Critical Thinking and Blind Intelligence

I have real concerns about the ability of traditional, Western critical thinking heuristics to be sufficient for negotiating the rhizome, any rhizome.

My primary issue is that all of the CT heuristics that I've found in my research are limited to one mind: mine or yours, but not to both. Critical thinking seems to be a function of the solitary mind as it contemplates and analyzes the separate universe. Most of the scholars I've read so far tacitly assume that critical thinking is a set of operations performed by a discrete subject, the Knower, upon discrete objects, the Known, buying into what Edgar Morin calls the "paradigm of simplification." Morin says that Descartes created this paradigm by "disjoining the thinking subject … and the thing being thought of" (On Complexity, 3). This paradigm of simple thought has "dominated the adventure of Western thought since the seventeenth century" and "has without doubt allowed for very great progress in scientific knowledge and in philosophical reflection" (3); yet, according to Morin, it has led us to a blind intelligence that "destroys unities and totalities" … that "isolates all objects from their environment" … and that "cannot conceive of the inseparable link between the observer and the observed" (4). Simple thought has created a pathology of knowing that is taking a "cruel toll on human phenomena" (5), and as Morin concludes about this "mutilating, one-dimensional vision:"

The inability to conceive of the complexity of anthroposocial reality, both in its micro dimension (the individual being), and in its macro dimension (the planetary collectivity of humanity), has led us to infinite tragedies. … Political strategy requires complex knowing, because strategy plays itself out by working with and against uncertainty, chance, the multiple play of interactions and retroactions (feedback loops). (5)

I like little metaphors when I'm trying to think through an idea, and to my mind, this mode of thought is akin to dissecting a frog, a live frog. If I am skillful enough with my scalpel—my analytical reason—I can neatly divide the frog into its constituent parts, reducing it to a collection of discrete, identifiable, and classifiable parts that will, in fact, help me understand the way the parts fit together and function in frogs, but along the way, of course, I've killed the frog, and I have no skill in putting it back together. This putting back together is not a trivial issue (certainly not for the frog). Moreover, the clean, hierarchical, explicit order that I imposed upon the frog's parts is not only useless for trying to reassemble the spaghetti-mess harmony that had been the living frog, but the hierarchical structure appears to work against reassembly.

This reminds me that for Deleuze & Guattari hierarchical thinking is a type of overcoding of reality that attempts to force all the relevant points of an object into neat little rows, each point occupying one, and only one, neat little place. As D& G note: "A rhizome or multiplicity [such as a frog, or a universe] never allows itself to be overcoded, never has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of lines, that is, over and above the multiplicity of numbers attached to those lines" (9). I see critical thinking as an overcoding, in this sense, as blind intelligence. Intelligence, yes. Blind, yes. Therefore, of limited use for approaching rhizomatic reality.

Critical Thinking: A Definition

I've started thinking much about critical thinking in preparation for a series of workshops that we are doing at my school, so of course, I asked myself what critical thinking has to do with life in the rhizome. As is almost always the case, I'm finding connections, but then, isn't that what the rhizome is all about? The very first characteristic of the rhizome as described by DnG is: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be (7).

The first connection that I want to explore is the role of critical thinking in cartography and decalcomania, the two mapping heuristics that DnG discuss. I think that these have been the two most difficult principles of rhizomatics for me. Perhaps critical thinking will give me a way to wrap my head around these concepts.

Let me start with a definition of critical thinking, not such a trivial task, as I have found out. Critical thinking tends to be one of those catch-all terms that everyone uses, nodding to each other in presumed agreement, while meaning slightly or totally different things. To my mind, critical thinking is a cluster of mental heuristics that increase my chances of reasonably and scientifically observing some slice of the world and deciding what to do or to believe about what I observe. Critical thinking helps me more skillfully respond to my world. What are these mental heuristics? I've found several lists, but the 1990 Delphi Report from the American Philosophical Association (Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction) provides perhaps as solid a starting point as we are likely to get. The Executive Summary of APA's Delphi Report says:

• We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one's personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair- minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.

