Radical Constructivism

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

One of the significant developments in the interdisciplinary field of judgment and decision making is the classification of environments as a function of (a) their capacity to enable people to learn from experience (kind environments vs. wicked environments) and (b) the consequences of having failed to understand and adapt to them (exacting environments vs. lenient environments). Based on the premise that 'environment' is a key geographical concept, I explore the usefulness of appropriating these classifications in geography and argue that they can stimulate normative work on the possible contours of a better world as well as illuminate in novel ways long-standing geographical concerns with the problematic of fairness. Les figures de l'environnement : ´ eléments de réflexion sur les bases envisageables d'un monde meilleur Parmi les innovations qui ont marqué la recherche interdisciplinaire sur le jugement et la décision, se trouve la classification des environnements définie en fonction : a) d'un mécanisme de base par lequel on peut tirer des enseignements de l'expérience (des environnements sains par opposition aux environnements hostiles) et b) des effets néfastes liés au fait que l'on n'a pasété en mesure de comprendre et de s'adapter (des environnements rigoureux par opposition aux environnements permissifs). En partant du principe selon lequel « l'environnement » est un concept central en géographie se pose la question de la pertinence de situer ces classifications dans une perspective géographique. Cetté etude fait valoir qu'elles peuvent en effet dynamiser les travaux afin de formuler des normes permettant d'´ etablir les bases envisageables d'un monde meilleur et de jeter un nouveí eclairage sur les enjeux géographiques autour de la problématique de l'´ equité. Mots clés : environnement, normativité, néolibéralisme, géographies de la moralité, apprentissage, ´ equité

By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realisation of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as the world — as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness.

Evidence-based practice has become an important approach to social work practice. This paper highlights some of the ethical dilemmas which may be implicated by this approach, and encourages social workers and social work researchers to carefully consider these potential quandaries.

Turkey’s journey towards one-man rule and a new political system without checks and balances turned a new corner with the disputed national referendum on 16 April 2017. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won new powers from voters, which confirmed his consistent efforts over years to transform Turkey from a secular Western democratic country into a political Islamist and authoritarian police state. Erdogan once said that democracy, for him, is not the objective but rather a tool, comparing it to a bus within a journey. “Once I get to my stop, I will get off.” Apparently, after highly controversial elections, Erdogan has arrived at his stop, and he has gotten off the democracy bus. Many scholars agree that the secular Republic of Turkey as it has been known does not exist anymore, and it is not coming back under the Erdogan dicta.

As a consequence, the West now has to deal with a political Islamist police state with a large portion of radicalised citizens. The priorities should be set to assist and help the people suffering in Turkey at the hands of Erdogan’s regime, many guilty of nothing more than not supporting the status quo. The West, when dealing with Erdogan, should seriously consider extending their support to the people suffering inside Turkey. Europe has ample leverage against Erdogan, including travel sanctions against individual members of the Turkish government, economic sanctions, refusal to sell arms, and politically pressuring the Erdogan regime. All these tools should be considered to assist the suffering Turks in the name of humanity and for the future bilateral and peaceful relationship between Turkey and Europe after Erdogan’s departure. European countries should also consider taking the allegations against the Turkish president listed in this article to the International Criminal Court at The Hague for the crimes against humanity. Europe must prioritise a sincere approach in order to neutralise threats coming from the Erdogan regime and his supporters and extend their hands to the brave citizens who did not accept becoming part of Erdogan’s dicta. While many Turkish citizens have found refuge in Europe, thousands are still being tortured, raped and even killed in Turkey. The world must find a way to stop this misery before it becomes a tragic loss of life reminiscent of the worst crimes in world history.

http://www.orient-online.com/

http://www.orient-online.com/issues/ORIENT-III/2017

The so-called Islamic State and the (slow but steady) Radicalisation of Turkey. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318066367_The_so-called_Islamic_State_and_the_slow_but_steady_Radicalisation_of_Turkey [accessed Jul 5, 2017].

