3. Structural Foundations of the Learning Process

Our intellectual process consists . . . in a rhythm of direct understanding—technically called apprehension—with indirect mediated understanding technically called comprehension.

—John Dewey, How We Think*

A term may be viewed in two ways, either as a class of objects . . . or as a set of attributes or characteristics which determine the objects. The first phase or aspect is called the denotation or extension of the term, while the second is called the connotation or intension. Thus the extension of the term “philosopher” is “Socrates,” “Plato,” “Thalus” and the like; its intension is “lover of wisdom,” “intelligent” and so on. . . . Why a term is applied to a set of objects is indicated by its intension; the set of objects to which it is applicable constitutes its extension.

—Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method

* John Dewey, How We Think, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath Co., 1910. Reprinted with the permission of the Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

The models of learning that were described in the last chapter provided tantalizing suggestions as to the nature of the learning process, but they also raise many important questions. How, for example, does one move through stages of the learning cycles described? Is this process identical for everyone? What determines how the dialectic conflicts between adaptive modes get resolved? With what consequences for learning and development? To answer these and other questions requires a more detailed examination and systematic formulation of the experiential learning process.

The approach taken in this chapter will be essentially structural. That is, the aim here is to identify the essential and enduring aspects of the learning process that determine its functioning, separating them from secondary, accidental aspects. In this sense, the structuralist approach seeks to draw the blueprints of how the “learning machine” functions ideally, not to document its actual functioning under varying conditions of circumstance, mood, culture, and the like. To achieve an adequate structural analysis of the learning process, we need to determine (1) its holistic structure, defining the interdependence of the internal components of the learning model without reliance on forces outside the model; (2) its transformation process, specifying the way in which structural components transact to maintain and elaborate themselves; and (3) its process of self-regulation, describing how the structural system maintains its identity and integrity (compare Piaget, 1968, p. 5).

In a sense, this analysis is already under way, for we have seen in the last chapter how the more phenomenological, descriptive models of learning described by Lewin and Dewey are enriched and corroborated by Piaget’s structural dimensions of cognitive development—phenomenalism/constructivism and egocentricism/reflectivism. However, the model proposed in this chapter will deviate in some respects from Piaget’s formulation. For Piaget, these two dimensions represent a developmental continuum, in which phenomenalism and egocentricism are lower forms of knowing than are constructivism and reflection. I will propose here that the poles of these two dimensions are equipotent modes of knowing that through dialectic transformations result in learning. This learning proceeds along a third, developmental dimension that represents not the dominance of one learning mode over another but the integration of the four adaptive modes.¹ We will have occasion to examine the details of the points of disagreement between my perspective and that of Piaget in the course of a more complete elaboration of the structure of experiential learning.

1. Those readers who are familiar with Piaget will already have noted this deviation from his linear idea of development in my description of the relationship between experiential learning and his model of development in Chapter 2. There I suggest an integrative developmental scheme by proposing that the stage of formal operations represents a return at a higher developmental level to the active orientation characteristic of stage 1.

I shall begin by making a distinction between two aspects of thinking that are different, although complementary. One is the figurative aspect, and the other I call the operative aspect. The figurative aspect is an imitation of states taken as momentary and static. In the cognitive area the figurative functions are, above all, perception, imitation, and mental imagery, which is in fact interiorized imitation.

The operative aspect of thought deals not with states but with transformations from one state to another. For instance, it includes actions themselves, which transform objects or states, and it also includes the intellectual operations, which are essentially systems of transformation. [Piaget, 1970, p. 14]

2. The concepts of prehension and transformation or figurative and operative aspects of thought have parallels in the computer modeling literature. For example, in Forrester’s system-dynamics approach to model building, he distinguishes between rates and levels, specifying that in any model, rates can only directly influence levels and vice versa (Forrester, 1971). A level (e.g., population size at any given time) corresponds to the prehension or figurative aspect, and a rate (e.g., percent increase in a given time period) corresponds to the transformation or operative aspect.

In the figurative aspects, perception and imitation correspond roughly to the apprehension process, and mental imagery corresponds to the comprehension process. For the operative aspect, there is a rough correspondence between action and the process of extension and between intellectual operations and the intention process.

With this brief overview of our structural perspective, we are now in a position to give more substance to the definition of learning proposed in the last chapter—namely, that learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it (see Figure 3.1). And since there are two dialectically opposed forms of prehension and, similarly, two opposed ways of transforming that prehension, the result is four different elementary forms of knowledge. Experience grasped through apprehension and transformed through intention results in what will be called divergent knowledge. Experience grasped through comprehension and transformed through intention results in assimilative knowledge. When experience is grasped through comprehension and transformed through extension, the result is convergent knowledge. And finally, when experience is grasped by apprehension and transformed by extension, accommodative knowledge is the result. These elementary forms of knowledge, as will be shown in later chapters, become the building blocks for developmentally higher levels of knowing.

The central idea here is that learning, and therefore knowing, requires both a grasp or figurative representation of experience and some transformation of that representation. Either the figurative grasp or operative transformation alone is not sufficient. The simple perception of experience is not sufficient for learning; something must be done with it. Similarly, transformation alone cannot represent learning, for there must be something to be transformed, some state or experience that is being acted upon. This view is largely consistent with that of Piaget, although his work has tended to highlight the role of transformation processes over the prehension process, whereas I will seek in this exposition to give both aspects equal status (compare Piaget, 1970, pp. 14–15).

In what follows, we will examine evidence for the prehension and transformation dimensions of learning from three different perspectives—philosophy, psychology, and physiology. From these three fields there emerges a consistent picture of the structure and functioning of these two basic dimensions of the learning process.

In this sense, concepts and the associated mode of knowing called comprehension seem secondary and somewhat arbitrary ways of knowing. Through comprehension we introduce order into what would otherwise be a seamless, unpredictable flow of apprehended sensations, but at the price of shaping (distorting) and forever changing that flow. Yet knowing through comprehension has other qualities that have made it primary in human society—namely, that comprehensions of experience can be communicated and thereby transcend time and space. If you put down this book, get up from the chair, and leave the room, your apprehensions of that situation will vanish without trace (substituted for, of course, by new apprehensions of the hallway or whatever new immediate situation you are in). Your comprehension of that situation, however, will allow you to create for yourself and communicate to others a model of that situation that could last forever. Further, to the extent that the model was accurately constructed from your apprehensions, it allows you to predict and recreate those apprehensions. You can, for example, find again the comfortable chair you were sitting in, although if you did not attend to and comprehend the light source, you might not remember where the blue ceramic table lamp is. For these tremendous powers of communication, prediction, and control that symbolic comprehension brings, the loss of the nuance and security of raw apprehended experience seems a small price to pay. Yet, as Goethe notes in Faust, it is a price—“Gray are all theories, / And green alone Life’s golden tree.”

