International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

J.W.S. PRINGLE distinguished (1951) the following different ways of learning:

1.Habituation, which results of a repeated reaction to repeated stimuli of one specific kind. This effect may disappear if the interval between repetitions is too long.

2.The conditioned reflex, which associates by convenient training a response, at first elicited by a specific stimulus, to another stimulus.

3.By trial and error, in which a response is selected by the subject after a number of more or less random actions.

4.lnsight learning, by which, in a new situation, a response is selected from a number of possible responses resulting from previous more or less similar experiences.

5."Imprinting" (in birds and insects), by which the environmental situation at certain critical periods in the animal's lifetime becomes specially effective in producing permanent modifications of subsequent behavior (p.94).

PRINGLE's paper is about these various learning ways.

E. LASZLO has stretched the concept of learning in relation to the different levels of natural systems. His views have been resumed by E. JANTSCH as follows:

"Virtual learning is characteristic of nonreflective consciousness…

"Functional. learning, characteristic of reflective consciousness, or simple perception… This kind of interaction is found in biological and primitive social processes…

"Conscious learning characteristic of self-reflective consciousness or apperception… the normal mode of learning and of becoming creative in the human social realm…

"Superconscious learning, characteristic of a more complex kind of self-reflective consciousness which mirrors itself in a "surface" consciousness as well as in a multilevel superconsciousness or "depth" consciousness… (It) provides a sense of direction for cultural and mankind progress by "illuminating" the process from the far end in terms of guiding images".

"These learning modes characterize levels of macroscopic coordination of interactive processes" (1976, p.41-42).

One only wonders if consciousness can exist without being reflective.

D. DUBOIS offers still another classification of types of learning:

"1. Learning as the process of creation of new representations… Ready-made representations can be proposed to intelligent systems who can assimilate them.

"2. Self-learning, the process through which (such systems) create themselves new representations.

"3. Meta-learning related to the learning of learning. It can be teached through rules that guide or channel the learning process.

"3. Meta-self-learning related to the intelligent system's reflexion on his/her self-learning methods. This is related to the phenomenon of consciousness" (1990, p.180)".