Can lessons be learned from every experience?: Philosophy Forums

Can lessons be learned from every experience?
Do human events exist from which no lessons can be learned?

Can lessons be learned from every experience?

Warshed
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Posted 07/07/09 - 10:53 AM: Subject: Can lessons be learned from every experience?	#1
One of my friends was very optimistic and believes that a person can learn something from every event in life. I feel thats wrong and that events occur all the time from which nothing of value is learned. A clear cut example is doing mind-numbing behaviors repetitively such as putting tires on a car repeatedly. Another is an event that results in one being in a coma for years. I think there are things that happen in life to people that are not a learning experiences and from which there is nothing gained. I also thought of an event such as someone pooping out a window and you get hit in the face with the poop. I just see nothing to learn from that.

van keister

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Posted 07/07/09 - 12:17 PM:	#2
If your life depends upon it you will learn quickly. Dull repetition is essential for the spawning grounds of creative ideas. Neanderthals for almost a million years did not assimilate anyting more creative than a hand axe for almost a million years! But climate change promted immediate innovations. It all depends upon survival, which the bulk of the six billion humanoids on the planet have forgotten.

TempletonEsquire
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Posted 07/07/09 - 12:18 PM:	#3
Warshed wrote: One of my friends was very optimistic and believes that a person can learn something from every event in life. I feel thats wrong and that events occur all the time from which nothing of value is learned. A clear cut example is doing mind-numbing behaviors repetitively such as putting tires on a car repeatedly. Another is an event that results in one being in a coma for years. I think there are things that happen in life to people that are not a learning experiences and from which there is nothing gained. I also thought of an event such as someone pooping out a window and you get hit in the face with the poop. I just see nothing to learn from that. Reflection can be gained from anything, even getting pooped on: unfortunately, there is no good way to experience revulsion. And also, you can "not learn" from every experience, people with memories that malfunction are a good example of this. I think there are three types of learning: instictual, experienced, and imagined. I find many things which I experience eventually become part of my instictual learning. Changing a tire for instance, takes little conscious thought and I am able to not consciously think about changing a tire, and instead let my imagination wander. If there is something different about changing the tire this time that I begin to experience, I might have to give it more focus, but otherwise if I have done it enough, it becomes instinctual.

wuliheron
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Posted 07/08/09 - 12:47 PM:	#4
If you assume that each moment of your life contains some element of novalty, then there is always something new to be learned. For example, when putting the tires on your car for the fifth time you might misplace the lug nuts to one wheel. A simple way around this difficulty is to take one lug nut off each of the remaining wheels. If you did not know this before hand then the situation presents an opportunity for you to learn. Whether or not you will learn and how valuable the lesson might be are different matters altogether.

PsychVegas
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Posted 07/08/09 - 07:11 PM:	#5
Based on the original post I assume each time a tire is changed it is considered an "event". If this assumption is correct then you are entirely correct that nothing new will be learned EVERY time. Use Nascar pit crews. They practice, practice, and practice to become faster with each event (changing the tire). There is a point of diminishing returns that can be empirically demonstrated. Eventually the pit crew is simply repeating muscle memory and nothing new is learned from each tire change. Granted, as the sport changes, technology changes, members of the team change, etc. new things can be learned, but this is not happening every event. Are you sure your friend has the same assumption or is your friend really trying to say for every 'new event' learning takes place? Even if this is the case an argument can be made that to learn as a consequence of a new event the person must attend to that event and move the information from working memory into long term memory.

PsychVegas
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Posted 07/08/09 - 07:19 PM:	#6
As for getting pooped on, that would most likely be a learning event. I would guess that would be a very salient event for most people that would easily be attended to, would go into long term memory and would be relatively easy to recall for quite some time. The question is what is learned from the event, how is that information turned into useful knowledge? Well, what is learned would be on an individual basis, what background knowledge the person possessed. They may learn not to walk under windows, or more specifically not to walk under that particular window without first making sure there is not a person hanging out ready to conduct their business.

arthurfex
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Posted 07/09/09 - 10:11 PM:	#7
If you see that something can be learned from an event, then there is something to be learned. It is all about how you view the events you experience the world. Your friend probably thinks he is learning a lot every time someone shits on his face (metaphorically I hope). But then some person shits on your face, and you see nothing of value to be learned from that experience. Also, you may not really understand or even have the ability to know at the time of the event what you have learned until that event is repeated. Repetition is the father of learning, so keep shitting on your optimistic friends face.

TIC
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Posted 07/09/09 - 10:17 PM:	#8
A lesson can in fact be learned from every experience. If you don't know what that lesson is, you haven't thought it through. If you suceed at something, you learned how to be sucessful. If you suceed at the same thing again, you learned a different way to be sucessful. If you fail once or more than once, you've simply found a way not to be succeful Both failure and sucess are progression, therefore nothing in life can come without a lesson.

Warshed
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Posted 07/14/09 - 08:14 AM:	#9
Right now I am shoveling food in my mouth. I have done this hundreds of thousands of times, and I have eaten this particular food tons of times. I am learning nothing new as I shovel this food in my mouth. I beleive anyone in my circumstance would learn nothing new as well. I don't think there are opportunities to learn every moment of my life. Just some novel moments. Sure I can think while doing other things and create new knowledge by making new connections but those connections are independent of the task at hand.

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