The relation between apprehension and comprehension has been an enduring philosophical concern. The philosophical distinction between these forms of knowing is perhaps best described by William James, whose knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-about correspond to apprehension and comprehension respectively. The following quotation describes James’ view of these two kinds of knowledge:

There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and practically distinguishable: We may call them respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-about. Most languages express the distinction; thus, ; noscere, scire; kennen, wissen; connâitre, savoir. I am acquainted with many people and things, which I know very little about, except their presence in the places where I have met them. I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of a pear when I taste it; I know an inch when I move my finger through it; a second of time, when I feel it pass; an effort of attention when I make it; a difference between two things when I notice it; but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all. I cannot impart acquaintance with them to anyone who has not already made it himself. I cannot describe them, make a blind man guess what blue is like, define to a child a syllogism, or tell a philosopher in just what respect distance is just what it is, and differs from other forms of relation. At most, I can say to my friends, Go to certain places and act in certain ways, and these objects will probably come. All the elementary natures of the world, its highest genera, the simple qualities of matter and mind, together with the kinds of relation that subsist between them, must either not be known at all, or known in this dumb way of acquaintance without knowledge-about. In minds able to speak at all there is, it is true, some knowledge about everything. Things can at least be classed, and the times of their appearance told. But in general, the less we analyze a thing, and the fewer of its relations we perceive, the less we know about it and the more our familiarity with it is of the acquaintance-type. . . . We can relapse at will into a mere condition of acquaintance with an object by scattering our attention and staring at it in a vacuous trance-like way. We can ascend to knowledge about it by rallying our wits and proceeding to notice and analyze and think. What we are only acquainted with is only present to our minds; we have it, or the idea of it. But when we know about it, we do more than merely have it; we seem, as we think over its relations, to subject it to a sort of treatment and to operate upon it with our thought. The words feeling and thought give voice to the antithesis. Through feelings we become acquainted with things, but only by our thoughts do we know about them. Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition, thoughts the developed tree. . . . The mental states usually distinguished as feelings are the emotions, and the sensations we get from skin, muscle, viscus, eye, ear, nose, and palate. The “thoughts,” as recognized in popular parlance, are the conceptions and judgments. [James, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 221–22]

Similar distinctions are made by Bertrand Russell (1912), Herbert Feigl (1958), and G.E. Moore, who describes two forms of actualized knowledge that parallel the apprehension and comprehension processes of grasping experience—apprehension (in direct and indirect forms) and knowledge proper (Klemke, 1969). Perkins distinguishes knowledge gained from physical concept formation and theory construction (comprehension) from what he calls “internal whatlike understanding” (apprehension), a process he defines as “that understanding of an experience that consists in knowing what an experience is like; and we know what an experience is like by virtue of having that experience” (1971, pp. 3–4). Whitehead distinguishes between two kinds of perception: perception by causal efficacy, in which one sees objects in terms of what can be done with them (comprehension), and perception by presentational immediacy, where one sees patches of color and hears patterns of sound (apprehension). Magrite seems to be expressing the dual knowledge idea in Les Idées Claires (see Figure 3.2). Similarly, Pepper (1966, p. 68) distinguishes between conceptual knowledge and felt qualities.

Pepper and Feigl use the distinction between these two forms of grasping experience to propose a solution to a perennial question of philosophy—the mind-body problem. Feigl suggests that there are dual languages referring to the two forms of knowing: phenomenal language, referring to felt qualities of experience (apprehension), and physical language, referring to descriptive symbols (comprehension). Basing their ideas on research in neurophysiology, Pepper and Feigl maintained that the physical and phenomenal languages refer to the same thing—namely, the object of acquaintance directly referred to in phenomenal language. Feigl puts his mind-body identity thesis this way:

The identity thesis which I wish to clarify and defend asserts that the states of direct experience which conscious human beings “live through,” and those which we confidently ascribe to some of the higher animals, are identical with certain (presumably configurational) aspects of the neural processes in those organisms. To put the same idea in the terminology explained previously, we may say what is had-in-experience, and (in the case of human beings) knowable by acquaintance, is identical with the object of knowledge by description provided first by molar behavior theory and this in turn is identical with what the science of neurophysiology describes (or, rather, will describe when sufficient progress has been achieved) as processes of the central nervous system, perhaps especially in the cerebral cortex. In its basic core this is a double knowledge theory. [Feigl, 1958, p. 446]

Since Feigl published that paragraph in 1958, research in neurophysiology has advanced greatly, providing enticing new evidence for the “double knowledge” theory. Recent research on the specialized functions of the left and right hemispheres of the neocortex has the most relevance for the distinction between apprehension and comprehension as dialectically opposed modes for grasping reality. The origins of this work stem from the research and clinical observation of Roger Sperry and his colleagues in the early 1960s (Sperry, Gazzaniga, and Bogen, 1969). They studied the behavior of so-called split-brain patients who, in order to relieve the frequency and severity of epileptic seizures, had undergone surgical division of the corpus callosum, a complex bundle of neural fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the neocortex. These patients as a result possessed two relatively normal hemispheres whose functions could be separately identified. The resulting studies produced results that are at odds with conventional and ancient wisdom about brain function. Until that time, it had been assumed that it was the left hemisphere that was responsible for all cognitive functioning worthy of the name—consciousness, verbal reasoning, analytic ability, and so on. The right hemisphere was thought to be something of a cerebral spare tire, a nonconscious automaton whose function was only to transmit information to the executive left hemisphere. Sperry showed that this was not the case. In fact, the right hemisphere was superior to the left in its functioning on some tasks, such as the visual construction required in drawing.

