Presentation at CILC II – Institutions, Interactivity, Individuals 2nd International Conference on Interactivity, Language and Cognition, September 11-12, 2014, Jyväskylä. Finland

2. Experiences,
physical artefacts
in communication
Bauters, Merja
Aalto University, Finland
CILC II – Institutions, Interactivity, Individuals
2nd International Conference on Interactivity, Language and Cognition, September 11-12,
2014, Jyväskylä

3. Content
• Why this topic…
• Pragmatism communicative approach
• Learning and habits
• The essence of experience
• Meaning creation through common ground

4. Why this topic…
• Experiences, physical artefacts are essential in informal
learning
• Technology enhanced social interaction to support
knowledge sharing among peers.
• Various training or learning programs and technologies to
support the capture and sharing of tacit knowledge
embedded in practice experience. by Cheng et all (2014)
• In line with the claim of Welsh, Wanberg, Brown, and
Simmering’s (2003): the integration of personnel training
with on-demand job support and professional development
might become a future direction of workplace e-learning

5. Why this topic…
• Future focus:
• Cheng et all (2014) stated: many studies are limited to
the superficial use and analysis of the tools without taking
into account the organizational contexts that may affect
the essential attributes of social and collaborative
behaviour, such as trust, voluntariness, and self-directness
– where do these emerge?

6. During this period practitioners feel like novices, but without
having the excuses or discounts on performance normally
accorded to novices. The pain of change lies in the loss of
control over one’s practice when one's tacit knowledge ceases
to provide the necessary support; and the emotional dimension
is also of considerable importance. The common assumption
that change is partly a problem of `attitude' and partly a
process of learning new explicit knowledge is deceptive and
fallacious." Eraut 2004:261

8. Work context learning needs
• The context, feelings of “uncertainty/disturbance” are
needed for some kind of change to occur
• The halted moment, should support moment to become
conscious of our awareness
• Awareness will be directed
• Heightened/intensified perceiving of environment (context)
• Support for reasoning – finding “help” using social networks
• Potential for change is in the process

9. Pragmatism
communicative
approach
"Thinking is shown in constant interaction with
Doing and Communicating" (Eraut 2004 257)

10. Communicative perspective
• According to Peirce, signs are interpreted within social, future-oriented
processes. Peircean sign theory holds that all thinking is
dialogical and has its basis on communication (Ransdell 2007,
see also Cunningham 1998) and that human thinking does not
merely happen in the brain, but involves use of external objects
and tools - signs.
• Thought, sense, thinking resides in the environment, in the tools
we use etc., thought is a semiosis
• In the knowledge-creation metaphor, knowledge is embedded in
mediating artefacts and skills and practices.
• People embody, objectify knowledge on these artefacts: scientific
theories, plans, models, instruments, and so on (Paavola,
Hakkarainen 2009) – object-orientedness of activity is the most
fundamental aspect of such inquiry.

11. Learning and habits
• Pragmatism gave habit a new meaning
• Habit is not only mindless routines, rather, it is a process
that is open for reflection and control (Kilpinen 2008:3 and
2009: 102, Bergman 2009: 10)
• “ […] that multiple reiterated behavior of the same kind,
under similar combinations of percepts and fancies,
produces a tendency, - the habit, - actually to behave in a
similar way under similar circumstances in the future” (EP
2:413, “Pragmatism” 1907)

12. Learning and habits
• “Intelligent habit upon which we shall act when occasion
presents itself” (EP 2:19 [1895]), might NOT be in the focus
of our awareness but can be easily brought up into
reflection to distinguish them from tacit knowledge
• Requires agency and effort
• When in doubt, seeing the environment with more “clarity”

13. Embodiment – towards experience
• “I believe it comes decidedly nearer the truth (though not really true)
that language resides in the tongue. In my opinion it is much more
true that the thoughts of a living writer are in any printed copy of his
book than that they are in his brain.” (Peirce CP 7.364).
• Albert Einstein, pointed out ”my pen is smarter than I am”
(Skagestad, 1999, p. 552)
• Signs do not constitute a separate conceptual realm, but are
connected, from the start, to the (material) world.
• Conceptions are not only in dialogue with fellow inquirers (+ shared
interpretations) or with the object of inquiry but always in relation to
both of these poles.
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15. The essence of
experience

