Dr. Shone Surendran recounts his unconventional path from engineering and monastic life to academia, exploring Vygotsky, non-dualism, and insights gained from his experiences in India, particularly concerning marginalized knowledge. His discussion extends to AI ethics, where he critiques the Western-centric biases inherent in algorithms. Surendran advocates for significant philosophical diversity and the decolonization of higher education, pushing for globally interconnected learning perspectives that challenge academic dominance and promote epistemic pluralism to foster more inclusive and relevant learning environments.
Dr. Shone Surendran's unique intellectual path began with aerospace engineering, followed by six transformative years of monastic training in India. This blend of scientific rigor and deep spiritual immersion laid the groundwork for his current role as an academic philosopher. His thinking has been profoundly shaped by non-dualist interpretations of Vygotsky, influenced by German Idealism (via Jan Derry), and rich Indian philosophies like Advaita Vedanta. These diverse influences equipped him with a framework to understand knowledge beyond the confines of traditional Western dualistic perspectives, fostering a more interconnected view of mind, world, and ultimate reality.
Working at Amrita University in Kerala, Dr. Surendran develops philosophy modules for cognitive science students, where he has observed firsthand how students from the Global South often feel their indigenous philosophical traditions are undervalued in Western-dominated academia. This phenomenon, which he terms 'epistemic exclusion,' is a central theme in his research. It extends into his work on AI ethics, particularly within NHS genomics projects, where he focuses on effectively communicating complex AI concepts to diverse patient groups and critically examining algorithmic biases, such as the 'colonial bias' embedded in large language models that can perpetuate historical inequalities.
Ultimately, Dr. Surendran critiques the 'academic hegemony' of the Global North, passionately advocating for 'philosophical diversity' and 'epistemic pluralism.' His projects, such as autobiographical writing linking superhero narratives to decolonization, exemplify his commitment to bridging diverse domains. He calls on universities to foster genuine intercultural dialogue, acknowledge varied ways of knowing including spiritual traditions, and cultivate truly inclusive learning environments. His work champions a fundamental re-evaluation of knowledge, urging a shift towards a more holistic, equitable, and globally representative approach to education and technology.
This episode is hosted by Dr. Adam Lang. Please subscribe to the podcast through Apple, Google, Spotify, or Amazon Music. You may also follow @c4c_ed on Twitter. We look forward to hearing your feedback. If you would like to explore participating in our podcast and submit your blog post to the C4C, do not hesitate to reach out through the online participation form or email us at conversations4citizenship@gmail.com
**If you would like to learn more about Amrita University, feel free to click here.
Adam Peter Lang (00:00)
Well, hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of the fourth season of conversations for citizenship, our innovative podcast. I'm going to be your host today. I'm Dr. Adam Peter Lang from University College London, and I'm going to be working closely today with my colleague, Dr. Stella Michong Cheong from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. And I'm delighted to say today we've got a very interesting and diverse academic scholar to speak to us who's got a very interesting background and a very interesting reach in many universities he has worked with and engaged with. So I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Shone Surendran from King's College London to our podcast today. Welcome, Shone. How are you doing?
Shone Surendran (00:52)
Yeah, I'm very well. Thank you, Adam, for having me on today. Really appreciate it. Yeah, and I'm doing very well.
Adam Peter Lang (01:00)
Good. Well, that's great to hear. And where are you? Where are we recording you from today, right?
Shone Surendran (01:04)
So currently, today, I'm at King's College London, at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. IOPPN today. And, yeah, I'm in one of the offices in Denmark Hill.
Adam Peter Lang (01:18)
Okay, lovely. So, you're in London, where the sun is shining. Yes, it is. We were particularly taken on the podcast by an article that you co-authored in the spring edition of BERA Research Intelligence on something that, again, our listeners are very interested in, international comparative education. And the article was about personal tutoring in the face of philosophical diversity, it interested us a great deal. So we're going to be talking about that a little bit later on, and another work that you do in your diverse, eclectic way. But I wonder if we could just start perhaps by asking you to say a little bit about yourself, Shone, because you are, listeners are going to be very interested in what you've got to say. But you've actually got a very eclectic because they're a very eclectic bunch of early career scholars, practitioners, teachers, academics, and they're always very interested in our contributors and particularly background. And you've got a very interesting one, your story and narrative, including, I see dropping out of your first-degree training as a monk. So could you just share with us a little bit about your journey into academia?