It is worth describing some of these split-brain studies to illustrate how dramatic the results were. Since the left hemisphere controls vision in the right visual field and the right hand, while the right hemisphere controls the left visual field and the left hand (see Figure 3.3), it was possible to do experiments that gave information on problems to only one hemisphere or conflicting information to both hemispheres. Betty Edwards gives the following descriptions of the results of two such experiments:

A few examples of the specially designed tests devised for use with the split-brain patients might illustrate the separate reality perceived by each hemisphere and the special modes of processing employed. In one test two different pictures were flashed for an instant on a screen, with a split-brain patient’s eyes fixed on a midpoint so that scanning both images was prevented. Each hemisphere, then, received different pictures. A picture of a spoon on the left side of the screen went to the right brain; a picture of a knife on the right side of the screen went to the verbal left brain. When questioned, the patients gave different responses. If asked to name what had been flashed on the screen, the confidently articulate left hemisphere caused the patient to say, “knife.” Then the patient was asked to reach behind a curtain with his left hand (right hemisphere) and pick out what had been flashed on the screen. The patient then picked out a spoon from a group of objects that included a spoon and a knife. If the experimenter asked the patient to identify what he held in his hand behind the curtain, the patient might look confused for a moment and then say, “a knife.” The right hemisphere, knowing that the answer was wrong but not having sufficient words to correct the articulate left hemisphere, continued the dialogue by causing the patient to mutely shake his head. At that, the verbal left hemisphere wondered aloud, “Why am I shaking my head?”

In another test that demonstrated the right brain to be better at spatial problems, a male patient was given several wooden shapes to arrange to match a certain design. His attempts with his right hand (left hemisphere) failed again and again. His right hemisphere kept trying to help. The right hand would knock the left hand away; and finally, the man had to sit on his left hand to keep it away from the puzzle. When the scientists finally suggested that he use both hands, the spatially “smart” left hand had to shove the spatially “dumb” right hand away to keep it from interfering. [Edwards, 1979, pp. 30–31]

Further research with split-brain patients and later with normal subjects reinforced and elaborated the conclusion that the two hemispheres of the brain were specialized for two different modes of consciousness—the two different modes of knowing about the world that we are calling apprehension and comprehension.

Edwards (1979) has summarized the results of these studies in Figure 3.4. Left-mode functioning corresponds to the comprehension process. It is abstract, symbolic, analytical, and verbal. It functions in a linear sequential manner much like a digital computer. The right-mode function, corresponding to the apprehension process, is concrete, holistic, and spatial. Its functioning is analogic and synthetic, drawing together likenesses among things to recognize patterns. These different orientations to prehension of the world are apparent in many human activities. In music, for instance, the left hemisphere governs the ability to read music, but it is the right hemisphere with its holistic pattern recognition sense that controls the ability to recognize, appreciate, and remember melodies. The left hemisphere is specialized for understanding language communication, but it is the right hemisphere that is most adept at nonverbal understanding, such as recognizing facial expressions (Benton, 1980), emotion, and so on. It is not the assumed anatomical location of the functions identified by this research that is primary, for this is currently highly speculative, but their description and recognition as representative of the dual-knowledge epistemology of experiential learning.

The hemisphere-dominance research provides compelling evidence for the theory that there are two distinct, coequal, and dialectically opposed ways of understanding the world. There is similar psychological evidence as well. In a recent American Psychologist article entitled, “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences,” Robert Zajonc (1980) summarizes evidence from the early studies of Wilhelm Wundt to his own present-day research indicating that feeling and thinking are separate processes. He further argues that affective responses are primary. Contrary to the accepted psychological doctrine that affective attributes are the result of cognitive analysis, Zajonc shows that in some cases, affective judgment occurs before cognitive analysis. These findings suggest a basis for that mysterious process we call intuition—namely, that intuitive behavior is guided by affective judgment (the apprehension process) rather than cognitive judgment. For example, in one of his experimental studies, he showed that subjects were able to distinguish between old and new stimuli flashed for very short periods of time on the basis of affective judgment (like/dislike) before they were able to directly identify the stimuli as old and new. Zajonc suggests that cognitive judgments are based on discriminando, the specific, analyzable, component features of a stimulus, whereas affective judgments are based on preferenda, which are more configural, vague, and global aspects of the stimulus.

. . . the separation being considered here is between an affective and a cognitive system—a separation that distinguishes between discriminanda and preferenda and that takes us back to Wundt and Bartlett, who speculated that the overall impression or attitude has an existence of its own, independent of the components that contributed to its emergence. The question that cannot be answered with the data thus far collected is whether the affect-content separation is simply a matter of separate storage . . . or whether there isn’t some separation already at the point of registration and encoding. The rapid processing times of affect suggest a more complete separation of the two processes at several junctures.

One is necessarily reminded in this context of the dual coding hypothesis proposed by Paivio (1975) for the processing of pictures and words. Paivio (1978a) suggested a number of differences between the processing of these types of content, for example, that representations of pictures emerge as perceptual isomorphs or analogs (imagens), whereas parallel units in the verbal system are linguistic components (logogens). He also proposed that pictorial information is organized in a synchronous and spatially parallel manner, whereas verbal information is discrete and sequential. Finally, he suggested that the processing of pictures is more likely to be the business of the right-brain hemisphere, whereas the processing of words is the business of the left. [Zajonc, 1980, p. 168]

The view that concrete apprehension processes are coequal with comprehension processes represents a dramatic change from that of the 1940’s. Early research on brain damage viewed concreteness as a deficit, an indicator of brain damage (Goldstein and Scheerer, 1941). Piaget’s work represents an intermediate position, considering concrete apprehension processes to be a sign of the young brain and immature thought. Now the theory of dual prehension processes has gained great credibility, based particularly on the hemisphere specialization research. It has been the basis for sharp critiques of the domination of comprehensive left-mode thinking throughout our society, particularly in education (Bogen, 1975). The process of apprehension as a mode of grasping experience and understanding the world is gaining scientific respectability, confirming the longstanding artistic recognition of these powers:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact. . . .

—William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream³

3. Shakespeare seemed fascinated with the distinction between apprehension and comprehension as two ways of knowing. Use of these terms is sprinkled appropriately throughout his works, including the humorous misuse of the distinction when the constable in Much Ado About Nothing reports, “Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons.”

Not all descriptions of a person need be attached to some central symbol for that person, which stores the person’s name. Descriptions can be manufactured and manipulated in themselves. We can invent nonexistent people by making descriptions of them; we can merge two descriptions when we find they represent a single entity; we can split one description into two when we find it represents two things, not one—and so on. The “calculus of descriptions” is at the heart of thinking. It is said to be intensional and not extensional, which means that descriptions can “float” without being anchored down to specific, known objects. The intensionality of thought is connected to its flexibility, it gives us the ability to imagine hypothetical worlds, to amalgamate different descriptions or chop one description into separate pieces, and so on. . . . Fantasy and fact intermingle very closely in our minds, and this is because thinking involves the manufacture and manipulation of complex descriptions, which need in no way be tied down to real events or things. [Hofstadter, 1979, pp. 338–39]

4. The spelling is changed here from the logical term intension to include the broader psychological as well as logical meanings of intention (e.g., intent, purpose, meaning).

