QUESTION 1
Dr. Glasersfeld
In working with students epecially in middle school science, I
have found one way of teaching that ascribes to the theory of
constructivism. I do notice a jump from the concrete to formal
operation in terms of their thinking. I would like to ask how
can I measure this change in students cognitive development? Is
there a measure that you would suggest?
Thank you, mwarumba email: mikanjuni@yahoo.com
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Dear Mr. mwarumba,
I'm afraid measurement and testing have never been of much
interest to me. I can only give you the address of someone who
is an expert in the area of the development of logical thinking:
Dr. Leslie Smith, Dept. of Education, University of Lancaster,
LA1 4YL UK.
I'm sorry that I cannot do more
for you,
Best wishes,
Ernst von Glasersfeld
QUESTION 2
From: Liu Chaochun <liuchaoc@comp.nus.edu.sg>
Subject: Some doubts
Dear Professor:
I am a graduate student and has learned constructism for some
time. I really think RC is a marvelous theory and it has
changed my thinking in some way. However, I have some
doubts.
1: I largely accept that
knowledge is constructed and not truthful representation of
reality, as you said, there are many viable approaches to avoid
constraints. However, I don't like the word
"adaptive", or the biological and passive flavor of RC
in large. RC seems saying we construct and modify knowledge to
adapt to experience, mainly to avoid a bad experience. I think
RC misses an important point:human's purpose, goals and needs.
Human actively construct knowledge to fulfill their purposes
within the constraints of environment, not just passive adaption.
Though Rc claim knowledge is relevant to goals, but obviously we
can't say all knowledge is adaptive. In terms of goals and
needs, we can identify several levels, and only the lowest level
(physical needs) can be said as adaptive and for survival. Other
higher level needs, like craving for arts, religion, science,
can not. Take Einstein for example. His sustained passion,
craving for science is not adaptive. Yes,RC claims there are two
kinds of adaption, the second is on the conceptual level needed
to build science knowledge, but this seems not reasonable. What
force has asked for conceptual adaption? Most people have lived
well with their practical, not so coherent and theoretical (comapred
with scientific knowledge) knowledge.
2: RC is
post-epistemological, and its sole reliance on subjective
experience makes it hard to support itself and criticize its
opponent. Foe example, I read from article of RC criticizing
empiricism somewhat like "we can't get valid generalization
from empirical data base on logic".But RC also is not based
on logic. Or "Empirical study has shown that even percetion
is an active construction process, so there is no empirical data
in the sense of the empiricist, and this provide support for
constructivism". Here empirical conclusion is used to
support constructivism, and against empiricism. My point is on
what grounds can RC support itself. Everyone knows we can't just
cite personal experience to support our theory in scientific
argumentation. This letter is long and I am quite sorry to say,
it is also blunt. I hope you don't mind. I can see from your
response to others that you are open minded and will not be
bothered. I really respect you from my heart and my doubts are
sincere.
Regards
Liu Chaochun
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Dear Liu Chaochun,
Thank you for articulating
your doubts about RC and sharing them with me.I like this much
better than people telling me they believe what I say, for they
have to find out for themselves what may be right for them. I'll
go through your statement and pick out the points where I think
an explanation of my perspective may be helpful. RC seems saying
we construct and modify knowledge to adapt to experience, mainly
to avoid a bad experience. Human actively construct knowledge to
fulfill their purposes within the constraints of environment,
not just passive adaption. Though Rc claim knowledge is relevant
to goals, but obviously we can't say all knowledge is adaptive.
- I have tried to make clear
that on the biological level it is a matter of survival (and
thus of avoiding of fatal experiences), but on the conceptual
level it's a matter of internal equilibrium, i,e., of avoiding
incompatibilities and contradictions among concepts, relational
notions, theories, goals, and ways of thinking in general. This
division is fundamental in Piaget's and also in my model. And I
have often repeated that the choice of goals is part of ethics,
a domain in which rational thought (of which RC is a tentative
model) has no decisive role to play. What force has asked for
conceptual adaption? Most people have lived well with their
practical, not so coherent and theoretical (compared with
scientific knowledge) knowledge.
- Equilibration is certainly
not a force. The assumption that there is a desire to approach
and maintain it is one of the fundamental presuppositions of RC;
like reflective consciousness and some form of memory. -
Equilibration is also an internal affair and not very assessable
by another person. Paragraph 2< - The expression: ''we can't
get valid generalization from empirical data ...'' shows that
you are still looking for some absolute TRUTH. The experiential
reality of a constructivist is built on generalizations from
empirical data and reflective abstractions from these. I
think you tend to interpret 'empirical' as referring to an
experience-independent reality. That's a mistake that many
writers (especially of psychology textbooks) have made. But
empirical means pertaining to experience. So there is no
reason why RC should disdain empirical data. But you are
right: RC cannot be justified by empirical data.
It's justification springs primarily from the
incontrovertibility of the sceptics' doubt - we can never tell
whether or not our picture of the world is 'really' like the
world - and then from the strange fact that everybody believes
to receive information through the senses, yet we have no
plausible model of HOW such a transfer of 'information' could
take place. Finally: don' t forget that RC does not claim to be
'true', it only hopes to be useful.
