Knowing and learning

What do we mean by learning? Is there learning when you are merely accumulating knowledge, gathering information? That is one kind of learning, is it not? As a student of engineering, you study mathematics, and so on; you are learning, informing yourself about the subject. You are accumulating knowledge in order to use that knowledge in practical ways. Your learning is accumulative, additive. Now, when the mind is merely taking on, adding, acquiring, is it learning? Or is learning something entirely different? I say the additive process that we now call learning is not learning at all. It is merely a cultivation of memory, which becomes mechanical; and a mind that functions mechanically, like a machine, is not capable of learning. A machine is never capable of learning, except in the additive sense. Learning is something quite different, as I shall try to show you.

A mind that is learning never says, 'I know,' because knowledge is always partial, whereas learning is complete all the time. Learning does not mean starting with a certain amount of knowledge, and adding to it further knowledge. That is not learning at all; it is a purely mechanistic process. To me, learning is something entirely different. I am learning about myself from moment to moment, and the myself is extraordinarily vital; it is living, moving; it has no beginning and no end. When I say, 'I know myself,' learning has come to an end in accumulated knowledge. Learning is never cumulative; it is a movement of knowing which has no beginning and no end." J.K

"To me, learning is something entirely different. I am learning about myself from moment to moment, and the myself is extraordinarily vital; it is living, moving; it has no beginning and no end"

What exactly are you learning about yourself from moment to moment?

China is engaging in an existential exercise. Its meaning or attachment to reality is moot.

Are you asking the difference between book smarts and wisdom? Or common sense? If so I believe there's a huge difference. A genius can have all the knowledge in the world but may not have enough common sense to take care of himself in a hurricane situation where survival instincts are needed.

Yes.

Yes.

False analogy, in my opinion. Machines are indeed capable of learning. They can change the way they respond to the information they get about what's going on around them, depending on the nature of the information. If that's not learning, I don't know what else you could call it. Quite apart from that, minds are not machines and don't function like machines. And how the Hell else can you learn except by adding to your stockpile of things you can remember?

(emphasis mine) WHAT??!! What have you been smoking?

Uh... was there not a moment when a sperm met an egg to create you? Was there not a moment when you were born? Aren't those beginnings of some sort? Do you not expect to die some day? Isn't that an end of some sort?

I've read that post of yours a dozen times and have not a clue what you think learning means. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge and understanding; those aren't hard concepts to grasp. No offense intended here China, I've read enough of your posts to know you're not stupid or dull, but on this one you sound like people I knew in the 1960s who doped themselves up and thought their inanities were profundities. I think you need to clarify your thought processes.

Learning is not simply the accumulation of information. It is also acquiring understanding of some facts or phenomena, of the way things work and of why they work in that particular way, and getting to use this understanding in your everyday life. That's the sense of learning somehing, in my opinion.

Exactly; nicely put. You can pack your memory with facts all you want, but if you don't see that they make a pattern and point to certain conclusions, then you may know a whole lot but you haven't learned much, which is why I defined learning as the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.

I've known people who have lots of information at their fingertips, and they're devastating at games like Trivial Pursuit, but try to talk to them about what any of this information means and you'll get a response like "Uh... whut?" Lots of information, no comprehension (which I think is the real difference between machines and minds, at least so far...). You think that new person you just met must be really bright and perceptive and he turns out to be an idiot savant. Most irritating and disappointing.

Yes it is irritating when people don't live up to your expectations.


Vereya your way of expressing yourself is refreshing. I totally agree that knowledge is more than facts it also requires a verb to be knowledge. There's a doing incorporated in knowing.

Suppose you had never read a book, religious or psychological, and you had to find the meaning, the significance of life. How would you set about it? Suppose there were no Masters, no religious organizations, no Buddha, no Christ, and you had to begin from the beginning. How would you set about it? First, you would have to understand your process of thinking, would you not? - and not project yourself, your thoughts, into the future and create a God who pleases you; that would be too childish. So first you would have to understand the process of your thinking. That is the only way to discover anything new . When I say that learning or knowledge is an impediment, a hindrance, I am not including technical knowledge - how to drive a car, how to run machinery - or the efficiency that such knowledge brings. I have in mind quite a different thing: that sense of creative happiness that no amount of knowledge or learning will bring. To be creative in the truest sense of that word is to be free of the past from moment to moment, because it is the past that is continually shadowing the present. Merely to cling to information, to the experiences of others, to what someone has said, however great, and try to approximate your action to that - all that is knowledge .But to discover anything new you must start on your own; you must start on a journey completely denuded, especially of knowledge, because it is very easy, through knowledge and belief, to have experiences; but these experiences are merely the products of self-projection and therefore utterly unreal, false." JK.


