• This issue of “Organization Science” features an article by Saeki Akira on “Learning in the Field,” in which he introduces the concept of iRIICHI’s combinationality and concludes that learning is ultimately about creating convivial relationships with others. Interesting.

  • Organization Science Vol.48 No.2 pp.38-49 Min Saeki “What Does it Mean to ‘Learn’ in the First Place: Before and After the Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory.”

  • A discussion of the flow of psychology up to the emergence of orthodox peripheral participation theory and the possibilities for change since then.

  • After Watson said in 1913 that psychology would be a natural science if it focused only on behavior (conversely, anything else ain’t science), psychology entered the heyday of behaviorism.

    • The idea in this period was that “if a behavior is rewarded immediately after it occurs, the behavior is reinforced” (operant conditioning).
    • This, however, has been out of order for a long time.
  • Krechevsky 1932

    • Analysis of the learning curve of discrimination learning in rodents
    • Rats don’t learn by having their behavior reinforced.
    • Have a “hypothesis” of what to use as a clue to discriminate, and abandoning false hypotheses rapidly increases the percentage of correct answers.
    • insisting that
  • Tolman 1948

    • From the behavior of rats that have learned the shortest path in a maze, but cannot follow the path by placing obstacles (i.e., cannot reach the path by the combination of learned behaviors),
    • Claims that rats have learned a cognitive map of where food is located, not a set of behaviors.
  • Two more examples are given, such as

  • The bottom line is that the “learning by stimulus-response association” model is broken with respect to animals.

  • However, CAI and behavioral therapy based on this model are producing results. Why are they getting results when they are based on the wrong model?

  • From here, the story takes an even more shocking turn.

    • When a chimpanzee and a human 3-year-old learn to operate a device that does not allow them to see how it works by following a specific procedure to remove candy by showing them a model behavior, both learn in the same way.
    • Then you get to a state where you can see the inner workings and know, “What the heck, most of the steps are pointless.
    • Chimpanzees skip meaningless steps, while humans dutifully perform futile ones. (Whiten+ 2005) - Humans continue pointless procedures.
    • The major difference between humans and other animals is “culture,” the “blind” transmission of what is taught as “supposed to be done this way” with the meaning unclear (Gergely&Csibra 2006).
    • My interpretation
      • Rather than a species in which each individual thinks and acts on its own, a species in which some smart individuals create new rules and the remaining individuals blindly follow those rules without thinking for themselves may be more beneficial for survival, and natural selection may have selected that species.
      • This is quite shocking to my value system, which always endorses thinking for oneself.
  • Now, in the overall story, this story is a side note

  • Returning to the original path, four landmark studies were published in 1956, when “this is how behaviorism failed and what other paths could be taken” were being tried and tested.

    • Bruner+‘s “Humans formulate hypotheses, test them, and revise them,
    • Miller’s “short-term memory is 7±2”, Miller1956.
    • Newell&Simon’s theorem proving system,
    • Chomsky’s generative grammar
  • Then two ideas appeared

    • Focusing on human information processing, Milner+‘s idea that the key concept is “plan”.
    • Neisser’s cognitive psychology idea that humans are trying to generate meaningful coherence from sensory input
  • The latter will become mainstream.

  • Winograd’s understanding of natural language (the famous SHRDLU) led to an increase in research on how to express knowledge and language, and research on identifying and fixing bugs from the perspective that students who make mistakes in math at school are also making mistakes because of bugs in the programs in their brains.

  • Piaget 1974 said that an anthropological point of view was needed in response to this.

  • However, the idea was shown to be valid in Suchman 1987.

  • Here Situated (Embedded in the situation) communication is communication between a tool and a person, and.situation

  • Lave was impressed by the word Situated and proposed the concept of Situated Learning in 1991.

  • Here, learning is defined as “the formation of a person’s identity as a member of a community of practice through participation in that community.

  • Saeki criticizes this orthodox theory of peripheral participation for not asking the question, “Why do people learn?

  • Iriichi’s conviviality is usually translated as “living in harmony with independence,” but Furuse uses the word “sycophancy” to describe enjoying the company.

  • In order to create a convivial society, he introduces Reddy’s observation of his own child, and says that we need a second-person, rather than a third-person, relationship, in which the subject is responsive to our actions, and basically likes to have fun.

  • This leads to the conclusion that to learn is to consider others as convivial beings and to try to create convivial relationships with them.


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