Learnable Theory & Analysis E-Book

Ahlam Alharbi

• Herausgeber: LUISS University Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

This introduction to Learnable Theory and Analysis leverages several contributions that Italian researchers and research centers have provided in Philosophy, Linguistics and Neurosciences. Contributions which appear particularly relevant in the construction of a solid link between Philosophy and Business Studies. A link which has the ambition to guide both Academics and Practitioners of Management across the tumultuous waters of Philosophy, Linguistics and Neurosciences, whose investigations the authors here present and develop in view of new opportunities of deeper understanding and broader interventions. Contributions of scholars such as Giacomo Rizzolatti and Silvio Ceccato, as well as the work of others who have been following their tracks and, in some cases, even drastically reconsidered their propositions, are here highly leveraged and celebrated together with Roy Bhaskar’s revolutionary ontological framework and George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s enlightening studies on metaphors.

Leseprobe

Learnable Theory & Analysis

by Luca Magni, Giorgio Marchetti and Ahlam Alharbi

© 2023 Luiss University Press – LuissX srl

Tutti i diritti riservati

ISBN 978-88-6105-953-5

Luiss University Press – LuissX srl

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E-mail [email protected]

www.luissuniversitypress.it

Editing Tralerighe

Impaginazione Livia Pierini

Prima edizione marzo 2023

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Foreword

by Prof. Matteo Caroli

Introduction

by Luca Magni

Chapter I

The Foundations of Learnable Theory

by Luca Magni

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Ontologies of Stratified Reality & Critical Realism

3. Learnable and the Challenges in Contemporary Philosophy

4. Learnable and cultures

5. Conclusion

References

Chapter II

The Neuroscientific Roots of Learnable Analysis

by Luca Magni

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Mirror Neurons

3. Neural Networks Development and Reuse

4. Interiorization of Language and Syntax

5. On Focusing and Defocusing Effects of Interiorized Language Structures

6. Conceptual Metaphors

7. The Learnable, Metaphors, Attentional Processes and Prepositions

8. Conclusion

References

Chapter III

Metaphor Triangulation of Learnables

by Ahlam Alharbi

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. From Taxonomy of Metaphors to Metaphor Triangulation of Learnables

3. Covid-19 Discourse & Metaphor

4. Methodology

5. Data Analysis

6. Discussion

7. Conclusion

References

Chapter IV

The Linguistic and Cognitive Relevance of Prepositions

by Giorgio Marchetti

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Prepositional Assembling

3. A Comparison Between Prepositions and the Other Major Classes of Relators

4. Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Chapter V

The Cognitive Operational Meanings of Prepositions and their Leveraging in Learnable Analysis

by Giorgio Marchetti

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Prepositions: Syncategorematic, Polysemantic or Monosemantic Words?

3. English Prepositions

4. Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

Chapter VI

The Attentional Impact of Prepositions in Metaphors:

Focusing and Defocusing Mechanisms of the Learnable

by Luca Magni, Giorgio Marchetti, and Ahlam Alharbi

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Metaphors

3. Prepositional Metaphors

4. Conclusion

References

Closing Remarks

by Luca Magni

The Authors

Contents

Introduction

Luca Magni

The Foundations of Learnable Theory

Luca Magni

The Neuroscientific Roots of Learnable Analysis

Luca Magni

Metaphor Triangulation of the Learnables

Ahlam Alharbi

The Linguistic and Cognitive Relevance of Prepositions

Giorgio Marchetti

The Cognitive Operational Meanings of Prepositions and their Leveraging in Learnable Analysis

Giorgio Marchetti

The Attentional Impact of Prepositions in Metaphors: Focusing and Defocusing Mechanisms of the Learnable

Luca Magni, Giorgio Marchetti, and Ahlam Alharbi

Closing Remarks

Luca Magni

List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1.1. Learnable Enhanced Bhaskarian Ontology (LEBO)

Figure 1.2. Observational Instances of the Learnable Enhanced Bhaskarian Ontology (LEBO)

Figure 3.1. Bhaskar’s Critical Realism & Learnable

Figure 3.2. Metaphor Triangulation of Learnables (MTL) Taxonomy

Figure 3.3. Critical Realism & Covid-19

Figure 4.1. Main cognitive operations (CO) involved in understanding the meaning of a prepositional assembling (PA)

Figure 4.2 Main CO involved in understanding the meaning of a noun-adjective phrase