What I propose here is that the transformation processes of intention and extension can be applied to our concrete apprehensions of the world as well as to our symbolic comprehensions. We learn the meaning of our concrete immediate experiences by internally reflecting on their presymbolic impact on our feelings, and/or by acting on our apprehended experience and thus extending it. Take, for example, the rose lying on my desk. I transform my apprehension of the rose intentionally by deploying my attention to its different aspects, noting the delicate pink color that is not solid but alternates subtly from white to a deeper rose. I sense its delicate fragrance and experience a blossoming of brief reminiscences. Here I cannot resist the impulse to transform the experience extensionally, to pick up the rose and hold it to my nose. In so doing, I prick my finger on the thorny stem and extend my apprehension of this rose still further. Now this new extended apprehension further stimulates my internal reflections and feelings. . . .

Learning, the creation of knowledge and meaning, occurs through the active extension and grounding of ideas and experiences in the external world and through internal reflection about the attributes of these experiences and ideas. As Yeats put it, “The human soul is always moving outward into the external world and inward into itself, and this movement is double because the human soul would not be conscious were it not suspended between contraries. The greater the contrast, the more intense the consciousness.”

As previously indicated, the conception that extension and intention are the basic transformation processes in learning is largely consistent with Piaget’s emphasis on the operative aspects of thought, which he divides into behavioral actions (extension) that transform objects or states, and intellectual operations (intention) that are internalized actions or systems of transformation (see Piaget, 1971, p. 67). It should be noted that Piaget seems to associate extensional transformation (individual actions) primarily with concrete apprehensions of the world, whereas intentional transformation (reflective abstraction) is reserved for logical and mathematical knowledge. This is perhaps a function of his focus on child development, where we see as the child matures that reflection and abstraction together do replace overt action and concrete apprehension. In addition, Piaget’s tendency to view transformation by reflective abstraction as superior to overt action transformation also reflects this developmental focus. It will be argued here, however, that although the figurative and operative aspects develop together in childhood, in the mature adult the two dimensions are independent, producing four equipotent combinations of prehension and transformation (see Chapter 6, pp. 199–205).

In this sense, the transformation dimension is perhaps best described by the concepts of introversion (intention) and extraversion (extension), the primary concepts in the theory of types developed by Carl Jung:

. . . one could describe the introverted standpoint as one that under all circumstances sets the self and the subjective psychological process above the object and the objective process, or at any rate holds its ground against the object. This attitude, therefore, gives the subject a higher value than the object. As a result, the object always possesses a lower value; it has secondary importance; occasionally it even represents merely an outward objective token of a subjective content, the embodiment of an idea in other words, in which, however, the idea is the essential factor; or it is the object of a feeling, where, however, the feeling experience is the chief thing, and not the object in its own individuality. The extroverted standpoint, on the contrary, sets the subject below the object, whereby the object receives the predominant value. The subject always has secondary importance; the subjective process appears at times merely as a disturbing or superfluous accessory to objective events. It is plain that the psychology resulting from these antagonistic standpoints must be distinguished as two totally different orientations. The one sees everything from the angle of his conception, the other from the viewpoint of the objective occurrence.

These opposite attitudes are merely opposite mechanisms—a diastolic going out and seizing of the object, and a systolic concentration and release of energy from the object seized. Every human being possesses both mechanisms as an expression of his natural life-rhythm. . . . [Jung, 1923, pp. 12–13]

In this original conception, Jung laid great emphasis on the epistimological aspects of introversion and extraversion. He saw in the distinction the psychological underpinning of the philosophical debate between nominalism, the view that universals and ideas exist in name only, and realism, the doctrine that universals have a real objective existence. For Jung, truth lay neither in the nominalist or realist positions but in the dynamic integration of the introverted and extraverted attitudes:

Every logico-intellectual formulation, however embracing it may be, divests the objective impression of its living and immediate quality. It must do this in order to reach any formulation whatsoever. But, in so doing, just that is lost which to the extraverted attitude seems absolutely essential, namely, the relationship to the real object. No possibility exists, therefore, that we shall find upon the line of either attitude any satisfactory and reconciling formula. And yet man cannot remain in this division—even if his mind could—for this discussion is not merely a matter of remote philosophy; it is the daily repeated problem of the relations of man to himself and to the world. And, because this at bottom is the problem at issue, the division cannot be resolved by a discussion of nominalist and realist arguments. For its solution a third, intermediate standpoint is needed. To the “esse in intellectu” tangible reality is lacking; to the “esse in re” the mind.

Idea and thing come together, however, in the psyche of man, which holds the balance between them. What would the idea amount to if the psyche did not provide its living value? What would the objective thing be worth if the psyche withheld from it the determining force of the sense impression? What indeed is reality if it is not a reality in ourselves, an “esse in anima?” Living reality is the exclusive product neither of the actual, objective behavior of things, nor of the formulated idea; rather does it come through the gathering up of both in the living psychological process, through the “esse in anima.” Only through the specific vital activity of the psyche does the sense-perception attain that intensity, and the idea that effective force, which are the two indispensable constituents of living reality. [Jung, 1923, p. 68]

In proposing esse in anima as the dialectic integration of esse in re and esse in intellectu, Jung was at great pains to assert the reality of the internal world of ideas and fantasy, placing it in an equal or perhaps even superior status with the demonstrable reality of the external world. He saw, in his time, that both the church and modern science had fostered attitudes that denied the reality of the inner world in favor of objective, publicly confirmable external events and objects. For the basic dialectic of introversion and extraversion to work, however, internal experience could not merely be reflections of the external world. The assertion of the validity and independent status of internal experiences in the face of the powerful social forces denying them was to become a central mission of Jung’s work, reflected in his later inquiries into mysticism, alchemy, and religion for the fundamental symbols or archetypes that constitute what he called the collective unconscious. Jung defined these archetypes as “active living dispositions, ideas in the Platonic sense, that preform and continually influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions” (Read et al. eds., 1961–1967, Vol. 8, p. 154). For Jung, the role of personal experience was to actualize the potential that existed in the archetypes born within each and every living individual, inherited in the same way that physical characteristics are. By thus developing and playing our archetypes in personal life experiences, one achieved individuation or self-actualization by realizing one’s genetic potential. Personal development was not the result of accumulated life experiences that shaped the personality (the Freudian/behaviorist view), but rather resulted from the interaction of internal subjective archetypical potentials and external circumstance.