> Context • The alleged dichotomy between mind and matter is pervasive. Therefore, the attempt to explain matter in terms of mind (idealism) is often considered a mirror image of that of explaining mind in terms of matter (mainstream physicalism), in the sense of being structurally equivalent despite being reversely arranged. > Problem • I argue that this is an error arising from language artifacts, for dichotomies must reside in the same level of abstraction. > Method • I show that, because matter outside mind is not an empirical observation but rather an explanatory model, the epistemic symmetry between the two is broken. Consequently, matter and mind cannot reside in the same level of abstraction. > Results • It then becomes clear that attempting to explain mind in terms of matter is epistemically more costly than attempting to explain matter in terms of mind. > Implications • The qualities of experience are suggested to be not only epistemically, but also ontologically primary. > Constructivist content • I highlight the primacy of perceptual constructs over explanatory abstraction on both epistemic and ontic levels.

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

Th e people" is such an elusive signifi er that it is tempting to drop it and replace it with one we can really get our hands on. So why don't we do it? Because this solves nothing: in a non-Cartesian setting "the people," like "equality," "justice," "freedom," and so many other terms that make up our po liti cal lexicon, have a contested meaning. Ambiguity, as Michael Oakeshott claims, is a structural and not a passing feature of the vocabulary of politics. 1 On top of all this, "the people" has been the name adopted by outcasts in modern emancipatory plots-and also invoked in countless racist, xenophobic, and authoritarian narratives-since the French Revolution. You just can't get rid of such a ubiquitous and resilient signifi er.

Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) — all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In so doing, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination or if Whitehead's controlled unfolding process actually denies a truly creative present.

This chapter is about managing sociotechnological risks. It is in the 70s that the notion of ‘high-risk’ (or ‘safety critical’) systems started to be distinguished and grouped into an independent category including industries such as the nuclear, aviation, marine, petrochemical or the railways. Any attempt such as this one to introduce this background in a few pages is necessarily restrictive, partly unfair but also a simplified account. And, there are of course many different strategies to do so. One option is to consider the field through the scientific disciplines involved, say sociology, engineering, psychology, ergonomics, management, etc. A second one, quite related to the first, is to introduce pioneers who, from different disciplinary backgrounds, produced seminal contributions used as shared references among various research communities interested in the safety of complex sociotechnological systems. A third one is to look into industry (aviation, nuclear or petrochemical) in order to illustrate and to differentiate the diversity of problems related to sociotechnological risks and how they materialise. Another option is to identify core concepts that sometimes cut across a range of disciplines, authors and industry which offers also good insights into the issues involved with sociotechnological risks. In any case, it is a very challenging task. The intention in this chapter is to combine a bit of these strategies in order to offer the reader a broad vision, and to follow editors’ guidelines specifying the following structure: first, key concepts, second, major debates and third open questions/perspectives.

This article argues that radical theory in general, and post-anarchism specifically has spent so much effort deconstructing and analyzing power that it has largely overlooked the important task of examining the constructive and prefigurative dimensions of the political alternatives coming to the fore. Drawing on the post-anarchist thought of Deleuze, Guattari, and the Zapatistas this article offers the beginnings of a corrective to this trend by outlining three strategic contributions located in their political theory and practice: (1) a multi-centered strategy of political diagnosis, (2) a prefigurative strategy of political transformation, and (3) a participatory strategy of organizing institutions.

Preface/Introduction

The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself.

What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only).

I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism.

Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.)

“Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In con-trast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones are assumed to do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness.

As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imagi-nary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210)

Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers).

I am very grateful to Huping Hu, editor, for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries.

References

Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Hu-man Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP.

Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Gregory M. Nixon
University of Northern British Columbia
Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

Context: Constructivist epistemology is not a doctrinal set of clear and consistent theses and assumptions but a movement full of tensions, with minimally integrated lines of discussions. Problem: This situation explains why it is so difficult to come up with a general definition of constructivist epistemology that could serve as a starting point to study its several research programs systematically and comparatively. Method: We compare the constructivist epistemologies of Jean Piaget, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Humberto Maturana, and Niklas Luhmann regarding tensions between knowledge/reality and individual/society. Results: Our comparison leads to a general definition of constructivist epistemology as a heterogeneous movement problematizing certain dualities - such as subject/object, knowledge/reality, or individual/society - that have been shown to be central for epistemological inquiry. We argue that such dualisms can be used as dimensions for critical analysis, comparison, and discussion among the different research programs, and that, at the same time, they would allow us to analyze the general strategies characterizing such programs. The comparative and critical analysis of the programs by way of the aforementioned tensions results in an organized presentation highlighting their convergences, divergences, and singularities.