Table 1.1: LEBO observational instances and their relations with truth

Table 3.1. TIME IS MONEY Taxonomy

Table 3.2. VIRUS IS ENEMY Taxonomy

Table 3.3. PANDEMIC IS WAR Taxonomy

Table 3.4. PANDEMIC IS FIRE Taxonomy

Table 3.5. PANDEMIC IS NATURAL DISASTER/HAZARD (i.e., TORNADO) Taxonomy

Table 5.1. Preposition of

Table 5.2. Preposition in

Table 5.3. Preposition to

Table 5.4. Preposition for

Table 5.5. Preposition with

Table 5.6. Preposition on

Table 5.7. Preposition at

Table 5.8. Preposition by

Table 5.9. Preposition over

Table 5.10. Preposition against

Table 5.11. Preposition without

Table 5.12. The instructions provided by the English prepositions of, in, to, for, with, on, at, by, over, against, and without

Table 6.1. The focusing and defocusing operations prompted by the English prepositions of, in, to, for, with, on, at, by, over, against, and without

Table 6.2. Analysis of prepositional metaphors in terms of attentional focusing and attentional defocusing

foreword

by prof. matteo caroli1

The book that follows is the result of the research that Luca Magni, Giorgio Marchetti and Ahlam Alharbi have accomplished in one year of close collaboration and very intensive work as Members of the Open Research Unit of Learnable and Metaphors Operative Analysis, which Luca Magni started early in 2022 and has been directing ever since, at Luiss Business School.

Open Research Units are a form of highly agile and flexible research circles that Luiss Business School launched last year. Their aim is to grow interest, develop and spread knowledge, within the Business Community and among Researchers in Management Studies, around either business practices or research perspectives which – despite their potential impact on people and society – do not seem to be receiving the attention they deserve. Some business practices may receive little coverage because of the industry or the geographical areas where they take place are out of the main circuits where the Business Community looks for inspiration, while others might simply pass unnoticed for the occurrence of distracting concomitant events. Similarly, there are also theoretical perspectives that leverage on a set of quite specific competences – which are very far from the most traditional disciplines taught in Business Schools and therefore run the risk of remaining out of the radars of Academics and Practitioners in Management Sciences. This despite the undisputable potential that such theoretical and analytical perspectives may offer.

The Open Research Unit of Learnable and Metaphors Operative Analysis gathers competences and interests in the areas of Philosophy, Psychology, Neurosciences and Linguistics. In the past, these disciplines have often crossed their paths and they have seen their research programs converging, even more and very frequently in the last decade. On such basis the University of Oxford and many other educational institutions worldwide have developed joint degrees offerings that bring together Philosophy, Psychology and Linguistics and this seems to ratify how interdependent the developments of these disciplines have become, particularly with the advent of Neurosciences. Parallel to these dynamics, bridges have also been built between Behavioral Sciences, Economics and Management Sciences and the benefit of such integration was amply recognized even with the award of the Nobel Prize to some of its proponents. The nexus between the philosophical assumptions and managerial practices is a theme rarely addressed and that is the space that Luca Magni, Giorgio Marchetti and Ahlam Alharbi enter with their study.

This introduction to Learnable Theory and Analysis leverages several contributions that Italian researchers and research centers have provided in Philosophy, Linguistics and Neurosciences. Contributions which appear particularly relevant in the construction of a solid link between Philosophy and Business Studies. A link which has the ambition to guide both Academics and Practitioners of Management across the tumultuous waters of Philosophy, Linguistics and Neurosciences, whose investigations the authors here present and develop in view of new opportunities of deeper understanding and broader interventions. Contributions of scholars such as Giacomo Rizzolatti and Silvio Ceccato, as well as the work of others who have been following their tracks and, in some cases, even drastically reconsidered their propositions, are here highly leveraged and celebrated together with Roy Bhaskar’s revolutionary ontological framework and George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s enlightening studies on metaphors. I enjoyed reading this book and very much appreciated its invitation to emancipate from the boundaries that our belonging to a group or a community of practice casts on us: I lived the reading of this study as my own step in that direction.

1. Associate Dean for Applied Research & Internationalization, Director of the Center of Research on Social Innovation and Full Professor of International Business at Luiss Business School.

introduction

by luca magni

Two Times Three, or the Enigma of the 3 T’s as I call it today. It is from this simple mathematical operation that everything started. It happened during a one-to-one homework session I had with my eldest daughter in 2002: Sveva was 6 years old, and she was struggling with some very basic and newly acquired computational skills. She was at the desk in her bedroom and still wearing her uniform. She had come back from school and after a brief break – for a snack in front of her favourite TV programme – she was sitting there, fully reenergized, and ready for a couple of exercises, under my close parental supervision. I remember it was a Friday afternoon and Sveva was not willing to leave any homework behind, pending and ruining her weekend.

