of persons or items so engaged. For example, the use of passive voice would necessitate using an Agent with an instrumental suffix, whereas the nonpassive voice implies that the agent of the sentence, if represented by a noun or pronoun, will be marked by a nominative singular suffix.

Word order in Sanskrit has usually no more than stylistic significance, and the Sanskrit theoreticians paid no more than scant attention to it. The language is then very suited to an approach that eliminates syntax and produces basically a list of semantic messages associated with the karakas.

An example of the operation of this model on an intransitive sentence is the following:

(7) Because of the wind, a leaf falls from a tree to the ground."

Here the wind is instrumental in bringing about an operation that results in a leaf being disunited from a tree and being united with the ground. By virtue of functioning as instrument of the operation, the term "wind" qualifies as a representative of the auxiliary activity "Instrument"; by virtue of functioning as the place from which the operation commences, the "tree" qualifies to be called "The Point of Departure"; by virtue of the fact that it is the place where the leaf ends up, the "ground" receives the designation "Locality". In the example, the word "leaf" serves only to further specify the agent that is already specified by the nonpassive verb in the form of a personal suffix. In the language it is rendered as a nominative case suffix. In passive sentences other statements have to be made. One may argue that the above phrase does not differ in meaning from "The wind blows a leaf from the tree," in which the "wind" appears in the Agent slot, the "leaf" in the Object slot. The truth is that this phrase is transitive, whereas the earlier one is intransitive. "Transitivity" can be viewed as an additional feature added to the verb. In Sanskrit this process is often accomplished by a suffix, the causative suffix, which when added to the verbal root would change the meaning as follows: "The wind causes the leaf to fall from the tree," and since English has the word "blows" as the equivalent of "causes to fall" in the case of an Instrument "wind," the relation is not quite transparent. Therefore, the analysis of the sentence presented earlier, in spite of its manifest awkwardness, enabled the Indian theoreticians to introduce a clarity into their speculations on language that was theretofore un- available. Structures that appeared radically different at first sight become transparent transforms of a basic set of elementary semantic categories.

It is by no means the case that these analyses have been exhausted, or that their potential has been exploited to the full. On the contrary, it would seem that detailed analyses of sentences and discourse units had just received a great impetus from Nagesha, when history intervened: The British conquered India and brought with them new and apparently effective means for studying and analyzing languages. The subsequent introduction of Western methods of language analysis, including such areas of research as historical and structural linguistics, and lately generative linguistics, has for a long time acted as an impediment to further research along the traditional ways. Lately, however, serious and responsible research into Indian semantics has been resumed, especially at the University of Poona, India. The surprising equivalence of the Indian analysis to the techniques used in applications of Artificial Intelligence will be discussed in the next section.
Equivalence

A comparison of the theories discussed in the first section with the Indian theories of sentence analysis in the second section shows at once a few striking similarities. Both theories take extreme care to define minute details with which a language describes the relations between events in the natural world. In both instances, the analysis itself is a map of the relations between events in the universe described. In the case of the computer-oriented analysis, this mapping is a necessary prerequisite for making the speaker's natural language digestible for the artificial processor; in the case of Sanskrit, the motivation is more elusive and probably has to do with an age-old Indo-Aryan preoccupation to discover the nature of the reality behind the the impressions we human beings receive through the operation of our sense organs. Be it as it may, it is a matter of surprise to discover that the outcome of both trends of thinking-so removed in time, space, and culture-have arrived at a representation of linguistic events that is not only theoretically equivalent but close in form as well. The one superficial difference is that the Indian tradition was on the whole, unfamiliar with the facility of diagrammatic representation, and attempted instead to formulate all abstract notions in grammatical sentences. In the following paragraphs a number of the parallellisms of the two analyses will be pointed out to illustrate the equivalence of the two systems.

Consider the sentence: "John is going." The Sanskrit paraphrase would be

"An Act of going is taking place in which the Agent is 'John' specified by singularity and masculinity."

If we now turn to the analysis in semantic nets, the event portrayed by a set of triples is the following:

1. "going events, instance, go (this specific going event)"

2. "go, agent, John"

3. "go, time, present."

The first equivalence to be observed is that the basic framework for inference is the same. John must be a semantic primitive, or it must have a dictionary entry, or it must be further represented (i.e. "John, number, 1" etc.) if further processing requires more detail (e.g. "HOW many people are going?"). Similarly, in the Indian analysis, the detail required in one case is not necessarily required in another case, although it can be produced on demand (if needed). The point to be made is that in both systems, an extensive degree of specification is crucial in understanding the real meaning of the sentence to the extent that it will allow inferences to be made about the facts not explicitly stated in the sentence

Sanskrit Semantic Net System

The basic crux of the equivalence can be illustrated by a careful look at sentence (5) noted in Part II.

"Out of friendship, Maitra cooks rice for Devadatta in a pot over a fire "

The semantic net is supplied in Figure 5. The triples corresponding to the net are:

cause, event, friendship

friendship, objectl, Devadatta

friendship, object2, Maitra

cause, result cook

cook, agent, Maitra

cook, recipient, Devadatta

cook, instrument, fire

cook, object, rice

cook, on-lot, pot.

The sentence in the Indian analysis is rendered as follows:

The Agent is represented by Maitra, the Object by "rice," the Instrument by "fire," the Recipient by "Devadatta," the Point of Departure (or cause) by "friendship" (between Maitra and Devadatta), the Locality by "pot."

Since all of these syntactic structures represent actions auxiliary to the action "cook," let us write %ook" uext to each karakn and its sentence representat(ion:

cook, agent, Maitra

cook, object, rice

cook, instrument, fire

cook, recipient, Devadatta

cook, because-of, friendship

friendship, Maitra, Devadatta

cook, locality, pot.

The comparison of the analyses shows that the Sanskrit sentence when rendered into triples matches the analysis arrived at through the application of computer processing. That is surprising, because the form of the Sanskrit sentence is radically different from that of the English. For comparison, the Sanskrit sentence is given here: Maitrah: sauhardyat Devadattaya odanam ghate agnina pacati.

Here the stem forms of the nouns are: Muitra-sauhardya- "friendship," Devadatta -, odana- "gruel," ghatu- "pot," agni- "fire' and the verb stem is paca- "cook". The deviations of the stem forms occuring at the end of each word represent the change dictated by the word's semantic and syntactic position. It should also be noted that the Indian analysis calls for the specification of even a greater amount of grammatical and semantic detail: Maitra, Devadatta, the pot, and fire would all be said to be qualified by "singularity" and "masculinity" and the act of cooking can optionally be expanded into a number of successive perceivable activities. Also note that the phrase "over a fire" on the face of it sounds like a locative of the same form as "in a pot." However, the context indicates that the prepositional phrase describes the instrument through which the heating of the rice takes place and, therefore, is best regarded as an instrument semantically. cause

Of course, many versions of semantic nets have been proposed, some of which match the Indian system better than others do in terms of specific concepts and structure. The important point is that the same ideas are present in both traditions and that in the case of many proposed semantic net systems it is the Indian analysis which is more specific.

A third important similarity between the two treatments of the sentence is its focal point which in both cases is the verb. The Sanskrit here is more specific by rendering the activity as a "going-event", rather than "ongoing." This procedure introduces a new necessary level of abstraction, for in order to keep the analysis properly structured, the focal point ought to be phrased: "there is an event taking place which is one of cooking," rather than "there is cooking taking place", in order for the computer to distinguish between the levels of unspecified "doing" (vyapara) and the result of the doing (phala).