Abstract

Defining NGO organisational effectiveness
in Indonesia:  an unfolding journey

This paper summarizes a two-year field study aimed at discovering how Indonesian NGO managers perceived, interpreted and implemented constructs of organisational effectiveness (OE) in their workplace. The findings--reflecting emerging trends within Indonesian civil society during a period closely following intense domestic violence and unrest, and growing distrust of Western policies and practices within Indonesia-- were compared with the more established views of OE conceptualized by Western for-profit (FPO) and not-for-profit (NPO) organisations.

The research indicated a bifurcated view of effectiveness with two-thirds of NGO managers interpreting OE that were similar to their western counterparts. However, another third of the responses held radical views on management that focused on ideology, desire for political agitation and endorsement of elusive, nonhierarchical organisational structures of a utopian nature. These alternative, politicized, ideological conceptions reflect Indonesia’s larger political and social concerns and are affecting the work of local NGOs in their communities.


KEYWORDS: 
Indonesian NGOs
Organisational effectiveness
Radical management
NGO management

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I chapter is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural proto-language learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion, narrative, and in-tersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and object — of self and world — the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being.

Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyn-cratic conceptualizations of the individual. Awareness in itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of crea-tive unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power — and enormous responsibility — of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, and future of conscious experience will have to be made.

Design thinking is not thinking about design, but rather a re-focus on the way we think, about the world in general, and in this cybernetic process the real self can be brought into being. Gramma/topology is the social structuration of a theory-as-ontology framework with the ability to function as a design educational model that could enrich the teaching and learning of design in all its diverse applications. To paraphrase and deconstruct Derrida, I shall call this model gramma/topology; since such a peculiar field-of-knowing does not exist, in any particular form, before the model is used, no one can say with certainty what the outcome would be, but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance for both designer-Dasein and design-Dasein.

In what follows, I suggest that, against most theories of time, there really is an actual present, a now, but that such an eternal moment cannot be found before or after time. It may even be semantically incoherent to say that such an eternal present exists since “it” is changeless and formless (presumably a dynamic chaos without location or duration) yet with creative potential. Such a field of near-infinite potential energy could have had no beginning and will have no end, yet within it stirs the desire to experience that brings forth singularities, like the one that exploded into the Big Bang (experiencing itself through relative and relational spacetime). From the perspective of the eternal now of near-infinite possibilities (if such a sentence can be semantically parsed at all), there is only the timeless creative present, so the Big Bang did not happen some 13 billion years ago. Inasmuch as there is neither time past nor time future nor any time at all at the null point of forever, we must understand the Big Bang (and all other events) as taking place right here and now. In terms of the eternal now, the beginning is happening now and we just appeared (and are always just appearing) to witness it. The rest is all conscious construction; time and experience are so entangled, they need each other to exist.

Es ist rasch zum Lehrbuch-Wissen geworden: „Medien konstruieren Wirklichkeit“. Doch was heißt das? Taten sie dies immer schon? Oder tun sie es immer mehr? Oder gar beides? Von welcher Ebene reden wir? Meint Wirklichkeitskonstruktion einen erkenntnistheoretischen Sachverhalt oder eine bewusste Strategie? Ist es so, dass wir (die Journalisten wie die Rezipienten) gar nicht nicht konstruieren können, oder kann man sich doch für oder gegen die Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit entscheiden?
Wiederveröffentlicht online: https://www.mediamanual.at/mediamanual/themen/pdf/diverse/40_Weber.pdf