Sveva attended the Bilingual European School in Milan – Italy – the town where she was born and brought up. The school had been opened just the year before she was enrolled. All the subjects there, including mathematics, were taught both in English and in Italian. It was a very small school and counted no more than 50 pupils. One of the very first educational institutions working on the introduction of English-Italian dual-language teaching in Italy. The idea was launched by a British lady, who had married with an Italian and had transferred to Milan years before. She pursued the clear scope to broaden and make more international, since the early stages of their development, the educational experiences of Italian and Non-Italian pupils: a goal quite distant from the one of “minorities’ socio-cultural integration” that characterized similar pedagogic experiences in USA and Canada. There bilingual schools and dual language programmes had traditionally been focused on the cultural integration of disadvantaged Spanish/French speaking children within a dominant English-speaking reality. Quite differently, in Milan, the large majority of pupils who attended the Bilingual European School came from families that were perfectly integrated in the socio-economic life of the town. These families were just pursuing the goal of an early mastering of the English language by their children, attracted by the cognitive opportunities this represented together with the wider international future career options that a bilingual education was likely to generate.

A few months had passed, since the beginning of the school; teachers, pupils and parents seemed all very happy. Lessons had progressed smoothly and rapidly, along the very challenging programs of the double English-Italian curriculum, but suddenly things changed: teachers reported about an unexpected learning setback, parents were contacted and told that their children needed some extra homework in maths. In fact, it seemed that even the brightest and most diligent students, when transitioning from additions to multiplications, clearly struggled with the conceptualization and the processing of the new mathematical operation. This learning block revealed itself through the very long execution times that pupils seemed to require to resolve even the simplest multiplications. Teachers invited parents to supervise children closely when they were doing their homework. Additional exercises were indeed assigned to strengthen their abilities and to accelerate the overcoming of the difficulties encountered in multiplying numbers.

That Friday afternoon, after a few minutes I spent observing Sveva at work, I started envisioning the problem. When facing the 2x3 multiplication, my bilingual daughter was not dealing with a calculation challenge, but with a cultural conflict, which only many years later I was able to relate to the Learnable. The very same “2x3” mathematical operation read in Italian and English led my daughter to treat the numerical entities 2 and 3 very differently. She had been explained to deal with the newly acquired multiplication based on the metaphor “multiplications are like sums”, which most teachers had since long been using to introduce the concept of multiplications to their young learners. The use of metaphors in science education is indeed very common, particularly when introducing new concepts. Key elements or explanations of new phenomena are frequently addressed by leveraging on what already learnt and acquired, using similes or metaphors which bridge the known to the unknown. This seems indeed the path most walked, by educators, to expand their pupils’ comprehension and understanding of the world. One might even argue that the entire educational challenge, for human beings, depends on metaphors. Metaphors are among the most thoroughly studied psycho-linguistic phenomena and some of their key peculiarities, when it comes to learning, were indeed revealed to me by the above Enigma of the 3 T’s. Multiple linguistic, cultural, intertwined aspects emerged from my reflections, later in life, on that 2x3 challenge, enlightening my way along the investigation around how metaphors perform their explicatory cognitive function, as well as their role in the elaboration of new realities.

During that tutoring session, in March 2002, when I sat at the desk with my daughter to resolve the Enigma of the 3 T’s, I questioned Sveva on how she was tackling her task: I simply asked her to tell me what she was doing, considering and elaborating. Then I realized that, guided by the metaphor “multiplications are like sums”, she was trapped in her bilingual world. Sveva read the operation in Italian – due-PER-tre (literally translatable in English as: 2-FOR-3) – which prompted her towards the following resolutive algorithm: 2+2+2. On the other hand, she also simultaneously interpreted that very same “2x3” operation in English – two-TIMES-three – which guided her mind into an alternative and confusing 3+3 computational option. Confronted with the above two algorithms, my 6-years-old daughter looked lost, uncapable to decide which resolutive path she had to follow.

Some readers might be wondering how things evolved with my daughter. Well, I am happy to share that once the Enigma of the 3 T’s was cleared, the Bilingual European School of Milan decided to teach Mathematics only in one language and for practical reasons (i.e., local availability of experienced maths teachers) they chose Italian. This immediately resolved the original learning delay and allowed all pupils, in the following years, to progress smoothly along their journey in Mathematics, encountering no difficulty in their step from additions to multiplications.

