The hard problem of education concerns the existence of generic aspects of cognition, and the ability of teachers and others to train these aspects. The problem is, to what extent are our decisions, actions, and thinking guided by a top-down central processing unit and to what extent are we "the sum of our memory"? That's the quick and dirty nutshell version. The question of whether we can improve something like working memory or creativity is mute until we actually know if there is anything there to be improved? Just what *is* a generic thinking skill?
The word "generic" in "generic" thinking skills is important. Education's hard problem is a battle between those who believe that you can develop pure cognitive functioning or "thinking-skills", and those who think the best, possibly only, way to improve cognitive functioning is by enriching the store of knowledge in memory.
What are these generic aspects of cognition? In short, the ability of your mind to put things together in unique ways, take decisions (choose between options), create new ideas and new artefacts. What happens *to* knowledge and *with what* does it happen when you are thinking? Working memory is included here, as are "executive functions."
I want to make the case that alongside the traditional ways of measuring cognition, via brain scans or performance on tasks, there is another way. The other way is via first person experience, or asking people to look at what they are experiencing in their minds and use this as the point of departure for what is actually going on *in there*. Traditionally, there seem to me to be two ways of "measuring" the mind, you can scan the brain then try to describe what happens when you "exercise cognitive functions" and/or you can create some behavioural correlate and call it cognitive functions, such as performance on a creativity or problem-solving task.
I want to make the case that alongside the traditional ways of measuring cognition, via brain scans or performance on tasks, there is another way. The other way is via first person experience, or asking people to look at what they are experiencing in their minds and use this as the point of departure for what is actually going on *in there*. Traditionally, there seem to me to be two ways of "measuring" the mind, you can scan the brain then try to describe what happens when you "exercise cognitive functions" and/or you can create some behavioural correlate and call it cognitive functions, such as performance on a creativity or problem-solving task.
I think there is a third way. Ask people who meditate a lot to talk to you about what happens when they think. If we don't, the discussion will remain theoretical. This is because generic cognitive functions are *the mind* and we cannot measure the mind; hence the title of the blog, Education's hard problem. All we can measure are behaviours or brain states that are correlated with what we call a particular cognitive function. We can be clever about the statistics linking these things together and pull out variables that change either the brain state or the task performance, hopefully both.
This is what causes the homunculus problem; the problem is that we assume the existence of cognitive functions independently of what they *look like* as a particular manifestation as behaviour or brain state. It strikes me that we assume these things exist in order to create a measurement, rather than using the measurements to see if the functions exist.
Talking to people who meditate can give insight into what happens in your mind when decisions are being made. Here's what I think many people who meditate would agree on, there is no central processing system that we can experience. To quote the headless philosopher, I have no head. Just as I have no head, I have no central processing system. There is nothing that *it is like* to experience creativity, problem-solving or decision-making.
If you don't believe me. Try it yourself, close your eyes and think of the question, "what is my mind"? Lots of different thoughts will pop up, words and images perhaps, that you have very little *say* over. No creativity or evaluation is happening, just different thoughts with different angles appearing in a temporal order. We are left in the position of having to infer the existence of a whole load of processes to explain what we do. That's fine, we cannot always experience the thing in itself. We don't see "gravity" we see the effects of gravity (well we couldn't until recently, but that's a different story).
So the appearance of the thoughts leads us to assume intention, agency, purpose. Yet those purposes and intentions are hidden from us. We see the effects of the central processing unit when people take decisions and are creative. Ergo, there must be something that corresponds to this inside our bodies that we can find that "causes" these things or "is" these things. But we can't, it's like looking for the gold at the bottom of the rainbow. There is nothing there.
If you don't believe me. Try it yourself, close your eyes and think of the question, "what is my mind"? Lots of different thoughts will pop up, words and images perhaps, that you have very little *say* over. No creativity or evaluation is happening, just different thoughts with different angles appearing in a temporal order. We are left in the position of having to infer the existence of a whole load of processes to explain what we do. That's fine, we cannot always experience the thing in itself. We don't see "gravity" we see the effects of gravity (well we couldn't until recently, but that's a different story).
So the appearance of the thoughts leads us to assume intention, agency, purpose. Yet those purposes and intentions are hidden from us. We see the effects of the central processing unit when people take decisions and are creative. Ergo, there must be something that corresponds to this inside our bodies that we can find that "causes" these things or "is" these things. But we can't, it's like looking for the gold at the bottom of the rainbow. There is nothing there.
All we have are thoughts. Sometimes our "fast brain" or intuition will just throw a solution out there and sometimes you can slow down just enough to weigh up some options. However the content of thought is not something that I can control, really. Waiting for the "central executive" to appear, some discreet creator of thought and experience, is like waiting for Godot.
If we can barely control our thoughts, and if we are largely operating our of a combination of genetics and environment, why do we need the idea of a central processing unit? At best I can distance myself a bit from the stream of consciousness, but even that takes a lot of practice. Even something simple like whether to order an ice cream goes something like this. Voice 1. "Oh no, it's unhealthy and I'm a bit of fatty, better not eat it" vs Voice 2: "Go on, go on it's delicious." You have the feeling of "deciding" what do do but there is nothing "on top" of this from a first person perspective. At some point, you simply stop and whatever voice that spoke last drives behaviour.
There are of course, emotions attached to this process too. I cannot know if I am evaluating, analysing or explaining something to myself but I do know what I am feeling as I am weighing up a decision. Eventually, the discussion between different parts of my mind will stop and a decision or action will happen. How much does this relate to thought and how much to our nervous system and emotional life? Cognition, creativity, problem solving, can be very context driven. We are easily manipulated by signs and suggestions that are outside our minds. This explains why we need reminding that puppies are for life and not just for Christmas.
Every decision is influenced *everything* that is around me, things that I am aware of and things I am not aware of. Human beings crazy unpredictability in *the wild* has to do with the amount of external stimuli. Take all the external stimuli and multiply it by the history of an individual, and we have a very complex determination of what decision will be taken in any circumstance. To attribute decision-making to an imaginary central control mechanism is madness.
So in short - I don't think we can work on generic problem solving skills if we are not even sure that a central executive exists. At best, we can work to distance ourselves a bit from our thoughts - watch them - to gain a bit of space and a bit of agency.
Cheers
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