Educating Symbiotic P-individuals
through Multi-level Conversations
From the Integrity of Concepts t6 the Symbiosis of Cultures
Gary McIntyre Boyd
Abstract - Interbody and transbody autopoietic virtual organisms, which Gordon
Pask named "p-individuals", are taken to be the essential entities involved in
cultural transmission. It is asserted that their problematical accessibility to consciousness, their competitive, and especially their pre-emptive dominative character,
must be dealt with more directly in order to work educationally toward symbiosis
among cultures and between cultures and the biosphere. Both kinds of symbiosis are
necessary conditions for our happiness and survival. Some heuristic rules for the
appropriate conduct of multi-level, and multi-modal (verbaUvisua1 etc.) learning
conversations is examined as a practicable way to cultivate such symbioses. Gordon
Pask's formal Conversation Theory prescribes some necessary aspects of such
intercourse. Here it is extended and reframed by situating Pask's three leveled CT
conversations in the author's seven cybersystemic levels of communication and
control.
Keywords - Conversation Theory, discourse, meme, cultural-symbiosis, p-individual,
educational cybernetics, heterarchy, cybersystemics, Computer-Mediated-Communication.
Address - Gary McIntyre Boyd, Professor of Education, Concordia University 1455
DeMaisonneuve blvd. west, Montreal, Quebec H3G IM8 CANADA.
1 Introduction
1.1 Concern, and directions
The implicit proposition underlying Gordon Pask's Conversation Theory is that
well-ordered multi-level conversation is probably the most felicitous technique at
our disposal for converting available energyiinformation (Hekergy) into potent and
delightful understanding, and therefore human well-being.
Very broadly, my concern is that people are destroying each other and much of the
most valuable cultural and biological variety of our planet unnecessarily. Perhaps,
if we can understand the processes of cultural evolution and identity formation well
enough to employ educational technology to re-engineer them, we (those who care
more for happiness and global viability than for the perpetuation of un-examined
collective identities) might make some progress towards more pleasant futures on
Systems Research Vol. 10. No. 3, pp.
ISSN 0731-7239
113-128.1993
Thesis Publishers
0 1993 International Federation for Systems Research
Earth. For example, the education of women has proven to be the most effective
strategy for reducing the high birth-rates which are so ecologically disastrous, but
autopoietic cultural entities (eg, religions) impede such education.
Generally and fundamentally: Ernest Becker[2], and Jurgen Habermas[l7], have
addressed the terribly destructive cultural identity reproduction and propagation
conflict which arises wherever immortality/hero systems pre-empt herds of human
hosts. More immediately and narrowly, as a Professor of Educational Technology
I need a theory to guide research and professional practice so as to develop better
educational subsystems for multicultural communities such as those of Montreal and
Canada.
Most of what is available in the way of learning theories, and related instructional
theories[22] is not adequate because it addresses the learning of small chunks of
knowledge and skill with little o r no reference to the formation of individual, let
alone collective cultural identity. It seems that perhaps only Bandura, Vygotsky and
in a sense Boyd and Richerson[B] do address complex sociocultural learning.
There are two basically opposing schools of learning science:
a COGNITIVE SCIENCE: the computer-science derived, frame and rule-based
cognitive science as exemplified by the work of Newel1 and Simon, John
Anderson[ 1] and Roger Schank[35], versus
b NEURO-EVOLUTIONARY psychology: the pattern recognition connexionist and
neuronal group selection based science of learning and action of Warren McCulloch[24], Howard Margolis[23], and Gerald H. Edelman[lS].
Each school presents a collection of learning theories which do cover well appreciable but different areas of the observations of human learning. Neither is comprehensively adequate. Neither does very well at distinguishing the relative roles of
consciousness and sub-conscious processing, let alone those of communal social
processing, in the development and steering of motivation and persistence for
complex adult learning. S o that there is a need for another approach in order to
provide a really adequate theory of learning for higher-level (human identity reconstructive) education.
