Constructivism

[waxwing]

Radical Constructivism according to Ernst von Glasserfield:
1. Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication, but is actively built up by the cognising subject.
2. The function of cognition is adaptive and serves the subject's organization of the experiential world, not the discovery of an objective ontological reality.

(http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CONSTRUC.html)

Do you think that students can be taught to learn by constructivist theory, or must there be an innate ability to build upon one's former knowledge and experience?

What is the value of discovering an objective ontological reality as opposed to organizing the experimental world? Can we learn to do both simultaneously?

[cjs55]

What is the value of discovering an objective ontological reality as opposed to organizing the experimental world? Can we learn to do both simultaneously?

It is impossible to do the first due to our perceptional filter from the world. Thus the second is the best we've got. This (constructivism) is how everyone's view of the world works (without people knowing it), but through actively recognizing this a person certainly does gain many advantages. So in that sense it definitely should be taught.

Most interesting is the problems with validity of personal understandings that are listed at the bottom of the article. I find the solution to be pretty simple though: How well one's constructed system can be used to predict future events (doesn't matter that we don't know exactly what those events are, all that matters is we can go to the moon and bake cakes and build tall buildings and fly planes into them).

[even though the meanings of all of those things are not perfectly defined, they don't have to be for personal system construction to be useful]

[PenguinHunter]

Interesting post.

A statement that caught my eye was: "That construction serves in the first place selfish purposes: the subject wants to get control over what it perceives, in order to eliminate any deviations or perturbations from its own preferred goal state."

I don't think I've decided whether I agree with this or not but my initial reaction was definately not. I felt like I could go along with pretty much everything else I read, and think about it while a go about my day "perceiving" and "contructing" the world. But this statement seems really strange. Maybe it is just the wording but they make it sound like we consciously (both want to and do) manipulate the world to fit some kind of pre-conceived ideal state. I don't think I can agree with that. If they just mean in the sense of that anti-body/natural selection example then I can go along with it. They make it sound as if we ruthlessly disregard everything that is not a part of our immediate "goal." And now I realise I have no idea what they mean by "goal." I will have to think about this a bit more.

[Jacque]

What is the value of discovering an objective ontological reality as opposed to organizing the experimental world?

Discovery is a purely constructive term. To say I've discovered something is to say I've found another missing puzzle piece, which is to say I possess the larger picture. I much prefer imagination to pixelation.


Can we learn to do both simultaneously?
Biologically we have no choice. We have a "use it or lose it" brain, and "ontological reality" prunes this organizational structure. That is to say the two are intertwined and the exercise is for us a grave matter of survival, rather than a philosophical excursion.

[Red Sky]

This idea, that reality is "external" somehow- and inaccessible... it upsets me as a common-sense realist. The same way that Richard Rorty upsets me as a common-sense linguist.

See, we have direct access to reality- we are reality. We are "in the world" and "part of the world." It seems that anti-realists and constructivists alike are assuming that direct access to reality would be the View From Nowhere... if you ditch this notion you don't have to choose between the concepts of "constructing" or "discovering" knowledge about X because knowledge is a synthesis of both.

IMO, the Realism versus Anti-Realism debate that rages on in the western world is a fundamental mistake.