Three are the very broad doors that the Enigma of the 3 T’s projected as being still and firmly closed, in front of my eyes, as obstacles to my further description of the Learnable and its functioning: 1) Does previous learning impact future learning? 2) How is previous learning elaborated and leveraged into new learnings? 3) What elements are key in bridging present and future learnings?

Multiple studies and attempts to address these questions led me to the Theory of Learnable which leverage the analysis of metaphors, similes and beliefs engrained in different Symbolic Representative Systems (i.e., Language, Arts, Maths, Coding, etc.) and their effect on individual attentional processes. The Learnable refers to the way such representations are constructed and their components are related with one another, which derives from previous experiences and learnings and is enacted by new syntaxes and/or the adoption of pre-exiting ones. These seem to determine the causal powers of Learnable and ultimately provide an articulated and thorough positive answer to question 1: previous experiences and learnings do impact future ones.

Therefore, a significant part of the Theory of Learnable focuses on how Symbolic Representative Systems influence the elaboration, explanation, and exploration of reality. Studies of the Learnable have so far concentrated on attentional focusing and defocusing which are relatable to the use of specific grammatical elements (i.e., prepositions) in metaphors and similes to resolve question 2, as well as to the identification of gender differences and other elements impacting the processes of construction and change of beliefs systems which relate to question 3. Metaphors, similes and beliefs in their cognitive and affective mappings of reality not only incorporate grammatical and syntactic rules, which operate into such frameworks and determine key attentional prioritizations, but doing so they influence the way reality is represented and even more importantly elaborated, made conceivable, and acted on.

The chapters that follow provide a glimpse at the mentioned areas of investigation the Enigma of the 3 T’s has led to so far, but many others exist and will be hopefully the subject of future publications that present and future partners in crime may decide to conduct. This book elaborates on HOW some metaphors and similes determine the direction that constrains individuals and groups in their explanation and exploration of reality and thereafter their decisions and actions. In this study of the HOW, Giorgio Marchetti, Ahlam Alharbi and I identified and investigated WHAT appears to play a key role within metaphors and similes, in their focusing/defocusing of the attention of individuals and groups – i.e., the syntax governing shared metaphors and similes – which eventually led to highlight some recent research and discoveries in neurosciences as possible explanations of the constructive, directive, evocative powers of metaphors and similes.

In the six chapters that follow, together with Giorgio Marchetti and Ahlam Alharbi, I have tried to condense the most updated speculations I have made about the Learnable, how it reflects on the learnables, characterizing different cultures around which individuals shape their own realities and the ones of the communities to which they belong. The book also explores the analytic path that individuals may try to emancipate, via Learnable Analysis, from the cognitive and emotional constraints that limit their choices and ultimately even their existence. Hereafter is a brief anticipation of what each chapter addresses and how Giorgio Marchetti, Ahlam Alharbi and I believe Learnable Theory and Analysis can play a relevant role in accompanying readers, step by step, in the appreciation of the Learnable perspective and its potential applications in different areas and circumstances. Each chapter is written by either one or all authors, based on our specific areas of specialization and the expertise required by each section.

Chapter I was written by me. It introduces the theoretical bases underpinning the Theory of Learnable. It highlights how this differs from the traditional philosophical perspectives and how, departing from Bhaskar and his proposal to overcome most extreme and naive types of realism and relativism, the addition of the Learnable as an ontological dimension makes a leap forward. This leverages and eventually overcomes Bhaskar’s tripartite stratified ontology to better support as a reference for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and other cultural analytic approaches, which appear to be beyond the reach of Bhaskar’s original proposal. The chapter also briefly discusses the opportunity to reconduct objective, subjective, and intersubjective observational levels to the 4 ontological dimensions – Real, Actual, Empirical and Learnable – which the Learnable Enhanced Bhaskarian Ontology (LEBO) proposes. At the end of the chapter some hints are finally provided on how this new perspective may represent a path to detect and resolve a few contradictions emerging in contemporary philosophical discussions.

Chapter II was written also by me. It deals with a set of core scientific discoveries, foundational for the understanding of the Learnable and the path here pursued for its analysis. Among the most relevant, the chapter focuses on: cognitive investigations, prompted by the discovery of Mirror Neurons, and the research on associative learning mechanisms, related to the formation of Mirror Neurons Systems; the studies on neural plasticity (i.e., on the ability of brain cells to shape around specific purposes and eventually be reused to support others); as well as the studies around the interiorization of language and its critical function in the development of individuals and their relationships with reality and society. In this respect a mention is also made to the internalization of syntax and the adoption of interiorized conceptual metaphors in their function of shared deep-structure mappings along which both the analysis of human cognitions and behaviors can be pursued. All the above is crucial to explain the analysis of the Learnable and its effects, and important to ground the focus of this book on the attribution of attention, linguistically mediated by intersubjective representations of reality, sustained by neural substrata and therefore neurophenomenologically ascribable to recursive, anteroprojective, intersubjective and symbolic-driven dynamics.