One possible basis for this new synthesis may be the orthogonal school of
actorlagent evolutionary network thinking exemplified by Gordon Pask's Conversation Theory[27], and Minsky's Society of Mind[25]. Both of these approaches span
the cognitivist and evolutionary connexionist models. And they can also be seen as
lying within Rom Harre's[l6] "ethogenic psychology". The big picture is perhaps
best articulated in Stafford Beer's Viable System Methodology. These, when further
augmented by Habermas's insights into legitimate non-dominative discourse, and
supported by computer communications[6] can, I believe, provide education for
cultural symbiosis. This paper is a first-cut outline of what may be required and
how it might work.
Gary Mclntyre Boyd
1.2 Review of Conversation Theory
Review of Some Aspects of Conversation Theory
To paraphrase McCulloch's question:" What is Man that he may know number? and
What is number that it may be known by man?" Gordon Pask's question seems to
be: What is a 'participant' that it may know a concept? and what is a concept that
it may be generated by participants? As I read his works on Conversation Theory
(1 972 to 1987), his answer appears to be that: Man must be an ensemble of multiperspective conversing 'p-individuals'. (They subsist in 'm-individuals', a term
coined by Strawson[36]to represent the bodies or machines which host individuals.)
And, also, that a knowable concept such as 'number' must be a coherent system of
executable procedures which can be manipulated, and can be sim~~ltaneously
conversed about at two or more levels by pairs of such p-individuals. What we
might now call 'classical Paskian Conversation Theory' deals with 'concepts', and
'strict conversations' between formally defined p-individuals which lead to increasingly coherent prunings and elaborations of their respective conceptual entityuniverses.
Which nonetheless may include agreements to disagree about some concepts.
Conversation Theory is an example of a transcendental theory, in that it asks: What
minimally, of necessity must be the case in order that coherent autopoietic conceptual entities can be co-constructed and function adequately?
The question of observability of autopoietic conversations is a difficult one. Clearly,
some are conscious external natural language conversations between people which
can be taped or computer-recorded, others are conscious "explicit" intrabody
conversations which if remembered can be repeated. But others still, and perhaps
some of the most important 'conversations' occur sub-consciously in various iconic
image forms (as in dreams) and elementary neural-signal languages which are as
yet, not accessible.
However, recent work[21] indicates that at the neuronal level 'explicit' (including
potentially conscious reasoned) learning occurs based mainly on Hebbian Pre-Post
coincidence synapses; while "implicit" learning, such as that involved in acquiring
psychomotor skills by practise over extended time periods may be based on premodulatory (activity dependent facilitation) coincidence. These elementary learnings
probably involve the evolutionary binding together of somewhat autonomous
neuronal groups[l5]. It is tempting to associate Edelman's neuronal groups with
Minsky's Agents or with the most elementary of Pask's p-individuals.
It seems that Conversation Theory might be stretched downward somewhat plausibly for modeling some binding together autopoiesis based mainly upon the so-called
"explicit" or "declarative" form of neuronal learning which: "..is fast and may take
place after only one training trial. It often involves association of simultaneous
stimuli, and permits storage of information about a single event that happens in a
particular time and place." Such 'explicit' learning is believed to have cellular level
associativity maintaining feedback mechanisms via chemical substances diffusing
back to adjacent pre-synaptic terminals of several neurons.
Educating Symbioric P-individuals
However, the main application of Conversation Theory should be to the process
whereby long term memory producing agents come into agreement. The short term
changes in existing synaptic connections, if repeatedly used together over time (an
half hour to a month) somehow activate genes which facilitate the expression of
proteins which are used to grow new (enduring) synaptic connections-anatomic
changes in the hippocampus and eventually in the cortex. T h e elaboration of groups
of these neuronal activity-structures appears to occur by a kind of Darwinian
evolution where selection is provided through extremely elementary kinds of
information exchange[l5]. These may perhaps be thought of as micro-conversations.
Other neurolinguistic studies by Damasio[l3] clearly show that three distinct
regions of the brain, a region 'containing' word representations, a region 'containing' concepts, and one making connections between words and concepts are all
involved in ordinary interpersonal conversation. The important point here is that at
the bottom 'carrier' level of moving patterned mass and energy there are reciprocal
communication (quasi-conversational) processes which appear to be directly
associated with perception, thought, memory, consciousness, discourse, and
intentionality.
