QUESTION:

 

Dear Dr. Von Glasersfeld:

First off, thank you for answering! I deeply appreciate it, as it is

exciting for me to actually correspond with someone else on these matters.

Here are a couple quotes from you Q & A answers:

 

Quote1, from http://www.oikos.org/vonansfeb03.htm  :

"I have said that I don't deny an ultimate reality - because

it makes no sense to deny something of which one cannot have any

knowledge."

 

Quote2, from http://www.oikos.org/vonansjan06.htm  :

"A point of radical constructivism, that many interpreters

have shied away from, is that the inaccessibility of an objective

reality is total."

Quote3 from your answer (to my own question! :),

 

http://www.oikos.org/vonansmay06.htm  :

"I have said often enough that I consider RC one way of

thinking - which implies that there may be others"

 

Next, I reiterate the main intent of my previous question(s): I think that

your phrasing of responses to questioners, whom I see as obviously

ontologically-oriented, is misleading. The above quotes 1 and 2 are only

snippets of examples that explicitly state my more general impression of

an imbalance in your responses, ie "misleading".

 

In Quote1, I actually strongly agree with the "not denying" first

part, but the reason given I read as representing an absolutist

stance on our inability to have "knowledge" of an "ultimate reality". This

is even more explicitly stated in Quote2. Interestingly, in your response

to me (Quote3), you use "often enough" and "implies". I disagree with your

evaluation of the "often enough" part in your responses, and your use of

"implies" is a nice, although trivial, example of word-level inconsistency

with the concept-level tenets of RC. I say this because when I'm trying to

be precise, I tend to shy away from using "imply" and instead use "infer"

as it incorporates the action of an "observer" creating meaning from

something. At this point, let me say that I do not say these things with

disrespect, but actually out of great respect - otherwise, I wouldn't even

be writing you. ;) Anyway, my response so far as been in negative space as

I call it, or saying what I disagree with.

 

Which brings me to my "moving past" the tenets of RC. To justify

precisely the framework that I use would take more space than I think is

proper for this Q & A (I would be *extremely* interested in communicating

directly with you via email or here if you wouldn't mind), but I'll offer

a little bit on how I would phrase the "inaccessibility" of some absolute,

objective Truth. I would say something like:

"Truth may be accessible, and if someone wishes to continue

creating constructs that emphasize that access as a goal, by all

means go ahead. But RC stipulates that the concept of any absolute

Truth is becoming less and less viable, and that focus on an

observer-based experiential Truth is proving to be more and more

viable, especially in the fields of education, artificial

intelligence, etc. Since, within RC, truth is used as a measurement

of viability, you could say that this interpretation of 'Truth' is

true, but not True."

 

This quick example, to me, seems more internally consistent with the

tenets of RC, as it applies the high-level RC concepts at the relatively

low level of communication with words. It would be more balanced, in that

it includes both the "inaccessibility" of some nonsensical Truth, as well

as the "tentative" quality of RC to which you did indeed refer

occasionally.

 

And just a little bit more from my perspective and I'll curtail this: Two

aspects I see missing in the core tenets of RC are observer-interest

(self-interest) and economics (in the general sense of allocating limited

resources). This key aspect of economics is largely why I asked if you

thought that the inconsistency stems from the "spontaneous" aspect of your

answers, ie your relatively small (although huge since I find no others

doing this online for free!) amount of limited time allocated to answering

these questions, which did I mention "Thank You"? ;)

Anyway, I have to run. Thanks (again) for your time, and best wishes to

you :)

 

Bill Raiford

PS By the way, you might be interested in looking up "truthiness" on

wikipedia, if you are not already aware of its recent revival. Highly

entertaining, and probably fruitful grounds for application of an RC-like

analysis.

 

ANSWER:

Dear Mr. Raiford,

 

1. That we cannot gain objective knowledge of something beyond our

experience (quotes 1 and 2) is not an experiential statement within RC

but a logical one. All our concepts are based on abstractions from

experience and are therefore not capable of capturing anything beyond

this.

 

 2. It's your prerogative to complain that I haven't said certain

 things often enough. In the case in question it may be because you

 haven't read enough of my writings.

 

3. As the implication I mention in quote 3 stems from something I

have written myself, it would make no sense for me to "infer" what I

intend to imply.

 

4, With regard to your "moving past", I would say, go ahead! But try to

avoid misstatements such as "within RC, truth is used as a measurement of

viability..." As I have explained in one of my earlier answers to you:

In the constructivist view, "something is true if it is considered

adequately to reflect the original description of an earlier experience."

Depending on the purpose you have in mind, an adequate description may be

less viable than a lie.

Best wishes,

Ernst von Glasersfeld
 

 

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