A further similarity between the two systems is the striving for unambiguity. Both Indian and AI schools en-code in a very clear, often apparently redundant way, in order to make the analysis accessible to inference. Thus, by using the distinction of phala and vyapara, individual processes are separated into components which in term are decomposable. For example, "to cook rice" was broken down as "placing a pot on the fire, adding fuel, fanning, etc." Cooking rice also implies a change of state, realized by the phala, which is the heated softened rice. Such specifications are necessary to make logical pathways, which otherwise would remain unclear. For example, take the following sentence:Rice Cooking

"Maitra cooked rice for Devadatta who burned his mouth while eating it."

The semantic nets used earlier do not give any information about the logical connection between the two clauses. In order to fully understand the sentence, one has to be able to make the inference that the cooking process involves the process of "heating" and the process of "making palatable." The Sanskrit grammarians bridged the logical gap by the employment of the phalu/ vyapara distinction. Semantic nets could accomplish the same in a variety of ways:

1. by mapping "cooking" as a change of state, which would involve an excessive amount of detail with too much compulsory inference;

2. by representing the whole statement as a cause (event-result), or

3. by including dictionary information about cooking. A further comparison between the Indian system and the theory of semantic nets points to another similarity: The passive and the active transforms of the same sentence are given the same analysis in both systems. In the Indian system the notion of the "intention of the speaker" (tatparya, vivaksa) is adduced as a cause for distinguishing the two transforms semantically. The passive construction is said to emphasize the object, the nonpassive emphasizes the agent. But the explicit triples are not different. This observation indicates that both systems extract the meaning from the syntax.

Finally, a point worth noting is the Indian analysis of the intransitive phrase (7) describing the leaf falling from the tree. The semantic net analysis resembles the Sanskrit analysis remarkably, but the latter has an interesting flavor. Instead of a change from one location to another, as the semantic net analysis prescribes, the Indian system views the process as a uniting and disuniting of an agent. This process is equivalent to the concept of addition to and deletion from sets. A leaf falling to the ground can be viewed as a leaf disuniting from the set of leaves still attached to the tree followed by a uniting with (addition to) the set of leaves already on the ground. This theory is very useful and necessary to formulate changes or statements of state, such as "The hill is in the valley."

In the Indian system, inference is very complete indeed. There is the notion that in an event of "moving", there is, at each instant, a disunion with a preceding point (the source, the initial state), and a union with the following point, toward the destination, the final state. This calculus-like concept fascillitates inference. If it is stated that a process occurred, then a language processor could answer queries about the state of the world at any point during the execution of the process.

As has been shown, the main point in which the two lines of thought have converged is that the decomposition of each prose sentence into karalca-representations of action and focal verbal-action, yields the same set of triples as those which result from the decomposition of a semantic net into nodes, arcs, and labels. It is interesting to speculate as to why the Indians found it worthwhile to pursue studies into unambiguous coding of natural language into semantic elements. It is tempting to think of them as computer scientists without the hardware, but a possible explanation is that a search for clear, unambigous understanding is inherent in the human being.

Let us not forget that among the great accomplishments of the Indian thinkers were the invention of zero, and of the binary number system a thousand years before the West re-invented them.

Zero Mathematical SymbolBinary Number System

Their analysis of language casts doubt on the humanistic distinction between natural and artificial intelligence, and may throw light on how research in AI may finally solve the natural language understanding and machine translation problems.

References
Bhatta, Nagesha (1963) Vaiyakarana-Siddhanta-Laghu-Manjusa, Benares (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office).

Nilsson, Nils J. Principles of Artificial Intelligence. Palo Alto: Tioga Publishing Co

Bhatta, Nagesha (1974) Parama-Lalu-Manjusa Edited by Pandit Alakhadeva Sharma, Benares (Chowkhambha Sanskrit Series Office).

Rumelhart, D E. & D A. Norman (1973) Active Semantic Networks as a model of human memory. IJCAI.

Wang, William S-Y (1967) "Final Administrative Report to the National Science Foundation." Project for Machine Translation. University of California, Berkeley. (A biblzographical summary of work done in Berkeley on a program to translate Chinese.)

Wikileaks:motive of truth can be dangerous


"Your opinion is not being sought here and you will be penalized for stating it. You must include some background on the issue, but don’t spend more than a few sentences doing so."
In this new age of twitter journalism and face bookism wikileaks responds with the cables and gates by bombing down every headquarter of executives and executers alike through a serious blogging world where the blowers identity remains confidential and it is upto the strategic fiction of the reader involved to understand the ramifications of his actions and response of his thoughts.

This are the latest responses
Use media criticism from bloggers, academics and opinion/journalists specifically involved in explaining and commenting on the workings of the press.

Many of them can be found in the listings on the class website under “Critical Journalism.”

In fact, a cursory examination of Poynter.org, Mediates, Huffingtonpost, AJR.org produced these thought-provoking items from people commenting on the media's use of WikiLeaks.

Wikileaks' Iraq Docs Reflect Both the Good Wikileaks and the Bad Wikileaks
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-scheer/wikileaks-iraq-docs-refle_b_777065.html

Defying a Superpower
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/defying-a-superpower_b_775343.html

Spreading leaks before WikiLeaks
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4958

How WikiLeaks is changing the news power structure
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=187619

What WikiLeaks Means for Journalism and Whistle-Blowers
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=101&aid=178520

A google search of conservative websites may also produce helpful commentary.

The question that raises all bar
was wikileaks essential
My argument is quite simple and commonsensical. It goes something like this. (A policy wonk would be able to explain this better than I could, but I'm in the hot seat so I'll have a go.) Diplomatic communiqués are secret precisely because they contain information that it would be dangerous, or stupid, to make public. They disclose names and quotations that, for reasons either obvious or quite impossible for us to know, might get people killed. They also contain reports of actions that might lead to serious repercussions. They might even pinpoint locations of secret installations that might come under attack. They recount discussions of important plans and personalities—information that, if known to the wrong people, might lead to various military excursions, including war.

Does that sound acceptable to you? Let's put it this way. Wikileaks' actions, by releasing so much consequential, incendiary information, could easily lead to the deaths of people all around the world, and not just Americans. It could destabilize foreign relations that it benefits no one to have destabilized. It could—probably will not, but given that these are secret diplomatic communiqués in a very complex world, could—lead to war.

I find it incomprehensible that Wikileaks and its defenders are not given pause by such obvious considerations. I find it sad that so many people are not able to grasp such arguments intuitively. Perhaps they ignore them, or perhaps they only pretend that such considerations do not exist.

Now, let's talk about three common fallacies about Wikileaks' latest disastrous actions. Again, this is going to have to be brief.
Fallacy: we can already see (less than 24 hours after release) that the leaks have no damaging information, and the information in the first leaks (about Iraq and Afghanistan) did not lead to any deaths. Well—not yet they didn't, not as far as we know. But there is a big difference between the Iraq and Afghanistan leaks and the latest leak. Since the latest leak contains huge numbers of secret diplomatic communiqués, they do, of course, concern intelligence. Wikileaks' defenders seem not to realize the cumulative nature of intelligence. Intelligence-gathering is like detective work. In a detective story, often it is one tidbit of information that sheds light on a case and blows it wide open. Similarly, a communiqué that looks to the uninformed to be completely innocuous might turn out to be exactly the tidbit needed for enemies of the U.S.—and others—to inflict death and serious destruction. It amazes me that otherwise intelligent people, including journalists, think that they can make such judgments, let alone promote their obviously amateur judgments online. This does not speak well for the judgment of the New York Times' editors. To their credit, others, such as the Washington Post, would not make deals with Wikileaks.

