Comparing Piaget, Bateson und von Foerster
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Is there a connection between von Foerster's idea of 'in principle un/decidable questions', Piaget's mechanism of 'assimilation'/'accomodation', and Bateson's types of learning?
Comparing Piaget and Bateson
Piaget’s mechanism of assimilation means expanding an existing schema to a schema which includes something new. In my opinion you can compare these mechanisms with Bateson’s learning types. If assimilation is comparable to Learning one, accommodation is comparable to Learning two (learning to learn). Learning one includes all learning types similar to the Pavlovian experiments. It means changing your behaviour within a set of alternatives. Your behaviour is changed because there is the possibility of an incorrect answer and your behaviour doesn’t seem to be the right one. Comparing this to Piaget’s mechanism of assimilation it means changing a well known behaviour because something doesn’t fit into this schema; you could call the former schema wrong and the new one right.
When speaking about accommodation we talk about changing a schema because of something new. In contrast to assimilation, the schema is not just expanded but changed in a way the new knowledge fits in. In the words of Bateson you could call it a change in a person’s point of view. At this point I have to confess that I am not sure about my classifications of assimilation and accommodation: If Learning two describes a person’s view of life, then Learning three is changing this point of view. But if Learning three is changing this point of view, Learning three and not (as explained above) Learning two is comparable to the mechanism of accommodation. Well, I think that’s worth further thinking.
But for now I will go on comparing the ideas of Piaget, Foerster and Bateson.
Explaining Foerster
When discussing about Foerster’s idea of undecidable and decidable questions my group and I wondered if there are questions that are in principle undecidable. Going back to Foerster’s idea of an in principle undecidable question, an undecidable question is a question without a true or false answer. You can answer such a question, but the answer depends on persons, not on facts or the truth. Examples for these type of questions are the question whether god exists or the question if we are allowed to kill a killer. As said before we wondered if there are questions that are in principle decidable because every person can deny facts other persons call proofs for a specific answer. You could then call the answer most people believe in the right answer for an in principle decidable question, but obviously that’s not the way to go, too.
Comparing Foerster to Bateson
Comparing Foerster’s ideas to the ideas of Bateson and Piaget I decided to compare Foerster’s idea of an decidable question (if there are decidable questions at all, see the text above) to Bateson’s Learning type one, because Learning one means that there is the possibility of a true and a false answer. Personally deciding an in principle undecidable question could be called Learning two because Learning two means changing Learning one and if you decide to answer an undecidable question you’re influencing the possible answers on the level of Learning one, for example making “Yes, god exists” the true answer. But if the process of answering an undecidable question means changing a person’s complete view of life, you could call it Learning three.
Comparing Foerster to Piaget
I’m not sure if my result of comparing Foerster’s idea and the one from Piaget could really be that simple, but to me it seems as if assimilation describes the process of answering a decidable question. Maybe the learner didn’t know the right answer for a specific problem before, but if answering in a true/false modus is possible, the schema remains the same, it’s just expanded to a true/false schema containing just another topic. And if assimilation is comparable to the process of answering a decidable question, we should try if it is possible to compare accommodation with the process of answering an in principal undecidable question. By doing so it becomes obvious that this is the right way to go. But I began to wonder if there could be a difference between answering such a question and the process of thinking about this type of question. To shorten it: for me, answering an undecidable question as if it is a decidable one represents assimilation because the former true/false schema hasn’t changed. But thinking about an undecidable question resembles the process of changing the true/false schema into a new one which is able to cope with the fact of undecidable questions. And this process is comparable to the mechanism of accommodation.
by Anjuli
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