Chapter III was written by Ahlam Alharbi. It highlights the influential social role of metaphors and stresses how crucial they are when used as a public (behavior) management tool. Hence, this chapter offers an analytical taxonomy, namely, Metaphor Triangulation of Learnables, to bridge the existing gap in the literature on metaphor and account for the behavioral function of metaphors, a function that has been neglected and underemphasized by many theoretical frameworks. Sketching a theoretical framework that incorporates and accounts for the Learnable, the chapter offers a better understanding of metaphors. It illustrates a case study, where this theoretical framework is utilized to examine Covid-19 metaphors and reveals the various learnables that were activated to manage, adjust, and change public habits and behaviors, since the successful management and adjustment of public behaviors was pursued for the containment of the virus. The chapter also refers to different behavioral frameworks of the most dominant and controversial metaphors used during the pandemic, that is, enemy, war, fire, and natural disasters.

Chapter IV was written by Giorgio Marchetti. It focuses on prepositions and the impasse encountered in defining them in linguistic and objectivist semantic terms, which generated inconsistencies and circularities. The chapter provides therefore an alternative perspective, adopting a set of cognitive operations (CO) as the analytical tool to analyze prepositions, which includes the operations performed by attention and by what Marchetti (2018) defined as the self, namely working memory, long term memory and force dynamics. Thanks to this set of CO, prepositions are differentiated from the other parts of speech and grammatical constructions and are defined as relational tools that produce a prepositional assembling (PA) that the chapter then investigates as in the form of XprepZ, where Z determines X according to the specific instructions provided by each preposition.

Chapter V was written by Giorgio Marchetti. It dives deeper into the Operational Linguistics approach that is described in the previous section and it details the analyses of the instructions provided by some of the most-used English prepositions: of, in, to, for, with, on, at, by, over, against and without. The analyses are here spelled out in terms of the cognitive operations (CO) that produce the conscious experiences conveyed by each preposition. The chapter also stresses how the approach here applied seems to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional debate over the syncategorematic, polysemantic or monosemantic nature of prepositions, which primarily originates from analyzing prepositions in terms of the products of their usage (that is, the overall meaning of the PA) rather than in terms of what produces prepositions.

Chapter VI was written by Giorgio Marchetti, Ahlam Alharbi and me. It converges on the Metaphor-Mediated-Thinking hypotheses and enucleates our findings about the use of prepositions and the different effects these determine on individuals and groups, via the attentional dynamics they drive and the explanatory and exploratory choices they prime and inhibit. The chapter offers a few considerations on how we expect this work may contribute to Neurophenomenological investigations of Syntactically-Ruled-Attention mechanisms and how these might be eventually expanded in fields presently only very marginally addressed by linguistics and neurosciences, such as social sciences, media, and business studies.

chapter i

The Foundations of Learnable Theory

by luca magni

abstract

This chapter illustrates the philosophical foundations of Learnable Theory:

1) It departs from the classical philosophical debate around the accessibility of reality and truth.

2) It refers to Bhaskar’s stratified ontology of reality and its relative success in overcoming most naive and extreme forms of realism and relativism.

3) Bhaskar’s tripartite stratified ontology is then addressed from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to highlight how CDA, with a multitude of cultural analytic perspectives, out-of-reach for the Bhaskar’s original proposal.

4) Learnable Enhanced Bhaskarian Ontology (LEBO), on the other hand, with the introduction of the Learnable, as a key ontological integration to Bhaskar’s tripartite ontology, offers the opportunity to address the challenges above and many others.

5) About the opportunities offered by LEBO, this chapter briefly elaborates on the possibility to reconduct objective, subjective and intersubjective observational instances to different ontological strata, and how this resolves some of the inconsistencies often emerging in contemporary philosophical debates.

This section intends to provide only an overview of the points listed above, it offers concise information about how the author ultimately sees this work positioned among the multitude of studies that from different perspectives and in different fields have dealt with the intricate mechanisms and limitations of human comprehension of reality.

Keywords: Critical Realism; Ontology; Real; Actual; Empirical; Learnable; Learnable Enhanced Bhaskarian Ontology (LEBO); Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); Observational Instances.

1. introduction