1. Physical artefacts,
indices and experience
in communication
Pramatism and Communication
Helsinki 3-5.5.2014
PhD Merja Bauters

2. Table of contents
• Motivation of the topic
• Informal learning research in workplaces
• Meaning making = Learning & sharing
• Peirce’s communicative perspective
• Indices, common ground, physical artefacts
• Where to go next – experiences

3. Motivation of the topic
Workplace learning is informal learning that takes place without
explicit teaching (Tynjälä 2013).
It is continuous process of improving employee competence and
performance through training, socialization, and development within
an organizational context (Ford, Kozlowski, Kraiger, Salas, & Teachout
1997).

4. Informal learning research in
workplaces
The results of a research on e-learning in the workplace 2000–2012:
A bibliometric analysis of the literature by Cheng et all (2014)
provides a beautiful overview on the studies on workplace learning.
Identified 4 dimensions in the field:
• e-learning for continuing education and professional development
• e-learning in the healthcare sector
• use of social media for e-learning
• the integration of knowledge management with e-learning.
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5. Informal learning research in
workplaces
• Most based in cognitive science learning; on-demand learning;
and flexibility in time and place (Salas et al., 2002; Welsh et al.
2003).
• Related to professional knowledge and skills, knowledge
exchange, and workplace knowledge.
• Social media for informal learning in the focus
• Main aim: knowledge management, knowledge sharing,
knowledge workers, knowledge exchange, and knowledge
creation are central topics in job-oriented professional
development
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6. Informal learning research in
workplaces
• Less in focus but highly important:
• Technology enhanced social interaction to support knowledge
exchange or sharing among peers.
• Various training or learning programs and technologies to support
the capture and transfer of tacit knowledge embedded in practice
experience.
In line with the claim of Welsh, Wanberg, Brown, and Simmering’s
(2003): the integration of personnel training with on-demand job
support and professional development might become a future
direction of workplace e-learning
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7. Informal learning research in
workplaces
Another important aspect:
• Web 2.0 technologies provide affordances to informal learning by
supporting knowledge exchange based on informal social
relations,
• Needs to take into account:
• the development of trust and reputation, and knowledge transfer
through mentoring (García-Peñalvo, Colomo-Palacios, & Lytas
2012; Liu, Macintyre, & Ferguson, 2012; Seufert 2012).
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8. Informal learning research in
workplaces
• Where to focus now:
• Learning in workplace contexts requires employees to capture intuition or tacit
knowledge, contribute to the creation of new knowledge, and manage knowledge
assets for continuous improvement.
• Future focus:
• Learning in the organizational context should go beyond the individual level, and
an organization should be able to learn and adapt to the environment (Wang &
Yang 2009).
Cheng et all (2014) stated: many studies are limited to the superficial use and
analysis of the tools without taking into account the organizational contexts that
may affect the essential attributes of social and collaborative behaviour, such
as trust, voluntariness, and self-directness – where do these emerge?.
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9. Meaning making =
Learning & sharing
• Support learning as part of the work.
• Provide tools to allow near automatic sharing/collaboration
• Feelings that may push towards learning moment:
• Wish to ask help
• Feeling uncertain
• Being in doubt – halt in the work
• Feeling that all went perfectly
• Wanting to remember

10. Meaning making & change …
• The context, feelings of “uncertainty/disturbance” are needed for
some kind of change to occur
• The halted moment, should support moment to become conscious
of our awareness
• Awareness will be directed
• Heightened/intensified perceiving of environment (context)
• Support for reasoning – finding “help” using social networks
• Potential for change is in the process