Shone Surendran (02:43)
Yeah, it's a bit of a long story, to be honest. But yeah, I mean, you captured something of what I kind of, I'm working on something now. It's something like my origin stories, just something I've polished up over the years. But yeah, I started out in those hard sciences, really, as an engineer. And like typical of most South Asian or Indian families, your kind of expected to either be an engineer or doctor or a lawyer. And so, you know, there was no question what I'm going to do. It was just an engineer. But somewhere while I was doing that, this is aerospace engineering, and somewhere along the way, I didn't really know what I was really doing with life, and I'd already been engaged in philosophy for a long time, and I'd been getting more and more engaged in, in the practices of my own philosophical tradition. And it was at that point I just like, I can't really do the engineering. I'm just not passionate about it. I just couldn't do. I remember turning to one of my friends, and I said, Why are we even doing this? And he turned around to me and said, Who cares? Think about how much money you're going to make. And I was just like, Well, I'm not in it for the money. And what I ended up doing is going to India to train as a monk for about six years. And it was through my monk training in India that I was told I had actually just dropped everything and gone. And I was told, Well, when I was training at the monk there, and this is a philosophical school in the traditional sense in India, and they said, you can't just stay here and study. You need a Western degree. And so they told me to come back and get a degree. And so I ended up studying philosophy as a at a Jesuit college.
Adam Peter Lang (04:40)
And then yes, very interesting. Yeah,
Shone Surendran (04:43)
Yes. I went from the science to the philosophy, and then yeah, I can expand if you want.
Adam Peter Lang (04:48)
No, no, no, that's very. That's fascinating. And again, that will resonate, I think, a lot, with our audience. So we're going to come back to talk a bit more about some of the work you do. But I. I picked up, and I might be wrong on this, but you've got certain influences, the certain lens that you apply to some of your work, whether it's philosophical or what you're doing at the moment, is that Vygotsky, I'm always not very good on pronunciation. Vygotsky, do you want to tell us a little bit about how you came into being interested in influence, yeah, and how you've actually, I believe you kind of taken that train of thought on further. Is that right?
Shone Surendran (05:28)
Yeah, I think that was a good way to put it. I'll speak about something I'm working on at the moment. I've just written about this, and it's coming out as a book chapter, actually, and I've kind of woven this narrative in with the Marvel Superheroes, but yeah, Vygotsky, I discovered by doing my PhD in Science Education, and it was there that I discovered Vygotsky, but in education, not or know about Vygotsky within education because of his Vygotsky or Lev. Vygotsky a Russian thinker who really brought to the fore the role of culture and language in learning and development. But my approach to Vygotsky, not mine, really inspired by Jan Derry. Professor, Jan Derry has been an inspiration to me on my own work, it's you've got this Russian thinker who's focusing on language and culture, but in my PhD, what I focused was on a scholarship that really foregrounded his philosophical thinking, and my thesis really kind of focused and honed in on the fact that this philosophical tradition is rooted in German idealism. And what was really interesting there is it sits in contrast to Anglo American readings of Vygotsky. So actually, when, when I was studying at the IOE, we would, I think it was Jan who told this story that Basil Bernstein, when he was there, the first copy of Thought and Language was delivered, translated into English and delivered at the IOE by Luria, his student. And then, apparently, Basil Bernstein, when he read it, couldn't sleep for three days, apparently. But having studied Vygotsky with this philosophical lens, it draws on the German idealist tradition. That's what Jan's work has shown. What's particularly of interest to me in the German idealist tradition, and this what my work picks up on is the German idealist tradition is non-dualist, which is that they don't see the mind and the world as two separate things that are somehow connected. And that's something deeply entrenched in the Western enlightenment tradition, following from Descartes. So this quite, there's quite deeply philosophical conversation about epistemology, our way of looking at the world of knowledge. So what was interesting for me is when I saw this, this is quite a hard concept in educational research, but for me, it was completely natural, because this was the philosophy I was raised in from the East, from the Indian philosophy I was trained in non-dualism. But ironically, when I was running the seminars, what I found was a lot of students from the Global South could very easily resonate with this kind of non-dualism. It was quite intuitive. So there wasn't much of that barrier that I faced in trying to write up my thesis when I was having conversation with students from the Global South. And now, of course, I've gone out to Indian tour, and I found the same thing there.
Adam Peter Lang (09:10)
Yes, that's very interesting. And Shone just to let you know, and for our listeners to know that if you've got some particular references for that that were, were that you could recommend, you were recommending an academic UCL as well. I think there do let us know, because we will add that when we put the podcast out. But then just go a little bit further on that, because I go back to this article that I mentioned earlier on, that interested us. You've been doing some work out in Kerala, in Southern India, have you?
