QUESTION:

 

Dr. Von Glasersfeld

 

First off, I think it is beautiful that you answer these questions

online. I see it as a wonderful, mutually beneficial process. So, kudos

;)

 

Now to my questions, I have noticed that your responses to many

ontologically-oriented questioners is that they are expecting some

absolute Truth and that this Truth is not available. You don't deny

necessarily that the Truth is there, but that it is not accessible to us.

I think that this phrasing is misleading, as I see it to be a somewhat

absolutist stance on our inaccessibility to Truth, thus being internally

inconsistent. Do you think this inconsistency stems from these questions

being spontaneously answered, or do you disagree with my inference which

leads to the inconsistency? Or, do you see no inconsistency?

 

I am asking mostly because I am interested in the future of Radical

Constructivism. I reached the tenets of RC on my own through intense,

iterative epistemological thought over the past decade or so - molto

lentamente, heh. Awhile back I was fascinated with the fact that German

does not usually differentiate between the present and present

progressive tenses, which contributed to my early realization that people

were speaking through vastly different concepts, not just language.

Anyway, as I said I reached the RC tenets and have subsequently moved

past them and I am interested in speaking with someone who is interested

in evolving the epistemological framework of RC beyond where it is today.

 Would you be interested, or could you point me to someone else?

 

Vielen grazie per il tuo Zeit.

 

Bill Raiford (mybiz@ibgib.com)

 

ANSWER:

Dear Mr. Raiford,

 

What is Truth? In any realist epistemology Truth is the congruence

of an image, statement, or belief with an objective reality. Hence it

would be nonsense to say that Truth "is there" and I cannot remember ever

having denied its "existence" or non-existence. In the constructivist

view, something is true if it is considered adequately to reflect the

original description of an earlier experience; therefore it has nothing

to do with ontology. The only occasion where it might make sense to say

that truth is inaccessible is when memory of a past situation or event is

so patchy that we are unable to repeat the description of it that we may

have produced at the time.

 

I have said often enough that I consider RC one way of thinking -

which implies that there may be others, I am therefore interested to hear

where you got to when, as you say, you "moved past" the tenets of RC.

 

Best wishes,

Ernst von Glasersfeld
 

 

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