The further requirement that Gordon Pask makes (taken from Heinz vonFoerster) is
that rates of change of maximum entropy, and also actual entropy of a p-individual
in an 'm-individual' (m = mechanical, body or computer net) be positive for
autopoietic viability. This implies that ever greater flows of available
energylinformation should pass through the developing (humanlsocial) system for
indefinite viability. The claim has quite a ring of plausibility from the standpoint of
Prigogine's "Order out of Chaos" theory, and because of the recent history of the
utility of the maximum entropy principle for the characterization of complex selfoptimizing systems, but it seems to me to be somewhat pessimistic given our rather
limited long term access to hekergy (available-energylinformation).
1.3 'P-individuals' and Autopoietic 'meme-complexes'
P-individuals as Autopoietic 'meme complexes'
With respect to 'p-individuals', Pask[28] also asserts that a coherent
organisationally closed but informationally open micro-universe of executing
concepts (including those involved in being able to make distinctions, and hence
being able to use a meta-language) such that more than one perspective is maintained within a boundary computed by the system, is the necessary definition of
what in turn actually constitutes a p-individual (where 'p' has in Pask's writings,
variously stood for: perspective, participant, or psychological individual). That is to
say, the nature of the autopoiesis involved in a 'strict' conversation is such that the
participants or p-individuals which hold a conversation are themselves the products
of series of previous conversations which reach the level where their
"organisational closure" of explanations of explanations of representations occurs-so
that they contain at least two alternative representations of some domain.
evolution of the conversationally fittest p-individuals occurs. Just where it might be,
that responsible free-willed creative-initiative can be exercised by some multiple
p-individual 'Self', is perhaps necessarily still somewhat obscure. Although, the
basis for free-willed creativity would seem to lie in the clash of the multiple
perspectives of middle level p-individuals within a higher level p-individual, as
variously envisaged: by Minsky[25] with his competing k-linelagent subsystems, by
Edelman[lS] with his theory of neuronal group selection, and by Dennet with his
multiple draughts theory. These views, notwithstanding their authors protests and
those of Zohar[37], seem rather compatible and even (reductively) physically
possible thanks to the sort of y a n t u m mechanical loose-jointedness Penrose
espouses[33].
Not only is it imprudent to consider biological or mechanical individuals to be the
actors in an educational conversation, as Pask pointed out by defining the essential
actors to be 'P'-individuals, but also who these actors are, depends both upon who
the other actors temporarily perceive them to be, as well as upon who actually
causes changes in things. Therefore, process studies and educational interventions
can be carried out intelligibly, and reasonably predictably, only if stylistic, and
vested-interest clues, in transcriptions of conversations andlor recordings of
performances over a sufficient period of time can be analysed. The personal
interpretations of the actors, when available, should be used in parallel with such
analyses, but cautiously.
Meme-complexes
Richard Dawkins (1976) introduced the term "memes" to refer by loose analogy
with genes, to signals which people tend automatically to reproduce and propagate.
Hofstadter (1985) Heylighen (1992),Turchin, Joslyn and others have extended the
concept to include large systems of mutually supporting auto-propagative messages,
such as religions, and languages. Some biologists are unhappy with the meme
terminology because what is involved is arguably much closer to the behaviour of
viral material than to the behaviour of genes. Moreover various people have
referred to a whole range of phenomena from specific simple patterns which people
automatically repeat (whistling a few notes) up through powerful ideas
(Pythagorean theorem) to whole religions, as "memes". These things occur at very
different levels of communication and control which should be carefully recognized
if fallacious generalizations and wrong predictions are to be avoided. Hence, while
agreeing on the prevalence and importance of contagious and autopoietic messages
it seems that to avoid losing important distinctions a finer-grained terminology than
that of "memes" is needed. In particular, t o distinguish among propagating informational entities which behave very differently from each other terms such as intrabody p-individual, and transbody p-individual are more discriminating.
Meme complexes as envisioned by Hofstadter (1985) seem very close to being the
same things as some p-individua!~, which, however, arise from and hold un-defined
or ill-defined conversations.