Shone Surendran (09:47)
Yeah. And yeah, it's a Kerala, Southern India. It's Amrita University, or Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and. And it's a very interesting University. It's very young university. It's only about 20 years old, and it's rapidly expanded, and it's got multiple campuses across India, but they're also doing a lot of courses that are interdisciplinary, cutting edge, and as part of that kind of movement on the on the university side, they had just launched their postgraduate program on Cognitive Science, Learning and Technology, and I had done some work out there before my PhD, which is how I ended up in my PhD in education at the IOE UCL. And after I finished, I was in touch with them, and they said, Oh, we're launching a master's program on learning and technology. And I said, you know, I'm happy to offer a module on philosophy and learning using, you know, the stuff I've been learning about Vygotsky with the philosophical lens. And originally it was supposed to be some, you know, optional module, but it turned out, when we were designing the curriculum, when they submitted it to the Indian government, it turned out that the government mandated a module on philosophy. And so this optional module ended up becoming a core module, and on that module is where a lot of the connections I found with Vygotsky, German idealism and Advaita Vedanta, which is an Indian non-dualist philosophy, I was able to incorporate all of that into this course on philosophy of Cognitive Science and mind.
Adam Peter Lang (11:41)
That's very interesting. Sorry, keep going.
Shone Surendran (11:43)
Yeah. And as part of that cause, actually, I had the opportunity to actually invite Jan Derry to actually interact with the students as well. So it was a fantastic opportunity. And then on the back of that, while I was teaching, I got an invitation to submit me on my experience to Bera research magazine, which is what I ended up writing about, but it was such a short article that I'm hoping to develop that into a full paper.
Adam Peter Lang (12:09)
Actually, no, it was a short article, but nevertheless, it was very interesting for the moment I was in Kerala in January.
Shone Surendran (12:16)
Actually, we
Adam Peter Lang (12:18)
Should have, we should have bumped into each other after many years. But what? Amongst other things, I just noticed even there, how rapidly the country is developing and how difficult. So you just said that Amrita has a university. There a fairly University. It's very interesting that we shouldn't, in our podcast, or shouldn't in our thinking be not considering what work that's going on in other parts of the world, and you bringing that to us is very important.
Shone Surendran (12:50)
I think you're absolutely spot on about the pace of change and progress and development. I mean, I was there in the 2000 and I remember saying to people, the thing about India is, when they developed a move that they didn't evolve or transition, they quantum leap. They went from having no TVs to having flat screen TVs. They went from having no computers to having laptops. You know, they went from not having landline phones to having mobile phones. So it was, it was within a space of a few years that happened, and it has been non-stop. And yeah, it's been incredible being out there just trying to grapple with how fast to change it. But at the same time, the students are equally grappling with a changing world and a changing education system, and they're really grappling, I think, personally, from my experience with the changing job market, they're learning for a world they don't know what to expect of.
Adam Peter Lang (13:54)
In your short article, and we'll be very interested to read it, But as a paper and our listeners will. I just picked out one thing. One of your students that you interviewed said this, we as Indian students often feel our views are marginalized. How do you How does that come to you, and how do you feel that we're approaching students from different parts of the world in the academic field? Yeah, tell us more your thoughts on that.
Shone Surendran (14:28)
Now, this is critical, actually, and that little statement it goes on to talk about knowledge. And I think this is fundamental to my understanding of Vygotsky, because the thing about Vygotsky, and this is what I was really pressing for in my thesis and my current work in all the different fields and my teaching, is we often see Vygotsky as someone who was either a Russian psychologist or interested in learning or development. But in Jan Derry's work, she identifies him as an epistemologist, an epistemologist, someone who is concerned with the nature of knowledge and this is something fundamental, because these students, they're in India, they've got this immense, rich heritage, and yet their education system is deeply influenced by the Western world view, and so a lot of the knowledge that they are educated into is Western knowledge, and that sits at odds with their own cultural heritage and belief systems and knowledge system. And running this course on philosophy of cognitive science and mind and learning and knowledge, it was fascinating because I was able to really have a conversation about, you know, what do we mean by this? What do we mean by knowledge? Whose knowledge are you actually learning about? And this became a fascinating topic of interest, not just for the course, but for the students, in terms of their own self reflection and I and identity.
