Formation of the concept of embodiment in the contemporary philosophy and neuroscience, and elaborating and developing of it in recent century, open a lot of approaches up in different fields; one of them is educational sciences. As the theory is revolutionary, its employment in other fields would be revolutionary necessarily. Yet theories related to embodiment and knowledge take many different forms and have many different theorists and schools. In this paper, having Gilles Deleuze’s doctrines in mind, especially the concept of (...) rhizome, we try to elicit his doctrines about embodiment. Thus, doctrines of one of important contemporary philosophers would be related to one of most important contemporary theories. Then, we will apply the results to education. This paper, in fact, has two main parts: first, Deleuze and embodiment, and second, applying it to education. In the latter, a few elements of education, i.e., the role of student, the class and school, would be seen in the light of what is come from the former. (shrink)

Systems thinking provides insights into how ideas interact and change, and constructivism is an example of this type of systemic approach. In the 1970s constructivism emphasised the development of mathematical and scientific ideas in children. Recently constructivist ideas are applied much more generally. Here I use this approach to consider beliefs and their role in conflicts and the conditions needed for reconciliation. If we look at Reality in terms of how we construct it as a human cognitive process, we recognise (...) two things. First, that we cannot go beyond our senses and thoughts to what exists independently of us, and second, if we construct what we know we have to take responsibility for this. This inevitably focuses our thinking on the relation we have with the physical and social world, we are a part of the universe rather than apart from it. This paper argues that accepting and understanding these limits of human knowing together with our interconnectedness provide opportunities to understand conflicting positions. To resolve conflict, people with opposing viewpoints have to be prepared to understand each other. That is a challenge because our own reality plays a vital role in our lives, for everything from personal survival to social support. (shrink)

In discussions regarding models of cognition, the very mention of “computationalism” often incites reactions against the insufficiency of the Turing machine model, its abstractness, determinism, the lack of naturalist foundations, triviality and the absence of clarity. None of those objections, however, concerns models based on natural computation or computing nature, where the model of computation is broader than symbol manipulation or conventional models of computation. Computing nature consists of physical structures that form layered computational architecture, with computation processes ranging from (...) quantum to chemical, biological/cognitive and social-level computation. It is argued that, on the lower levels of information processing in the brain, finite automata or Turing machines may still be adequate models, while, on the higher levels of whole-brain information processing, natural computing models are necessary. A layered computational architecture of the mind based on the intrinsic computing of physical systems avoids objections against early versions of computationalism in the form of abstract symbols manipulation. (shrink)