I am very interested in modeling a person’s network of ideas. What key concepts or values particularly motivate their thinking and how are those ideas connected?
I see this task as being particularly valuable in understanding and improving civil and political discourse. In this model, dialogue can be seen as an informal and iterative process through which people think about how their own ideas are connected, reason with each other about what ideas should be connected, and ultimately revise (or don’t) their way of thinking by adding or removing idea nodes or connections between them.
This concept of knowledge networks – epistemic networks – has been used by David Williamson Shaffer to measure the development of students’ professional knowledge; eg their ability to “think like an engineer” or “think like an urban planner.” More recently, Peter Levine has advanced the use of epistemic networks in “moral mapping” – modeling a person’s values and ways of thinking.
This work has made valuable progress, but a critical question remains: just what is the best way to model a person’s epistemic network? Is there an unbiased way to determine the most critical nodes? Must we rely on a given person’s active reasoning to determine the links? In the case of multi-person exchanges, what determines if two concepts are the “same”? Is semantic similarity sufficient, or must individuals actively discuss and determine that they do each indeed mean the same thing? If you make adjustments to a visualized epistemic network following a discussion, can we distinguish between genuine changes in view from corrections due to accidental omission?
Questions and challenges abound.
But these problems aren’t necessarily insurmountable.
As a starting place, it is helpful to think about semantic networks. In the 1950s, Richard H. Richens original proposed semantic networks as a tool to aid in machine translation.
“I refer now to the construction of an interlingua in which all the structural peculiarities of the base language are removed and we are left with what I shall call a ‘semantic net’ of ‘naked ideas,'” he wrote. “The elements represent things, qualities or relations…A bond points from a thing to its qualities or relations, or from a quality or relation to a further qualification.”
Thus, from its earliest days, semantic networks were seen as somewhat synonymous with epistemic networks: words presumably represent ideas, so it logically follows that a network of words is a network of ideas.
This may well be true, but I find it helpful to separate the two ideas. A semantic network is observed; an epistemic network is inferred.
That is, through any number of advanced Natural Language Processing algorithms, it is essentially possible to feed text into a computer and have it return of network of words which are connected in that text.
You can imagine some simple algorithms for accomplishing this: perhaps two words are connected if they co-occur in the same sentence or paragraph. Removing stop words prevents your retrieved network from being over connected by instances of “the” or “a.” Part-of-speech tagging – a relatively simple task thanks to huge databanks of tagged corpora – can bring an additional level of sophistication. Perhaps we want to know which subjects are connected to which objects. And there are even cooler techniques relying on probabilistic models or projections of the corpus into k-space, where k is the number of unique words.
These models typically assume some type of unobserved data – eg, we observe a list of words and use that to discover the unobserved connections – but colloquially speaking, semantic networks are observed in the sense that they can be drawn out directly from a text. They exist in some indirect but concrete way.
And while it seems fair to assume that words do indeed have meaning, it still takes a bit of a leap to take a semantic network as synonymous with an epistemic network.
Consider an example: if we were to take some great novel and cleverly reduce it to a semantic network, would the resulting network illustrate exactly what the author was intending?
The fact that it’s even worth asking that question to me indicates that the two are not intrinsically one and the same.
Arguably, this is fundementally a matter of degrees. It seems reasonable to say that, unless our algorithm was terribly off, the semantic network can tell us something interesting and worthwhile about the studied text. Yet it seems like a stretch to claim that such a simplistic representation could accurately and fully capture the depth of concepts and connections an author was seeking to convey.
If that were the case, we could study networks instead of reading books and – notably – everyone would agree on their meaning.
A semantic network, then, can be better considered as a representation of an epistemic network. It takes reason and judgement to interpret a semantic network epistemically.
Perhaps it is sufficient to be aware of the gap between these two – to know that interpreting a semantic network epistemically necessarily means introducing bias and methodological subjectivity.
But I wonder if there’s something better we can do to model this distinction – some better way to capture the complex, dynamic, and possibly conflicting essence of a more accurately epistemic network.
The 32-page discussion guide, Freshwater For The Future, was edited by Shannon Wheatley Hartman Ph.D. and Dennis Boyer, and published on Interactivity Foundation’s site in January 2016. This discussion guide explores multiple dimensions around water issues and the future of water needs.