I have included original excerpts from Jung here because as successive generations of researchers have explored introversion and extraversion, a kind of conceptual “genetic drift” has taken place, such that Jung’s original epistomological concerns and his conception of the dialectic relationship between introversion and extraversion has been lost. Psychometricians have consistently conceived of introversion/extraversion (I/E) as a single dimension in spite of Jung’s clear conception of introversion and extraversion as independent entities in dialectic opposition (for example, Eaves and Eysenck, 1975). Most research studies have been unable to demonstrate a single I/E factor, and this has often been considered evidence for doubting the validity of the concept (Carrigan, 1960) rather than as a failure to properly operationalize it. What these studies do show is that at least two independent factors are required to account for the intercorrelations between I/E variables. One factor, emphasizing the strengths of introversion skills, seems to coincide with the common European view of the dimension, with its emphasis on impulsiveness and weak-superego controls in the extravert; the other, emphasizing the positive skills of the extravert, fits the American conception that views extraverts as sociable and comfortable in interpersonal relations. Although both these conceptions reflect meaningful aspects of introversion and extraversion, I prefer to think of them as secondary to the basic epistemological dynamics emphasized by Jung, at least for the present purposes of inquiry about learning.

Another facet of the psychological perspective on the processes of intention and extension is provided by a contemporary of Jung’s, Hermann Rorschach. The creator of the famous ink-blot projective test developed a measure of subjects’ responses to the test that he called experience balance. This measure is the ratio of responses to the test that are judged to be determined by the colors of the ink, divided into those responses that describe movement (for instance, two dancing women). Those persons labeled extratensive by Rorschach, with a ratio favoring color, are said to be outwardly oriented, by virtue of their responsiveness to objective reality—color stimuli present in the blots. The perception of movement, on the other hand, has no corresponding external reality, and thus requires an intervening subjective process. Consequently, intratensive subjects, with a preponderance of movement responses, are described as having a more active “inner life” and less concern with external, objective reality.

Although Rorschach (1951) denied any relation between his experience balance concept and Jung’s extraversion-introversion, the two viewpoints seem to have much in common (compare Bash, 1955). Rorschach’s distinction between objective and subjective orientation is the crux of Jung’s theory, and descriptions of the two Rorschach “experience types” are remarkably like Jung’s characterizations of the extravert and introvert. Moreover, evidence from several studies indicates that some of the empirical differences between extratensive and intratensive subjects correspond to hypothesized or observed differences between extraverts and introverts. Intratensives are more cognitively complex than extratensives (Bieri and Messerley, 1957); they are more imaginative, have more active fantasy lives, and are more capable of motor inhibition (Singer, Wilensky, and McCraven, 1956); they have few doubts “that the self is a reasonably stable basis from which experience may be interpreted” (Palmer, 1956, p. 209; compare Mann, 1956; Singer and Spohn, 1954).

The contemporary work of Jerome Kagan adds further insights into the dynamics of intention and extension. His research on cognitive processes in children has identified a dimension that he calls impulsivity-reflection. This dimension, which he defines as “the degree to which the subject reflects on the validity of his solution hypothesis” (Kagan and Kogan, 1970, p. 1309), is very similar to the European view of introversion in its tendency to emphasize the positive skills of introversion, impulse control, and reflection. Kagan has used several tests to assess this dimension, the most common of which is the Matching Familiar Figures Test. This test asks the child to select one figure from a group of six that is identical with a given standard. Impulsive children tend to make more errors and respond more quickly on this task than do reflective children. Kagan finds that reflection increases with age from 5 to 11 years; that people have fairly stable dispositions toward impulsivity or reflection over time—that is, they maintain their position on this dimension relative to their age mates; and that a given person’s tendency to be reflective or impulsive generalizes across different kinds of tasks. Kagan also finds, however, that people modify their orientations as a function of environmental demands; that is, when they are encouraged to take their time and be sure of answers, reflection increases (Kagan and Kogan, 1970). His interpretation of these and other findings suggests that impulsive and reflective people have different underlying motivational dynamics:

. . . the greater the fear of making a mistake, the more reflective and cautious the performance. Minimal anxiety over a potentially inaccurate answer is likely to be a primary determinant of an impulsive performance. Reflectives seem to be overly concerned with making a mistake and wish to avoid error at all costs. Impulsives seem minimally apprehensive about error and consequently respond quickly. It will be recalled that impulsive subjects did not scan all the alternatives before offering a solution hypothesis and reported words they did not hear in a serial recall procedures. [Kagan and Kogan, 1970, pp. 13–14]

Thus, those with an orientation toward extensional transformation are primarily concerned with maximizing success, with little concern about failure or error. Being oriented toward intentional transformation is associated with primary concern about avoiding failure and error and a willingness to sacrifice opportunities for successful performance in order to do so. The differences in these two definitions of successful performance are not only useful for understanding the behavior of children; they also shed light on basic conflicts between intentional and extensional orientations in the adult world. Many of the conflicts between science and government or between professionals and academics have their origin in these differences. The scientist, for example, seeks the best approximation of absolute truth and is socialized to avoid “irresponsible” errors, whereas the politician is perpetually faced with the imperative of action under uncertainty. Here, doing something takes priority over doing what is ideal.

As with the prehension modes of apprehension and comprehension, there is evidence, although more tentative, of physiological bases for the transformation modes of intention and extension. Whereas the control of prehension modes seems to reside primarily in the left and right hemispheres of the neocortex, Bogen (in press) has suggested that transformation processes may be reflected in a front-to-back placement in the brain: “If there is a manipulative (extension) vs. perceptual (intention) gradient in the brain, it is more likely from front to back than from left to right.” Other evidence suggests that orientations toward intention and extension are associated with changes in the limbic system, driven primarily by the arousal of parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is considered to have a generally mobilizing function in preparation for action and coping with the external world, whereas the parasympathetic nervous system is thought to work toward the person’s protection, conservation, and relaxation when dealing with the external world is not required. These two portions of the limbic systems are somewhat independent but frequently are in competition, so that a person’s extensional or intentional orientation would be a function of the joint momentary activity of the two systems.