11. Peirce’s communicative
perspective

12. Communicative perspective
• The fundamental meaning of fully developed sign is its effect on
our Habits (ultimate logical Interpetant)
• The determination of the object to the Interpretant is important in a
sense that it creates the borders in which the interpretation occurs. It
also points to the need of collateral experience to enable to even
take the sign as a sign.
• In this way, there is a connection to the “real” the concrete world.
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13. Communicative perspective
• The emotional part is important since according to the recent
neuroscientific research reasoning, thinking and learning are
based on emotions - feeling of emotions – Peirce: “Thought is not
necessarily connected with a brain”
• Thought, sense, thinking resides in the environment, in the tools
we use etc., thought is a semiosis (see above individual
Interpretants)
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14. Embodiment – towards experience
• “I believe it comes decidedly nearer the truth (though not really true)
that language resides in the tongue. In my opinion it is much more
true that the thoughts of a living writer are in any printed copy of his
book than that they are in his brain.” (Peirce CP 7.364).
• Albert Einstein, pointed out ”my pen is smarter than I am” (Skagestad,
1999, p. 552)
• Signs do not constitute a separate conceptual realm, but are
connected, from the start, to the (material) world.
• Conceptions are not only in dialogue with fellow inquirers (+ shared
interpretations) or with the object of inquiry but always in relation to
both of these poles.
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15. Communicative perspective
• Interpretation does not only involve symbolic processes
(Thirdness) but also fuzzy and vague feeling of emotions
(Firstness) and resistance encountered in practical
experimentation (Secondness) that may, in turn, bring new
conceptualisations about
• Objects cannot be developed freely but have properties or
affordances that support certain uses and purposes
• Interpretation involves both: dialogue with nature and dialogue
with collective (shared, collaborative interpretations guiding and
constraining Interpretations)
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16. Peirce’s communicative perspective
(Bergman 1999: 46 and 2004: 386 adapted)
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Phaneroscopic
categories
Perspective of
inquiry
Firstness Secondness Thirdness
Structural-Normative Immediate Dynamical Final
Individual Emotional Energetic Logical
Communicative Intentional Effectual Communicational
Emotional
meaning
Existential
meaning
Logical
meaning
Societal semiosis
- habit forming
Forming of the
semiotic self
Collateral
experiences

17. Communicative perspective
• “There is the Intentional Interpretant, which is a determination of
the mind of the utterer, The Effectual Interpretant, which is a
determination of the mind of the interpreter; and the
Communicational Interpretant, or say the Cominterpretant, which
is a determination of that mind into which the mind of utterer and
interpreter have to to be fused in order that any communication
should take place. This mind may be called the commens. It
consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between
utterer and interpreter at the outset, in order that the sign in
question should fulfill its function. (SS 196-197 [1906] in Bergman
2004)
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18. Habits – changing habits = (informal)
learning
• Pragmatism gave habit a new meaning
• Habit is not only mindless routines, rather, it is a process that is open for
reflection and control( Kilpinen 2008:3 and 2009: 102, Bergman 2009:
10)
• “ […] that multiple reiterated behavior of the same kind, under similar
combinations of percepts and fancies, produces a tendency, - the habit, -
actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the
future” (EP 2:413, “Pragmatism” 1907)
• “Intelligent habit upon which we shall act when occasion presents itself”
(EP 2:19 [1895]), might NOT be in the focus of our awareness but can be
easily brought up into reflection to distinguish them from tacit knowledge
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19. Habits – changing habits = (informal)
learning
• Only self-controlled habits can be ultimate logical Interpretants.
• Requires agency and effort
• When in doubt, seeing the environment with more “clarity”
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20. Indices, common ground,
physical artefacts

21. Sharing meaning…? Common ground
• “The universe must be well known and mutually
known to be known and agreed to exist, in some
sense, between speaker and hearer, between the
mind as appealing to its own further consideration
and the mind as so appealed to, or there can be
no communication, or 'common ground,' at all.”
(Peirce 1931-1958, 3.621; see also ibid., 6.338;
8.179) In Bergman 2002: 10)
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22. Common ground (Collateral
experience)
• Common ground is needed to make communication, or sign-processes
(semiosis) understandable (see Clark & Brennan 1991; Peirce 1931-1958,
3.621)
• Collateral experience "serves a kind of double function, on the one hand
showing us some limits of the semiotic domain, while on the other reminding
us of the relevance of situational and contextual factors. In fact, the crucial
recognition of reality is achieved through indexical and experiential means.
According to Peirce, we cannot distinguish fact from fiction by any
description” See also Bergman 2002 (CP 2.337 [c. 1895]). Bergman 2002: 9).
• Sharing experiences requires indices, signs which indicate ,call, pinpoint,
direct the attention to their objects through which experiences could be
shared
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23. Common ground (Collateral
experience)
• To have the collateral experience is the prerequisite for getting any idea
signified by the sign. (CP 8.179; cf. CP 8.181.). “[…] Collateral experience is
not of the character of a representation, but of another mode of being
(Secondness). Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind how threadbare
this experience is as such. It is only when it is interpreted and brought within
the domain of signs that it can play a truly meaningful role”( Bergman 2002:
10).
• However “Mere signs will be inefficient, it the required experience
background or proficiency is missing” (Bergman 2004: 418).
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24. Indices, Artefacts & meaning
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• The meaning is NOT just symbolic but an indexical relationship to artefacts
and experiences …
• “The subject must be something which speaker and listener both know by
experience; or else, the assertion must show the hearer by what process he
can gain experience” (MS 805:19-20 In Bergman 2004: 420)
• Indices play an important role in creating and maintaining and developing
common ground and contextualising the communication
• They indicate where to place attention (designations/subindicies), point to
physical objects/artefacts (reagents) and connect to familiar experiences

