Genes, Networks, Behavior, and Beyond:
Thinking Backwards About the Brain and Education
A Starting Question: Why Do People Behave the Way They Do?
- Innate characteristics?
- Individual experiences (including culture)?
- Free will?
- Other unknown (unknowable?) forces?
The Neuronal Network As a Way to Make the Question Approachable
- The network as the material substrate of behavior
- Are networks influenced by genes?
- Are networks influenced by individual experience?
- Is behavior predictable if the network is known?
Learning To Think Backwards About Science and the Brain
Thinking Backwards about Behavior:
Implications for Education
- Experience AND genes AND ...
- Appreciating behavior as cause and as result
- Recognizing unpredictability as the characteristic
of an active, exploratory agent
- Considering education as an active rather than a passive process
- The information revolution as the right tool