Constructivism

In the philosophy of science and epistemology, constructivism or epistemological constructivism is a current of thought that emerged in the mid-20th century, from  researchers very diverse disciplines (philosophers, psychiatrists, anthropologists, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, psychologists, sociologists , linguists, etc.) who maintain that reality is a construction to some degree "invented" by the observer. You can never get to know reality as it is because always, when knowing something, we order the data obtained from reality (even if they are basic perceptions) in a theoretical or mental framework. In such a way, that object or reality that we understand "such" is not such, we do not have a "mirror reflection" of what is "there outside of us", but something that we have built based on our perceptions and empirical data. Thus, science and knowledge in general offer only an approximation to the truth, which is beyond our reach.

 

Gerald M. Edelman illustrates this idea by saying that "Every act of perception is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is in a way an act of imagination."

 

History

The fundamental orientation of this current started from Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) when he distinguished between the phenomenon and the noumenon (or thing in itself). He affirmed that reality is not found outside the person who observes it, but rather is constructed by his cognitive apparatus. 

 

Other precedents of constructivist thought could be René Descartes (1596-1650) with his "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I exist"), David Hume (1711-1776) and, above all, Bishop George Berkeley (1685 -1753), whose "esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived") That principle  fits perfectly in this context.

 

Jean Piaget is one of the thinkers who differ from the above  mentioned. Piaget’s approach is based on the creation of schemes and his position on constructivism is skeptical, even when it is said that he is a thinker immersed in this scholl of thought

 

 

 

Different theories of constructivism

Radical constructivism

One of its main spokespersons in the German sphere was the Austrian scientist Paul Watzlawick (born in 1921 and emigrated to California), with the book The Invented Reality, published in 1981, where he brings together ten essays by different authors on the so-called «constructivist thought ». His coleagues, Heinz Von Foerster and Ernst von Glasersfeld are also Austrians and work in the United States.

 

For von Glasersfeld, the term radical constructivism refers to an unconventional approach to the problem of knowledge and to the fact of knowing. This begins with the presumption that knowledge, no matter how it is defined, is in people's minds, and that the knowing subject has no alternative but to construct what he or she knows, on the basis of his or her own experience. Knowledge is then built from individual experiences. All types of experience are essentially subjective, and although reasons can be found to believe that one person's experience may be similar to that of another, there is no way of knowing whether it is actually the same.

The theory of radical constructivism developed by von Glasersfeld starts from the statements of another Austrian, Heinz von Foerster. The vision developed by Von Foerster of constructivism posited that the nervous system could not distinguish at all between perception and hallucination, since both were simple patterns of nervous excitement. The neurophysiological implications of this statement were later developed in 1971 by the Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela, who perceived knowledge as a necessary component of the processes of autopoiesis (capacity of systems to produce themselves) that characterize living organisms. .

 

Von Glasersfeld's theory is part of a solid scientific school of thought that reaches Jean Piaget, from whom it draws numerous references, as well as authors such as Gregory Bateson, Paul Watzlawick, Ilya Prigogine, Niklas Luhmann, Edgar Morin and Humberto Maturana, among many others. It is inspired by the philosophical proposals of the Italian thinker Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) and considers him a direct precursor of radical constructivism, since the latter argued that truth is the particular reality of the person who expresses it, that is, a subjective construction ( "Verum ipsum factum" [what is true <is> the same as <that> what is done]). Von Glasersfeld maintains that ontological reality cannot be reduced to a rational interpretation. On the contrary, reality is constructed from the experience of reality itself.

In order to eliminate the presumption of reality in the explanation of knowledge, von Glasersfeld (1996) states the following basic principles:

 

Knowledge "is not received passively, neither through the senses, nor through communication, but is actively constructed by the knowing subject."

"The function of knowledge is adaptive, in the biological sense of the term, tending toward adjustment or viability."

"Cognition serves the organization of the experiential world of the subject, not the discovery of an objective ontological reality."

There is a demand for sociality, in terms of «a conceptual construction of the 'others'»; in this sense, the other subjectivities are constructed from the experiential field of the individual. According to this thesis, originated in Kant, the first interaction must be with individual experience.

 

Linked to this last point, von Glasersfeld postulates that meanings, or conceptual relationships, cannot be transmitted from one speaker to another. These blocks are derived solely from individual experience and can then be adjusted intersubjectively. In this way, meanings are subjective so "we cannot maintain the preconceived notion that words communicate ideas or knowledge." Man, according to this view, is solely responsible for his thoughts, his knowledge and his actions.