They later list 6 primary skills with sub-skills:

Critical Thinking Skills
Interpretation	Categorization Decoding Significance Clarifying Meaning
Analysis	Examining Ideas Identifying Arguments Analyzing Arguments
Evaluation	Assessing Claims Assessing Arguments
Inference	Querying Evidence Conjecturing Alternatives Drawing Conclusions
Explanation	Stating Results Justifying Procedures Presenting Arguments
Self-Regulation	Self-examination Self-correction

This is a fairly workable list and grouping, but a tighter grouping is provided by Sohindar Sachdev in the book Critical Thinking Through Technology in Science and Mathematics Education (2001). Sachdev groups 19 different critical thinking skills into three categories:

1. Interpretive Reasoning - "the cognitive processes by which we begin to understand the information that has been remembered or observed."
2. Strategic Reasoning - "the cognitive process by which we develop the conclusion provided by interpretive reasoning."
3. Adaptive Reasoning - "the cognitive process by which we extend the knowledge beyond the criteria established by strategic reasoning."

Of course, I immediately see ways that I differ from these definitions. I start my critical thinking with observation, which neither of these definitions seem to do. To my mind, observation is an interpretive act, and if you are not observing in some systematic, critical way, then you are likely to see or not see most anything. But I don't choose to quibble about this just now. I think the above definitions of critical thinking form a useful starting point for my thinking about critical thinking, so I'm willing to see how far this boat will row.

In short, then, critical thinking is one way that I increase my chances for coming to know my world and positioning myself within it. If I think with some skill and grace, then I will better align with the world and make my way through it. As I mentioned in my previous post about the work of becoming an individual, "you work out the meaning of your life by the constant positioning, realignment, connecting and reconnecting of yourself with all the other selves in the rhizome." Critical thinking is one of the ways that we position, realign, connect, and reconnect ourselves with the world. It can be a fine way. It is the academic way, the path of Western intellectualism and science. Is it a rhizomatic way? I have my suspicions, but more on that later.

The Death of Individualism?

I promised to talk about how Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome and Siemens' connectivism connect (pun intentional). I'll start with a quote from Matt Ridley's TED talk that was in my last post. Near the end of his talk (14:55), he sums his argument about the central role of trade and cooperation in advancing human culture when he says:

• That's one of the reasons why I'm not interested in the debate about IQ … It's completely irrelevant. What's relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas and how well they're cooperating, not how clever the individuals are. So we've created something called the collective brain. We're just the nodes in the network—we're just the neurons in this brain. It's the interchange of ideas—the meeting and mating of ideas between them—that is causing technological progress, incrementally, bit by bit, however bad things may happen.

Ridley is dismissing the usual emphasis in Western culture on the individual (IQ as a measurement of intellectual intelligence in a single, discrete individual) in favor of an emphasis on the network, or rhizome (how well people are … [connecting and] cooperating). This may very well be at the heart of connectivism, and I can easily connect it to my understanding of the rhizome.

When I point out this shift in a context such as a workshop with university faculty, I'm often asked if this is the end of Western Individualism. I don't think it is, but it is perhaps a rethinking of what individualism means. I believe that we have defined individualism atomistically, as something that is discrete, indivisible, stable, with an intrinsic essence and identity. We contrast this notion of individualism with group, in which the individual is lost, subsumed, made continuous with the whole, with only an extrinsic, shared essence and identity. Ridley could be interpreted as suggesting this very loss of individual identity when he says that "we're just the nodes in the network—we're just the neurons in this brain." I think his use of the somewhat pejorative and certainly limiting adverb just is unfortunate, as it implies that we are no more than an interchangeable part of some whole. I don't think this is what he means at all.