Fallacy: the United States is an "empire" and needs to be reined in. Exposing the inner workings of this government's foreign policy is a good thing. It's not a bad thing that the leaks damage U.S. interests, because U.S. interests are contrary to the interests of a lot of the rest of the world. This argument is made by two different groups of people who are best addressed separately.

On the one hand, people on the radical left are of course deeply opposed to the American system of government. I am not one of these people—though occasionally, as an open-minded philosopher, I have considered some such people as my personal friends. Anyway, these people naturally regard the U.S. government, the main defender of this much-hated system, as enemy #1 in world politics. I don't. Obviously, radical leftists will be among Wikileaks' most vociferous supporters in the latest leaks, precisely because they want the U.S. undermined. As a patriotic, loyal American citizen, I do not want my country undermined, and I'm not ashamed to say so. Taking this openly pro-U.S. stance as I do, radical leftists cannot be expected to treat me nicely. Fortunately, I couldn't care less about what they think, when they use playground insults and attempt to bait me into stupid exchanges of sentiments. I'm not about to enter an exchange with such people about the merits of the American system and hence the defensibility of undermining it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of liberals, libertarians, and social democrats who support Wikileaks. My views are closer to theirs. I agree with them that, as a rough generality, leakage of government documents is a good thing for open government, free speech, and democracy. This is why, when Wikileaks first appeared, I was cautiously supportive. But it is perfectly consistent for liberals, libertarians, and social democrats—and conservatives too, of course—to draw the distinction between positive leaks that improve government and irresponsible leaks that do nothing but cause all sorts of harm and pointless chaos. If you are an anarchist, you might celebrate all leaks, but most of us aren't anarchists and are capable of making intelligent distinctions between good and bad leaks.

Let me put this another way. There are a lot of things that the U.S. State Department does that democracy-loving people across the political landscape can agree are positive, or at least supportable. But some of those things have to be done in secret. That is the nature of diplomacy, espionage, and foreign policy in the real world, which is a dangerous, complex world. To leak three million communiqués potentially undermines everything positive that the U.S. can do in the world. Come on, folks—can't you see that? It should be obvious, and it's very disappointing that it isn't more so to liberals. Unless you count yourself as one of the aforementioned radical leftists, who want to see the U.S. lose, period, then you cannot support Wikileaks' action. It is completely unsupportable.

Fallacy: Wikileaks is a force for openness and transparency. Openness is good. (Oh, how can a founder of Wikipedia fail to realize this? The horror!) There are some people who think that all of government should be conducted "in the open," always. Such people remind me of my radical libertarian friends: their theories sound nice, beautiful even, but they quite stubbornly refuse to take seriously the reasons for the things they criticize. The fact is that some, only some, of democratic government has always been conducted without public exposure. In this brief comment, I cannot elaborate the reasons for occasional government secrecy, but I'll give you a hint: it has to do with privacy, public safety, and national defense. I disagree with those people who want government to be so "open"—open far beyond anything any government has ever experienced, open far beyond anything widely thought to be required—that they are perfectly willing to undermine privacy, public safety, and national defense in order to secure that openness. Such people are ideologues, and they are fun for other ideologues to argue with, and occasionally for philosophers too, but they can be safely ignored by more sane, grounded people and those with little time on their hands for philosophy.

That Jullian Asange has created is a perennial monster is a known fact but when the wikileaks may lead us into the black hole of media mayhem and create a society where no one will trust no one as his past will cause a ripple into allegiance of his future.
The cyber age may respond to a new doomsday of minds.
As they said truth is often so dangerous if does not come out in the full glow of the sun and needs to be leaked out for some vested interest.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

learning method and process


learning theory
What is learning? Is it a change in behaviour or understanding? Is it a process? Here we survey some common models.
contents: introduction · learning as a product · task-conscious or acquisition learning, and learning-conscious or formalized learning ·learning as a process · the behaviourist orientation to learning · the cognitive orientation to learning · the humanistic orientation to learning · the social/situational orientation to learning · further reading · how to cite this article

picture - carl rogers public domain - wikipedia commonsI want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" Carl Rogers 1983: 18-19

For all the talk of learning amongst educational policymakers and practitioners, there is a surprising lack of attention to what it entails. In Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, theories of learning do not figure strongly in professional education programmes for teachers and those within different arenas of informal education. It is almost as if it is something is unproblematic and that can be taken for granted. Get the instructional regime right, the message seems to be, and learning (as measured by tests and assessment regimes) will follow. This lack of attention to the nature of learning inevitably leads to an impoverishment of education. It isn't simply that the process is less effective as a result, but what passes for education can actually diminish well-being.

Here we begin by examining learning as a product and as a process. The latter takes us into the arena of competing learning theories - ideas about how learning may happen. We also look at Alan Roger's (2003) helpful discussion of task-conscious or acquisition learning, and learning-conscious or formalized learning.
Learning as a product

Pick up a standard psychology textbook - especially from the 1960s and 1970s and you will probably find learning defined as a change in behaviour. In other words, learning is approached as an outcome - the end product of some process. It can be recognized or seen. This approach has the virtue of highlighting a crucial aspect of learning - change. It's apparent clarity may also make some sense when conducting experiments. However, it is rather a blunt instrument. For example:

* Does a person need to perform in order for learning to have happened?

* Are there other factors that may cause behaviour to change?

* Can the change involved include the potential for change? (Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124)

Questions such as these have led to qualification. Some have looked to identifying relatively permanent changes in behaviour (or potential for change) as a result of experiences (see behaviourism below). However, not all changes in behaviour resulting from experience involve learning. It would seem fair to expect that if we are to say that learning has taken place, experience should have been used in some way. Conditioning may result in a change in behaviour, but the change may not involved drawing upon experience to generate new knowledge. Not surprisingly, many theorists have, thus, been less concerned with overt behaviour but with changes in the ways in which people 'understand, or experience, or conceptualize the world around them' (Ramsden 1992: 4) (see cognitivism below). The focus for them, is gaining knowledge or ability through the use of experience.