Also, similarly, the coherently executing conceptual entailment-mesh concept
products of some of those p-individuals' conversations in turn will become the new
p-individuals that hold some future conversations. Presumably, a kind of Darwinian
116
Gary Mclntyre Royd
Educating Symbiotic P-individuals
1.4 Cultural Evolution and Necessary Symbioses
The Evolution and Symbiosis of Culture
Cultural Evolution, according to Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson[9], is both a
biological and psycho-social process: "Systems of inheritance have internal structure, and relationships to the external world. Individuals are the products of gene
pools and cultures; they are locii of natural selection and decision making."
'Culture' is defined by Boyd and Richerson as: "the information affecting
phenotype acquired by (biological) individuals by imitation or teaching." A crucial
point here is that there is an huge difference between learning by imitation, which
with practice is our main way of acquiring implicit (sub-conscious, and
psychomotor) behaviours, versus learning explicitly and consciously from the
suggestive and critical conversations which constitute good teaching. An invention
does not become culture until it is transmitted. Cultural transmission differs from
genetic transmission because it includes the inheritance of acquired variation.
However, many, if not most, traits are acquired by imitation and are only weakly
affected by trial-and-error correction (let-alone theory-based) learning. Natural
selection consequently has been at least as important as, and probably a more
important cultural evolution mechanism than, adaptive learning has been.
However, it now appears that for us to survive on Earth we must make taught
cybersystemic learning take precedence over imitation and instinct-particularly over
our most destructive imitative, and reproductive instincts. The critical issue here is
how to deal with cases where the meme propagation of trans-body P-individuals
(languages, religions, ideologies etc.) come into mortal conflict with the biological
hosts' functional imperatives (e.g. Christian celibacy versus the biological procreative imperative). Although it may be that even the most bizarre cultural traits have
some biologically adaptive advantage in certain niches.
As Israel Scheffler[34] has pointed out (p.54): Teaching can and should "involve
the widest possible extension of reasoned criticism to the culture itself' if it is to
be the means for a cultural renewal which it can and should be. 'Conversation' in
both the colloquial broad sense and the strict Paskian sense is central to such
learninglteaching to overcome pathologically autopoietic p-individuals.
1.5 Emergent Levels of Communication and Control
Emergent Cybersystemic Levels of Communication
Previously[4], I have argued for a model of cybernetic and systemic levels of
communication based on the existence of a masslenergy 'carrier' world and six
emergent levels in the world of 'modulations' as existing, and constituting sociotechnical systems.
The cybersystemic levels are as follows:
1 A physically real foundation 'CARRIER' bottom level of Patterned mass-energy
flow, and six levels of modulations borne upon that (and emerging out of each
other):
Gary Mclntyre Boyd
2 INSTRUMENTAL level, the basic communicative1contro1 level. of {Hartley,
Shannon} information which they defined to be a measure of the reduction of
some receiver's uncertainty as to which of a set of publicly standardised possible
messages was sent.
3 SUBJECTIVE level {Weltner} information-a measure of the reduction of a
receiver's uncertainty in terms of its private or personal set of possible expected
messages.
4 SUSTENANTIAL level (foodJpoison) information and control, which alters the
probability of the on-going autopoiesis (survival and growth or self-production)
of the receiver.
4 VIRALICO-PROPAGATIVE level (parasiticlsymbiotic) information {Dawkins[14,20]} which has some probability of being hosted and propagated (reproduced) by the receiver.
5 CONJUGATIVEITRANSCREATIVE level information which has some probability of joining into the very identity of the receiver transforming it, and being
propagated indefinitely.
7 EXISTENTIAL level (hopeldespair) information which alters the probability of
continuation of the desire to go on desiring to survive.
Messages at all levels result in some reduction of uncertainty with respect to an
ensemble of possibilities appertaining to a receiver. (i.e. tThey are all analogous to,
and emergent from the original Hartley, Shannon, Weaver definitions.)
Example:
T o make this clear, we may consider the case of money which can exist and
function at all the levels:
1 At the carrier level money is coins and printed paper, plastic mag-striped cards,
and electron flows in computercations systems.
2 At the Instrumental signal level the bits of pattern of the money indicate the
nationality of the currency and the number of units eg. "Yen 50,000.-"
3 At the subjective level, to a given person, a Kyoto university student say, this
Yen 50.000.- comes as a surprise since he was expecting about 10,000 Yen.