Adam Peter Lang (16:17)
Do you think that some of them feel as though their knowledge, their philosophical background they sort of have to leave at the door when they come into academia, or they or do you think that they are now reflecting on that and using it a lot more? They don't feel that it's not warranted of study. What do you think about that? Is it a changing attitude?
Shone Surendran (16:41)
Yeah. I mean, it's, this is something I'm really trying to unpack. And it's very, very complicated for me myself, because I've gone through that entire journey on my own, just going from my monk training, studying philosophy of science. And I think that that idea of, do they need to leave it at the door? I think when you're training in sciences, I think it's kind of, it's how the knowledge domain itself is already set up, that there is no space to have that conversation about where does your belief or where does your world view fit into this but it is a space that opens up when you're looking at learning and educational technology, because you can't create an educational technology for another culture that you're not Part of and not understand that culture just by doing engineering. You can't do that. You can't work in that kind of binary way. Do they leave it at the door? I think when they do traditional I mean, I don't know for sure. I mean, from my experience of talking with them, I think when they study science the way we approach science, it forces them to leave their beliefs at the door, because there's no opportunity. And I think that's what the students are talking about. Their knowledge. They feel modern. They don't have an opportunity to have that conversation. I didn't have an opportunity to have that conversation studying here, and I remember, and this is something I say in the paper, drawing on my experiences here, and the students’ experiences there. They're facing the same thing, and it's really about students from the global south in general, in a world where education is rooted in the northern project, it's that we don't question it at all. It's seen as the gold standard and it doesn't need to be, actually, I would argue that by not situating it in world knowledge, where we're actually we're all being marginalized, including people who are having a Western education. So to answer your question, I think I think it's not, they're not forced to leave it at the door. I think the kind of education system we've all inherited has set it up so that you're forced to, anyone's forced to leave it at the door.
Adam Peter Lang (19:13)
That's very interesting. And I hope that some of our listeners, I'm sure they, will come back to us with their thoughts on what you're saying there. It's very interesting. Now I'm conscious of time, but I'm just going to go on because, Sean, you've been involved in quite a lot of things, of research. I'm just going to touch base some of the work you're doing, or you have been doing on in Imperial and Kings College, and you've been working on, I just picked this one out, that Guy's and St Thomas's, NHS, National Health Foundation, trust on Al genomics. Are you able to share some thoughts about what you're what you've done there, what's led you into that?
Shone Surendran (19:55)
Yeah, I can share some thoughts on. On the project, and some of the issues I've been working on and have presented on and it kind of relates to many of the other projects I'm working on, and the Al genomics. So to just explain this, Al genomics is the project I'm working on. Is based at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital the NHS Foundation Trust, and I'm working with a group of amazing cardiologists looking at hereditary heart disease and a number of other kinds of heart disease. And what they're doing there is they are using Al technology to try and understand the how we how we can leverage and harness the power of Al to help identify and pre-empt people with cardiovascular disease. My role in this project, coming in, and like many of the other healthcare projects I've been working on, is really about, how do we communicate the use of Al and technology with patients and everyday people. And that fundamental issue is really at the heart of all of the other healthcare projects I've been working on, whether that's in renal or whether that's with dietitians. The issue is, how do we talk about a technology in a way that patients can understand it and really understand it in a meaning, meaningful way that's relevant to their own lives and their own health and lifestyle? But the Al genomics, my role in this project is to speak with the patients, to really understand the barriers to them, understanding the use of Al and the barriers to the their concerns, and how we can better understand their concerns about the use of this technology, because this is a fundamental issue around the rollout of Al, people have concerns around the technology and the data, so there's this issue about trust and relationship, and that's where I come in, is how do we engage with patients and communities, and how do we communicate the healthcare service and innovations in a way that we can understand them and they can understand the healthcare service and their development.
Adam Peter Lang (22:46)
I mean, I think what's fascinating about your work, Sean, is that the way you reach out, but also the different people you bring together. You just mentioned there about different back. Grounds and cross fertilization and thinking in a different way that's very, very interesting. Are you now, can I just ask you one question? I may have got this wrong, but did I read somewhere that your help? You're involved in another project at Strathclyde University, looking at, is that right? A place of useful learning. They call it. Are you? Are you doing something on that? And if right, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Shone Surendran (23:25)
So on the one hand, working on the data collection. We're doing the data collection with patients, and that's my that's the project I'm working on. I'm working with patients and doing the data collection on these kinds of issues. My paper on I'm drawing on this work to talk about philosophy of education and Al, and I'll be submitting that paper in the next few months, but it draws on my work in India and this very issue of marginalized knowledge and the philosophical diversity and so my co-authors, Sharon Ancy, George, and Gauri S, , they have very different backgrounds. And it was fascinating because we got someone from medical sociology and someone from physics and someone from education, and we start to realize that these are not just educational issues. They're global issues, and they're issues that we're facing as a human race and a human community. And we start to realize that it's not just healthcare or education or technology that fundamentally, culture and communication is an issue that I think historically, we haven't really, we really haven't engaged with that deeply.
