Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The 54th annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, “Rethinking context as process when studying human development: Implications for theory, practice, and policy”, Belgrade, Sırbistan, 29 - 31 Mayıs 2025, (Yayınlanmadı)
Symposium Abstract:
In developmental psychology, the notion of meta-cognitive reflection typically focuses on one of two functions: the creation of qualitatively new forms of knowing or qualitatively new abilities related to self- regulation through some sort of distancing process. It is also the case that many researchers consider language to play a constitutive role in reflection processes but often underspecify how exactly language is to be integrated into ongoing reflective development. In the current symposium we adopt the interactivist framework (Bickhard, 2024) to discuss the development of new knowing through reflection and how language is integrated into the process. While the self-regulation function of reflection will not be our focus, the creation of new forms of knowing is grounded in action and also has the direct implication of creating interactive distance from the environment.
The key to most models of reflection is some notion of implicit representing/knowing. Interactivism is an action-based approach in which all knowing is grounded in potential interactions with the environment; implicitly indicated. (e.g., an indication that I can grab an object presupposes that it is not glued to the table; or a web of indications about interacting with an object in another room presupposes that the object is still there – object permanence). The epistemic function of reflection is to render implicit presuppositions explicit. This allows reflective knowing about the environment and it also begins to create distance between the direct interactive representations with the environment and (indirect) reflective interactions with the presuppositions about the environment.
The following four talks will proceed by first providing an introduction to interactivism. The first talk will be an introduction to the basic principles of interactivism, namely, a non-correspondence theory of representation based on a non-formal, dynamic version of implicit definition (“contact”) and anticipatory predication (“content”). The next paper provides a critique of some prominent models of reflection in the literature (Zelazo, Karmiloff-Smith, Mandler). These models are all united in their commitment to an information- processing framework; and we argue that this undermines any attempt to model reflection. The third talk will demonstrate how the interactivist model of reflection incorporates language as part of the enculturation process. The final talk will give some examples of the back and forth dialectic between implicit and explicit representations in reflective learning. Particular cases will include the acquisition of reading skills, rehearsal practices of professional dancers and surrogate reasoning over symbolic languages.
Presentation Abstract:
Implicit as automatic and not inaccessible
Most models treat the distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge as a computational property of agentive representations. (Kirsh, 2006) Historically “implicit” is used in association with related concepts such as tacit knowledge, implicit bias, implicit learning, blindsight, unconscious or subconscious. (Chomsky, 1965/2014; Goschke, 2013; Mancy, 2007; Marr, 2010; Polanyi, 1967/2009; Weinert, 2009; Weiskrantz, 1990). However prevalent, this understanding is untenable when we consider the embodiment of knowledge. Interactivism (Bickhard, 2009, 2024) provides an alternative, modeled after the Hilbertian notion of implicit definition (Resnik, 1974a). The alternative view sheds light on accessibility, as well as deliberate learning through practice. Based on the interactivist notion, diverse examples from the acquisition of reading skills (Secco, 2024) to the development of new dance choreographies (Kirsh, 2011; Kirsh et al., 2020) will be discussed to illustrate the dialectic use of implicit and explicit representations in deliberate learning and discovery. These particular examples concern the idea of surrogate reasoning (Swoyer, 1991), whereby external representations are utilized as interactive contexts, where the interactive features simulate (stand for) interactive features of real contexts. For instance, calculus allows reasoning about continuity (Strogatz, 2019). Meanwhile the practice of “marking” by dancers during rehearsal (i.e., gestural representing of dance moves) allows “thinking with the body”, simulating the actual interaction in relevant ways. The resulting account is functional, where the difference between representing something explicitly or implicitly depends on the previously learned capacities of the agent.
Keywords: implicit, explicit, representation, interactivism, unconscious, surrogative reasoning