 

The importance of constructivism is evident when it is compared with the opposite epistemological approach or cognitive science, which bases knowledge on a passive reflection of external objective reality. This implies an external "instruction" process, since in order to obtain that image of reality, the subject must somehow receive some type of information from the outside. This approach, von Glasersfeld argues, involves a naive perspective, where the senses function as a camera that only projects an image of how the world actually appears in our brains, and uses that image as a map, encoding the 'external' structure into a different format. This vision conflicts with a series of conceptual problems, since it ignores the infinite complexity of the world. Furthermore, detailed observation shows that in practice, cognition does not work that way. On the contrary, it is shown that the subject actively generates enough potential models and that the role played by the environment is simply reduced to reinforcing some of these models while eliminating others (selection process). By means of this concept of viability (fit) of knowledge, it is indicated that this cannot be interpreted as a representation of reality, but rather as the key that opens different paths for Humankind.

 

This construction referred to, serves in the first place selfish purposes: the subject wants to take control over what he perceives, in order to eliminate any deviation or disturbance from the achievement of his own goals. Control requires a model of what you want to control, but this model will only include those aspects relevant to the goals and actions of the subject. Somehow, the subject is not interested in controlling the thing: he is only interested in compensating for the disturbances that he feels that this thing represents for his goals and therefore makes him capable of adapting to changing circumstances. That is why Maturana speaks of "objectivity" in quotation marks. And how objectivity becomes an instrument of power, for example in science. In Maturana's words, the result of assuming this position is the legitimate acceptance of the other. Since the place that the other occupies in the world is different from mine, and his "objectivity" will be different, I cannot but listen to him with respect.

 

Mathematical constructivism

There is also linked to constructivism a branch in mathematics, the result of reflection on its nature (such as the Dutch L. E. J. Brouwer), or on the assimilability of mathematical language (Michael Dummett, in the field of British analytical philosophy).

 

Genetic Epistemology

Although the expression was coined by James Mark Baldwin, it became popular a posteriori thanks to the meaning and elaborations of Jean Piaget, who in 1967 presented constructivist epistemologies in his famous article "Logic and Scientific Knowledge" in the Encyclopedia Pléiades.

 

There are differences between Baldwin's and Piaget's approaches and even divergences in various concepts.

 

While Baldwin proposes the crucial influence of both socio-environmental and epigenetic factors far beyond that attributed to natural selection by neo-Lamarckians, Piaget distinguishes above all genesis, that is, generation.  Although there would be those who propose as a more appropriate translation of the Piagetian concept that of a kind of  genetic epistemology,  the historical, editorial and academic consensus, elevates it as Genetic Epistemology.

 

In 1956, Piaget created the International pour l'Épistémologie Génétique (International Center for Genetic Epistemology) attached to the University of Geneva in which it brings together specialists in various scientific disciplines.

 

Piaget will henceforth participate in the writing of the Études d'épistémologie génétique (Studies in genetic epistemology), edited by the specialists of the Center, which he directed until 1980.

 

Concepts and ideas

For constructivist thought, reality is a construction to some extent "invented" by the observer. One of the most common criticisms of radical constructivism is its apparent proximity to solipsism.

 

Constructivism affirms that reality can never be known for what it is, since when facing the object of knowledge, one does nothing but order the data that the object offers in the theoretical framework that is available. Thus, for example, for constructivism science does not offer an exact description of how things are, but only an approximation to the truth, which works as long as there is no more valid intersubjective explanation. For constructivism an exact description of how things are does not exist, because reality does not have an existence independent of the observer-subject. Taking an example from Ernst von Glasersfeld, the path chosen by science when dealing with reality is like that of a key that fits the lock, although how the lock is made is unknown. For the moment, the key that is available serves the purpose of the user, even though he or she is ignorant of the substance of the matter.

 

The constructivist approach is opposed to the cognitivist theory of information processing; since it considers that reality is neither unique, objective nor independent from whoever seeks to describe and explain it. The subject actively constructs his own tools and symbols to manipulate in a concrete (physical) and abstract (semantic) way the external world and his conception of himself. It emphasizes that manipulated symbols are semiotic constructions, that is, patterns of communication behavior including signs and their systems of significance, and the means by which human beings communicate. In turn, these symbols are socio-historically produced, since the subject begins to construct meaning  when already immersed in the social and cultural systems in which he was born.