4 At the sustenantial level, the Kyoto student realizes that this sum will keep her
for a year. Here one should note that the information can directly sustain
processes in the mind which need that piece of the puzzle as it were (the
sustenance of the body by the food bought for the money is at a lower level.).
5 At the Viral or Co-habitative (viral/symbiocyte/parasite) level a poor student
might be haunted in his dreams by the recurring image of a 50,000 Yen note.
6 At the Conjugative (identity marrying) level it is something which might cause
a very poor person to re-define himself as a "rich man" and to re-orient his
behaviour to preserve and propagate this wealth which is now experienced as an
important part of his identity.
7 At the Existentiallpropagative (immortalitylhopeldespair) level he might find the
Yen 50,000 a reason not to commit suicide, and might consecrate it as sacred,
thenceforth proselytizing for the worship of money.
Educating Symbiolic P-individuals
2 Argument
I
2.1 Cultural Symbiosis and Conversational Learning
Cultural symbiosis means that trans-body p-individuals (cultures) co-exist in a
mutually supportive fashion without attempting to assimilate or obliterate each
other. Since our planet is small and people are now highly mobile and very
numerous, cultures must share the same geographical space, and in many cases
several cultures must share the same human bodies. While it is true that additional
virtual Lebensraum can now be created in 'Cyberspace', this still leaves, at least,
time-multiplexing and energy allocations to be arranged by conversation.
Current educational research shows that most people are habitually poor at logical
reasoning. They take positions without being able to give valid reasons, and are
unable to frame alternative hypothetical positions and compare such on their merits.
If anything, trans-body p-individuals generally appear to be much worse than
persons at arguing about the relative benefits and costs of proposals for co-existence. In particular, there seems to be little awareness as to which parts of a
p-individual's identity are crucially essential for viability and which elements are
incidental and sacrificeable. It seems that natural selection has not worked to
promote such self-understanding and the correlative negotiating skills. The conjecture, here, is that, perhaps, deliberate meta-conversational education based on an
elucidation of levels and kinds of criticality for adaptive identity co-survival can
improve the situation.
2.2 Core Conjectures
The core of the argument is this, that:
a If we are composed of an heterarchy of autopoiet ic actors (p-individuals)-so that
sub-individual, individual, and collective processes are mutually interlocked
autopoietic systems, then, only by multilevel conversational educational intervention can appreciable culturally and ecologically symbiotic human learning be
brought about. This is because operations at a single level or even two levels are
likely to be subverted by operations at other levels.
b If such parallel multi-level communication can be designed and developed by
situating Pask's Conversation Theory in a larger systemic context, and by
complementing it with Habermas' desiderata for 'non-dominative discourse' an
effective and publicly legitimate basis for peaceful co-existence education should
result.
2.3 Pathological Autopoiesis
One thing which stands squarely in the way of the proposed strategy is the resistance to displacement o r transformation exhibited by somewhat low level autopoietic p-individuals; for example the ones that Harri-Augstein and Thomas[l8]
refer to as 'task robots' and 'learning robots'.
The educational literature is redolent with the invention and use of new names for
old phenomena. This is partly justifiable as a way of calling attention to important
conditions which have been lost sight of because of hackneyed cliche'd language.
It may also be a way of re-framing observations to yield deeper understanding.
120
Gary McIntyre Boyd
Most likely, Francis Bacon, Comenius, and Pestalozzi observed how previously
acquired patterns of thought and action stand in the way of new acquisitions.
Dewey referred to this as habit; while Pask[32] invented the more precise term
"cognitive fixity". And subsequently showed that 'p-individuals' may become
cognitively fixated automata if they don't engage in true learning conversations.
Minsky[25] wrote of the importance, and liability, of 'suppressor' and 'censor'
agents as often being the main thing standing in the way of new learning. Also as
mentioned above Harri-Augstein and Thomas[l8] refer to "task robots" and
"learning robots"; (my preferred since more explanatory, term is PAVO = Preemptive Autopoietic Virtual Organism).
In any case the phenomenon observed is the same very troublesome one for
teachers, and learners. Not just the labelling, but the actual understanding of it
needed to improve and has done so with Pask's transition from "cognitive fixity"
to "organisationally closed but informationally open" 'p-individals'; some of which
are actively self-defensively consciousness pre-empting.