You can view the discussion guide in full on IF’s site and it can also be downloaded as a PDF for free here.
From Interactivity Foundation…
Water, water, not everywhere… and maybe soon not a drop fit to drink. Water issues present a convergence of issues relating to population, where and how we live, how we have modified our environment, and how we produce our food, fiber, energy, and material goods. Water has been one of our primary “commons” and here in the United States has often been treated as an inexhaustible resource. Environmental indicators suggest that era is coming to an end. Water is worth discussing now as an issue that promises to be ever more prominent in the coming years.
This project will explore the public policy possibilities surrounding the issue of freshwater. We will examine how regulation, supply, and access to water shape our lives, vitality of cities, international relationships, and sense of stewardship of the planet. The various dimensions of water will include, but are not limited to: access to water, water as a natural right, riparian water rights, regulation of water supply, water as habitat (inland fisheries, biological reserves), water as security (local, national, human, food), agriculture, health of aquifers, clean water as key to public health, and water as component of community and economic development.
Outside the parameters of this project are: maritime issues and law of the sea, naval security issues, water as energy source, and the physical public works of dams, levees, jetties, harbors, canals, aids to navigation, and so on—except insofar as they relate to the freshwater dimensions above.
In this project we will explore the types of water needs we will have in the future. We will imagine the role that public policy might play in addressing these needs. Is access to water a natural right? Do we imagine a future where everyone has as much water as he or she needs? Do we imagine societies existing in traditionally inhospitable, arid lands? Will conflict between nations proliferate due to water demands? Will climate change force us to rethink our relationship with water? Our decisions about water have far ranging impacts. Access to water affects where and how we live, the kind of environment we have around us, and the kinds of social and economic development we achieve. Access to water has had long standing implications for gender equality, health, and mobility. So what kinds of choices might we make when it comes to thinking about policies surrounding water?
The PDF version of this report is available for download here.
About the Interactivity Foundation
The Interactivity Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to enhance the process and expand the scope of our public discussions through facilitated small-group discussion of multiple and contrasting possibilities. The Foundation does not engage in political advocacy for itself, any other organization or group, or on behalf of any of the policy possibilities described in its discussion guidebooks. For more information, see the Foundation’s website atwww.interactivityfoundation.org.
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Resource Link: www.interactivityfoundation.org/discussions/freshwater/
1.
The sidewalk is significant.
Its ridges hamper wheels,
Its cracks harbor meadows
And little things with wills.
It is safe–the street, maleficent.
It is hard–it doles out blows.
2.
The sidewalk barely registers:
Eyes on faces, signs, and lights.
Can you say what bore your shoefalls
As you strode down streets and flights?
Thoughts on larger characters,
You miss the fragile kid who falls.
3.
When that child belongs to you, though,
Down you’ll stoop to scoop her up.
For you again it matters that
A stick is in a cup.
Significant is the crust of snow
And sun stripes on the cat.
It seems reasonably accepted that a person can like something or dislike something, but is it possible in a most sincere, fundamental way, to nothing something?
To explore this question, we first must understand what it would mean to nothing something – assuming such an action were possible.
At it’s core, nothing-ing something is an active response – just as it requires at least some level of attention to like or dislike something. You can’t nothing something purely by virtue of being unaware of it; you have to observe, process, and actively elect to respond with nothingness.
Perhaps this seems like the worst kind of egoism – to declare your position nothing is to claim yourself free from bias and partiality.
But I would be inclined to take a different view – nothing-ing is rather an expression of humility. It is the act of observing, of accepting an external object as a thing which exists in the world, and of recognizing one’s own inability to sit in judgement of that thing.
In Camus’ An Absurd Reasoning, he ties the state of nothing-ing to the absurd – that distinctive existential Nirvana:
In certain situations, replying “nothing” when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man. Those who are loved are well aware of this. But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of the soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as the first sign of absurdity.
Thus the act of nothing-ing, if genuinely achieved, is a critical step towards embracing the absurd. Camus goes on to clarify what he means by the absurd:
I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment is it all that links them together…This is all I can discern clearly in this measureless universe where my adventure takes place.