Context: In the literature concerning the theory of social systems, interest in epistemological and ontological questions has increased in recent years. The controversies regarding a realist vs. constructivist interpretation of Luhmann’s theory, as well as the concept of many realities that correspond to many ontologies, deserve attention. Problem: The paper discusses interrelated ontological and epistemological problems in Luhmann’s systems theory, such as ontology and de-ontologization, realism vs. constructivism, contingency and its limits and one vs. many realities. Method: The paper proposes an interpretation, according to which systems theory is based on an epistemology - radical operative constructivism. Results: Luhmann is not a realist. The last word belongs to radical operative constructivism, and naïve realism with reference to social systems has only a preliminary, methodological significance. However, taking a position in the dispute between realism and constructivism inevitably involves an ontological “vocabulary,” that is, usage of the reality/construction distinction. Furthermore, operative constructivism formulates the necessary conditions of the possibility of cognition, which limit the contingency of the theory and constitute one reality that is a construction of systems theory. Luhmann rejects ontology, but he does not renounce epistemology, and consequently the project of de-ontologization remains incomplete. Implications: The paper offers a new, coherent interpretation of ontological and epistemological questions in Luhmann’s theory, and also throws light on some problems of radical constructivism in general, such as the ontological implications of epistemology or the constructivist self-reference of theories. Key words: Radical operative constructivism, social systems, Luhmann, ontology, reality, contingency.

> Context • The relationship between design and science has shifted over recent decades. One bridge between the two is cybernetics, which offers perspectives on both in terms of their practice. From around 1980 onwards, drawing on ideas from cybernetics, Glanville has suggested that rather than apply science to design, it makes more sense to understand science as a form of design activity, reversing the more usual hierarchy between the two. I return to review this argument here, in the context of recent discussions in this journal regarding second-order science (SOS). > problem • Despite numerous connections to practice, second-order cybernetics (SOC) has tended to be associated with theory. As a result, SOC is perceived as separate to the more tangible aspects of earlier cybernetics in a way that obscures both the continuity between the two and also current opportunities for developing the field. > Method • I review Glanville's understanding of design, and particularly his account of scientific research as a design-like activity, placing this within the context of the shifting relation between science and design during the development of SOC, with reference to the work of Rittel and Feyerabend. Through this, I summarise significant parallels and overlaps between SOC and the contemporary concerns of design research. > results • I suggest that we can see design research not just as a field influenced by cybernetics but as a form of SOC practice even where cybernetics is not explicitly referenced. > implications • Given this, design research offers much to cybernetics as an important example of SOC that is both outward looking and practice based. As such, it bridges the gap between SOC and the more tangible legacy of earlier cybernetics, while also suggesting connections to contemporary concerns in this journal with SOS in terms of researching research. > Constructivist content • By suggesting that we see design research as an example of SOC, I develop connections between constructivism and practice.

> Context • Philosophical and – more recently – empirical approaches to the study of mind have recognized the research into lived experience as crucial for the understanding of their subject matter. Such research is faced with self-referentiality: every attempt at examining the experience seems to change the experience in question. This so-called "excavation fallacy" has been taken by many to undermine the possibility of first-person inquiry as a form of scientific practice. > Problem • What is the epistemic character and value of reflectively acquired phenomenological data? Can the study of experience, despite the excavation fallacy, rely on the act of reflection on lived experience and make sense and use of its results? > Method • Through a philosophical discourse, informed by empirical first-person inquiry, we explore the experiential structure of the act of reflection and the formation of the corresponding belief about past experience. > Results • We present a provisional first-person model of the experiential dynamics of retrospective reflection, in which the reflective act is characterized as enaction of belief about past experience that co-determines – rather than distorts – its results. From a constructivist perspective on the inevitable interdependence between the act of observing and the observed, the excavation "fallacy" is recognized as an intrinsic characteristic of reflection. Reflection is described as an iterative, self-referential process, guided by a context-and subject-specific horizon of expectations. > Implications • Knowing the characteristics of the formation of beliefs about experience is essential for understanding first-person data and for the possibility of their acquisition and use in scientific practice, particularly in the context of second-person approaches to the study of experience. > Constructivist content • We relate the proposed understanding of reflection to constructivist epistemology and argue that constructivism provides an epistemological foundation for the empirical study of experience more suitable than the traditional epistemological objectivism of cognitive science. We suggest that the constructive nature of the process of reflection calls for a collaboration between the fields of constructivism, phenomenology, and first-person research, and points towards the potential for their mutual enrichment. >

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo caracterizar al “constructivismo operativo” del sociólogo alemán Niklas Luhmann a partir de una caracterización relacional con dos corrientes del constructivismo epistemológico: el de inspiración piagetiana y el constructivismo radical. Se proponen tres ejes para la presentación de cada uno de los tres programas: la caracterización del rol activo del sujeto epistémico; el problema del status del conocimiento y su relación con la realidad; y el problema del origen del significado conceptual y la relación individuo- sociedad. Sobre la base de estas caracterizaciones se evalúa en qué aspectos el programa cons- tructivista de Luhmann diverge o converge con las otras dos corrientes de constructivismo epistemológico.

