Dear prof. Von Glasersfeld,
(Thank you for replying; I hope you will
soon be in business as usual, after
the fire. I send my message to the oikos address
as well.)
Reading your "Piaget's Legacy: Cognition
as Adaptive Activity" in "Does
representation need reality?" a question came up, perhaps
related to a matter of phrasing.
How does radical constructivisme
explains viability of constructed knowledge
without admitting any kind of correspondence? In the
screen-metaphor, the screen
admits what falls through and discards what does not, and the
things that fall through
are then the viable things. Causes or correspondences
then, with regard to viability, seem to be not
existing or irrelevant.
Or differently put: how to bring on the
one side the screen-metaphor and your
"(..) concepts cannot grasp ANY (capitals RK) ontological
reality posited as independent of
the human experiencer" in agreement with on the
other side your "I want to point out that I am
not saying sensory signals have
no cause" and the viable construction in physical knowledge
that states that
physical things exist independent of our thinking of them and
independent of our experiencing them?
Did perhaps your phrasing stretch
constructivism too far, or not yet far
enough?
Yours sincerely,
Rob Kooijman
Dear Mr. Kooijman,
I am sorry about the delay in answering
your questions but recovering from the
fire takes more time that we expected. I will be brief but - I
hope - clear enough.
The concept of viability does NOT entail
any kind of "correspondence". It is
equivalent to what one can call "functional fit".
A grain of sand manages to
fall through the gardener's sieve because it fits
the constraints of the mesh; but
the fact that it managed to get through gives it no indication
of what constraints there were.
My answer to the contention that it is a
"viable" construction in physical
knowledge that physical things exist independent of our
thinking of them and
independent of our experiencing them is simple: no
explanation that cannot be
experientially demonstrated has more power than the one that
God created us
so that we experience the world as we experience it. In short,
such explanations are
metaphysical fictions and useless in a rational model of
cognition. The people who assert (as the great
physicists have never asserted)
that their theory describes things as they "are", should have
to tell us HOW they know this.
The root of your misunderstanding
constructivism lies, I think, in your reluctance
to relinquish the notion that knowing must at some point lead
to the knowledge of a
knower-independent reality.
Best wishes,
Ernst von Glasersfeld
Dear prof. Von Glasersfeld,
Thank you for replying.
First of all, with regard to your "The
root of your misunderstanding
constructivism", I think it's either a matter of difficulty of
phrasing constructivism properly, or of
not stretching constructivism far enough, as
I am inclined to think RC is doing. There is no
reluctance from my part to say it is us
who construct knowledge.
Somehow I did not get my point across.
The point is that when one says 'knower
dependent reality' one seems to say there is a physical
dependency: in
constructivism the construction of knowledge seems to entail
the physical construction
of the world, not only our knowledge. There is no physical
knowledge that states that the existence of
physical things depends of our thinking
of them and depends of our experiencing them: whether or not I
think of them (the cause of our sensory signals
or whatever) is of no importance.
Please again: how to bring "(..)
concepts cannot grasp any ontological reality
posited as independent of the human experiencer" in agreement
with your "I want to point out
that I am not saying sensory signals have no
cause"? Does this cause exist whether or not we
experience it and think of it?
Physicists believe it does, I presume.
Yours sincerely,
Rob Kooijman
Dear Mr. Kooijman,
This discussion should be on the oikos
website; please send your questions
there. I will answer your message when I receive it from Rome.
In the meantime let me ask you a
question: what exactly do you mean when you say
"physical" or "physical knowledge" - does that relate
to physics? Or do you
mean, as i would, to refer to the class of constructs
we want to distinguish
from the "mental"?
Ernst von Glasersfeld
Dear prof. Von Glasersfeld,
Please keep in mind, for the time being
I presume it is a matter of difficulty
in phrasing (radical) constructivism.
"Physical" or "physical knowledge" -
refers to the knowledge physicists
have, an 'object' exist physically whether or not one thinks
about it or is
experiencing it: the 'cause' of our sensory signals.
As you, I refer to the class of
constructs we want to distinguish from the
"mental". Popularly phrased: the image of for
example a car we have in our head
is obviously not the physical car outside our head, because it
wouldn't fit physically in
our head. It that context it is awkward to say we
construct reality.
Regarding putting our exchange of
thoughts on the Oikos-website I would
like to propose to put it there when it
has an accesible fashion, presented as
clear cut as possible.
Regards,
Rob Kooijman
Dear Mr. Kooijman,
I do not agree with your plan to edit
our exchange before putting on the
website. The site was started to record spontaneous questions
and spontaneous answers. Thererfore,
once more, I ask you a query: you say
that the difference between the
"physical" car and the car in your head is
"obvious". I suggest you ask yourself how you
come to make this distinction.
I hope you'll send your pieces to oikos.
Best wishes,
Ernst von Glasersfeld
Dear prof. Von Glasersfeld,
(regarding the website: I hope we can
leave asides aside)
Therefore, once more, I ask you a query:
you say that the difference between the
"physical" car and the car in your head
is "obvious". I suggest you ask yourself
how you come to make this distinction.
"Obvious" was, as said, popularly
phrased as was "the car doesn't fit
physically in my head". I could refer to Piaget's notion of
'epistemological decentering'.
But my answer is that is has presumably the same reasons as
your distinction in 'cause of sensory signals'.
Isn't this 'cause' outside
our head? How did you arrive at 'cause' and how to
assert it is a 'viable' construction?
RC seems to be saying that we create in
our act of knowing this (physical?)
cause ('physical' as physicians up to now understand
'physical'). That seems, again,
awkwardly phrased to me.
Yours sincerely
Rob Kooijman