25. Material artefacts, Indices, & meaning
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• A suggestion: To get the dynamics of processes, the interplay between dynamical,
immediate and “final” object (i.e. object which is the outcome) should be taken into
account
• The immediate object: The immediate object is the object as it is represented in the
sign. It is the meaningful referential content of the sign.
• dynamical (or real) object: The Dynamic object can be characterised by three traits: (1)
it is determinative, (2) it is unexpressed in the sign itself, and (3) it must be known by
so-called collateral experience. It’s the tie to material part of artefacts. It’s the one to
which we try to refer to, to point attention to when we try to find out our collateral
experience, our shared background in a particular actual situation.
• The dynamic object limits the field of signification or semiosis. It provides the
borders/scope in which the interpretation can occur. Therefore, we cannot interpret
whatever, from sign, these are always tied to the material “context”. (Joswick 1996, p.
98; Liszka 1996, p. 23, Bauters 2007).

26. Common ground grows
“I have defined an index or indication as a sign by virtue of physical connection.
Experiental connection would be more explicit; for I mean by physical connection that the
signs occurs in our experience in relation to when and where of the object it represents.
The phrase “our experience” is significant. Experience is the course of life, so far as we
attend to it. “Our experience”, I say, because unless tow persons had some experience in
common, they could not communicate, at all. If their experience were identical, they could
not furnish one another no information. But to the experience both have in common, the
several experiences of the two connect other occurrences: and so we have shares in
collective experience. An index connects a new experience with the former experiences.
(MS 797:10 in Bergman 2004:427).
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29. Where to go next – experiences

30. Peirce’s communicative perspective
(Bergman 1999: 46 and 2004: 386 adapted)
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Phaneroscopic
categories
Perspective of
inquiry
Firstness Secondness Thirdness
Structural-Normative Immediate Dynamical Final
Individual Emotional Energetic Logical
Communicative Intentional Effectual Communicational
Emotional
meaning
Existential
meaning
Logical
meaning
Societal semiosis
- habit forming
Forming of the
semiotic self
Collateral
experiences

31. Experience - time
• The experience stretches, it is not static nor stable, its the relations
between all things in the environment and social environment/culture.
These are scoped by the past experiences and directed by the
anticipated future, so that existing habits, tools, institutions etc. have
an affect on the current situation where the experience occurs
"qualitative immediacy”. (Alhanen 2013)
• The qualitative immediacy is close to Peirce "brute force". The past
and anticipated future makes a difference in attention – where the
focus will be and how the experience forms the meaning. The felt
experiences are not impressions, they are real even though these
would be hallucinations - they are felt as real. (MW 9 [DE):16-21. MW
12 [RP]: 133. LW 12 [LTI]:52).
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32. Experience - time
• The experience is not something that happens inside the subject,
its not something where the subject forms a representations of the
things in the environment. Rather it is a continuous interaction with
environment, where the "inside and outside" are not really
separate but forma unified whole. (LW 12 [LTI]: 73-74).
• "It is that reconstruction or reorganisation of experience which
adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to
direct the course of subsequent experience.” (MW 9 [DE]: 83).
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33. Experience - time
"Habits are conditions of intellectual efficiency. They operate in two
ways upon intellect. Obviously, they restrict its reach, they fix its
boundaries. They are blinders that confine the eyes of mind to the
road ahead. They prevent thought from straying away from its
imminent occupation to a landscape more varied and picturesque but
irrelevant to practice. [...] Habit is however more than restriction of
thought. Habit become negative limits because they are first positive
agencies. The more numerous our habits the wider field of
possible observations and foretelling. The more flexible they are,
the more refined is perception in it's discrimination and the more
delicate the presentation evoked by imagination. " (MW 14 [HNC]:
122).
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34. Experience - time
• “A general idea, living and conscious now, it is already determinative of
acts in the future to an extent which is not now conscious.” (EP 1.331
[1892]).
• “The Interpretant does not need to exist; a “being in futuro will suffice”
(EP 2.92 [1902]).” Bergman 2002: 4).
• Experiences (their meaning / remembering) changes because of
anticipated future
• Prager: the present and anticipated future may transfer the perceived
past “feeling states and bodily desires, inherited from the past but
prevailing in the present, can rewrite the past in the service of the
present” (Prager 1998: 83)
• Reflected in Dewey's experience, building of continues experiences
for learning
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35. Thank you!
Merja Bauters
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
Helsinki – Finland
firstname.surname@aalto.fi
The Learning Layers project is supported by the European Commission
within the 7th Framework Programme under Grant Agreement
#318209, under the DG Information society and Media (E3), unit of
Cultural heritage and technology-enhanced learning. http://learning-
layers.eu

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