Morris's Arc (1988) for String Quartet flows; it flows with substance, and with purpose. By flowing, I don’t just mean in the trivial sense that all music flows because it is unfolding in time and time flows. Rather I mean that there is continuity to its various surges of eventfulness; these surges are not disjunct or sudden. And by substance I mean both that its sound is as a sensuous fluid material and that the unfolding of its constituent events presents a coherent organization, thus binding together into a statement that seems meaningful in retrospect. By purpose I mean not only that there is a local logic to the consequence of one note following another, but also that the flow of events enables the material to organize into processes that forge a trajectory toward a goal.
    The analysis first focuses on local details considered in terms of pitch and pitch-class formations as arising from twelve-tone rows; then it delves into aspects of form, process, and texture. These are considered in terms of emergent properties in flux. The modeling of these properties and their flux employs some mathematical formalisms, but the reader can rely on the fact that every mathematical definition and formula is described carefully in prose as well.
    In Arc, the twelve-tone pitch class details and the surging emergent qualities projecting form are not completely separate from each other. Rather, all these features interact. Thus not only does the article weave together connections between such facets as form, process, and texture, but it also connects these to the twelve-tone rows and pitch-class configurations that are more straightforwardly part of the compositional plan (and more usual in analyses) of Morris’s music.

[Download the pdf below, or contact the author jmailman@alumni.uchicago.edu, for a digital offprint. It can also accessed through JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/10.7757/persnewmusi.52.2.0249 ]

To develop a sociology of the international, it is common in international relations (IR) to use a notion of inter-subjectivity defined as the space ''in-between'' individual actors. This approach is based on a parts ⁄ whole systems theory where common norms and values inscribed in international law not only create a ''world society'' but also provide for its social cohesion. Rooted in a parts ⁄ whole distinction, the very term of inter-subjectivity takes on a rather positivist meaning as the social quality of the international is then ''measurable'' and possibly even falsifiable by observing states' behavior. In the end, the inter-subjective quality of rules and norms is then ultimately reduced to the individual level. This article proposes a different avenue that breaks with the parts ⁄ whole distinction to emphasize the connectivity of communications. From this perspective, the notion of inter-subjectivity appears to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution and is thus replaced by the distinction between system and environment. The changing contours of international law are then decoupled from states' interests to emphasize the ''relative autonomy'' of the legal discourse as represented in its shifting paradox and programs.

Cognitive science increasingly strives to avoid the gratuitous assumption that minds ‘represent’ a world. For Anthony Chemero, a radical and embodied approach hypothesises that agent-environment interactions ground all cognitive powers. Pursuing this bold view, the paper shows how Agent-Based-Modelling (ABM) can clarify how cultural resources (e.g. sound patterns) enable flexible adaptive behavior. They grant communities modes of action that arise as bodies sensitise to coordinated behavior (e.g. how /a/ is spoken).

Using ABM, Stanford and Kenny (2013) examine pronunciation shifts. They show how future changes can be prefigured in simple child-agents: this pinpoints the premature theorization that all too often bedevils the human sciences. Given significant differences in how /a/ is pronounced, many mistakenly conclude that there must be an ‘underlying’ (neural) mechanism. They ignore the diachronic nature of human cognition–much depends on history. Those who immediately posit inner mechanisms stumble into the e bar (∌) fallacy: they assume that an intervening variable (or system) must explain any significant difference.  ABM is thus a deflationary weapon to investigate cognition beyond the brain. Pursuing the positive agenda, I echo Robert Rosen in stressing that biological encoding is creative: models can show how social norms empower diachronic systems. While based in embrained bodies, humans depend on ascribing sense to events in cognitive cultural ecosystems.  As living beings, persons use artifacts, institutions and the said –they exploit impersonal resources. A major advantage of ABM is that it can be used to model how such resources enrich body-based cognition.