2.4 Levels of Conversation related to Cybersysternic Levels
Relating Conversation Levels to Cybersystemic Levels
Here, the question arises: how does Pask's[29] formal conceptualisation of conversations and participants or 'p-individuals' operating on three to five levels cohere
with the seven cybersystemic levels and how is this important for the survival and
reproduction of cultural p-individuals?
Pask's p-individuals can interact at five levels:
I - The level of direct actions in a shared space.
I1 - The level of simply naming each action taken (in the protolanguage L).
111 - The level for conveying explanations of these actions.
IV - The level of explanations of the explanations-the top level of 'teachback'
(also in L).
V - The level of negotiation of the engagement to converse and specification of
the scope of discourse and other rules. (This is the level of the metalanguage
L*).
These five levels of strict conversation do not directly correspond to any one
particular subset of the seven cybersystemic levels. Rather, various alignments are
possible. See figure 1.
For instance in the most elementary circumstances (as shown in the figure): IIIteachback can occur at the sustenantial (fourth) cybersystemic level, 11-explanations
can occur at the third (subjective-information) level, and I-actions can occur at the
second (instrumental (Shannon) information) level. This state of affairs is just good
enough to solve problems but will not create further symbiotic p-individuals, nor
will it conjugatively transform existing p-individuals.
Educating Symbiotic P-individuals
Figure 1
I
Cybersystemic levels, and strict conversation levels
EXISTENTIAL
1
CONJUGATIVE
VIRAL
SUSTENANTIA
Habermas' Communicative Competence Desiderata
Criticisable validity-claim making ability involves exhibiting the grounds and
arguments for a position through:
1 well-form-ed grammatical sentence production ability
2 ability to properly characterise the current lifeworld context of the discourse,
3 ability to logically exhibit. the truth of statements,
4 to exhibit the rightness of anticipated success of actions,
5 the rightness of moral norms, and
6 the authenticity of expression used.
(from vol.1 of the Theory of Communicative Action, 1985)
SUBJECTIVE
Pask's requirements for setting up a strict conversation: involve the negotiation in
a meta-language (L*) of a normative framework in which the participants agree to
speak a well-formed object language (L) so as to aim for and bring about relations
(R,), or failing that to aim for constructing a procedure; alias a concept, to bring
about such relations. It is agreed that all topics R, shall belong to a fixed domain R
on which the conversation shall be anchored. Moreover this domain R is such that
participants' models of each other can be contained within it (to that extent it is the
local lifeworld domain).
OBJECTIVE
CARRIERS
More aesthetically, or morally, potent actions and explanations will operate at
higher levels: conversational IV level explanations of explanations can, if they are
potent enough, function at the sixth or Conjugativeltranscreative cybersystemic level
to transform the identity of the p-individuals involved. This is the most important
kind of conversational learning for developing cultural symbioses.
2.5 Habermas' desiderata for discursive legitimacy
Desiderata for Discursively Legitimate Conversation
Habermas[l7] has been concerned to promote understanding of systemics and
lifeworlds through rational discourse. I n particular, he is concerned that dominative
behaviour which by blocking or subverting discourse, uses other people as mere
means rather than the ends-in-ourselves which we are. I see our interest in promoting understanding as being one of the most important ways of conserving available
energylinformation, of conserving and up-grading hekergy. Hence, I see our
common interest in promoting understanding as actually being an instrumental
interest in long-term survival as well as in present satisfaction. since the hekergy
of collaboratively shared knowledge is the most potent form of human capital the
promotion of understanding is a very practical undertaking. Understanding promoting discursive rationality, itself a concept, is slowly being transformed (through
conversational ventures such as this paper) into a broadly distributed transbody
p-individual in its own right.
Gary McIntyre Boyd
From the above it appears that Habermas' desiderata for non-dominative conversation fit well with, and somewhat extend Pask's L* conditions for effective learning
conversations between p-individuals-as is to be expected if this phenomenon
constitutes the naturally-selected anabolic mechanism of socio-mind.