The depth or nature of the changes involved are likely to be different. Some years ago Säljö (1979) carried out a simple, but very useful piece of research. He asked a number of adult students what they understood by learning. Their responses fell into five main categories:

1. Learning as a quantitative increase in knowledge. Learning is acquiring information or ‘knowing a lot’.
2. Learning as memorising. Learning is storing information that can be reproduced.
3. Learning as acquiring facts, skills, and methods that can be retained and used as necessary.
4. Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning. Learning involves relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world.
5. Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a different way. Learning involves comprehending the world by reinterpreting knowledge. (quoted in Ramsden 1992: 26)

As Paul Ramsden comments, we can see immediately that conceptions 4 and 5 in are qualitatively different from the first three. Conceptions 1 to 3 imply a less complex view of learning. Learning is something external to the learner. It may even be something that just happens or is done to you by teachers (as in conception 1). In a way learning becomes a bit like shopping. People go out and buy knowledge - it becomes their possession. The last two conceptions look to the 'internal' or personal aspect of learning. Learning is seen as something that you do in order to understand the real world.
'knowing that' and 'knowing how'

A man knowing little or nothing of medical science could not be a good surgeon, but excellence at surgery is not the same thing as knowledge of medical science; not is it a simple product of it. The surgeon must indeed have learned from instruction, or by his own inductions and observations, a great number of truths; but he must also have learned by practice a great number of aptitudes. (Ryle 1949: 48-49)

Learning how or improving an ability is not like learning that or acquiring information. Truths can be imparted, procedures can only be inculcated, and while inculcation is a gradual process, imparting is relatively sudden. It makes sense to ask at what moment someone became apprised of a truth, but not to ask at what moment someone acquired a skill. (Ryle 1949: 58)

In some ways the difference here involves what Gilbert Ryle (1949) has termed 'knowing that' and 'knowing how'. The first two categories mostly involve 'knowing that'. As we move through the third we see that alongside 'knowing that' there is growing emphasis on 'knowing how'. This system of categories is hierarchical - each higher conception implies all the rest beneath it. 'In other words, students who conceive of learning as understanding reality are also able to see it as increasing their knowledge' (Ramsden 1992: 27).
Learning as a process - task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning

In the five categories that Säljö identified we can see learning appearing as a process - there is a concern with what happens when the learning takes place. In this way, learning could be thought of as 'a process by which behaviour changes as a result of experience' (Maples and Webster 1980 quoted in Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124). One of the significant questions that arises is the extent to which people are conscious of what is going on. Are they aware that they are engaged in learning - and what significance does it have if they are? Such questions have appeared in various guises over the years - and have surfaced, for example, in debates around the rather confusing notion of 'informal learning'.

One particularly helpful way of approaching the area has been formulated by Alan Rogers (2003). Drawing especially on the work of those who study the learning of language (for example, Krashen 1982), Rogers sets out two contrasting approaches: task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning.

Task-conscious or acquisition learning. Acquisition learning is seen as going on all the time. It is 'concrete, immediate and confined to a specific activity; it is not concerned with general principles' (Rogers 2003: 18). Examples include much of the learning involved in parenting or with running a home. Some have referred to this kind of learning as unconscious or implicit. Rogers (2003: 21), however, suggests that it might be better to speak of it as having a consciousness of the task. In other words, whilst the learner may not be conscious of learning, they are usually aware of the specific task in hand.

Learning-conscious or formalized learning. Formalized learning arises from the process of facilitating learning. It is 'educative learning' rather than the accumulation of experience. To this extent there is a consciousness of learning - people are aware that the task they are engaged in entails learning. 'Learning itself is the task. What formalized learning does is to make learning more conscious in order to enhance it' (Rogers 2003: 27). It involves guided episodes of learning.

When approached in this way it becomes clear that these contrasting ways of learning can appear in the same context. Both are present in schools. Both are present in families. It is possible to think of the mix of acquisition and formalized learning as forming a continuum.

At one extreme lie those unintentional and usually accidental learning events which occur continuously as we walk through life. Next comes incidental learning - unconscious learning through acquisition methods which occurs in the course of some other activity... Then there are various activities in which we are somewhat more more conscious of learning, experiential activities arising from immediate life-related concerns, though even here the focus is still on the task... Then come more purposeful activities - occasions where we set out to learn something in a more systematic way, using whatever comes to hand for that purpose, but often deliberately disregarding engagement with teachers and formal institutions of learning... Further along the continuum lie the self-directed learning projects on which there is so much literature... More formalized and generalized (and consequently less contextualized) forms of learning are the distance and open education programmes, where some elements of acquisition learning are often built into the designed learning programme. Towards the further extreme lie more formalized learning programmes of highly decontextualized learning, using material common to all the learners without paying any regard to their individual preferences, agendas or needs. There are of course no clear boundaries between each of these categories. (Rogers 2003: 41-2)

This distinction is echoed in different ways in the writings of many of those concerned with education - but in particular in key theorists such as Kurt Lewin, Chris Argyris, Donald Schön, or Michael Polanyi.
Learning as a process - learning theory

The focus on process obviously takes us into the realm of learning theories - ideas about how or why change occurs. On these pages we focus on four different orientations (the first three taken from Merriam and Caffarella 1991).

the behaviourist orientation to learning

the cognitive orientation to learning

the humanistic orientation to learning

the social/situational orientation to learning

As with any categorization of this sort the divisions are a bit arbitrary: there could be further additions and sub-divisions to the scheme, and there a various ways in which the orientations overlap and draw upon each other.

The four orientations can be summed up in the following figure:
Four orientations to learning (after Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 138)
Aspect

Behaviourist

Cognitivist

Humanist

Social and situational
Learning theorists Thorndike, Pavlov, Watson, Guthrie, Hull, Tolman, Skinner Koffka, Kohler, Lewin, Piaget, Ausubel, Bruner, Gagne

Maslow, Rogers Bandura, Lave and Wenger, Salomon
View of the learning process Change in behaviour Internal mental process (including insight, information processing, memory, perception

A personal act to fulfil potential. Interaction /observation in social contexts. Movement from the periphery to the centre of a community of practice

Locus of learning Stimuli in external environment Internal cognitive structuring Affective and cognitive needs Learning is in relationship between people and environment.

Purpose in education Produce behavioural change in desired direction

Develop capacity and skills to learn better Become self-actualized, autonomous Full participation in communities of practice and utilization of resources

Educator's role Arranges environment to elicit desired response

Structures content of learning activity Facilitates development of the whole person Works to establish communities of practice in which conversation and participation can occur.

Manifestations in adult learning Behavioural objectives

Competency -based education

Skill development and training
Cognitive development

Intelligence, learning and memory as function of age

Learning how to learn

Andragogy

Self-directed learning
Socialization

Social participation

Associationalism

Conversation



As can seen from the above schematic presentation and the discussion on the linked pages, these approaches involve contrasting ideas as to the purpose and process of learning and education - and the role that educators may take. It is also important to recognize that the theories may apply to different sectors of the acquision-formalized learning continuum outlined above. For example, the work of Lave and Wenger is broadly a form of acquisition learning that can involve some more formal interludes.
Further reading

For this listing I have tried to bring together a selection of books that look to the main themes arising in the literature around learning (and education). For those familiar with Tennant (1997) (which is a set text on a course I teach!), the writers can be grouped as follows:

* humanistic orientations - here I chosen Maslow and Rogers.
* psychoanalytical approaches - Salzberger-Wittenberg et al provide a useful introduction.
* the cognitive orientation - with Piaget, Gagné and Bruner
* learning styles - Witkin on field dependence and independence; and Kolb on experiential learning.
* behaviourism - represented here by Skinner.
* building learning communities - Dewey on group investigation; Lave and Wenger on situated learning.
* critical awareness - Mezirow on the transformative dimensions of learning; Freire on 'conscientization'.

Theory of eveything learning

learning theory
What is learning? Is it a change in behaviour or understanding? Is it a process? Here we survey some common models.
contents: introduction · learning as a product · task-conscious or acquisition learning, and learning-conscious or formalized learning ·learning as a process · the behaviourist orientation to learning · the cognitive orientation to learning · the humanistic orientation to learning · the social/situational orientation to learning · further reading · how to cite this article

picture - carl rogers public domain - wikipedia commonsI want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" Carl Rogers 1983: 18-19

For all the talk of learning amongst educational policymakers and practitioners, there is a surprising lack of attention to what it entails. In Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, theories of learning do not figure strongly in professional education programmes for teachers and those within different arenas of informal education. It is almost as if it is something is unproblematic and that can be taken for granted. Get the instructional regime right, the message seems to be, and learning (as measured by tests and assessment regimes) will follow. This lack of attention to the nature of learning inevitably leads to an impoverishment of education. It isn't simply that the process is less effective as a result, but what passes for education can actually diminish well-being.