The effect of the activation or inhibition of these two systems on performance and learning is illustrated by Broverman et al.’s (1968) review of the effects of drug-induced arousal or inhibition of these two systems. From their literature review of the effects of drugs on performance, they concluded that those substances that increased the organism’s level of activation (extensional orientation), either by stimulating the sympathetic nervous system or by depressing the functioning of the parasympathetic system, result in increased effectiveness in dealing with simple perceptual-motor tasks such as visual acuity or reading and writing speed, but result in poorer performance on more complex perceptual restructuring tasks that require inhibition of action and higher-order thought processes. Those substances that tended to increase the organism’s level of inhibition (intentional orientation) by depressing sympathetic nervous system functioning or by stimulating parasympathetic functioning produce the reverse pattern—poorer performance on the simple tasks and improved performance on the complex tasks. This symmetrical but rather complex pattern of results is portrayed in Table 3.1.

Overall, the evidence suggests that it is not the sympathetic/and/parasympathetic nervous systems alone that determine the individual’s orientation toward intentional or extensional transformation of experience, but that these systems are major forces in determining a holistic pattern of psychological and physiological processes governing the person’s orientation toward action or reflection. Arthur Diekman has described these two orientations as an action mode and a receptive mode of consciousness. He describes the components of these two holistic orientations as follows:

The action mode is a state organized to manipulate the environment. The striate muscle system and the sympathetic nervous system are the dominant physiological agencies. The EEG shows beta waves, and baseline muscle tension is increased. The principle psychological manifestations of this state are focal attention, object-based logic, heightened boundary perception, and the dominance of formal characteristics over the sensory; shapes and meanings have a preference over colors and textures. The action mode is a state of striving, oriented toward achieving personal goals that range from nutrition to defense to obtaining social rewards, plus a variety of symbolic and sensual pleasures, as well as the avoidance of a comparable variety of pain. . . .

In contrast, the receptive mode is a state organized around intake of the environment rather than manipulation. The sensory-perceptual system is the dominant agency rather than the muscle system, and parasympathetic functions tend to be most prominent. The EEG tends toward alpha waves, and baseline muscle tension is decreased. Other attributes of the receptive mode are diffuse attending, paralogical thought processes, decreased boundary perception, and the dominance of the sensory over the formal. [Diekman, 1971, p. 481]

With Jung, Diekman argues that the action mode has come to dominate the reflection mode in human society. The obvious survival value of orienting toward and coping with the external environment tends to overshadow the values of perception and experiencing, in the receptive mode, an orientation that tends to be commonly associated with infancy, passivity, and regression. This domination is particularly prominent in Western technological societies, whereas Eastern cultures have tended to give more emphasis to the receptive mode and have developed reflective adaptive skills highly in such disciplines as yoga and Zen meditation. Certain forms of yoga can develop demonstrable voluntary control over parasympathetically controlled processes such as heartbeat and respiration rate. Currently, there is great interest in developing introverted reflective functioning by using yogic meditative activities and other Eastern disciplines, such as the martial arts, as well as such Western technological variations as biofeedback, to cope with the stress and tension created by the overemphasis on the extraverted action mode and its attendant arousal of the sympathetic nervous system (for example, Ornstein, 1972).

Previous thinking has tended to confuse the grasping and transformation dimensions by collapsing them into one dimension. Thus, Jung first saw extraversion as associated with the feeling orientation and introversion with the thinking orientation (Bash, 1955). Only later did his research separate these as independent dimensions. Similarly, Piaget sees the dimension of phenomenalism/constructivism and the operative dimension of egocentricism/reflection as correlated throughout the developmental process, although he does emphasize the differences between the figurative and operative aspects of thought in his structural analysis of cognitive development. Much of the literature on left/right brain functions has, in my own opinion, also confused the grasping dimension with the prehension dimension and as a result attributed to the left and right hemispheres psychological functions that are controlled elsewhere (see Ornstein, 1972; or Diekman, 1971, quoted above). The position taken here is that it is useful to keep these dimensions analytically separate even though in some circumstances they are empirically correlated (such as in successive stages of child development).

In addition, it is important to note that these two basic dimensions are not unitary continua; rather, each represents a dialectic opposition between two independent but mutually enhancing orientations. Apprehension and comprehension are each independent modes of grasping experience. Physiological evidence suggests separate locations of these functions in the right and left cerebral hemispheres and an integrative mechanism in the corpus callosum.

Similarly, intention and extension are independent modes of transforming experience and appear to be controlled in part by the separate and interrelated parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Finally, it is maintained that apprehension and comprehension as prehension processes, and intention and extension as transformation processes, are equipotent contributions to the learning process. This is in disagreement with Piaget’s view that comprehension and intention are superior processes. This relationship between apprehension and comprehension and between intention and extension is captured (at an admittedly intuitive, apprehension level) by Escher’s etching, Day and Night (Figure 3.5).

After the description of the basic underlying structures of the experiential learning process, it now remains for us to describe how these structures function in the learning process. In the next chapter, we will examine patterns and vicissitudes in the learning process and the concept of individual learning styles.

—Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Since the 1980s, there is no area of research that has advanced more rapidly than research on the brain. At the time I was writing Experiential Learning, much excitement had been generated by the split-brain research that identified different functions for the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Research by Roger Sperry and others in the 1960s gained widespread publicity and popularization when Sperry was awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The studies demonstrated that the left and right hemispheres of the brain specialize in different tasks. I saw this as related to William James, two modes of knowing the world, apprehension in the right brain and comprehension in the left brain (Chapter 3, pp. 71–77). At that time, the field of cognitive neuroscience was beginning to thrive as methods for directly examining brain engagement in cognition such as the fMRI became available. The 1990s was designated the “decade of the brain” by President George W.H. Bush. Today research on brain processes and structure and their role in learning is expanding dramatically. In 2008 alone, more than 26,500 refereed articles were published in over 400 neuroscience journals. The Society for Neuroscience’s first conference in 1979 had 1,300 attendees; by 2000, 24,000 people attended. Today the brain has entered popular culture everywhere, and disciplines from education to law to marketing to economics to ethics have developed specialties called neuroeducation, neurolaw, and so on (Rose and Abi-Rached, 2013).

Recent fMRI research has added substantially to our understanding of James’ dual knowledge theory which formed the foundation for contemporary work on dual-processing (Evans, 2008), made popular by Kahneman’s recent book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) describing apprehension as system 1 and comprehension as system 2. Boyatzis, Rochford, and Jacks (2014) in a recent review of the fMRI studies by their team and others give a detailed picture of two large brain networks involved in dual processing—the task positive network (TPN) and the default mode network (DMN). Consistent with James’ theory, the task positive network and default mode network have a dialectic relationship. Neural activity in the task positive network inhibits activity in the default mode network and vice versa. The task positive network is important for problem solving, focusing attention, decision making, and control of action (system 2). The default mode network plays a central role in control of emotions, social cognition, ethical decision-making, creativity, and openness to new ideas (system 2).

