Constructivist Foundations

(editor-in-chief)
Postal address: Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Krijgskundestraat 33, B-1160 Brussels, Belgium
Physical web server:
University of Vienna, A-1010 Vienna, Austria

ISSN 1782-348X

Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an international peer-reviewed academic e-journal dedicated to constructivist issues raised by philosophy a well as the natural, human, and applied sciences. The journal publishes original scholarly work in all areas of constructivist approaches, especially radical constructivism, enactive cognitive science, second order cybernetics, biology of cognition and the theory of autopoietic systems, and non-dualizing philosophy, among others. The readers of the journal will be kept up-to-date with the central issues and problems of contemporary constructivist approaches. Papers are published in an attractive format ready to be printed by the reader. Their physical appearance is permanently fixed (“permanent links”) to allow for reliable citations in terms of volume, number, and page.

Constructivist Foundations is listed in Thomson Reuters's Science Citation Index (Arts & Humanities Citation Index and the Current Contents/Arts & Humanities), in The Philosopher's Index, and in EBSCO's Education Research Complete.

NEWS — In January 2010, Herbert F. J. Müller, member of the editorial board and editor of the Karl Jaspers Forum, has passed away at the age of 85. In many publications he introduced his approach called “epistemic structuring of experience.” It is also subject of his forthcoming book “Brain in mind – Ontology becomes pragmatic design in the unstructured.”

Number of subscribers (as of 10 November 2009): 2427.

Aims and Scope

Constructivist approaches support the idea that mental structures such as cognition and perception are actively built by one’s mind rather than passively acquired. However, constructivist approaches vary in function of how much influence they attribute to constructions.

Many assume a dualistic relationship between reality and constructed elements. They maintain that constructed mental structures gradually adapt to the structures of the real world (e.g., Piaget). In this view perception is the pickup of information controlled by the mental structure that is constructed from earlier perceptions (e.g., Neisser). This leads to the claim that mental structures are about learning sensorimotor contingencies (e.g., O’Regan).

Others seek to avoid the dualistic position. Either they skeptically reject that the structures of the real world can be compared with mental ones, independently of the senses through which the mental structures were constructed in the first place (e.g., von Glasersfeld), or they embrace a phenomenological perspective that considers perception as the grouping of experiential complexes (e.g., Mach).

All these approaches emphasize the primacy of the cognitive system (e.g., Llinás) and its organizational closure (e.g., von Foerster, Maturana). Hence, perceived patterns and regularities may be regarded as invariants of inborn cognitive operators (e.g., Diettrich).

Constructivist approaches can be said to differ also with respect to whether constructs are considered to populate the rational-linguistic (e.g., von Glasersfeld, Schmidt), the biological-bodily (“enactivist/embodied” theories, e.g., Varela), or the social realm (social constructivism, e.g., Latour).

Guidelines for Authors

Author's Guidelines for Full Papers in HTML or PDF
Word template with predefined styles
Author's Guidelines for Commentaries (PDF)
Editorial of the Initial Issue (PDF).

Featured Books

Related books:
Radical Constructivism: A Relativist Epistemic Approach to Science Education Andreas Quale (Sense Publishers, 2008), 244 pages	Die erfundene Wirklichkeit Paul Watzlawick (1990)	An Unfinished Revolution? Heinz von Foerster and the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL), 1958–1976 Edited by Albert Müller and Karl Müller (Edition Echoraum, Vienna, 2007)	The Illusion of Conscious Will Daniel M. Wegner (The MIT Press, 2003) 419 pages	Neuroconstructivism. Vol. 1: How the Brain Constructs Cognition Vol. 2: Perspectives and Prospects Denis Mareschal, Mark H. Johnson, Sylvain Sirois, Michael Spratling, Michael S. C. Thomas, and Gert Westermann (Oxford University Press, 2007)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ADVISORY BOARD

EDITORIAL BOARD

PUBLISHER

Aims and Scope

Guidelines for Authors

Featured Books