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Is the brain already programmed to know a language before we are born, or could you be placed in any country and just instantly learn that language. That is part of what we discussed in TOK class. Personally I don’t think like Socrates that the brain is just remembering something it already knows, partly because I have seen this proved wrong with my own eyes. Children just put everything in their brain, and when it gets organised they realize how to use what they have learnt. Languages have also changed over time, therefore it would be quite hard to just remember something if it is different than it was when you were supposed to have “remembered” it. We also talked about Geometry a bit but it was not as interesting as I thought the discussion on babies and languages was. Overall a good TOK class. I’m gonna try and keep this as simple and straightforward as possible. Our discussion involving Socrates (Mr. MacKnight) teaching the slave boy (Aaron) geometry ended. However, the idea when put in the scenario Socrates created (involving the slave boy and geometry) has some… say, ‘flaws’. One of these ‘flaws’ was that the questions Socrates gave the slave boy were nearly all closed questions or simple one-word-answer questions. To be more specific, each of these closed questions required the slave boy to respond with a ‘yes’ and the one-word-answer questions were almost always with a number. There lies the problem. There were two points of view we could place ourselves when looking at this scenario: “Now, a square figure has these lines, four in number, all equal?” “Certainly“ <- seriously? “And these, drawn through the middle, are equal too, are they not?” “Yes“ <- tells us a lot, yeah? We moved on to babies and how they learn a language. So.. babies. Are they really reincarnations of past living people? Do they really carry the knowledge that is supposedly passed on through psyche? Moreover, how can they have the potential to learn virtually any language in the world? We asked and discussed these in class. On the off-hand, following Socrates’ theory, babies have the ability to learn because the knowledge of the language(s) was already within them, but it only required some “key” to “unlock” that knowledge. That key is the baby’s environment, which can be led to say that babies grow up speaking the language they are exposed to, because that is the only language the baby’s learning is offered in. (ADAPTATION?) Language, apparently, is the same wherever you go. We talked about how every single language has some form of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Simple. Straightforward. This class gave me some things to ponder on. Waiting to see what the next class would bring. Right now, the time is exactly 1:07 a.m. I am tired and extremely sleepy but here I am, pondering upon the ‘wonders’ of TOK. In class this week, we talked about a lot of stuff but the most memorable one was the one about subjective vs. objective. I don’t quite remember what it was about(sorry, but it is early morning; my brain isn’t functioning) but I know it was about how we know the things we are perceiving is real, as in the truth. For example, how do we know a table is actually a table? How do we know the color blue, is actually the color blue? We only think this way because we were taught to see it that way and believe that it could only be that, nothing else. But what if I made a new word one day and started using the word every time? Sooner or later, the people around me will use it and then it’ll start a chain reaction until my word becomes the definition of whatever I said it was; a new word will be made and the future generations will only know it as that because I said it was that. This is sort of like the idea in the book “Frindle” by Andrew Clements. Someone back a LOOOOOOONG time ago decided to name everything the way he wanted it to and we were just taught that way. But what if we were the one that started naming everything? Can you imagine a life where blue isn’t actually blue but it’s actually orange? Life will be so different if we or somebody else chose to decide how to name and what to name everything. I think if I named everything and decided what was what, life will be more interesting because all the names would be very funky. Do babies just pick up whatever language they are immersed in? I think this is true. This is because they actually start to learning about the language spoken around them the second they were born. People don’t remember learning about their native language because they were so small. The brains are just like sponges that take in everything that is given. Also, due to the imitating characteristic of primates, new born babies will just copy actions and voices. At the same time, babies don’t have pressure in learning to speak their first language, or their first word. Babies learning a language is an intrinsic motivation. While when an adult learns a language, it’s an extrinsic motivation. Therefore, babies will just pick up the language they are exposed to. On Monday, we discussed Socrates theory of how the mind works, that the soul just remembers things from the past, instead of learning. He demonstrates this by guiding the slave boy with questions, making him think deeper and find the answer on his own. Although some of us felt cheated, as we felt that Socrates did in fact teach the slave boy, that type of teaching was created by Socrates himself. Therefore, at that point in time, it was not considered teaching and his argument was valid. The modern version of his theory is that our brains are structured in a way to categorise and process the information. We were told that this is why babies are able to learn any language, no matter where they came from. After all, languages are generally categorised into verbs, nouns and adjectives.  