Rather, he captures his meaning earlier in his talk when he discusses the difference between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. In some ways, Neanderthals were more gifted than we: bigger, more powerful bodies, bigger brains. They were imaginative, intellectual creatures with language, art, religion, and tools, but for some reason, they did not develop commerce as we did: the interchange of ideas, tools, goods, and services that requires a marketplace and a degree of specialization. Commerce requires BOTH that we individualize into arrow-makers, axe-makers, farmers, etc. AND that we connect and collaborate in a market of some kind. In short, we must be completely individuals, completely in a group. At the same time, we must maintain our integrity as an individual, and we must find our place within a group. Our meaning depends on it.

Unfortunately, Western culture, especially the late American variety, has emphasized the individual at the expense of the network and created a false dichotomy: you are either an independent, discrete individual or a drone in a hive. No, this is wrong. It is not either/or; rather, it is both. You are an individual in a rhizome, and you work out the meaning of your life by the constant positioning, realignment, connecting and reconnecting of yourself with all the other selves in the rhizome. The rugged individualism of High Plains Drifter and Rambo may make for good movies, but it makes a very poor, dysfunctional myth for a culture.

Or for a school. Our educational systems are overwhelmingly informed with the myth of the individual. Our testing regimes, grading regimes, pedagogies, epistemologies, and learning theories are all based on the individual, ignoring the role of the network, or rhizome, in the creation and management of knowledge. From their different perspectives, both D&G's rhizomatics and Siemens' connectivism explore the shortcomings of this narrow focus on the individual. Connectivism, of course, focuses primarily on the shortcomings in education, while D&G take a broader, more philosophical approach, but both of them suggest that we risk confusion and misunderstanding when we ignore the dynamics of the rhizome when trying to explore and explain any slice of life, even education.

What pleases me most about Ridley's discussion of the Neanderthals is the implication that rhizomatic, network structures have been important to human progress long before the emergence of the Internet. George Siemens bills connectivism as a learning theory for the digital age. While I think the Internet, and all that technology associated with it, has highlighted the poverty of extreme individualism and has heightened the ways and the ease with which we can now interconnect, the Internet is but the latest iteration of the technologies humans have devised to heighten their ability to connect and collaborate.

Sex in the Rhizome

I am, of course, horrified that I've written nothing on this blog for two and a half months. This is unforgivable. I don't know what to say, but I do know what to write. So let's get to it.

As often happens, I am inspired by a TED talk, this one by Matt Ridley. Let's listen first to the talk:



See what I mean? Don't you see the rhizome in most everything he says? No? Hmm. Perhaps the problem is me, then. I see the rhizome everywhere. It's my new lens. I could throw in a bit of connectivism also. If the rhizome is my right lens, then connectivism is my left. I'll tell you how.

Trends in Education: Multiplicity

A second key trend in education can be described by the third and fourth characteristics of rhizomatic structures as discussed by Deleuze and Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus:

• multiplicity
• asignifying ruptures

In this post I will use the single term multiplicity to speak of both characteristics, except when I want to speak of asignifying ruptures by themselves. 

Multiplicity is a complex concept that we might approach first from the ideas of connectivity and heterogeneity. Every point in a rhizome can and must connect to everything else; thus, we cannot understand any single point, except in a most abstract and academic way, without considering and accounting for all its connections. This brings us directly to holistic, environmental, systemic, relativistic, organic, fractal, chaotic thinking, and is in direct tension with the kind of rigidly reasonable individualism that has dominated much of Western thought and almost all of American thought for the past two centuries. In terms of multiplicity, then, any thing is best thought of as an assemblage of multiple assemblages—both near and far, now and then and yet to be, in and out, up and down—themselves assemblages of multiple assemblages. Thus, at whatever level or scale we consider any thing, we see assemblages of assemblages within assemblages, all interconnected in a fluidly orderly fashion, like a beautiful fractal image.