Here we begin by examining learning as a product and as a process. The latter takes us into the arena of competing learning theories - ideas about how learning may happen. We also look at Alan Roger's (2003) helpful discussion of task-conscious or acquisition learning, and learning-conscious or formalized learning.
Learning as a product

Pick up a standard psychology textbook - especially from the 1960s and 1970s and you will probably find learning defined as a change in behaviour. In other words, learning is approached as an outcome - the end product of some process. It can be recognized or seen. This approach has the virtue of highlighting a crucial aspect of learning - change. It's apparent clarity may also make some sense when conducting experiments. However, it is rather a blunt instrument. For example:

* Does a person need to perform in order for learning to have happened?

* Are there other factors that may cause behaviour to change?

* Can the change involved include the potential for change? (Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124)

Questions such as these have led to qualification. Some have looked to identifying relatively permanent changes in behaviour (or potential for change) as a result of experiences (see behaviourism below). However, not all changes in behaviour resulting from experience involve learning. It would seem fair to expect that if we are to say that learning has taken place, experience should have been used in some way. Conditioning may result in a change in behaviour, but the change may not involved drawing upon experience to generate new knowledge. Not surprisingly, many theorists have, thus, been less concerned with overt behaviour but with changes in the ways in which people 'understand, or experience, or conceptualize the world around them' (Ramsden 1992: 4) (see cognitivism below). The focus for them, is gaining knowledge or ability through the use of experience.

The depth or nature of the changes involved are likely to be different. Some years ago Säljö (1979) carried out a simple, but very useful piece of research. He asked a number of adult students what they understood by learning. Their responses fell into five main categories:

1. Learning as a quantitative increase in knowledge. Learning is acquiring information or ‘knowing a lot’.
2. Learning as memorising. Learning is storing information that can be reproduced.
3. Learning as acquiring facts, skills, and methods that can be retained and used as necessary.
4. Learning as making sense or abstracting meaning. Learning involves relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world.
5. Learning as interpreting and understanding reality in a different way. Learning involves comprehending the world by reinterpreting knowledge. (quoted in Ramsden 1992: 26)

As Paul Ramsden comments, we can see immediately that conceptions 4 and 5 in are qualitatively different from the first three. Conceptions 1 to 3 imply a less complex view of learning. Learning is something external to the learner. It may even be something that just happens or is done to you by teachers (as in conception 1). In a way learning becomes a bit like shopping. People go out and buy knowledge - it becomes their possession. The last two conceptions look to the 'internal' or personal aspect of learning. Learning is seen as something that you do in order to understand the real world.
'knowing that' and 'knowing how'

A man knowing little or nothing of medical science could not be a good surgeon, but excellence at surgery is not the same thing as knowledge of medical science; not is it a simple product of it. The surgeon must indeed have learned from instruction, or by his own inductions and observations, a great number of truths; but he must also have learned by practice a great number of aptitudes. (Ryle 1949: 48-49)

Learning how or improving an ability is not like learning that or acquiring information. Truths can be imparted, procedures can only be inculcated, and while inculcation is a gradual process, imparting is relatively sudden. It makes sense to ask at what moment someone became apprised of a truth, but not to ask at what moment someone acquired a skill. (Ryle 1949: 58)

In some ways the difference here involves what Gilbert Ryle (1949) has termed 'knowing that' and 'knowing how'. The first two categories mostly involve 'knowing that'. As we move through the third we see that alongside 'knowing that' there is growing emphasis on 'knowing how'. This system of categories is hierarchical - each higher conception implies all the rest beneath it. 'In other words, students who conceive of learning as understanding reality are also able to see it as increasing their knowledge' (Ramsden 1992: 27).
Learning as a process - task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning

In the five categories that Säljö identified we can see learning appearing as a process - there is a concern with what happens when the learning takes place. In this way, learning could be thought of as 'a process by which behaviour changes as a result of experience' (Maples and Webster 1980 quoted in Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124). One of the significant questions that arises is the extent to which people are conscious of what is going on. Are they aware that they are engaged in learning - and what significance does it have if they are? Such questions have appeared in various guises over the years - and have surfaced, for example, in debates around the rather confusing notion of 'informal learning'.

One particularly helpful way of approaching the area has been formulated by Alan Rogers (2003). Drawing especially on the work of those who study the learning of language (for example, Krashen 1982), Rogers sets out two contrasting approaches: task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning.

Task-conscious or acquisition learning. Acquisition learning is seen as going on all the time. It is 'concrete, immediate and confined to a specific activity; it is not concerned with general principles' (Rogers 2003: 18). Examples include much of the learning involved in parenting or with running a home. Some have referred to this kind of learning as unconscious or implicit. Rogers (2003: 21), however, suggests that it might be better to speak of it as having a consciousness of the task. In other words, whilst the learner may not be conscious of learning, they are usually aware of the specific task in hand.

Learning-conscious or formalized learning. Formalized learning arises from the process of facilitating learning. It is 'educative learning' rather than the accumulation of experience. To this extent there is a consciousness of learning - people are aware that the task they are engaged in entails learning. 'Learning itself is the task. What formalized learning does is to make learning more conscious in order to enhance it' (Rogers 2003: 27). It involves guided episodes of learning.

When approached in this way it becomes clear that these contrasting ways of learning can appear in the same context. Both are present in schools. Both are present in families. It is possible to think of the mix of acquisition and formalized learning as forming a continuum.

At one extreme lie those unintentional and usually accidental learning events which occur continuously as we walk through life. Next comes incidental learning - unconscious learning through acquisition methods which occurs in the course of some other activity... Then there are various activities in which we are somewhat more more conscious of learning, experiential activities arising from immediate life-related concerns, though even here the focus is still on the task... Then come more purposeful activities - occasions where we set out to learn something in a more systematic way, using whatever comes to hand for that purpose, but often deliberately disregarding engagement with teachers and formal institutions of learning... Further along the continuum lie the self-directed learning projects on which there is so much literature... More formalized and generalized (and consequently less contextualized) forms of learning are the distance and open education programmes, where some elements of acquisition learning are often built into the designed learning programme. Towards the further extreme lie more formalized learning programmes of highly decontextualized learning, using material common to all the learners without paying any regard to their individual preferences, agendas or needs. There are of course no clear boundaries between each of these categories. (Rogers 2003: 41-2)

This distinction is echoed in different ways in the writings of many of those concerned with education - but in particular in key theorists such as Kurt Lewin, Chris Argyris, Donald Schön, or Michael Polanyi.
Learning as a process - learning theory

The focus on process obviously takes us into the realm of learning theories - ideas about how or why change occurs. On these pages we focus on four different orientations (the first three taken from Merriam and Caffarella 1991).

the behaviourist orientation to learning

the cognitive orientation to learning

the humanistic orientation to learning

the social/situational orientation to learning

As with any categorization of this sort the divisions are a bit arbitrary: there could be further additions and sub-divisions to the scheme, and there a various ways in which the orientations overlap and draw upon each other.