Adam Peter Lang (24:49)
I mean, I think what's fascinating about your work, Sean, is that the way you reach out, but also the different people you bring together. You just mentioned there about different back. Grounds and cross fertilization and thinking in a different way that's very, very interesting. Are you now, can I just ask you one question? I may have got this wrong, but did I read somewhere that your help? You're involved in another project at Strathclyde University, looking at, is that right? A place of useful learning. They call it. Are you? Are you doing something on that? And if right, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Shone Surendran (25:27)
Oh, now, this is a such an amazing story. So, yeah, this is, this is a really good place to be, because it really kind of puts everything you're saying and talking about together. What happened was, it's completely incidental, but there was a call for a paper put out by Strathclyde. And there was a researcher, a teaching fellow at Strathclyde, who has written and published in philosophy as education, and there was a call out in the philosophy of education journal for fan fiction and autobiographical writing. And what had happened. This is a little background story is as part of my thesis, and it's connected to what we're talking about as part of my thesis. I had so many conversations with so many different student from so many different backgrounds, and there was this issue that people's own beliefs were not really included in the research theory. And so when I was writing up this philosophy of education, building my thesis, there was this bit of my identity, which where I wrote about my own struggle, running Vygotsky seminars and running science education seminars, trying to bring in at that time, I didn't really know the terms global south at that time, He only came later on, but my but there was this issue around decolonisation, and I have problems with that word. And in my thesis, I had written a whole section about my personal identity, my philosophy, Western philosophy, and how Vygotsky and the philosophical reading of Vygotsky gave us an opportunity to bring it all together. And I kind of put it in the appendix at the researcher identity thing, and one of the examiners, she said she read it, and she said, this very powerfully written, you know, what's it doing in the back? And then when I was speaking to a she suggested you should have it published. So when this quote came out for fan fiction and autobiographical writing, I wrote saying, you know, would this be a good fit? And they wrote back that they said, This sounds really fascinating. And it says,
Adam Peter Lang (27:54)
Strathclyde University? (That's correct). Yeah, yeah, for our listeners, that's in Glasgow, Scotland,
Shone Surendran (28:00)
That's in Glasgow. Uh, yeah, and, and, and they put this call out on fan fiction, autobiographical writing. And they said they like that, but they said, Can you link it in with some sort of fiction, fan fiction, or something like that? And so I ended up submitting this publication on superheroes and philosophy. And it's called superhero representations and philosophical perspectives from fandom to random and basically what it is, it matches up my experience in education with the superhero culture and the kind of what's happening in popular culture. And Strathclyde had put this call out, and I didn't know. I recently went there for a conference, and Glasgow is an amazing city. You go there, and there is no way you can walk around Glasgow and not be smacked in the face with the idea of decolonization. It's just unbelievable. And I found it really strange that within this space that was actively acknowledging colonialism, and in Strathclyde, I find this as part of their culture. They are very they are really moving to really exploring diverse ways of thinking. So on the back of this chapter, they, they ran a they, they ran a special issue on lesser-known philosophers or lesser known thinkers. So I've now submitted not just on Vygotsky and connections. I've now actually just submitted a party, an article on the philosopher that I inspired me, Narayana guru, which, you know, was a prominent philosophy in Kerala. And so that's the kind of thing that's going on in Strathclyde. And they've got they’ve got a conference coming. Up, which is really showcasing the level of world thinkers out there and trying to bring them together.
Adam Peter Lang (30:05)
Yes, well, that's very interesting, and our listeners may well be interested in that. And would you be able to post, uh, give us some a contact maybe for that, because I think it's useful, isn't it? They're strap line, isn't it? It's a place of useful learning. And I'm going to just ask you this, just to sort of finish before I ask Dr. Stella to come in. What do you think about the role of universities in higher education at the moment in this post globalized world that we're literally living through at the moment, it's big change afoot. Isn't there all being or possibly difficulties or challenges, but some opportunities? Well, you've been very positive so far in your talking to us today. How do you see that playing out, particularly for people that are listening to this podcast?