This comic reminded me of ToK class... You know you're in the IB when an innocent webcomic makes you think of ToK “Isn’t it amazing how a baby can learn any language? Babies pick up whatever language they are immersed in.” Mr. MacKnight, if you were hoping that we would see this as some sort of revelation or ground-breaking idea, you may have to reconsider. Since most of us were MYP students until just recently, most of us would have been treated to some form or variation of the unit question, “Am I product of my environment?” Now… I’m not complaining or anything, the question definitely does make us think. But seriously, making us think about it once every year for 5 years is probably overdoing it a little bit. The reason why we don’t really think twice about why babies all over the world can learn any language is because we are reminded of the fact that we are a product of our environment every time we walk by an MYP English class. The language that a child grows up to be fluent in, I guess, is a result of the environment that they grow up in, and, being the “skilled thinkers” we are after years of “rigorous” MYP “training”, this idea loses its novelty relatively quickly. Although I may contradict myself a bit here, I think it still pays to revisit the idea and think -why- we are so much a product of our environment. I guess this brings us right into the gritty nature of ToK — how do we know? Specifically, “how do we learn?”. Immediately we are reminded of the theories proposed in class – the Socratic idea (or was the idea accepted by/ conceived by other Greeks? their idea certainly seems to be intertwined with Greek religion) that our psyche learns by recollection from past lives, and the idea modern neuroscience presents of our brain that we learn through repeated synapses of neurons in our brains. There is a problem with Socrates’ theory – which I see a lot of the other blogs have pointed out – was that if our soul learns by simply remembering knowledge from past lives, how did the first life learn anything? With that, we can see how quickly Socrates’s argument falls apart. If we assume that all knowledge cannot be new, and that what we learn is a recollection of what we learnt from past lives, then how is it possible that the first life could learn anything at all? (It’s possible that we are operating under a different set of assumptions from Socrates. Perhaps this theory assumes that there was no genesis, and no ‘first life”, in which case this theory holds.) However, Socrates’ theory does little to explain why our knowledge is ultimately a product of our environment. It does provide us with an interesting perspective of ways of learning – and it certainly provided us with insights into the Greek mindset, but does little to explain the phenomenon of babies learning languages wherever they are. A model of learning that DOES explain it though, is the model that modern neuroscience provides us with. Right now, my understanding of neuroscience can only be described as abysmal, but an idea that I (think) I know is that brains learn by repeated synapses of neurons, and much of the learning of the brain is a result of our brains forging neural pathways among the different regions of the brain. Language is learnt when our brain makes a neural pathway that connects the sound of a word and an object. Our brains will repeatedly make such connections, thus strengthening each neural pathway, and will continually make more of such connections with different words and objects, increasing our grasp on a language until it is second nature to associate certain thoughts, objects ideas with words. This explanation satisfies me more than Socrates’ explanation. It’s a scientific explanation that has been proven by evidence that can be seen. However, I have to admit that my belief in science is extremely arrogant – especially given the discussion in class about how impermanent knowledge can be, and how subjectivity can be present in otherwise seemingly objective pieces of knowledge. Last class, we finished talking about the geometry problem with Meno’s slave. There, Socrates let Meno and the slave boy know that they are learning and actually learning by questioning to themselves. Socrates states that the meaning of learning begins with questioning. I can definitely say that I agree with him because I also think that the more questions we ask of a certain topic, we find and learn information more in depth. As we start to ask and ask questions the learing outcome would be largely expanded. We also discussed about the someting