The four orientations can be summed up in the following figure:
Four orientations to learning (after Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 138)
Aspect

Behaviourist

Cognitivist

Humanist

Social and situational
Learning theorists Thorndike, Pavlov, Watson, Guthrie, Hull, Tolman, Skinner Koffka, Kohler, Lewin, Piaget, Ausubel, Bruner, Gagne

Maslow, Rogers Bandura, Lave and Wenger, Salomon
View of the learning process Change in behaviour Internal mental process (including insight, information processing, memory, perception

A personal act to fulfil potential. Interaction /observation in social contexts. Movement from the periphery to the centre of a community of practice

Locus of learning Stimuli in external environment Internal cognitive structuring Affective and cognitive needs Learning is in relationship between people and environment.

Purpose in education Produce behavioural change in desired direction

Develop capacity and skills to learn better Become self-actualized, autonomous Full participation in communities of practice and utilization of resources

Educator's role Arranges environment to elicit desired response

Structures content of learning activity Facilitates development of the whole person Works to establish communities of practice in which conversation and participation can occur.

Manifestations in adult learning Behavioural objectives

Competency -based education

Skill development and training
Cognitive development

Intelligence, learning and memory as function of age

Learning how to learn

Andragogy

Self-directed learning
Socialization

Social participation

Associationalism

Conversation



As can seen from the above schematic presentation and the discussion on the linked pages, these approaches involve contrasting ideas as to the purpose and process of learning and education - and the role that educators may take. It is also important to recognize that the theories may apply to different sectors of the acquision-formalized learning continuum outlined above. For example, the work of Lave and Wenger is broadly a form of acquisition learning that can involve some more formal interludes.
Further reading

For this listing I have tried to bring together a selection of books that look to the main themes arising in the literature around learning (and education). For those familiar with Tennant (1997) (which is a set text on a course I teach!), the writers can be grouped as follows:

* humanistic orientations - here I chosen Maslow and Rogers.
* psychoanalytical approaches - Salzberger-Wittenberg et al provide a useful introduction.
* the cognitive orientation - with Piaget, Gagné and Bruner
* learning styles - Witkin on field dependence and independence; and Kolb on experiential learning.
* behaviourism - represented here by Skinner.
* building learning communities - Dewey on group investigation; Lave and Wenger on situated learning.
* critical awareness - Mezirow on the transformative dimensions of learning; Freire on 'conscientization'.

Artificial intelligence and computational god explanation through software

This is an article that came up in orkut where the person Shivang Buch explained god in so many ways that sounds interesting
God (Supreme soul) has manufactured various robots/PCs (Bodies) with three self running application software programs (Gunas - viruses and antiviruses) which are also anti softwares of each other. They all are working together in the system. God switches on the network of PCs in the beginning of the kalp and switches off the PC at the end of the kalp and handles himself the server PC.

God has also programmed himself initially as an artificial intelligence system software (Souls - reflection of supreme soul) in all those PCs. This system software has the capability of changing its characteristics (Upgradation and degradation) depending upon which application software it allows to work maximum number of times (Kaaranam gunsangosya, sadasad yoni janmasu). Only in server PC, the application softwares start only at mouse click of the user (Gunateet).

Satva software automatically generates the scraps of love, service, peace and knowledge but it will send them to other's scrapbook only if rajas software is running (Karm) and every scrap sent creates an identity of the sender PC (Ego) visible in every system software and its own macro programs are automatically installed in other PCs. However, it can only catch rajas software of other's PC (Desire to get) and It then transfers the program to be installed in its satva software (Grasping power due to existing knowledge).

Tamas software automatically generates the scraps of hatred, harassment through hacking, destructive virus and laziness but will need rajas software (Action) to spread them and they are installed in tamas software of other's PC (easy Grasping) and thereby making it powerful weekens the satva software.

When Satva after knowing/gnyaan & planning, directs rajas (desire/bhakti & action/karma) towards regaining original form of system software, connectivity of that system software with server PC increases, and ultimately when the connectivity strength is excellent, that system software gains control command dialogue box over application softwares.
20/06/2009
Shivang
And when that client PC gets excellent connectivity with server and also regains its original form when it started, it destroys its hardware and transmits itself through the network in the Server PC.

Now extending the same logic to robots instead of PCs. Robots can stand up, walk, hit and can damage the hardware and system of other robots. They can also repair themselves and components of other robots. When after wear and tear, hardware becomes unusable, it is destroyed by the other robots to get the material after the software leaves the hardware and is lost in the network. The robots can also produce other robots with the help of other robots of opposite nature to complement/supplement each other. They can do so when they can find some software in the network available ready to be downloaded in the hardware they have created. These robot hardwares are of different sizes and shapes and functional abilities and software lost (roaming) in the network after leaving the earlier worn out hardware catch up only that newly produced hardware (Yoni) according to the current status of application software development (Degree of knowledge of soul) since hardware-software compatibility is required. These robots work on electricity/battery (Consciousness) which is provided to them by the administrator/user of the server. This makes them different from other simple materials (Jad padarth - panch mahabhoot) from which they are also made up. These robots exchange materials among themselves like floppies, CDs, Pendrive to run in them entertainment programs in tamas software. They need lubricating material (food) for extended life of their hardwares which they only produce by following the principles of physics and chemistry (In our case biology ).
When the tamas software of one robot tries to damage the hardware (through rajas software & hardware) or software of the hardware within LAN area (through rajas software) of other robot by directing its rajas software, mostly it makes the tamas software of the other robot working very fast which generates the macros which are transmitted in the network. Now these macros can be caught by any robot's system in proximity to the one which was the originator of the action. They can then be run in any software (Satva/rajas or tamas) of that recieving robot. Thus, when the receiving robot comes into contact with the robot originating action, it sends the macro back to that robot. (If it is run through tamas software, sinner gets back the fruit of the sin from anyone with the revengeful, damaging, hating or jealous state of mind - Shikhandi. If it is run through satva software, sinner gets back the fruit of the sin from anyone with the state of mind of sense of duty - Arjun. If it is run through rajas software, sinner gets back the fruit of the sin from anyone with the state of mind of desire of getting something in return)

Now the originator will receive the fruit of his action and will automatically download macro only if the rajas software is working (If desires of fruits are present, bad fruits will also be downloaded automatically along with good fruits for which the network connectivity is kept open. The sender of the fruit will generate a macro in the originator (now damaged by action) some new macro which will be relayed in the system. That means your tamas action through rajas software is bound to come back to you as tamas macro through your rajas software only to make your tamas powerful. God has programmed already that thing to happen out of karma theory unless your desires are completely destroyed and you have become one with server software. One (Robot) has to be only the cause (Nimitt maatra with either state of mind) and one would know that reality only through powerful satva software.

Now we all humans are predominantly rajas softwares (Karm yoni). Desires and actions. Satva without rajas (action & desire) is passive and is completely involved in self only (Samadhi) without interacting with others in the network. Tamas without rajas (action & desire) is also passive and can destroy oneself only through laziness, frustration, depression, etc. This becomes the cause of birth in lower intellect bodies appropriate/compatible for it. But our rajas when combined with tamas (Darkness/agnyaan) leads to anger and damaging actions for others and our rajas when combined with satva (Knowledge/light/sense of duty) serves the society and spreads the message of humanity, love and peace in all through action.