2.6 The integrity of p-individuals
As demonstrated by Varela and Maturana, living organisms have to be structurally
closed and informationally open in order to successfully carry on producing
themselves in a changing environment. There is a natural bridge from the autopiesis
of biological organisms via the autopoiesis of neuronal groups (Edelman[lS]) to the
autopoiesis of intra-body p-individuals. The next step is to extend this requirement
to the autopiesis of cultures qua transbody p-individuals.
It is crucial that the integrity of each p-individual participating in a learning
conversation be maintained if the conversation is to be productive of potent new
concepts and subsequently of potent new p-individuals. This is part of what being
"organisationally closed" means.
This implies that the dialogue must be conservative of variety, not assimilative nor
obliterative of distinctions. Neither assimilation nor obliteration leads to any
creation of new knowledge, although both may provide better signal to noise ratios
for existing knowledge to execute.
Assimilation may be of two sorts:
1 Coalescive-B is really just A by another name. or
2 imperialistic-B is a proper subset of A.
Educating Symbiotic P-individuals
Both say that there is nothing new in B worth noting except that the label B refers
to part or all of what we already know as A.
Obliteration is to filter out B altogether; to say that B is just noise to be eliminated.
The pathology of assimilation is that when concepts which have different intension
are assimilated the combined concept becomes less crisp, more vague. The extra
connotations of both A and B are jumbled up together so that we have a weaker
understanding of A.
The pathology of obliteration is that it destroys potentially nourishing variety; i.e.
it wastes hekergy.
Habitual tendencies to assimilate and obliterate are naturally selected since they are
effective and efficient short-term survival tactics. They say: treat this as A, which
you already know you can eat, or, ignore that B; you don't have any need to know
it, and moreover it's a distraction from A to waste time paying it attention. Unfortunately, such tactics preclude the generation of new concepts (and new p-individuals), and, what is worse, at the cultural level they can lead to such terrible things
as "ethnic cleansing".
2.7 Toward Symbiosis of p-individuals
There are symbiocytes which have no knowledge (specific model) of their cohabitants, such as the algae and fungii which together constitute lichen, while other
co-habitants, for example human spouses, develop complex models of each other
which are necessary to their symbiosis. Simplistic models of co-habitants (e.g.
racial stereotypes) tend to prevent symbiosis although they may foster parasitic coexistence.
Pask's Conversation Theory, especially when augmented by Habermas' desiderata
can enable co-habitants to develop highly complex and accurate models of each
other and their shared ecosystem, because their prescriptions demand continual
testing of assumptions, assertions, and actions for validity, agreement, legitimacy,
and efficacy.
3 Conclusions and recommendations
3.1 Conclusion
Considering all the foregoing, Gordon Pask's 'p-individual' terminology holds up
very well for critical emancipative educational purposes because it takes the key
ideological concept of the modern world 'individuality' and puts a sharp new
deeply illuminating twist on it. It does s o by disengaging individuality from the
normally assumed necessarily misleading belief in a one-to-one connection between
social individuals and separate human bodies. Pask's 'p-individual' terminology
thus restates in a more palatable and accessible form those insights of Freud and
Jung concerning multiple intra-body actors, and also those of Cassirer, Teilhard De
Chardin, John Donne, and an immemorial legion of mystics concerning the central
importance of various transbody distributed collective p-individuals.
124
Gary Mclntyre Boyd
Paskian Proto-Theoretical Conversation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. (Photo from the Pask family collection)
3.2 Recommendation
Although the conjecture that p-individuals constitute both human individuals and
human collectivities must still be considered tentative, the foregoing indicates that
it may promise to help correct the excessive zeal with which cultures compete for
lebensraum in their hosts. Perhaps the destructive effects of hyper-competitive
possessive individualism as pursued in the transnational business culture can be
mitigated a little? However, the main challenge is to use augmented Conversation
Theory, to develop symbiotic dialogs among those most possessive trans-body
p-individuals-human cultures.
Therefore I recommend that we use the p-individual centred conversation theory
model as a basis for designing and improving educational ventures, without
continuing to worry about its existential status.