Macro level interpretations of brain research have used three perspectives on the brain. The differentiation between the right and left hemispheres is a lateral one; the others being up/down (which describes the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the neocortex), and front to back. A recent paper by Eagleton (2011) combined the lateral perspective and the up/down, limbic/cortical perspectives to map the learning cycle on the brain. The left limbic senses and experiences through inquiry (CE), the left cortical is for reflective observation and critical thinking (RO), the right cortical is for lateral thinking and abstract analysis (AC), and the right limbic is for taking action and solving problems (AE). James Zull’s perspective is primarily front to back “. . . the most striking line of functional division in the cortex is the boundary between the somatosensory and the primary motor. It divides the cortex into a front half and a back half . . .” (2002, p. 175).

Zull sees a parallel between the learning cycle and the structure of the nervous system that creates the neuronal networks (see Figure 3.6). “Put into words, the figure illustrates that concrete experiences come through the sensory cortex, reflective observation involves the integrative cortex at the back, creating new abstract concepts occurs in the frontal integrative cortex, and active testing involves the motor brain. In other words, the learning cycle arises from the structure of the brain” (Zull, 2002, pp. 18–19; 2011.) While acknowledging the greater complexity of brain functioning, he proposes that these regions of the brain are heavily, but not exclusively, involved in the modes of the learning cycle. Their respective functions, sensing (CE), remembering (RO), theorizing (AC), and acting (AE), he calls the four pillars of learning.

Zull describes a cognitive neuroscience experiment showing that monkeys can distinguish cats from dogs, and more importantly, in doing so, they followed the sequence of the learning cycle in the pillar brain regions as his theory predicted: “sensory (perceiving major aspects of images of cats and dogs), memory (comparing the perceived image to remembered ones), theorizing (deciding the nature of perceived image as cat or dog), and testing the judgment by a specific action (pressing a red button if dog and a green button if cat)” (2012, p. 171).

Concrete Experience and Sensing—The Sensory Cortex

The sensory cortex receives information from the outside world through the senses. Zull describes how it operates: “During concrete experience, physical information from the world and from our bodies enters the brain through the sense organs . . . It is then sent in parallel to the emotion monitor (amygdala) and the specific parts of the cortex for each of the senses. If the amygdala recognizes the experience as dangerous, it will trigger an instinctive body action (fight or flight). . . . That is the extreme response. Normally, both the emotional and cognitive content of experience are sent to the cortex to be processed by the integrative cortex in the parietal and temporal lobes” (2002, p. 137). One implication of this parallel track is that attention can be diverted by unsafe and threatening conditions making it difficult to focus and take in the details of the experience fully. It also helps us understand James’ concept of pure experience (Chapter 2 Update and Reflections) and why it is clouded by cultural interpretations and memories of previous experiences. The incoming direct experiencing through the senses is immediately identified and interpreted on one track or the other before it goes to the frontal cortex for thinking.

Zull argues that “sense-luscious” real experiences that flood all the senses are the best for learning. “We are more likely to trust sensory input from the experience itself. I suspect that this confidence and trust in our sensory experience of the ‘real thing’ has a calming effect on our amygdala. And a calmer amygdala means clearer thinking” (2002, p. 145). Teachers should do more showing and less telling.

This integration is a creative and active, rather than reflective, process. “This means that we can change our purpose at any time. We can change our reasons for thinking; the content of our thoughts. We can discard specific facts and ideas, and replace them with others. We can choose what we want to think about and what problems we want to work on, and play with them in our mind. We can identify the elements that make up our thoughts, and move them around in our mental pictures as we work toward a specific goal or purpose. We can discard things that do not serve our purpose and add things that do. All this freedom! All this choice! This is what makes creative integration creative” (Zull, 2011, p. 93).

The integrative front cortex uses working memory to organize a sequence of movements that will accomplish a goal. Working memory selects memories and facts from the back integrative cortex relevant to the planned action and organizes them into a sequence of actions that will solve the problem. This is accomplished by a unique network of neurons in the cortex that fires when stimulated but continues firing for a while after the stimulus ends, “remembering” the stimulus. But if another stimulus occurs, the firing is interrupted, making short-term memory unstable and limited in how much it can hold. So working memory literally requires work and paying attention to avoid being distracted.

These functions are most associated with intelligence, though Zull stresses that the frontal cortex is driven by emotion through the dopamine reward system of the nucleus accumbens. The emotional aspects of learning and problem solving are as important as the mechanistic ones. It is driven by our desires and needs. He particularly emphasizes the feeling of ownership as essential for voluntary purposeful action.

The direct route is illustrated by the simple reflex, stimulus and response with no intervening cognitive activity. More complex activities are exploration and mimicry. Exploration is the continuing interaction between sensing and acting as in the way the eyes continuously move to explore something. Mimicry is copying sensory information and repeating it in action as when a child repeats her mother’s words to learn language. The neurons involved in mimicry are called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons match observations with actions and are located in Broca’s area, which is responsible for language. Direct recursive cycling between experience and action can actually produce skill mastery with little cognitive help (see Figure 3.7). Hoover, Giambatista, and Belkin (2012) have called this cycle “vicarious observational experiential learning,” suggesting that it lightens the cognitive demands of direct experiential learning and is therefore useful as a precursor to learning from direct experience, for example, observing a performance before doing it oneself.

The longer route around the learning cycle engages reflection and previous memories, coming to the motor cortex where coordinated voluntary muscle contractions that produce movement are triggered. These movements carry out plans and goals originating in the front integrative cortex including the actions of producing language through speech and writing.

The meta-cognitive abilities related to the self are essential for the function of episodic memory and what Tulving (1983, 2005) calls autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness: “Only through the sophisticated representation of the self can an individual autonoetically recollect personal events from the past and mentally project one’s existence into the subjective future. It is not known which regions of the frontal lobes are especially critical for self-awareness but the most anterior regions are good candidates” (Wheeler, Stuss, and Tulving, 1997, p. 333). Episodic memory, which includes some semantic memory, is different than semantic memory alone in that it recalls events in which the self participated in context and in time; while semantic memory registers, stores, and uses only decontextualized facts of the world, with no sense of when they were encountered.

