Dear ken,
you wrote:
"This reflects the original elements of the Greek word for problem as a
thing thrown or put forward. The Greeks used the word problem for a
question proposed for solution, a task, or question concerning the truth
of a statement. The Greeks also used the word to designate a difficult
question or situation, a puzzle, or a riddle."
We might add that the companion term, from Latin, is "object" - that is, the thing thrown down (the Greek meaning is perhaps more thrown forward = "pro"), in the way. From which we get, in the case of law, the "objection" - the lawyer throws down, in the way of the court, a counter argument/fact/reading etc.
As Dewey and others point out, the meaning of "object" has come to fluctuate between something in the mind and something in the world.
When a "problem" appears before consciousness, it can be perplexing and hence, we can end up with an "object" in the mind. For Dewey, his first example of such an object/problem is a ball that a baby has lost from its cot by way of falling. Hence we can see that there is a problem, as a thing in the world (a the ball out of the cot) and there is an object, as a thing in the mind of the child (I want my ball back).
In this sense, there are problems in the world just as there are objects in the mind ("she is the object of my affections). (Note: "subject", like "object" is equally fluctuating in its location.) and, objects in the mind can be perplexing and hence cause problems - we need to resolve such perplexing problems or else consciousness is frustrated and stuck. The answer for the child might firstly be to cry until either a parent arrives to fix the problem, or the child exhausts itself and gives up.
I make these distinctions in a paper of mine about ": The Problem of the Problem and Perplexity" which is mostly about the uses and mis-uses of so-called problem-based learning. I declare that most so-called PBL learning problems are in fact teaching projects.
cheers
keith russell
oz newcastle
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