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Very true. If you live in a vacuum, and have a world of your own to create and its laws to invent. In that case you can easily cast aside all the knowledge and experience that humanity has accumulated, look inside yourself and start on your own. But I don't think that you live in a vacuum. You live in a world, that develops according to some definite rules and laws. They exist, and they work, regardless of you. And that is an objective fact. So, instead of discarding all knowledge of these laws, it would probably be better to get to know them better? And to get to know the world you have to observe it, to study it, and to make your conclusions. It is not an act of training your memory, it is an act of training your brain, in fact.
And creative happiness cannot, in my opinion, be compared to learning and understanding something that already exists. I mean, these are not opposing notions, like black and white or good or bad. These are totally different categories. Creative happiness is a great thing to experience, that is true. But you don't have to exclude learning from you life to create something. After all, you have to learn to draw before you create a great picture.

Vereya and China...

What exactly do you folks mean by creative happiness?

I suppose could guess on my own...

China, I would guess that by creative happiness, you mean being creative for whatever ends you would personally desire and/or undertake of your own accord, rather than being forced into doing something else by a person or an institution. So maybe listening to a teacher in an educational institution could be considered somewhat akin to acting as an audio recorder (though not necessarily always).

Perhaps, as Richard Dawkins put it (I'm not going to quote him on it exactly, because my memory will prove to be way off the mark from what he actually wrote), when you are first taught to do math, let us say addition or multiplication or whatever, you figure out that 6 x 2 = 12, because that is what the adults told you it would equal. It is only after time, when you have really wrapped your mind around it yourself (that is, when you have applied your own creativity to the whole process), that you gain an appreciation and understanding for why 6 x 2 = 12.

Basically, in that sense, from here we may find somewhat of a difference between learning and 'learning', as you wondered initially. It is sort of the conclusion that others have already come to in this thread.

Leaving aside what it is that creates a great picture in someone's mind...

One can be taught all sorts of things in a classroom about shading and perspective, but it still boils down to that person taking the time to draw over and over again, getting better at it and learning, using their degree of mastery to limit the amount of mistakes that occur (this is art, essentially - and I would argue it covers any sort of action that is undertaken on one's own accord).

You can replicate a process (say copying a certain picture) over and over, but that in itself does not make you an artist, nor is it certain to make you better at similar or different actions - so it is perhaps not learning in the same sense as that which an artist undergoes, as it might offer less room for creativity.

These are some of the differences in creativity and learning that I think China was trying to get at.

of course, I could be wrong.

What is the mind? When I put that question, please don't wait for a reply from me. Look at your own mind; observe the ways of your own thought. What I describe is only an indication; just like in the previous posts , it is not the reality. The reality you must experience for yourself. The word, the description, the symbol, is not the actual thing. The word door is obviously not the door. The word love is not the feeling, the extraordinary quality that the word indicates. So do not let us confuse the word, the name, the symbol, with the fact. If you merely remain on the verbal level and discuss what the mind is, you are lost, for then you will never feel the quality of this astonishing thing called the mind.
So, what is the mind? Obviously, the mind is our total awareness or consciousness; it is the total way of our existence, the whole process of our thinking. The mind is the result of the brain. The brain produces the mind. Without the brain there is no mind, but the mind is separate from the brain. It is the child of the brain. If the brain is limited, damaged, the mind is also damaged. The brain, which records every sensation, every feeling of pleasure or pain, the brain with all its tissues, with all its responses, creates what we call the mind, although the mind is independent of the brain.
You don't have to accept this. You can experiment with it and see for yourself." JK

Not the mind. I asked what you mean by creative happiness. Please explain.

If you are referring to the end of creativity pretty much being human nature, then there is a chance I might agree.

But I want to know what you mean by creative happiness, as best as you can explain it using words.

By the way, I won't be experimenting with that particular aspect of the brain/mind that you mention. Won't see me damaging my brain to see what kind of effects it has on my mind.

I thought this type of thread went out of fashion in the 70's. It's like arguing over the specific gravity of rocks.

I'm honestly just trying to figure out what is going on, tamarin. Maybe it went out of fashion for a good reason.

All I know is, I asked a question about whatever creative happiness is supposed to mean, and I got a response about the mind and having to experience things for myself (assuming China was talking to me).

I dunno...