Educating Symbiotic P-individuals
References
Figure 2a
I
1. J.R. Anderson, (1983). The Architecture of Cognition: Cambridge MA. Harvard Univ.
Intra-body p-individuals
- ----
Prmq
Figure 2b
Trans-body p-individual
1
Gary Mclntyre Boyd
2. E. Becker, (1975), Escape from Evil: New York, The Free Press
3. G. McIntyre Boyd & P. Mitchell, P. David (1992), How can Intelligent CAL Better
Adapt to Learners?, Computers and Education vol. 18.1, 23-28
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Educational Cybernetics, in Sbornik (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth Prague Conference on Educational Cybernetics: Prague, Charles Univ. SRPN, 49-55
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Proceedings of COMPINT85, Washington D.C. IEEEIACM, 614-616
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Horwood
8. R.D. Boyd, and G.T. Myers. (1988), Transformative Education, International Journal
of Lifelong Education, Vo1.7, 4, 260-284
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Elsevier, 17-28
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Toronto, Collins
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seven & eight)
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Washington University
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Educating Symbiotic P-individuals
24. W. McCulloch, W.H. Pitts, (1943), A logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in
Nervous Activity: Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysisics 5,1, 33-1 15
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California Press
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Man-Machine Studies vo1.13, 357-41 1
28. G . Pask, (1984a), In Contrast to Scandura: An Essay Upon Concepts, Individuals and
Interactionism: Jour. Structural Learning, vol. 8, 91-102
29. G. Pask, (1984b). Review of Conversation Theory: Educational Communication and
Technology Journal, vol. 32, no.1, 3-40
30. G . Pask, (1981), Organizational Closure of Potentially Conscious Systems, in Zeleny,
M.(ed.), Autopoiesis: A Theory of Living Organization: New York, North Holland
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International Jour. of Man-Machine Studies, vol. 7, 15-134
32. G . Pask, (1969). Strategy, Competence and Conversation as Determinants of Learning:
Programmed Learning & Educational Technology, vol. 6, 250-267
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37.D. Zohar, (1991), The Quantum Self: New York, Harper-Collins.
I
Early Machinations
Robin McKinnon-Wood
Address
- 14 H a m Island, O l d Windsor, Berks SL.4
2JY, UK
I first met Gordon Pask at a tea party in a friend's digs at Cambridge. I was a first
year undergraduate studying maths and physics-he
was, I believe, studying
psychology. It must have been about spring, 1949. We were treated to a two hour
lecture on the (to us at that age) highly important subject of The Thermodynamics
of Love. We didn't understand it quite. This was not unusual.
However, there has to be a certain fascination for any budding scientist to attempt
to understand the unfathomable, so when I later met Gordon, again by chance, and
he asked if h e could use my workshop for various projects he had in mind, I found
it difficult to resist. At that time, Gordon was living at a house in Jordan's Yard,
Cambridge, under the aegis of John Brickell, a scientist and engineer whose help
was invaluable to us. I had acquired a disused potato warehouse which I converted
into a workshop, mainly for the art of motorcycle maintenance - until Gordon
turned up.
I know we all respect Gordon as a scientist, teacher, and above all innovator. For
my part, I first knew him as an artist and as a director. Show Biz. So it was wholly
consistent that the first Company w e formed was called Sirenelle, and was
dedicated to the staging of Musical Comedies. This, in turn, was wholly consistent
with the development of self-adaptive systems, self-organizing systems, manmachine interaction etc. So we changed the name to System Research Ltd-not that
this made any real difference.
We usually had a cart-before-the-horse attitude to building things, partly because
we had no money, and partly because we both liked junk. Gordon used to come
back from Liverpool or the Isle of Man with bits of Calliope organ, I would come
back from Lisle St, London with bits of bomb sight computer, and John Brickell
was very patient.
So what are you going to do with all that junk? Fortunately, Gordon is a very
creative person, and we did have some problems to solve. I think the first
significant one was the Musical Typewriter. Gordon was writing some lovely lyrics,
and we had some composers writing lovely music-but
they would never write
them down. Solution-a machine which would pick up a tune being played on a
Gary Mclntyre Boyd
Systems Research
lSSN 0731-7239
Vol. 10, No. 3, pp.
129-132. 1993
Thesis Publishers
0 1993 lnternational Federation for Systems Research