Shone Surendran (30:59)
Yeah, that's a fascinating question. It's one I'm grappling with myself and, and it's part of the part of the story, part of the story I've written about in the superhero piece. And, and it's something I've come face to face with, with teaching out in India. And I think post pandemic, there was a lot of issues in the healthcare sector where and one of the projects I'm working now is on the concept of epistemic exclusion. But it was very clear after the pandemic that race issues, colonial issues, cultural issues, marginalization, exclusion, they could no longer be ignored. They were important, essential issues. And I don't think that's just healthcare. I think it that's a lesson for society as a whole. And I don't just mean in Britain. I think that's a lesson for everybody around the world, that we are one organism, and a one a problem in any one place is going to be a problem for us all. And I think that holism, that that that interconnectedness, is something that's very prominent in global southern thinking, the think the thought of the Global South, this interconnectedness, that's something that's lost in the Western enlightenment. And I think in higher education, if higher education means Western higher education, or Anglo-American higher education. Or, you know, I don't know how to put this. Or the northern project, is the way I've heard someone put it. So that we have the counter. We keep saying Global South, we also need to pitch in terms of what its counter is. If higher education is part of the Northern project, then one of the ideas I've been talking about is that we might need to start addressing and naming and creating names and developing a language to talk about this, and I've called it academic hegemony, is that the way we think about academic knowledge is already rooted in our cultural history, stemming from the enlightenment. But that's not the totality of knowledge. And I think universities have a have a responsibility, to acknowledge that our history and our culture, our way of thinking about knowledge, is confined and I think if we don't do that, it's a disservice. And so I think the kind of geopolitical tensions that we're seeing around the world in cultures and communities and in technology, I think now has to come to the fore in educational discourse and and it should be an essential identity issue of higher education. Who are who are we? What are we doing, and who are we doing it for? And I think that's that that's at the core of philosophy of education, the purpose of education.
Adam Peter Lang (34:27)
Well, that's very, very interesting. Your reflections and your thoughts there. Shone, I'm now going to pass over to Stella.
Stella Micheong Cheong (34:34)
Wow. Shone, thank you so much for sharing your insightful thought experience, and thank you for leading on this wonderful session. So I have a lot of questions, but I know, because of the time constraint, and I'm going to ask you the two or three more questions, well, I'm fascinating your current. Research on Al ethics in healthcare. So I just check it out before recording this session. So your NHS genomics project use tools like AlphaMissense. Am I right? But we know the Al has the bias, no, yes, hallucination or something like that, yes. So how do you balance Al's diagnostic potential with a risk of algorithm bias, (yes, yes, yes), particularly for marginalized community, yes. Did you find, or did you discover this issue?
Shone Surendran (35:51)
The fascinating question, absolutely fascinating. And so, having taught in India, Amrita University, I've been I've been graced with the opportunity to supervise, to students on their thesis, on their postgraduate thesis, and their focus on technology and technology development. There, what's interesting there is that university is actually inspired by a global humanitarian leader. Her name is Amma Mata Amaritanandamayi Devi. She the she the Global Humanitarian leader. And so the technology coming out of this university has a very specific intention to change the world for the better. And as part of that, they are looking at how to think about technology and Al and kind of what's called a responsible Al, and they had a conference on this. And the person who set up the department in which I was teaching, she's also professor Bhavani Rao, she's the UNESCO chair for women empowerment. And so they were looking at issues around women empowerment and algorithms. And when I was looking at these issues with the students, one of the issues that came up is how we think about biases. Because what, what, what's really interesting about biases is that there, there's so many different kinds of biases, and one of them is colonial bias. And colonial bias is fundamentally that the way we develop algorithms and diagnostic models, or Chat GPT, for example, or any other kind of AI system, is based on large language models. And now large language models, this is very problematic, because the language, the model of language, is rooted in a philosophy of language coming from the Western enlightenment. So if we're going to have algorithms and technology developed for the world, we can't have large language models developed on a philosophy that's coming from one particular region in the world. So the epistemic exclusion is right deep nested in the way we even think and design and influence the culture in which we're doing that it's already, it's already biased. And actually there was a really beautiful film. I actually used this as part of my course to teach the creator, the film made by Disney the Creator. And it really does a good job of, sorry, spoiler alert, just for context, but it really does a good job of showing how culture shapes the nature of technology. And I think now what we're getting into is the philosophy of technology. So I think this is the issue, is when we're talking about diagnostics and algorithms, everything has a philosophy. It's everywhere, and that's what I meant by philosophical diversity, is that it doesn't matter what we're doing, what we're studying, what we're researching. This is why it's called a PhD. They become doctors. So everything is about knowledge, and yet we almost have to think about that diversity issue at the foundation, rather than as an add on. And I think this applies to algorithms. We have to think about, what do we mean by language when we're developing large language?