Best wishes,
Ernst von Glasersfeld
QUESTION 3
From: "Danielle Cross" <rpimath@hotmail.com>
To: kenny@oikos.org
Dr. Glasersfeld:
Do you agree with the statement "Truth is
Viability"?
Dear Ms Cross,
I think it is confusing to say that "truth is
viability" and that is why I don't like the Pragmatists'
statement: "truth is what works", although I agree
with much of pragmatism. Even a constructivist needs a concept
of 'truth', namely the adequate repetition of something
experienced or abstracted from experience at some earlier
moment. If I say: "I saw John at the cinema last
night", it is a "true" statement if I actually
did see him. If I didn't, it would be a lie. And this is a
distinction that constructivists want to make as much as
anyone else. As for the "Truth" philosophers used to
speak of, namely "truth" as correspondence with some
ontological reality, there is no room for it in the
constructivist theory. Its place is taken by
"viability" - but as this concerns exclusively the
experiential world, it is in no sense equivalent to
"truth". Best wishes,
Ernst von Glasersfeld
QUESTION 4
Dear Prof. Glasersfeld,
In your essay entitled 'The Perceptual Construction of Time'
you write, "I
believe, that the image of time moving and "going
by" is misleading. What goes by are our experiences." This idea
has always been
very interesting to me.
I would go somewhat further and say that our conception of
time
is essentially an aspect of memory. The difference from memory
in
other animals is that humans have developed the ability to
recall
their memories without any stimulation from their sensory
organs.
We remember some experience or event, reflect on the memory in
our heads,
and then we extrapolate this ability in the notion of
"time",
"intelligence", "rationality" , etc.
But memory can be rather simply explained as a process of
mentally cataloguing different experiences into an ordered
sequence. I
think other animals like dogs, for example, also experience
memory. But
where humans have developed the ability to reflect at will on
their
memory experiences (giving rise to the concept of time), dogs
and
other animals do not have the ability to reflect at will on
their
mental memory, or only very slighlty. For the most part, their
recollection of events and experiences are only recalled when
an event
they have experienced in the past repeats itself through their
senses. It's as if animals live for the most part in the present
whereas humans
have developed the mental capacity to remember the past and
the futrure,
ie. in "time".
I doubt a dog can reflect on
the nature of fire while it is gnawing on a
bone. But if you strike a match and hold it in front of the
dog where it
can see, smell and feel the heat, then it remembers. The
process of
"remembering could be efficiently achieved by an
automatic mental process
in which incoming sensual experiences are continually compared
and
analyzed against experiences stored in memory structures in
the brain.
The human brain had evolved the remarkable ability to recall
and scan
their experiences outside the context of their
"real-time" senses.
My question is this:
do you think the ability to recall past
experiences and events (memory) and project these experiences
into the
future is merely another evolutionary adaptation that humans
have acquired
in a structure of their brain, and that this is the sole basis
of
human intelligence?
Thank you.
Mr. d'Apollonia,
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Dear Mr. d'Apollonia,
My answer to the question at the end of your message is this:
what we call
"intelligence" is a multifaceted capability. It
comprises reflecting,
re-presenting, abstracting, comparing, projecting, associating,
etc. In your 2nd paragraph you mention "the ability to recall
memories without the
stimulation from sensory organs." This is what I have
called "spontaneous
re-pre-sentation". I know of no evidence that animals have
this ability. We
can sometimes watch dogs dreaming, but I doubt that whatever
re-presentations
they are having are deliberate. And the deliberateness is
crucial because it
furnishes the basis of language, i,e, the semantic connection of
symbols and
re-presentations of past experiences. I do not agree with the statement that "our conception of
time is essentially
an aspect of memory." I think of memory as two-dimensional:
on the one hand,
it maintains the sequential order of experience (and your
attention can
follow that sequence backwards or forwards); on the other hand,
your
attention can move from any remembered point, following
associational
connections to other remembered items, irrespective of their
position in the
experiential sequence. The concept of time arise (in my view)
when you
project two experientially separate but associated events on to
the whole
experiential sequence of which they were part. The interval
between them is
then filled with a succession of other events -- and this makes
it possible
to think of "duration" and consequently of time.
I want to stress that this is the model I have developed for
myself and that
I also believe that no "explanatory" model we concoct
can claim to be "true".
Its value can spring only from its usefulness.
Best wishes,
Ernst von Glasersfeld
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QUESTION
5
While investigating prolepsis
(the human capacity for an
intuitive- anticipation), I came across the program for a
conference in 1998
on Computing Anticipatory Systems where you had given the
keynote address.
Please explain the primary relations between prolepsis and
constructivism.
I 've also read Lev Vygotsky's work referred to on the same
topic.
Are you aware of additional material on Vygotsky and prolepsis?
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Dear <gil@ats.org>
The prolepsis you are interested in is not the result of
reasoning but of
non-rational intuition. It lies outside the anticipation covered
in my paper,
which concerns the kind of anticipations based on inductive
inferences from
past experience. If you are interested in that paper, you can
download it
from: http://www.umass.edu/srri/vonGlasersfeld/publications.html
I'm sorry, I cannot help you with Vygotsky; I don't know whether
he ever
discussed your kind of prolepsis.
Best wishes,
Ernst von
Glasersfeld
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