Orderly brings us to a key second feature of multiplicity: any multiplicity is self-organized. This is self-evident from a modern scientific point of view. If we consider the Universe—the uber-Rhizome—we see that most everything in it has self-organized. The initial spray of light coalesced into hydrogen and other atomic structures, which then organized into stars, then into planets, then into … well, us and eventually into this class at edfutures.com. We ourselves start with a couple of cells and then self-organize into an infant within another rhizomatic structure, or multiplicity, that we call mother. A star has its own light and gravity and self-organization, but that light and gravity extends throughout the universe, and to understand that star, we must consider both its own light, gravity, and self-organization and its relation to all the other lights, gravities, and organization. Any rhizomatic structure, then, contains all the facts and all the mystery possible, and to understand it, we can neither limit ourselves just to the facts or just to the mystery, but must consider the star in all its multiplicities. Clearly, we'll never completely understand any single star, or any single flower or person, and I take great comfort and joy in that. The Universe and everything in it is an infinite multiplicity.

A third point, also self-evident, is that rhizomatic structures are dynamic. They don't self-organize into static entities. They morph, they shift, they merge and sheer, they reorganize. They are susceptible to asignifying ruptures, those exchanges with and sheers into other rhizomatic structures that can so rearrange the rhizome that it appears to lose its significance and signification for us. It becomes asignified, no longer matching the language we've used to signify it. We try to capture rhizomes in language, establishing signs that point this way and that, walling in this space or that, but then the rhizomes shift and the signs point the wrong way. As Robert Frost so plainly says: something there is that doesn't love a wall.

And signification brings us to the final point for this post: our languages for signifying a rhizomatic structure are themselves multiplicities, giving us multiple ways to speak of and to signify any thing, each language with its own value and utility and each language interacting with and engaging the thing differently than another language will. We can start measuring anywhere in the rhizome, on any scale, using any language. Any measure will be more or less useful than others, more or less skillful, more or less salient, more or less common. No measure will be absolutely right or wrong.

To my mind, a multiplicity is easily envisioned in Blaise Agüera y Arcas' wonderful demonstration of Microsoft's new Photosynth technology. Basically, Photosynth is provides the technology to collect images, say of the Eiffel Tower, from around the Net, aggregate those images, and produce one, far more complete, multi-dimensional image that is far richer and more informative than any single image. Thus, the multiplicity produces an image that far exceeds the sum of all the parts.



So what is the point for education? That no student, no teacher, no subject is reducible to a single term. All statements about any student are provisional. "This is John, an exemplary A student, and this is Mary, a problematic F student" are both provisional, and do not say all that can be said or measured about either John or Mary or about ourselves for measuring and saying such things. That to teach any thing, we must define that thing, but our definitions are always provisional, always subject to change, usually sooner rather than later. That crowd sourcing in the style of Photosynth will produce a far richer image of reality than any single teacher or textbook can produce. 

Trends in Education: Connectivity and Heterogeneity

I am enrolled now in an Open Course in Education Futures taught by Dave Cormier and George Siemens. I'm interested in the course for several reasons:

1. I want the experience of taking an online, open course that connects educators from around the world.
2. I want to learn how to systematically think about the future, especially the future of education.
3. I want to work with Cormier and Siemens. I'm familiar with their work, and I like their takes on education. Cormier has some insight about rhizomes, and Siemens has developed a new pedagogy called connectivism. I want to know more about both.

One of our first tasks in the class is to identify trends in education. To my mind, the emergence and success of rhizomatic structures is a key trend to watch, especially in education. In short, rhizomatic structures are network-like structures that have always existed, but that are becoming more explicit in human culture as we develop the technology, especially the Internet, to extend them and use them for our purposes. Rhizomatic structures subsume and replace hierarchical structures, which have formed the basis of human culture for the past five thousand years. A quick scan of the six features of the rhizome mentioned by Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) will outline my thoughts.

