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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I think Matthias Melcher quite rightly points to the constructivists' objectivist problem. Quoting Potter: "Constructivists, analogously, do not realize the extent to which they work with objectivist ideals in objectivist contexts." But he then suggests that connectivism has the same problem. "All the notions of gradual, slow emergence of such patterns, or of 'seeing' them, makes no more sense for the explicit knowledge now extant." I wish he had drawn out this point in more detail, so I could see just where the problem lies for him. For me, for example, mathematics is just the formalized recognition of operations, similar perhaps to the process outlined by Kitcher. Our developing a knowledge of it is no more mysterious a natural phenomenon than is the development of a path to the ocean by rainwater in the form of a river.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 23, 2024 2:01 p.m.

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