Stella Micheong Cheong (39:33)
Yeah, I do agree what you said. And then the last March, my colleague and I, we attended a CIES that Adam told you. We also talk about the Digital Orientalism. Oh, wow, yeah. So yeah, as you pointed out, the large language model designed by the English. The English is so. Oh, so. I think, is it, it would be, it would be a big challenge in the future, maybe the near future.
Shone Surendran (40:12)
Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, think about it this way, when you're coding with coding on a keyboard. Now, I don't know much about what's happening in in Asia in terms of the coding and how that's being done, but the coding, the codes I've seen, is on a QWERTY board. So we're already using the Roman script as a baseline for coding. So could you maybe say something about, you know, is that the same in Korea? Are they using, like, Qwerty boards, or are you, I mean, yeah,
Stella Micheong Cheong (40:49)
Yeah. And we have different you have a different keyboard. Actually, we use the same keyboard, but we have different language system, the linguistic system, right? So, yeah, we integrate that Western the QWERTY keyboard into the Korean system.
Shone Surendran (41:12)
And this, this is where I think some really fascinating stuff is going to come out, because, because this was Vygotsky point. This was because his point about and this is a fascinating bit, and this is where it all comes together. Vygotsky wasn't just interested in language, culture or mind or knowledge. He was interested in consciousness. And this is the German idealism that fundamentally what lies at the heart of anything that we do, any kind of learning or communication, is consciousness. And so the kind of way we think and the kind of things that we develop, and the kind of way we interact with that is going to be shaped by our minds, our consciousness, and how we live together in that and so we have to find our different cultures, our different languages, and find how different cultures and communities code and that will be a way to really start thinking about bias. I don't I mean, we're going to have some sort of bias, I think. But I think that's a discussion I'll be really interested in engaging with.
Stella Micheong Cheong (42:16)
Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much, Sean, so maybe it would be, it may be the last question for me. Honestly, I draw on the Kantian cosmopolitanism and also Appiah and Starkey's the education for cosmopolitan citizenship. I don't know you have heard about this, but although the higher education use this kind of beautiful word, the cosmopolitanism, globalization, but we must admit, the almost all the university the higher education emphasize nationalism in each country. So with the rising nationalism, how can University foster useful learning? What you said the useful learning while maintaining inclusivity of all international mobile students or the students from Global South, can you share your thoughts or reflections?
Shone Surendran (43:26)
Yes, again, because you ask a question like this is so amazing, because my head just explodes with ideas. But really, the way I would answer this question is really starting with that, when I said philosophical diversity, it starts with the idea of diversity, because when we have diversity, each we shouldn't be instrumentalist about this idea. It's not like we have something and we need more diversity, because then, then what we're doing is, you've got a situation, and you're trying to use diversity as a way to improve something, right? But that that then assume that there was nothing wrong with what you have. You just need to input this idea of diversity, and then it will get better. But I think that at the root of diversity, what we need is dialog, and we need a dialog that itself is diverse and what I'm referring to here is, in my superhero chapter, I talk about, I talk about this idea of philosophical diversity, but I don't think I use that term. I was talking about academic hegemony, but there was a article in The New York Times, and it was written by someone who teaches world philosophy, and their title, it was an opinion piece in The New York Times, and it was called a. Um, if, if, if, philosophy doesn't diversify, we should just call it what it is, and. And the idea was that when we say, when you look at courses in universities, it's called Philosophy, it doesn't have the prefix Western philosophy, and, and so I think when we say diversity, we have to first acknowledge that the words that we have, the terms that we use, are themselves, are not really diverse themselves. And so when we say science, you know what we mean, is modern, Western science. And so this idea of diversity, we need to kind of think about this global diversity and you said about nationalism, this is where the geopolitical tensions that we see around the world we need to have a dialog that allows us to share meaning, share meaning, so that we can see what we mean when we say certain things and how we differ. And so diversity is not just about having more. Diversity is really about how we are communicating different ideas in different ways, and how we might need to learn from each other. And what I'm really trying to say is a bit more complicated. It's, it's, it's the Vygotsky, the idea about language and consciousness, it's, it's, it's really expressed in a philosophy that's called inferentialism , which is developed by Robert Brandom and he has this model to talk about language and the norms, and I think this is the we've got this term now in in the media, called new normal. But when we say new normal, everything's always normal. There's always a norm, and that's what we need. We need to start making explicit what everybody's national norms are so that it's not just new. There's always been norms, and so that's what we need now. We need a way to talk about and make explicit the norms that we have, the norms that we've changed, and the norms that we are now initiating and establishing and, and, and that's something we need to start having a conversation so that diversity isn't just a term, that diversity itself is going to be very diverse, depending on whose concept it is and, and how it's been perceived. And I think this way universities really need a lot of work is to really engage in I've seen this term called epistemic pluralism, and I thought that was very interesting. There was a paper in the London Review of education, and I think that's really interesting, because we need pluralism, diversity, non-dualism, inclusivity and interconnected. I think all of these kinds of things that were there in a lot of the global, global South, indigenous knowledge and traditions. I think that's what we need to really have a conversation about the history and the future in the present.
