Philosophical / Epistemological
The philosophical-epistemological version of constructivism is mainly represented by Ernst von Glasersfeld (EvG). He claims that knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing subject (first principle of EvG). Furthermore the function of cognition is adaptive; it serves the organization of the experiential world, not the discovery of ontological reality (second principle). He calls his version “radical constructivism” because he claims that constructivism has to be applied to all levels of description. “Those who ... do not explicitly give up the notion that our conceptual constructions can or should in some way represent an independent, ‘objective’ reality, are still caught up in the traditional theory of knowledge.” (Quoted from his 1991 paper Knowing without Metaphysics.)
EvG refers to the skeptic tradition in philosophy, especially Sextus Empiricus, Berkeley (Esse est percipi, i.e., to be is to be perceived), Vico (Verum ipsum factum, i.e., the truth is the same as the made), and OttoVaihinger (The philosophy of the As-If). For EvG, skepticism points the way to the insight that whatever world view we construct we do not have any means to validate it He also quotes Jean Piaget from whom he takes over the idea that the child constructs his or her world by means of assimilation and accommodation.
References
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) Radical Constructivism. A Way of Knowing and Learning. London: Falmer Press.
Cybernetic
Originally hired as editor of the proceedings of the Macy-conferences on cybernetics (cf. also Pias 2003) the subject of which was “circular-causal and feedback mechanisms in biological and social systems,” it soon stroke Heinz von Foerster (HvF) that a “cybernetics of observing systems” is far more interesting than a “cybernetics of observed systems.” His so defined second-ordered cybernetics (SOS) became a motto of the Biological Computing Lab he was running for many years.
Starting from the insight that nervous signals are just electrochemical, Heinz von Foerster formulated the Principle of Undifferentiated Encoding: “The response of a nerve cell does not encode the physical nature of the agents that caused its response. Encoded is only ‘how much’ at this point on my body, but not ‘what’” (Foerster 1973/2003, pp. 214–215). The principle can be found in Maturana and Varela’s claim that the cognitive apparatus is an “organizationally closed system” (see biological constructivism).
Foerster distinguishes between trivial and non-trivial machines. The former maps input to output according a mapping-function without memory (i.e., corresponds to finite state machines with regular grammar). Non-trivial machines consist of a memory holding an internal state and two mapping functions. The “effect” function that maps input to output depending on the internal state. The “state” function performs the state transition depending on the input. Of course, Foerster’s classification is fully covered by the Chomsky hierachy of formal grammars but he uses his disnction to point out how difficult it is to deduce the structure of a non-trivial machine from its behavior.
Further concepts of Foerster are: trivialization, and eigenbehavior.
Many (first-order) cybernetic insights have been worked out by W. Ross Ashby.
Stuart Umpleby focuses on the application of SOS to social and economic problems.
References
Ashby, W. R. (1956) Introduction to Cybernetics. New York: Methuen. [pdf file of 1.9 MB]
Foerster, H. von (2003) Understanding Understanding. New York: Springer-Verlag. [Collection of papers that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s].
Psychological / Cognitive
The developmental psychologist Jean Piaget became known for his statement “L’intelligence organise le monde en s’organisant elle-même.” In his theory of cognitive development (e.g., 1937/1954) he argued that in the beginning, a newborn knows little about how to cope with the perceptive impressions around her. Faces might be funny or threatening colorful spots and voices unknown sounds. In fact, she doesn’t even know that these are colors and sounds. Only by assimilation and accommodation the child constructs a collection of rules (schemata) during her ontogeny. Schemata serve as point of reference when it comes to assimilate new experiences. If impressions are too alien to be aligned to an older, already assimilated experience, they are either not perceived at all or give rise to the accommodation of those existing schemata, which are appropriately adjusted in order to include the new ‘exotic’ experience. With each of these assimilating or accommodating steps the child constructs another piece of reality. Piaget’s theory has been interpreted in a constructivist way especially by EvG.
Psychologist Ulric Neisser developed a theory of schemata controlled information pickup. A cognitive schema “accepts information as it becomes available at sensory surfaces and is changed by that information. It directs movements and exploratory activities that make more information available, by which it is further modified.”
For Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noë “seeing is knowing sensorimotor dependencies”, and the brain is a device to extract algebraic structures between perception and action. The authors refer to the work of Donald MacKay on “sensorimotor contingencies” and continued the work of Paul Bach-y-Rita (1972) who pioneered with work on sensory substitution. In particular, Bach-y-Rita showed how a blind person could gain some notion of sight by converting visual camera images into tactile information, and interpreted this as expression of brain plasticity.
References
Bach-y-Rita, P. (1972) Brain Mechanisms in Sensory Substitution. New York: Academic Press.
Neisser, U. (1976) Cognition and Reality. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
O’Regan, J. K. & Noë, A. (2001) What it is like to see: A sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience. Synthese 129 (2001): 79-103.
Piaget, J. (1937) La construction du réel chez l’enfant. Neuchâtel: Délachaux & Niestlé, 1937. Reprinted in Piaget, J. The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Ballantine, 1954.
Biological / Neurobiological
Biologists Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela formulated the theory of autopoietic systems as a sub-class of self-organizing systems which, if they exist in the physical domain, are the class of living systems. For them, the nervous system is a closed network of interacting neurons where any change in the state of relative activity of a collection of neurons leads to a change in the state of relative activity of other or the same collection of neurons. This is referred to as the “organizational closure” of the nervous system. It represents the first principle of radical constructivism (Riegler 2001).