that is subjective and objective. True opinion about an issue or theory is what is called subjective and the knowledge about that issue is something that is objective. I think subjective view could be all of what we think; it could be just a guess or a suggestion. By having our own thoughts on a topic, we could go further and learn about it and gain a objective view, knowledge. In my perspective, we can have a subjective view and then extend it to objective view on any topic or theory. For this journal, I want to question the credibility of Socrates’ experiment with slave boy to prove Meno that all real learning comes out of questioning, and that knowledge comes from the psyche (soul/mind). Socrates would not have wanted to dragged his questioning with the slave boy for another 3 days; he would have wanted to prove and persuade Meno as soon as possible. In addition, for the most part of Socrates’ questions, they were closed questions and the slave boy only answered “yes”. Therefore, there would have been a possibility that Socrates was asking in a haste or authoritative manner and that slave boy, as dumb as he is, would not have bothered to say “no” to contradict seemingly intelligent Socrates. However, I believe that this violates the credibility of true learning, as Cicero says, “the authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.” I would also like to mention that a genuine Socratic question would come from a teacher who does not know either, who is willing to collaboratively work with his/her student to figure things out. However, in this case, Socrates knew the concepts of geometry he was teaching to the slave boy, and he was trying to use questions artificially to get to the point where the slave boy would “learn”. Socrates mentioned that knowledge comes from the psyche (soul/mind), but he missed out a crucial question: how did the soul learn in the first place? Unless he can reincarnate himself or resurrect himself to answer this question, his assertion would forever remain a Gordian knot yet to be untied. This class we were discussing about geometry again especially how was it discovered? As an example we took socrates and menos slave. Socrates pushing menos slave to learn by teaching him more or less directly geometry with certain questions. So the main question is can humans learn this by themselves? The fact that humans are able to do so, to do geometry we have to assume that one person had to figure it out by him or herself before. Therefore it must be the case, that humans can teach stuff like geometry completely by themselves. Even the more we assumed that this discovering can only be done by trying out and keep on trying until you discover something. This could be even the more be seen as one of the most essential parts of human evolution. We would still sit in cages without our nosyness and trying to make life easier to ourselves. In some way this might be described as figureing out by asking oneself questions, like “how it works?”. Knowledge and true opinion. Subjective and objective. These are what we talked about in last ToK class. It is summarized as knowledge is something objective and true opinion is something subjective. People only have true opinion at first, but they can change it into knowledge by questioning to themselves. For accelerating, Socrates asked questions to the slave boy in this case, but anyway Socrates said recollection is learning because people change their true opinion to knowledge. I’m kind of agreeing with his opinion. It seems to be logical enough. However still, I think using “recollection” as an expression for “learning” is little bit weird. Maybe it’s because we don’t use this kind of expression in daily lives. We also talked about babies’ brain structure. Babies can say whatever languages which are spoken in the environments they grow up. I think this is a kind of instinct for survive…kind of adaptation, because all people around the baby talk with the same specific language. Thus, it’s natural for babies to learn that language. The geometry class of Socrates with a slave boy Aaron finally ended in last class. Now Socrates will let Meno ask questions again. So I’m expecting next class. What will Socrates tell to Meno? |
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I just think that idea is fascinating because our life and foundation is all based on that simple fact that somebody back then chose to do it and now it’s been passed down to us. If those certain people didn’t do it, eat it or even say it, we wouldn’t have that part of lifestyle, culture, language with us. For example, imagine a day where ALL of the human beings are killed. Now, ten thousand years later, a new species of humans come to Earth. They would have a completely different lifestyle and culture than us because they would start everything from afresh; thousands years later after they established civilization, however, the new generations will still believe what the old generations have told them because somebody decided to do it that way and it was passed on. I don’t know if I’m making any sense right now(I’m probably not) but I don’t know any other way to explain it.
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