Episodic memory is particularly important for experiential learning because it remembers by re-experiencing and mentally traveling back in time. “Its essence lies in the subjective feeling that, in the present experience, one is re-experiencing something that has happened before in one’s life . . . the self doing the experiencing now is the same self that did it originally” (Wheeling, Stuss, and Tulving, 1997, p. 349). Recall of these personal episodes forms the basis for future plans and actions. William James says of this “remembering” that “remembrance is like a direct feeling: its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains” (1890, p. 239). Most education focuses on semantic memory and thus makes the personal application of such facts and ideas in context difficult. The episodic memory of a statistics class, for example, may be trying to stay awake by watching formulas written on the blackboard. Experiential education and situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991), on the other hand, would work on using the statistics on a personally relevant research project. This episodic memory carries with it ideas on how to apply the concepts in future research.

The opportunities for deep learning are enhanced with a balanced use of all four learning modes and their corresponding parts of the brain.

The learning cycle’s four modes give four times the chance to remember. It is metacognitive and produces episodic memory central to future deliberate transfer of learning.

Emotion influences thinking more than thinking influences emotion. Positive emotions (joy) enhance learning.

Physical changes occur in the brain when we learn. Begin with existing neuronal networks which are the physical form of prior knowledge and build on it.

Learning how to learn should be a focus of education.

It is better to start with concrete examples rather than abstract principles. Abstract principles are where we are, not where the learners are.

Be careful to not overload the limited capacity of working memory. Shoving information in at one end only pushes out information at the other.

Always provoke an active reaction from learners. A safe environment for failure can help in this.

Indeed the physicalists appear to have won the day, and it is now generally agreed that the mind is a physical phenomenon—the mind is the brain. Even so, it is far from proven. A passionate advocate of the mind-is-brain idea, Daniel Dennett, who authored Consciousness Explained (1991), admits that he is only offering steps along the way to that goal. Stephen Jay Gould argues that reductionism in integrating the phenomena of mind and brain must fail for two reasons, “First, emergence, or the entry of novel explanatory rules in complex systems, laws arising from nonlinear or nonadditive interactions among constituent parts that therefore, in principle, cannot be discovered from properties of parts considered separately. . . . Second, contingency, or the growing importance of ‘unique’ historical accidents that cannot, in principle, be predicted, but remain fully accessible to factual explanation after their occurrence” (2003, pp. 201–202). Carla Hannaford (1995) argues that learning is holistic, involving the whole body, “But we have missed a most fundamental and mysterious aspect of the mind: learning, thought, creativity and intelligence are not processes of the brain alone but of the whole body. Sensations, movements, emotions and brain integrative functions are grounded in the body. The human qualities we associate with the mind can never exist separate from the body” (1995, p. 11).

Jim Zull is with the “brain is mind” majority: “Ultimately even the spiritual is physical. . . . A physical brain means a physical mind; meaning itself is physical” (2000, pp. 5–6). My view is that brain and mind represent two realms of discourse, two different perspectives that are useful for different purposes and together can enhance both perspectives. Brain talk is about physiology, neurons, receptors, and neurotransmitters. Mind talk is about intentions, ideas, beliefs, emotions, and desires. Ironically, neuroscience has increased conversation about consciousness and mind, not eliminated it. I completely support the neuroscientists in their pursuit for a deeper and more complete understanding of the brain. Their passionate belief in the physical nature of the mind serves them well in their drive to achieve this goal. I feel confident that humanity can deal with whatever they discover. In the meantime, the humanities discourse of mind and spirit still survives and thrives while digesting their discoveries. We have seen how Jim Zull’s humble presentation of the physical brain enlightens our understanding of how to learn and educate.

Would that always were the case. Disciplines have a way of privileging their discourse over others and extending it into areas where they have no expertise, while demeaning the expertise of other disciplines. And the “physics envy” of soft social scientists leads them to seek legitimacy with the neuro patina. Ordinary folks are impressed by the brain images and are led to believe that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a “real” disease just because it lights up the brain in a fMRI. Whether it does or not, PTSD is very real in the experience of those who must deal with it in their daily lives. Some, like Ryan and Deci, are concerned that popularization of neuroscience denies choice and free will. My brain made me do it. “The sense of self is just a post-behavioral ‘spin,’ whereas the brain, reified as if it were an intentional agent does the acting, deciding and gadget activating. Such interpretations, found pervasively in today’s popular neuropsychology are fraught with philosophical confounds. First, the brain replaces the philosophical homunculus in this description. Second, the logic is that if the brain is involved, it is therefore the ultimate and most relevant cause. No matter that the brain may itself be stimulated into action by social events . . . mediated by psychological interpretations and construals or that awareness and active reflection can alter these construals” (2004, p. 465).

Viewed from the perspective of radical empiricism where everything begins and ends in experience, both discourses come together in lived experience. As humans, we live our daily lives with both discourses competing to interpret what we are experiencing. Dewey call lived experience “immediate empiricism” and agreed with James, radical empiricism that, “It is in the concrete thing as experienced that all the grounds and clues to its own intellectual and logical rectification are contained” (1905, p. 397). Francisco Varela, the creator of embodied experiential learning and autopoiesis agrees: “The only real way to do a science of mind is to accept the hard and solid fact that the realm of experience is ontologically irreducible. It is what it is. The realm of explanation is also irreducible—it is what it is. I cannot do away with explanations. The whole point here is to make these two things not just coexist as two separate drawers in the huge chest of drawers of the universe, but to actually affect each other. . . . I’m just a very hard-headed, very respectful observer of what’s in front of me; and what’s in front of me is both material causal explanations and my experience. Both!” (Davis, 1995, p. 31).

In lived experience we are most comfortable explaining our experience with the discourse of mind—perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and intentions. However, the insights of neuroscience, when integrated with lived experience, can make a difference in our lives. Carol Dweck studied the “folk” psychology of school children, specifically their common sense understanding of the brain and intelligence. She discovered two different views which she called the fixed view, that people are born a certain way and intelligence is fixed, and a view that she called incremental, that people can change and become better learners. With her research team, she found that teaching neuroscience findings about the neuroplasticity of the brain improves their academic performance. Eight 25-minute classes for seventh graders focused on the message that “learning changes the brain by forming new connections and that students are in charge of this process” (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck, 2007, p. 254), which led to increased classroom motivation and reversed a decline in grades experienced by the control group. Similarly, Good, Aronson, and Inzlicht (2003) found that a similar incremental learning intervention led to significant improvements in adolescents’ achievement test scores and Aronson, Fried, and Good (2002) found that such teaching led to higher grades among college students. The lesson of neuroplasticity is that the mind can shape the brain as much as the brain shapes the mind.