Connectivity & Heterogeneity

These first two features of the rhizome, which D&G group together, tie closely to technology, especially to the Internet. D&G say that "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be" (7). This simple statement has profound consequences, especially in light of traditional hierarchical structures. Hierarchies are command-and-control structures that define 

• clear, enforced boundaries between inside and outside the group (a vetted, verified member of this class or not),
• clear, enforced, discrete roles and positions for all those within the group (teacher or student), and
• clear, enforced homogenous identities for those in the group (Education 101 students).

Connect-and-collaborate rhizomatic structures ignore those boundaries, roles, and positions. Anyone can and must connect to anything or anyone else. This is incredibly disruptive to orderly hierarchical structures and disorienting to those who are accustomed to functioning within hierarchical organizations.

This class could be a fine example, I think, of the effects of connectivity and heterogeneity. The boundaries between who is in the group and who is not are quite fluid, and the barriers for entry are extremely low. Anyone with Internet access can join (though Siemens and Cormier have perhaps done some gatekeeping, it certainly is not the gatekeeping of traditional universities). The roles between teacher/student are quite blurred. We have almost no homogenous identity other than being educationists, and I'm not sure about that. The course content is supposed to be the futures of education, but I think we can already see that 500 curious people can quickly sheer off into different directions (see asignifying ruptures below). In short, this class is free to connect to anything or anyone else, and we do not have to be the same or have the same goals and aspirations.

And as we've already seen, this disruption of normal, hierarchical structure is stressful to people who want to know who is in and out, what content is in and out, what roles we are to play, what tasks we are to perform, and who is going to tell us that we've done it correctly. These familiar signposts are gone, and we are not sure how to proceed. This can be invigorating, or terrifying. Most of us are still not quite convinced that groups of people really can connect and collaborate on their own—self-select and self-organize—to accomplish anything of value, despite the evidence of Wikipedia and Linux and, perhaps, of this Education Futures class.

This trend, of course, is not limited to education. We can see expressions of connectivity and heterogeneity in discussions about inclusion, the Commons, privacy, wikinomics, digital piracy, the flat earth, immigration policy, information overload, and more. But education is grievously stressed by the emergence of connectivity and heterogeneity. We simply do not yet know how to work with the ability of students to connect to whomever, whenever, whatever, and wherever they want. As the technology director in a public school system in the United States, I spent way too much time keeping students away from YouTube and Facebook, and not enough time connecting them to their imaginations.

To my mind, then, connectivity and heterogeneity form one of the most potent trends in education. They have the potential for disrupting everything we do and enabling everything we want to do. Schools and their societies will hate and resist the disruptions, while at the same time yearning for the possibilities. This will not prove easy, but I think—I hope—connectivity and heterogeneity win out.

I realize that this is a trend in and of itself. I will discuss the other features of rhizomatic structures as separate trends.

PLN: Connect to Others

Another step in creating a personal learning network is to connect to others. You have a starting point and an identity in the Net wilderness, you have some tools for cutting paths through the bush, so now it's time to start blazing a path to some other points of interest. Don Juan tells Carlos how to do this:

Go first to your old plant and watch carefully the watercourse made by the rain. By now the rain must have carried the seeds far away. Watch the crevices made by the runoff, and from them determine the direction of the flow. Then find the plant that is growing at the farthest point from your plant. All the devil's weed plants that are growing in between are yours. Later … you can extend the size of your territory by following the watercourse from each point along the way. (88)

This is the best practical advice I have seen for navigating the Net, and it graphically captures my own sense of how I explore my own personal learning network: watch the crevices, determine the direction of the flow, follow the watercourse from each point along the way. It fits nicely with what Cheun-Ferng Koh says about mapping the rhizome: a process of active construction based on flexible and functional experimentation, requiring and capitalizing on feedback. Follow this crevice, often to a dead-end, back up, float further downstream, follow another crevice, find something interesting, and link it to my blog, reader, social bookmarking tool, or all three. Gradually, over time, my PLN has emerged with some well-worn pathways between me and others, and with a wealth of offshoots still to explore.