Este artículo hace una presentación de la “sociocibernética” —el estudio de los fenómenos y problemas sociales como sistemas— como un campo donde se registran tensiones entre diferentes corrientes y programas, tanto de la sociología como de las ciencias de sistemas y de la complejidad. El trabajo consta de 3 partes: en la primera se introducen los antecedentes y orígenes de la sociocibernética; en la segunda se presentan dos programas sociocibernéticos particulares —la Teoría de los Sistemas Complejos (TSC) de Rolando García y la Teoría de los Sistemas Sociales (TSS) de Niklas Luhmann—; en el tercer apartado se discuten algunas convergencias y divergencias del sentido que adquiere la complejidad en este enfoque y estos programas con respecto a las “ciencias de la complejidad”.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which cybernetics leads to distinctiveways of acting.

Design/methodology/approach
– Paralleling von Foerster’s argument that it makes more sense to speak of the cybernetics of epistemology than the epistemology of cybernetics, the author argues that cybernetics is not one form of practice amongst others but an account of what it is to practice, understood as where we relate how we act to how we understand so that each informs the other. The author explores the potential difference that adopting this understanding of practice makes in practice and shows its significance by establishing connections between the eponymous cybernetic example of steering and questions regarding teleology in ethics.

Findings
– While all practice is cybernetic in the sense of involving a relationship between understanding and acting, the relationship between cybernetics and practice is not a neutral one. Understanding practice in cybernetic terms enables us to pursue goods internal to the practice, which, in turn, makes a difference to how we act.

Practical implications
– The author argues that how we understand the relation between our understanding and our acting (our theories of theory and practice) leads to significant differences of action in practice.

Originality/value
– The author argues that cybernetics has non-neutral, and ethically significant, consequences in practice that are beyond the application of cybernetics to practice or the advantages of adopting explicitly conversational ways of acting.

Resumen: Se comienza con una referencia a la teoría clásica del conocimiento y se explica cómo ésta termina afirmando que es imposible comprobar la trascendencia del conocimiento. La cosa en sí -la realidad- se presenta entonces como inaccesible para el sujeto cognoscente. En este sentido el constructivismo representa una teoría epistemológica capaz de operar con este mundo que permanece inalcanzable; concentrándonos en el constructivismo radical (de corte biológico y de corte social). Siguiendo la tesis de que “hay conocimiento de la realidad, precisamente porque no hay conocimiento de la realidad”, nos dedicamos a exponer la evolución de la filosofía de la ciencia y exponemos, de manera general, cómo ciertos paradigmas científicos pueden se convierten en visiones cosmológicas. Posteriormente, se dedica un apartado a exponer los principales elementos de la teoría de sistemas: desde sus inicios en el campo de la biología, pasando por la teoría de la autopoiesis de Humberto Maturana y Francisco Varela, así como su tránsito a sociología con Talcott Parsons y posteriormente con Niklas Luhmann. Analizamos los conceptos que consideramos centrales para la comprensión del derecho bajo una visión sistémico-autopoiética. Nos concentramos en problemas relacionados con la clausura operativa; la distinción código/programa; el derecho como generalización coherente de expectativas normativas bajo el contexto del teorema de la doble contingencia; el problema de la justicia; así como las formas de autoobservación y autodescripción del derecho. Llegados a esto, se nos presenta la oportunidad de tratar la teoría del derecho como una autodescripción, por lo que ofrecemos la distinción constructivismo/realismo-metafísico como una forma de aproximación teórica a la unidad del derecho. Volviendo a las limitaciones reconocidas por la teoría clásica del conocimiento, entendemos que no puede decirse objetivamente que ciertas teorías sean mejores que otras sí podemos reconocer que en el discurso interno de la epistemología es imposible demostrar la trascendencia del conocimiento y por tanto decidimos trabajar con esa clausura, con lo cual la teoría jurídica queda imposibilitada para utilizar fuentes jurídicas externas al derecho mismo: por ejemplo, principios o máximas universales. Así, entonces, proponemos adoptar la postura de que “sólo es derecho lo que el derecho designa como derecho”.  Se invita al lector, pues, a probar, este punto de vista.