Stella Micheong Cheong (48:18)
Oh, wow. Oh. Thank you so much, Sean, for sharing your remarkable explain your worth of experience with us today. So before wrapping up, is there anything you'd like to mention that we have not covered that is important for all of us?
Shone Surendran (48:37)
Yes, I think so. So you said you were interested in Kant's cosmopolitan and, and I've been talking about Vygotsky. I've been talking about some, you know, Eastern philosophies, and we've been talking about Western philosophy, and we've been talking about Vygotsky. And I think what, and we're talking about nationalism, and I think something we need to now as part of this type. But, yeah, so what I was going to say is around Kent, and we've talking about Vygotsky, and we talked about, well, yeah, we talked about Descartes and German idealism. And so just to link it back to the Strathclyde, I was invited on the back of the superhero thing and the lesser known thinkers like Narayana Guru from Kerala, we presented on Froebel. And Frobel is the father of kindergarten and the talk was around Frobel and about his thought about nature and how kindergarten was this idea that children should understand the divinity in themselves and nature and when I was there, I was really fascinated, because when I was talking to my colleague, I was I was explaining. Meaning how when I very often, when I talk, I self censor, because I don't bring in religion, because I think a lot of indigenous knowledge, it doesn't make the divide between religion, science or philosophy. And so I think if you're coming from an Aboriginal background, or Ubuntu or Zen or Taoism, or Hinduism, or Buddhism or Jainism. I think all of these different traditions, we need a way to bring this into the conversation. And I think very often this has been kind of sanitized, maybe cleaned up, and I think it's a very important part of the history of knowledge, and so that's part of the diversity I'm alluding to. And I think, yeah, when you say, say anything, I think we need to think about religion and not Western religion. I think religion as a philosophy, as a practice in a global sense, so that we world views, to consider world views, so that we can really start having a global, inclusive conversation about the whole of human history and knowledge, including indigenous and future. So that's what I wanted to bring in, just to bring in, because you said something about nationalism, and I think this is the thing, you got nationality, you got ethnicity, you got religion, you got belief, you got religion. And I think all needs to be part of knowledge, all of it. And I think I would love to see that kind of education where we can have a discussion about all of that.
Stella Micheong Cheong (51:39)
Oh, wow. Shone, what an incredible hour! Thank you so much for sharing your amazing thought and reflection and advice. So from your own unique path into academia, which is inspiring in itself, to the nitty gritty of making personal tutoring truly inclusive, especially hearing those students voices from India and that sense of feeling marginalized, they really hit home. It's a massive remind about who we are really here for so we are grateful for your practical advice and thoughts. Yeah, yes, amazing and thought. So, yeah, I'm sure our international audience will take away both inspiration and actionable idea for their own work. I'm closing the episode. I'm Stella Micheong Cheong Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to conversation for citizenship. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to conversations for citizenship and look for us on blue sky at C 4c podcast the Sky dot social, a transcript of today's conversation with Dr Shone Surendran surrender on can be found at www.conversations4citizenship.com. This episode of conversations for citizenship was produced by me, Stella Cheong and Adam Lang recorded a sound mix by Stella Cheong. Shone, thank you again for joining us and to our listeners, stay curious, keep asking, and we will see you next time on conversations4citizenship.