You and I have intrinsically the capacity to be happy, to be creative, to be in touch with something that is beyond the clutches of time. Creative happiness is not a gift reserved for the few; and why is it that the vast majority do not know that happiness? Why do some seem to keep in touch with the profound in spite of circumstances and accidents, while others are destroyed by them? Why are some resilient, pliable, while others remain unyielding and are destroyed? In spite of knowledge, some keep the door open to that which no person and no book can offer, while others are smothered by technique and authority. Why? It is fairly clear that the mind wants to be caught and made certain in some kind of activity, disregarding wider and deeper issues, for it is then on safer ground; so its education, its exercises, its activities are encouraged and sustained on that level, and excuses are found for not going beyond it.
Before they are contaminated by so-called education, many children are in touch with the unknown; they show this in so many ways. But environment soon begins to close around them, and after a certain age they lose that light, that beauty which is not found in any book or school. Why? Do not say that life is too much for them, that they have to face hard realities, that it is their karma, that it is their fathers’ sin; this is all nonsense. Creative happiness is for all and not for the few alone. You may express it in one way and I in another, but it is for all. Creative happiness has no value on the market; it is not a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder, but it is the one thing that can be for all.
Is creative happiness realizable? That is, can the mind keep in touch with that which is the source of all happiness? Can this openness be sustained in spite of knowledge and technique, in spite of education and the crowding in of life? It can be, but only when the educator is educated to this reality, only when he who teaches is himself in touch with the source of creative happiness. So our problem is not the pupil, the child, but the teacher and the parent. Education is a vicious circle only when we do not see the importance, the essential necessity above all else, of this supreme happiness. After all, to be open to the source of all happiness is the highest religion; but to realize this happiness, you must give right attention to it, as you do to business. The teacher’s profession is not a mere routine job, but the expression of beauty and joy, which cannot be measured in terms of achievement and success.
The light of reality and its bliss are destroyed when the mind, which is the seat of self, assumes control. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; without self-knowledge, learning leads to ignorance, strife and sorrow.
JK

I agree that we all have the capacity to be happy and creative, obviously... but that other part about being in touch with something that is beyond the clutches of time. I'm not too sure about that one. Maybe I am just fooling myself if I think I am in touch with something that is beyond the clutches of time?

I sure wish I knew what the Hell you're talking about. It sounds like it might mean something, but so far I haven't been able to puzzle it out.

For instance, you say this: And then you say this: Don't you see that at best only one of those statements can be true? I'm not going to do a detailed analysis of your lengthy posts here, but there's a lot of confusing inconsistency and vagueness like that in them. You throw around undefined concepts like "the source of all happiness" as if they were commonly understood ideas, and say things about children being in touch with the unknown. If it's unknown, how can anyone be in touch with it?

Actually you lost me with your first post in this thread. I've read enough of your posts to know you're no fool, so I keep looking at this thread and assuming there must be some substance here, but so far it's gone right by me.

btw China, it seems like you are interested in a different approach to education. Perhaps something more along the lines of Francisco Ferrer's ideas or the resulting modern school movement from back in the day (though they still exist even now, in different forms).

Ideally, these institutions are designed to allow kids to play and explore and learn on their own impetus, with materials and adult teachers around to help students on an equal basis when asked or needed.

Perhaps looking at these institutions might help to show if the current educational institutions are indeed a factor in the degradation of 'creative happiness' that you are concerned about? Though I must admit I don't quite follow you...

Yeah, I'd agree humanbeing, the educational experience can be a pretty bleak time for a lot of kids. Both of my two, for instance, actively disliked high school, and my son in particular... well, frankly I've never seen anybody who hated school as much as he did. It's often a sick little subculture based on cliques and popularity, with a layer of random authoritarianism from the school administrators overlaid on top. That was certainly true of the high school he had to go to. Fortunately he's perceptive enough to understand that the diploma is a useful ticket to other places, so he toughed it out with a lot of support from his parents (though he seriously panicked us more than a few times) and eventually got where he wanted to go; he's now the web master for a pretty substantial organization.

I have a strong suspicion that our educational systems are failing at their two primary duties: giving our children a basic level of knowledge about the world they live in, and teaching them how to think and learn. They're not too bad at the former, usually, but at the latter they suck the big one. They teach them what to think, not how to think, and one consequence of that is that there's no end to the mystic nonsense in this culture. Astrology, homeopathy, naturopathy, iridology, reflexology, reiki... ach, the list is infinite. Anybody who knows how to think clearly would reject all of those after a ten minute inspection of their claims and the evidence for them. But most of us don't learn at school how to think clearly. I certainly didn't, and it's taken me decades to figure it out on my own, despite being thoroughly trained to the post-graduate level in the sciences and spending a 30+ year career engaged in various scientific matters.