Now question is if everything is done by Gunas, then what is there in our hand?

Intellect (Observer & consent giver).

We are given the intellect to educate and control our mind and senses which are the root cause of desires (or organs of desires). We have to drive them towards right kind of desires through our satva. Divine desires. Desire for seeking God/self realization. Bhakti. Love. Whenever our satva (Knowledge) is developed, we have to grow it and make the best use of it by using our mind and senses in involvement. Whenever our tamas is developed, we have to become careful to control it by controlling our mind by keeping them away from attachments.

Being our yoni mainly rajas yoni, yagn procedure is recommended by vedas. We all have desires we can't deny that. So we have to perform actions (Parishram) rather than depending on others. We should give more and first. Then only we should take what we wanted. If our action was righteous, our satva (Knowledge) grows and we realize that what we wanted was inferior value or desire of life. So we perform another yagn by sacrificing what now we have to get thing of higher quality. That way by performing righteous action in duty bound way, one leads one's rajo gun towards saturation stage achieving highest desire of peace of mind. (Adhyay 3)
In management, same thing is mentioned in Maslow's pyramid theory.
In Ramayan serial, such state of saturation after karmas performed, at various places is called as "Poorn kaam" sthiti.

In Geeta Adhyay 6, Shloka 27, the words used for the same are "Prashaant manasam" and "Shaant rajasam".
In simple terms,
Satva means knowledge which drives our desires to be better and superior towards state of nishkaam bhaav. Satva makes itself powerful by providing strength to rajas while performing action and satisfying lower level need in a proper and controlled manner to gain further knowledge that it was not the ultimate need and thereby seeking higher need.
Tamas means lack of knowdedge which drives desires to be worse and inferior towards all bodily and physical needs (animals). Tamas makes itself powerful because it has tight hold over people in enjoyment of sensual pleasures and entertainment activities which people never like to leave with the help of rajas for making its desire and achieving it.
Good desires lead to good action and bad desires lead to bad action. Rajas leads to performing of action motivated by desires. Rajas itelf makes itself powerful. Stronger is the need, more it is converted into passion and stronger will be the coming action.
Among animals, udhyam (Parishram) when they have to hunt or search for food is rajas (Activity). Certain extremely tamas creatures with minimum rajas depend exclusively on other animal's hunt. The beauty and power in them is satva which makes them giving pleasure to man. Some of them serve man as carrier or by giving milk. Some possess sense of loyalty. Some possess sense of giving return.Some possess sense of bravery. Almost all (though not all) possess sense of motherhood and familyhood. Some of them have better memory power than man.
I feel this is the great theory part of Geeta which is not covered in Bhagwad Gita episodes of the serial just because of its depthness and not direct practical applicability on issue of war though had applicability on Arjun's knowledge and enlightenment that he himself was doing nothing. He just had to chose by his intellect proper duty for which he had to become only a cause of action (nimitt).
When the tamas software of one robot tries to damage the hardware (through rajas software & hardware) or software of the hardware within LAN area (through rajas software) of other robot by directing its rajas software, mostly it makes the tamas software of the other robot working very fast which generates the macros which are transmitted in the network. Now these macros can be caught by any robot's system in proximity to the one which was the originator of the action. They can then be run in any software (Satva/rajas or tamas) of that recieving robot. Thus, when the receiving robot comes into contact with the robot originating action, it sends the macro back to that robot. (If it is run through tamas software, sinner gets back the fruit of the sin from anyone with the revengeful, damaging, hating or jealous state of mind - Shikhandi. If it is run through satva software, sinner gets back the fruit of the sin from anyone with the state of mind of sense of duty - Arjun. If it is run through rajas software, sinner gets back the fruit of the sin from anyone with the state of mind of desire of getting something in return)

Now the originator will receive the fruit of his action and will automatically download macro only if the rajas software is working (If desires of fruits are present, bad fruits will also be downloaded automatically along with good fruits for which the network connectivity is kept open. The sender of the fruit will generate a macro in the originator (now damaged by action) some new macro which will be relayed in the system. That means your tamas action through rajas software is bound to come back to you as tamas macro through your rajas software only to make your tamas powerful. God has programmed already that thing to happen out of karma theory unless your desires are completely destroyed and you have become one with server software. One (Robot) has to be only the cause (Nimitt maatra with either state of mind) and one would know that reality only through powerful satva software.
Now we all humans are predominantly rajas softwares (Karm yoni). Desires and actions. Satva without rajas (action & desire) is passive and is completely involved in self only (Samadhi) without interacting with others in the network. Tamas without rajas (action & desire) is also passive and can destroy oneself only through laziness, frustration, depression, etc. This becomes the cause of birth in lower intellect bodies appropriate/compatible for it. But our rajas when combined with tamas (Darkness/agnyaan) leads to anger and damaging actions for others and our rajas when combined with satva (Knowledge/light/sense of duty) serves the society and spreads the message of humanity, love and peace in all through action.

Now question is if everything is done by Gunas, then what is there in our hand?

Intellect (Observer & consent giver).

We are given the intellect to educate and control our mind and senses which are the root cause of desires (or organs of desires). We have to drive them towards right kind of desires through our satva. Divine desires. Desire for seeking God/self realization. Bhakti. Love. Whenever our satva (Knowledge) is developed, we have to grow it and make the best use of it by using our mind and senses in involvement. Whenever our tamas is developed, we have to become careful to control it by controlling our mind by keeping them away from attachments.

Among animals, udhyam (Parishram) when they have to hunt or search for food is rajas (Activity). Certain extremely tamas creatures with minimum rajas depend exclusively on other animal's hunt. The beauty and power in them is satva which makes them giving pleasure to man. Some of them serve man as carrier or by giving milk. Some possess sense of loyalty. Some possess sense of giving return.Some possess sense of bravery. Almost all (though not all) possess sense of motherhood and familyhood. Some of them have better memory power than man.

I feel this is the great theory part of Geeta which is not covered in Bhagwad Gita episodes of the serial just because of its depthness and not direct practical applicability on issue of war though had applicability on Arjun's knowledge and enlightenment that he himself was doing nothing. He just had to chose by his intellect proper duty for which he had to become only a cause of action (nimitt).

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Desires and Feelings are Directions from Spiritual Forces