Neurophysiologist Rudolfo R. Llinás provides empirical backing. He too formulated a Closed-system Hypothesis: “[The brain] is capable of doing what it does without any sensory input whatsoever.” According to his dreaming machine-argument, we “are basically dreaming machines that construct virtual models of the real world.”
Neurophysiologist Gerhard Roth (Haynes et al. 1998) maintains that the limbic system, the unconsciously working part of the brain responsible for evaluations, is the ultimate instance of volitional cognition. In their view, consciousness is just a pseudo-ruling ego. It is not the ego who constructs; it is constructed. (For additional arguments and consequences see Riegler 2003).
References
Haynes, J.-D., Roth, G., Schwegler, H. & Stadler, M. (1998) Die funktionale Rolle des bewußt Erlebten. [The functional role of conscious experience].”Gestalt Theory 20: 186-213.
Llinás, R. R. (2001) I of the Vortex. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Maturana, H. & Varlea, F. (1980) Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Sciences. Vol. 42. Boston, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Riegler, A. (2001) Towards a Radical Constructivist Understanding of Science. Foundations of Science 6(1-3): 1-30.
Riegler, A. (2003 ) Whose anticipations? In Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems: Foundations, Theories, and Systems, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, edited by M. Butz, O. Sigaud, and P. Gérard. New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 11-22.
Physical
For physicist Olaf Diettrich, perceived patterns and regularities are just invariants of inborn cognitive (sensory) operators. Therefore, laws of nature are human-specific. A different set of cognitive operators yields a different cognitive phenotype. Creatures equipped with such alternative phenotypes would be impossible to communicate with. Diettrich’s approach also claims a homology between mechanisms generating mathematical terms and those generating observational ones, explaining thus why mathematics is such an effective tool to describe the world.
Physicist Gerhard Grössing maintains that perceived non-classical structure of space and time in relativistic cases are human-specific artifact based on neurophysiological processes.
References
Diettrich, O. (2001) A Physical Approach to the Construction of Cognition and to Cognitive Evolution. Foundation of Science 6 (4): 273-341.
Grössing, G. (2001) Comparing the Long-Term Evolution of “Cognitive Invariances” in Physics with a Dynamics in States of Consciousness. Foundation of Science 6 (4): 255-272.
Psychiatrist / Therapeutic
Paul Watzlawick’s well-known Palo-Alto group for family therapy uses constructivism to make patients solve their interpersonal problems. The basic therapeutic intervention is to disrupt pattern of symptomatic interaction by “reframing” a habitual situation, i.e., to “place conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in another frame which fits the ‘facts’ of the same concrete situation equally well or even better and thereby changes its entire meaning.” This encourages the patients to find alternative constructions of their worldview.
Psychologist George Kelly became famous for his statement “A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the way in which he anticipates events.” He is the founder of Personal Construct Psychology.
References
Kelly, G. (1963) A Theory of Personality. New York: Norton.
Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J. & Fisch, R. (1974) Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. New York: W. W. Norton.
Literature / Media Sciences
Literature scientist Siegfried J. Schmidt (SJS) introduced radical constructivism in media science in the 1980s and made thereby RC known and popular in the German-speaking countries. Part of the merits go also to Wolfram K. Köck who made excellent German translations of constructivist authors such as Maturana, Glasersfeld, and Foerster.
Further researchers in this area are Gebhard Rusch, Nancy Spivey, Tötösy de Zeptenek, and Stefan Weber who applies constructivism to journalism.
References
Rusch, G. (1987) Erkenntnis, Wissenschaft, Geschichte. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Schmidt, S.J. (ed.) (1987) Der Diskurs des Radikalen Konstruktivismus. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a. M.
Spivey, N. N. (1997) The Constructivist Metaphor. Reading, Writing, and the Making of Meaning. San Diego: Academic Press.
Social
Claims that (scientific) knowledge does not arise within cognizing individuals or within nature but is socially constituted. Proponents are Kenneth Gergen, Bruno Latour, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Dirk Baecker.
References
Knorr-Cetina, K. (1981) The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Erlangen Constructivism
Paul Lorenzen and Wilhelm Kamlah attempted a circular-free foundation of sciences and scientific languages. Its basis is twofold: a pre-scientific vocabulary and standardized action schemata to generate objects. Later, the Erlanger Constructivism has been transformed into the Methodological Culturalism by Peter Janich. He claims a relativism on the fact that all justifications are based on pre-active and pre-discursive consensuses, which are marked by the already achieved cultural level. (“Alle Begründungen und Rechtfertigungen finden zulässige Anfänge in präaktiven und prädiskursiven Konsensen, die durch eine schon erreichte Kulturhöhe ausgezeichnet sind.”)
References
Kamlah, W. & Lorenzen, P. (1967) Logische Propädeutik. Vorschule des vernünftigen Redens. Mannheim.
Zitterbarth, W. (1981) Der Erlanger Konstruktivismus in seiner Beziehung zum Konstruktiven Realismus. In: Peschl, M. F. (ed.) (1991) Formen des Konstruktivismus in Diskussion. Wien: WUV–Universitätsverlag, pp. 73–87.
Constructionism
Constructionism as an educational philosophy emphasizes that in order to learn about abstract concepts it is necessary to create and experiment with artifacts. In this perspective, understanding and experience are closely related in the sense that learning is considered a process of active knowledge construction rather than passive knowledge absorption.
References
Harel, I. and Papert, S. (eds.) (1991) Constructionism. Norwood: Ablex.