Existentialist enlightenment, then, comes from recognizing one’s own wild longing for clarity in an unreasonable universe – and reconciling the two by nothing-ing; by being comfortable with that absurd reality.
But perhaps it is not possible to nothing.
The Tao Te Ching argues:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
This chapter seems to imply that nothing-ing may be a valuable route to avoid the ugly and bad – with the worthy sacrifice of the beautiful and good. Yet the seeming contradictions leave one wondering if such a state – even if desirable – is truly attainable.
Learn to act without doing anything, and the ability to nothing is yours.
While the philosophy of Lao Tzu in many ways seems similar to Camus, the above passage perhaps stands in contrast from the latter’s words in The Myth of Sisyphus: There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
Rather than avoiding differentiating between good and bad, Camus would have us embrace them both.
I’m not sure, however, the extent to which these ideas conflict. Embracing the absurd means accepting the good and the bad, accepting that – despite our longing otherwise – the world is not reasonable.
Lao Tzu only argues for the necessity of these opposites; that appreciating beauty is the creating of ugly, and we should therefore not be too quick to judge which opposite is good and which opposite bad.
But his words could easily be interpreted as in line with the later thinking of Camus. Perhaps nothing-ing is not the act of responding without bias, indeed it is not a neutral action at all. It is rather the act of appreciating things as they are; beautiful or ugly, good or bad. It is all of it meaningless, all of it absurd.
There is nothing left but – nothing.
Washington (DC): I am on a civics road trip: the First Annual Civics Literacy Conference in Massachusetts, an advisory board meeting for iCivics inside the Supreme Court building, and then a meeting with executive branch people.
The public discourse about civic education often takes the form: “Why don’t people (meaning adults) know basic facts about politics? Why do 10% of college graduates think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court? We should teach schoolkids these facts!”
But almost all students study and face some kind of tests on facts like the number of US Senators. The problem is, adults don’t remember what they learned as kids.
That is because adults are not obligated to retain or update their civic knowledge. You spend 13 years of school learning to read and write. Then, if you have a job that involves written words, you must constantly update your literacy skills. You spend a few dozen hours in school learning about politics, and then you’re a citizen—but that role comes with no rewards or penalties. Nothing bad happens to you if you forget what you learned. Yes, politics affects us all. It is interested in you even if you aren’t interested in it. But just because it affects us all, each of us can let others take care of it.
Some of us do update and even dramatically expand what we learned as kids about civics. The reason is: we’re interested. Something made us feel that politics was intriguing, important, dramatic, and rewarding for us as individuals. I conclude that the main purpose of civic education in k-12 schools is to increase the proportion of young people who reach that conclusion.
Hi, everyone! Registration is live for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and now is the best possible time to register. For a limited time (through June 15th only), our special “SUPER Early Bird” rate of $350 is active.
We’re so excited about NCDD 2016! We’re coming together October 14-16 (Friday through Sunday) in the Boston Metro Area at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel & Conference Center in Framingham, MA.
This year’s conference is “Bridging Our Divides,” and our intention is to capture and draw attention to attendees’ stories. The conference is taking place one month before the presidential election, and we suspect many Americans will be hungry for a different narrative: true stories about how Americans across the political spectrum CAN and ARE working together to make progress on difficult issues.
NCDD conferences bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada. Over 2,800 people, from dozens of countries, have attended our biennial national and regional events, and we’re expecting at least 400 again this year! Hopefully you’re one of them!!
I’m also happy to announce that NCDD co-founder and longtime creative force Andy Fluke is returning to help design and develop material for this year’s conference. Since stepping down as creative director late last year, Andy has been working as a consultant to several NCDD members on a wide variety of projects including several new publications & ebooks, the launch of a new initiative (CCTN), and the relaunch of one of our favorite programs (Orangeband). You can learn more about his new venture at www.andyfluke.com or contact him directly at afluke@gmail.com.
Learn much more about the conference at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016, and register today at www.ncdd2016.eventbrite.com to take advantage of the Super Early Bird rate.
NCDD conferences are important networking and learning events for our field. Watch this highlight video by Keith Harrington of Shoestring Videos to get a sense of the energy and content of our last conference…