I want to stop for a quick aside. I started this exploration of how to build a PLN with Step One: Create an Online Identity and Presence. Well, I had to start somewhere, but I must note that I could as easily have started here, with Step One: Connect to Others. In some ways, it makes more sense to start here, but either way, it really doesn't matter. Indeed, you might as well start with both steps, doing both simultaneously. Writing demands something of a linear progression in describing a process, and most of us want a clearly delineated Step One, Step Two process, but that strict linear progression does not really capture the dynamic, experimental approach required of navigation in the rhizome. Strict, classically arranged process papers do not allow for asides, such as this one, but descriptions of the rhizome demand it. So start with whatever step makes sense at the time.

Actually, our decision early on to emphasize either creating an identity or connecting to others depends a great deal on our own status. If we are already professionals with a firm professional identity and a grasp of the scope of our professional conversation, then we may begin our PLN with establishing our own online identity. If on the other hand, we are students with an embryonic professional identity and only a shaky grasp of the profession's conversation, then we may begin our PLN with an emphasis on connecting to others more experienced than ourselves. And in true rhizomatic fashion, we will sometimes emphasize one approach and sometimes the other, depending on the PLN we are creating. When I started both my professional and my personal PLNs, I initially emphasized my own identity, having a fairly strong sense of what I already thought about connecting and collaborating in online environments on the one hand and my role in my network of friends and family on the other. I was confident that I already had value to add to both those networks, so I emphasized my stuff. However, when I began to develop a network about creating online videos, I emphasized connecting to others who knew much more about video cams, storyboarding, filming, editing, and YouTube. I had no identity as a videographer, so I wisely kept my mouth shut and read and watched until I was familiar with the conversation.

And this brings me nicely to what could be a separate point about creating PLNs, but I'll include it here as an aside to an aside: Step One: Learn the Conversation.

When you find an interesting conversation on the Net, spend some time learning the scope and tone of the conversation before you butt in. This is obviously important for newbies and students, but it is just as important for professionals, who can assume that they know where the conversation is going when they really don't. Nothing will annoy an existing group more than having a new person speak in a loud voice either about something they don't understand as well as the group does or about something that the group has already discussed and closed. If you don't want to get a curt RTFM or an annoyed bugger off message, then read the freaking manual before you talk. Review the group's FAQ, scan the blog's archives, google the people in the conversation, look at the group's video channels, attend to the group's tone of conversation. Form some idea of who you're talking to and what they're talking about and how they want to relate to each other. Then jump in if the conversation still interests you.

Well, let's return to connecting to others. How do you find interesting sites to begin with? Lots of ways. Make note of sites that you hear about in the actual world from your colleagues and other experts—at this conference, for instance. Net links are a ubiquitous and common aspect of professional life, and if you are attentive, then you will have no problem picking up the addresses of more interesting sites than you will have time to visit.

Then, conduct your own network search. Google your favorite passion, something such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games to connect to more than you will ever want to know about Second Life and World of Warcraft. Google a noted scholar or personality. Use more than one search engine. As fine a tool as it is, Google is not the only way to search the Net. Want to find music files? Try MP3Realm and TuneFind. Want to find videos? Use ClipBlast and Blinkx. And don't overlook the other general purpose search engines: Yahoo!, Bing, and WolframAlpha. Each of them can do something that Google doesn't. Study the advanced search techniques for the various search engines, and become more adept at extending and refining your searches. Trust me: with more than one hundred terabytes of information on the public Net, you'll have no problem finding something about anything.

While using the search engines are wonderful, they have one shared problem: they too often lead you down unproductive paths. A more focused method for finding new connections is following the connections your connections follow. Most every blog that I read avidly has links to other blogs that share similar interests and orientations, or often better, to blogs that provide a rich and fertile access point to an entirely different conversation that can still contribute to the current conversation. These cross-boundary links are often the most productive for me.