17. The essence of experience
• Based on Dewey’s views, experience is:
• The experience stretches, it is not static nor stable, its the relations
between all things in the environment and social
environment/culture. These are scoped by the past experiences and
directed by the anticipated future, so that existing habits, tools,
institutions etc. have an affect on the current situation where the
experience occurs "qualitative immediacy”. (Alhanen 2013)
• The qualitative immediacy is close to Peirce firstness. The past and
anticipated future makes a difference in attention – where the focus
will be and how the experience forms the meaning. The felt
experiences are not impressions, they are real even though these
would be hallucinations - they are felt as real. (MW 9 [DE):16-21.
MW 12 [RP]: 133. LW 12 [LTI]:52).

18. The essence of experience – process
• The experience is not something that happens inside the
subject, its not something where the subject forms a
representations of the things in the environment. Rather it is a
continuous interaction with environment, where the "inside
and outside" are not really separate but forma unified whole.
(LW 12 [LTI]: 73-74).
• "It is that reconstruction or reorganisation of experience which
adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases
ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.” (MW 9
[DE]: 83).

19. The essence of experience – time
• Experiences (their meaning / remembering) changes because
of anticipated future
• The present and anticipated future may transfer the perceived
past “feeling states and bodily desires, inherited from the past
but prevailing in the present, can rewrite the past in the
service of the present” (Prager 1998: 83)
• Reflected in Dewey's experience, building of continuos
experiences for learning

20. Common ground grows
“I have defined an index or indication as a sign by virtue of physical connection.
Experiental connection would be more explicit; for I mean by physical connection that
the signs occurs in our experience in relation to when and where of the object it
represents. The phrase “our experience” is significant. Experience is the course of life,
so far as we attend to it. “Our experience”, I say, because unless two persons had some
experience in common, they could not communicate, at all. If their experience were
identical, they could not furnish one another no information. But to the experience both
have in common, the several experiences of the two connect other occurrences: and so
we have shares in collective experience. An index connects a new experience with the
former experiences. (MS 797:10 in Bergman 2004:427).
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21. Meaning creation
through common
ground

23. Common Ground
• Peirce maintained that in order to understand
symbolic (or conceptual) signs, the utterer and
the interpreter have to refer (indexically) to some
common ground. So, as an example; if someone
shouts “There is a fire!”, it is not understandable
if we do not know where this utterance points to
(to the real world around us, to the fictional
world, or to somewhere else) (see Peirce CP
2.305; Bergman 2004, 416-429).

24. Sharing meaning…? Common ground
• “The universe must be well known and mutually
known to be known and agreed to exist, in some
sense, between speaker and hearer, between
the mind as appealing to its own further
consideration and the mind as so appealed to, or
there can be no communication, or 'common
ground,' at all.” (CP 3.621; CP 6.338; 8.179) In
Bergman 2002: 10)
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25. Common ground (Collateral
experience)
• Common ground is needed to make communication, or sign-processes
(semiosis) understandable (see Clark & Brennan 1991; Peirce 1931-1958,
3.621)
• Collateral experience "serves a kind of double function, on the one hand
showing us some limits of the semiotic domain, while on the other reminding
us of the relevance of situational and contextual factors. In fact, the
crucial recognition of reality is achieved through indexical and
experiential means. See also Bergman 2002 (CP 2.337 [c. 1895]).
Bergman 2002: 9).
• Sharing experiences requires indices, signs which indicate, call, pinpoint,
direct the attention to their objects through which experiences could be
shared
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26. Indices, Artefacts & meaning
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• The meaning is NOT just symbolic but an indexical
relationship to artefacts and experiences …
• “The subject must be something which speaker and
listener both know by experience; or else, the assertion
must show the hearer by what process he can gain
experience” (MS 805:19-20 In Bergman 2004: 420)
• Indices play an important role in creating and maintaining
and developing common ground and contextualising the
communication
• They indicate where to place attention
(designations/subindicies), point to physical
objects/artefacts (reagents) and connect to familiar
experiences

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28. Thank you!
The Learning Layers project is supported by the European Commission
within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Agreement
#318209, under the DG Information society and Media (E3), unit of
Cultural heritage and technology-enhanced learning. http://learning-layers.
Merja Bauters
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Helsinki – Finland
firstname.surname@aalto.fi
eu

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