It is necessary that Spirit should manifest in SOME KIND OF FORM in order that It may come into Self-Expression through Self-Realization. It is necessary that Spirit be manifested in order to express Itself. Behind every manifestation must be the desire to create, the urge to express. This is called the “Divine Urge“. It is the Cause that moves the energy. So dynamic is this Urge that it will cause a little seed to break open the most solid earth, in order that it may express itself in the form of a plant. It is the coming forth of Spirit into expression, the release of energy into action, and is apparent in all Creation. Behind every action of man is some form of desire to express. This desire, of course, is purely mental in
its nature. All that man is, is his mentality, both conscious and subconscious, plus what he expresses. The Divine Urge is strong in man and constantly causes him to seek some form of self-expression. It is Divine because It is the desire of Spirit to express Itself through him, and like all the other forces of Nature, this energy can work through man only at his bidding whether consciously or unconsciously, for
he is an individual and has self-choice. This Urge or Energy is called “Libido”, which means the emotional craving, or wish, behind all human activities. It is the repression of it which leads to psycho-neuroses.
The energy set in motion through this urge is the dynamic power of Mind, and unless it becomes expressed, it will congest and cause a conflict within the mentality. Inhibited action produces conflicts and complexes which mentally tear and bind; and as they manifest their physical correspondents, they
produce nervous disorders. It is claimed that a large percentage of diseases is caused by the suppression of some form of emotion.
Some form of desire is back of everything a person does, some desire to express life. Any unexpressed desire will eventually lead to a complication. Things will stand just so much pressure and no more; when the limit is reached an explosion will follow, unless some avenue for expression is provided. If we were completely expressed we would never become sick or unhappy. The average person goes through life
only partially expressed and always with a sense of incompletion and dissatisfaction.
Emotion, uncontrolled, produces chaos; unexpressed it produces confusion, conflict and complication; for energy will have an outlet. When an emotion conflicts with the will and becomes suppressed it returns to its subjective state, but remains active; it will come up in some other form; it will not be put down. It may remain in a subjective state for years; but eventually, unless neutralized, it will manifest. Let one go for years with some unexpressed longing and he will have created such a desire that it will have become irresistible in its inclination toward expression. People often become seething cauldrons within because of inhibited action.
Energy must find an outlet. Energy is energy and will be expressed or blow the top off, just as a pipe will stand only so much pressure before bursting. Millions are daily being blown up, mentally and physically, through the suppression of desires. Desire is a dynamic force and must be taken into account. The spirit leads you by desire. Desire is a feeling. When the spirit directs us, we would feel an inclination
to take a certain action. We feel like doing something, we want to do it. We have a desire to do it. That desire is what is known as an inner prompt. Follow your inner prompts and you are following the spirit. It is certain that you can do what you want to do. The desire to do it is proof that you have within you the power which can do it. Desire is power seeking to manifest. Deep down inside you know you can do it, that’s why you want to do it. Every desire is possibility seeking expression through life. The desire to play music is the power which can play music seeking expression and development. The desire to speak before millions is the power which can inspire the world seeking expression and development. The key is development.
When there is no power, either developed or undeveloped to do a thing, there is never any desire to do that thing. Power is the ability to do or act. When there is strong desire to do a thing, it is certain proof that the power to do it is strong. The more unbreakable a desire is, the more unbreakable the power present is. Power comes from purpose. It is God that works in us both to will and to do. Desire is based on Purpose. In your strongest desires, you feel a definite sense of purpose which is undeniable within you. Purpose is what defines us and binds us to our design and destiny. Purpose is the Will of the Divine.
Your innermost desires are divinely inspired. Your passions are God’s way of leading you. Every positive thought, idea an inspiration you have is a message from God. God is the universal mind who communicates through your mind. His message comes through your feelings, intuition and thoughts. God leads you from within. By choosing to follow your heart, you are fulfilling what God has placed in you. Our desires are the script given to our souls for us to execute here on earth, while our freewill gives us the choice to either follow our script or choose another one. We can choose whatever script we want, however following our own script may lead us to chaos, struggle, unnecessary challenges and pain, while following the script assigned to us by our souls leads us to happiness, joy, fulfillment, prosperity and wisdom.
Everything is vibration and vibration is frequency. You experience frequency, energy or vibration by feeling. Emotion or feeling is the closest thing to frequency or vibration that we can communicate to the universe with. All communication takes place through the use of frequency. When God communicates a frequency to you, you experience it as a feeling or desire. Feeling is the experience of energy being
moved. Emotions are the gateways and channels to thought waves of inspiration, creativity and ideas. How does an artist paint his picture? How does a musician create his song? How does a scientist discover his theory? He simply feels it out. Einstein discovered the theory of relativity by feeling the experience of riding on a beam of light. How did I create this piece of writing? I simply feel what I write and write what I feel. Desire and Feeling is the channel by which all spiritual forces direct you. It is the same channel by which God, devil, other minds, the sin nature, your conscience and your thoughts direct you. Desire is a feeling which is emotion and all emotion is energy in motion. It is energy which is being moved by the mind. You are energy and it is God and all other forces including yourself that moves you in the form of desires and feelings.
The key then is to discern which spiritual force is directing you, and to choose which feelings you should follow and which ones you should overcome. You can only overcome a feeling generated by a spiritual force with a feeling generated by another spiritual force. Choose to connect more with the mind of God and you will experience his direction of your feelings stronger than any other spiritual forces.

Gravity is Mind Attracting Mind


Gravity is the result of energy attracting energy. All matter is energy. Energy is consciousness. All consciousness seeks to unite and become one.
The oneness nature of the universe is what causes everything to be held together as a single whole.A body of mass seeks to join a greater body of mass. The largest body of mass will have the highest attracting force. Everything gravitates to something bigger than itself. The greater body of mass is not greater is size but in amount. One body of mass would have more attracting power than another of equal size if it has greater density. All energy is consciousness and consciousness is mind. To understand the attractive force of consciousness is to understand gravity. Gravity is mind attracting mind.A person with a stronger mind and more powerful thought waves will attract other minds to his own. Other people will gravitate towards his ideas and follow his thoughts. Gravity is the Law of Attraction at work in all dimensions of reality. Energy of the same vibration attract other. Energy of different vibrations repel each other. The more similar in vibration, the more they attract. The more different in vibration, the further they repel.
Scientists mention an unknown force that holds all the particles of an atom together but separated at a perfectly ordered distance that is in the ratio of phi (1.618). The distance between the planets and the sun are also in the ratio of phi. The densest planets are closest to the sun. The less dense ones are further away.
Things do not repel indefinitely. They only repel to a certain distance at then stay in that proximity according to the ratio of their vibrational difference.
In the physical world, helium rises upwards away from the ground because it is so fine in vibration that it repels from the dense mass of the Earth until it reaches a certain distance in the atmosphere where it remains in the attraction field of the Earth. In the world of thought, your attract the objects, people and resources that are in harmony with the thoughts you think. Your mind attracts like minded people and repel unlike minded ones. Increasing the difference in vibration (kinetic energy) between two objects is the secret of anti-gravity. Fire always burn upwards and not downwards. Electromagnetic waves travel upwards more easily than
downwards. Positive and harmonious thought waves tend to travel upwards. Negative and discordant thought waves tend to travel downwards.
Mass is the measure of an object’s resistance to changes in either the speed or direction of it motion. Finer vibrations change speed or direction more easily than denser ones.Violet gets refracted the most while red the least. Positive moods are easier to change than negative ones. It takes more focus and will to stay positive than it does to remain negative. Changing from positive to negative is easier than changing from negative to positive. That is the challenge, the stronger you are
the more positive you can be. The weaker you are, the more negative you will be.
Gravity has a lesser effect in the dream world. When you are dreaming, things will always feel lighter. Large objects that would hurt you in the physical world don’t seem to hurt you when they collide against
you in a dream. Everything is of a lower mass including yourself. When you skip and hop, your landing is slower and much softer. Sometimes you can even fly if your mind
is free enough. Otherwise you will keep getting pulled back to the ground as you rise and fall in cycles. In fact, gravity exists on all planes of reality.
Gravity is stronger in the morning because the surface is moving in the direction of the Earth’s orbit.Everything feels heavier. The air is denser and condenses to form dew. The more things move together in the same direction, the less difference in kinetic energy between them. Like minded people tend to move together in the same direction. Moving people together in the same direction cause them to become like minded. You can always use the Laws of Mind as the Laws of Physics and vice versa. The world within and the world without are a mirror of each other. As above so below, as below so above.