Palabras clave: Constructivismo radical; paradigmas científicos; autopoiesis; teoría de sistemas sociales; teoría del derecho.

Recent developments in the theory and methods of cognitive science are enabling educational researchers to evaluate empirically the historical thesis that mathematical concepts are grounded in sensorimotor activity. My presentation will survey results from several recent design-research studies that have used eye-tracking techniques to capture the moment at which a student first sees the world in a new way. For the student, this spontaneous perceptual construction serves as a handy solution for coordinating the control of an interactive system. In turn, through cultural mediation this construction evolves into a new way of reasoning that becomes a mathematical concept. I will speculate on implications for educational technology.

In this chapter it is my intent to draw upon a post-epistemological view of knowledge so as to reinscribe the discipline of mathematics in such a way that a more socially just manner of teaching can be recognized and embraced. Taking mathematical knowledge as constructed—fabricated—ways of knowing and thinking redefines the positionality of the teacher in relation to the learner, and the learner to others. The resulting need for the other, an ethical imperative, is established. Understanding knowledge differently, acknowledging this need for the other, and recognizing the emergence of a more just expectation for interaction—in particular educational interaction, provides the ethical dimension to this work....
From the strong position that takes knowledge as constructed and thus embracing a new politics of truth, I shape a four-pronged orientation to teaching mathematics for social justice. Then I consider the work of teaching in order to devise a pragmatic framework through which to enact a mathematical education for social justice. The chapter closes with a return to the post-epistemological view of knowledge in order to emphasize the ways that such an orientation creates a more socially just mathematics education.

In our understanding of constructivism, ethics is unavoidable because people are always embedded in ethical perspectives that infuse everything they do. ‘Anything goes’ is never an option, even if what goes varies by person. After distinguishing three versions of constructivist theory, we briefly summarize and counter various criticisms that portray constructivism as endorsing an ‘anything goes’ relativism. Then we outline a constructivist model of ethical meaning-making.

International law has changed significantly since the end of the Cold War. As long as the international was thought to be populated by sovereign states predominantly, international law was conceived of as a means for peaceful dispute settlement. That is: the reference to state sovereignty not only divided public from private international law, but structured most of public international law itself; from the very definition of and associated rights and duties to the attribution of responsibility. With the emergence of the post-national constellation, a reduction of law to questions of states' practices is increasingly problematic. At the same time, the post-national constellation denotes more than just a structural shift in the world polity. It challenges established dogmas rooted in an individualistic philosophy of science and thereby calls for a different understanding of how the world is (made) known. What uncertainty has to offer is the provision of a different vocabulary detached from the state through which we can reconsider some changes in international law.

In this article an epistemological framework is proposed in order to integrate the emergentist thought with systemic studies on biological autonomy, which are focused on the role of organization. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the observer's activity, especially: (a) the different operations he performs in order to identify the pertinent elements at each descriptive level, and (b) the relationships between the different models he builds from them. According to the approach sustained here, organization will be considered as the result of a specific operation of identification of the relational properties of the functional components of a system, which do not necessarily coincide with the intrinsic properties of its structural constituents. Also, an epistemological notion of emergence-that of "complex emergence"-will be introduced, which can be defined as the insufficiency, even in principle, of a single descriptive modality to provide a complete description of certain classes of systems. This integrative framework will allow us to deal with two issues in biological and emergentist studies: (1) distinguishing the autonomy proper of living systems from some physical processes like those of structural stability and pattern generation, and (2) reconsidering the notion of downward causation not as a direct or indirect influence of the whole on its parts, but instead as an epistemological problem of interaction between descriptive domains in which the concept of organization proposed and the observational operations related to it play a crucial role.

Some misconceptions about language and communication are pointed out as part of the rationalist language myth, and the need for naturalizing language is emphasized. The crucial importance of the concept of languaging as a consensual domain of interactions, in which the signifying function of linguistic signs arises, is discussed. It is argued that the ease of language acquisition by infants stems from the intrinsic indexicality of linguistic signs – their perceptual groundedness in the first-order consensual domain. As indices, linguistic signs cue human understanding with regard to the diverse aspects of the context of dialogical interactions. It is shown how approaching grammar as a perceptually grounded semiotic mechanism that underlies languaging facilitates instructed foreign language acquisition, dispelling the myth about language complexity.

