Embodiment, virtuality, and learning
21 August 2001

There are two central ideas:

• Hubert Dreyfus' idea that expert learning requires embodiment
• Robert Putnam's idea that social capital is vanishing

In On the Internet, Dreyfus argues that learning involves first acquiring context-free rules, resulting in what we may call competence; then learning how these rules must be applied in specific contexts, resulting in proficiency; and finally developing a seamless integration of the perception of relevant context and appropriate strategy in what he calls expertise. Competence, he suggests, can be acquired fairly mechanically, and may be modeled as a transfer of information to an individual from some source -- possibly digital. Even proficiency can be learned by route memorization and practice. Expertise, however, cannot be taught without personal involvement. He suggests expertise learning has two necessary components that cannot be simulated:

• personal modeling -- learning from the behavior of an expert
• emotional involvement -- success and failure matters

Both of these components, Dreyfus argues, require the physical presence together of the expert and the apprentice.

Comments

The strength of Dreyfus' arguments is that he attempts to describe very subtle processes of learning. His defense of the classroom is modest. In order to acquire competence and even proficiency, he suggests, it is in principle possible to use fairly mechanized and impersonal forms of teaching. However, this is true with an important proviso: the learning must be independently motivated. So an important point he is making is that social situations where people are physically present to each other create a psychological group dynamics that in practice is necessary for learning.

The evolutionary argument here may sound vacuous: high levels of skill develop only under ecologically realistic scenarios (the types of scenarios that existed in the EEA). Still, this sets a research agenda that differs significantly from the alternatives.

Putnam extends this argument, proposing that sociality and community require embodiment and are weakend by simulated interactions.

What you can add to this is a surprising twist: there are areas where simulated learning works, because natural selection has acted on the relevant capacities. These areas are broadly those of fiction-based entertainment. The theoretical question then becomes, In what areas and to what degree of mastery can fiction-based entertainment provide an adequate method of training, and where does it fail?

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