Our educational systems generally don't teach our children how to think. I had to do that for them myself, and it was one of the most difficult tasks I've ever set myself. I didn't want to simply indoctrinate them into thinking the same way I do, so most of my teaching of them consisted of questions like, why do you think X is true? followed by a careful dissection of their answers. And I always tried to encourage them to challenge me the same way. And by gawd they sure did, especially in late adolescence. I learned at least as much from them as they did from me.

And they both graduated from their post secondary educations in the top 5% of the class, and they're both doing very well. I am hugely pleased with and proud of both of them, and I like to think I deserve some of the credit for their success, despite my parallel belief that your children will be whoever they'll be regardless of anything you try to do for them.

Eh, we do the best we can, hope for the best, pray for the rest... well, I'm not a praying man, I'm an atheist (at least so far), but I carefully haven't closed any doors in that area.

And it's late at night in my time zone, I've recently come home from a fabulous party at the home of some of my favourite people, and I may be a little too tired and too full of good scotch to be making sense.

Despite your rather dogmatic skepticism concerning "obscure" subject such as astrology, you make perfect sense to me Dexter Sinister... I had good parents and from what you describe, you were and still are an excellent one... There is nothing more precious than learning how to think and it is to your great merit if you managed to guide your children wisely through their intellectual development...

Yeah I know all about that, and I'd strongly challenge your use of "dogmatic" in this context, but let's not open that can of worms here. It's way off topic.

It is always difficult to keep simple and clear. The world worships success, the bigger the better; the greater the audience the greater the speaker; the colossal super buildings, cars, aeroplanes and people. Simplicity is lost. The successful people are not the ones who are building a new world. To be a real revolutionary requires a complete change of heart and mind, and how few want to free themselves. One cuts the surface roots; but to cut the deep feeding roots of mediocrity, success, needs something more than words, methods, compulsions. There seem to be few, but they are the real builders--the rest labor in vain.
One is everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, with what one should be, with someone who is more fortunate. This comparison really kills. Comparison is degrading, it perverts one's outlook. And on comparison one is brought up. All our education is based on it and so is our culture. So there is everlasting struggle to be something other than what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers creativeness, but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness, ambition, which we think brings about progress. Progress has only led so far to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known. To bring up children without comparison is true education. JK.

Lieutenant Governor : What exactly are you learning about yourself from moment to moment?

Obviously ... myself..
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Dexter Sinister :False analogy, in my opinion. Machines are indeed capable of learning

Think again of what you are saying my dear friend.

DEXTER SINISTER:Uh... was there not a moment when a sperm met an egg to create you? Was there not a moment when you were born? ----------------
My body....? ,yes.

Do you not expect to die some day? Isn't that an end of some sort?

Yes , I am , from moment to moment ...to my past.

Vereya :Learning is not simply the accumulation of information. It is also acquiring understanding of some facts or phenomena, of the way things work and of why they work in that particular way, and getting to use this understanding in your everyday life. That's the sense of learning somehing, in my opinion. ------------------------------

Is there learning when you are merely accumulating knowledge, gathering information?

Vereya ,please read the post again . --------------------------

Vereya :You live in a world, that develops according to some definite rules and laws. They exist, and they work, regardless of you. And that is an objective fact. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

And so do I ,regardless of any developed rules and laws developed by the world.
And so Christ said ...be in this world but don't be of this world..and thats a fact . ( now, try to figure out this one ,Vereya)

I did read your post once again, China. It is most interesting. However, I again failed to see the inadequacy of my answer to your post.
And as for trying to figure out what Christ said or was supposed to have said, I'd rather not. It's three years already since I'm done with figuring out his teachings. And discussing that particular phrase that you mentioned would be off-topic in this thread.

Vereya ; here we go again.There is no inadequacy in your answer to the post re."Learning is not simply the accumulation of information. It is also acquiring understanding of some facts or phenomena, of the way things work and of why they work in that particular way, and getting to use this understanding in your everyday life. That's the sense of learning somehing, in my opinion." ,the post agrees with you -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You state:Vereya :You live in a world, that develops according to some definite rules and laws. They exist, and they work, regardless of you. And that is an objective fact. ------------------------------------------------------ And so do I Vereya!,I also exist ,regardless of some definite rules and laws .The meaning of what Christ said and the way I understand it is ,.."be in this world (society) but dont be a part of it",( dont be a part of definite rules and laws ) but I could be wrong ...I havent read the Bible in long time.