The notions of knowledge and belief play an important role in philosophy. Unfortunately, the literature is not very consistent about defining these notions. Is belief more fundamental than knowledge or the other way around? Many accounts rely on the widely accepted strategy of appealing to the intuition of the reader. Such an argumentative methodology is fundamentally flawed as it lets the problems of common sense reasoning in through the front door. Instead, I suggest that philosophical arguments should be based on formal-computational models to (a) reduce the ambiguities and uncertainties that come with intuitive arguments and reasoning, and (b) capture the dynamic nature of many philosophical concepts. I present a model of knowledge and belief that lends itself to being implemented on computers. Its purpose is to resolve terminological confusion in favor of a more transparent account. The position I defend is an anti-realist naturalized one: knowledge is best conceived as arising from experience, and is fundamental to belief.

In this article we provide an epistemological analysis of three uses of the concept of contingency in biology. On the basis of this analysis we propose a heuristic solution to the issue of contingency versus determinism in the domain of studies on the origin of life, which makes it possible to approach this problem from a scientific point of view rather than by recurring to belief.

This article presents a case study of a seven-year-old girl named Amanda who participated in an eighteen-week teaching experiment I conducted in order to model the development of her intuitive and informal topological ideas. I designed a new dynamic geometry environment that I used in each of the episodes of the teaching experiment to elicit these conceptions and further support their development. As the study progressed, I found that Amanda developed significant and authentic forms of geometric reasoning. It is these newly identified forms of reasoning, which I refer to as "qualitative geometry," that have implications for the teaching and learning of geometry and for research into students' mathematical reasoning.

Josef Mitterer behauptet in seinem Vorwort zur Neuauflage des Buchs " Geschichten und Diskurse " vom Haupt-Proponenten des Konstruktivismus in Deutschland, von Siegfried J. Schmidt, dass sich der (Radikale) Konstruktivismus in der akademischen Philosophie nicht durchgesetzt habe, weil diese immer Neuem gegenüber Vorbehalte zeige (vgl. Mitterer 2017, S. 2 ff.). Hier soll eine andere Auffassung vertreten werden: Der Konstruktivismus, insbesondere der Radikale Konstruktivismus, ist so stark von Widersprüchen durchzogen, dass es wohl eher ein Gebot der akademischen Höflichkeit war, von einer ernsthaften Auseinandersetzung bislang abzusehen. Aus ‚pragmatischem' Grund entschied sich die akademische Philosophie für Schweigen. Die Widersprüche sollen in diesem Paper anhand von vier Beispielen herausgearbeitet werden.

> Context • The late Ernst von Glasersfeld humbly claimed that he was not a therapist and therefore had no comment on the relevance of his radical constructivism for psychotherapy.
> Problem • Because the constructivist view of psychotherapeutic
change is often overlooked, this paper in von Glasersfeld’s memory uses his constructivist theory to conceptualize how such change occurs.
> Method • By briefly outlining the radical constructivist position and examining its theoretical implications for psychotherapy, the significance of von Glasersfeld’s theorizing for understanding therapeutic change is articulated.
> Results • A constructivist view of psychotherapeutic change emphasizes relational factors rather than the rote steps of an empirically supported treatment approach. While client-therapist interactions never instruct clients how to change, the therapeutic relationship is the mechanism by which client systems are disrupted and compelled to reorganize in new ways.
> Implications • Von Glasersfeld’s constructivism implies that therapy is a structured way of generating client change. Because all clients are closed systems, therapy is different with every client. Von Glasersfeld’s theory provides a basis for conceptualizing therapy in relational, rather than empirically supported treatment, terms.

Basado en la aplicación del método funcional, utilizado en la arquitectura de la teoría de sistemas sociales (Luhmann), se presenta una alternativa al método funcionalista causal. Se traza una distinción (Spencer-Brown) y con ello se identifica un punto de referencia. Se parte de la discusión clásica sobre la relación entre el derecho y la moral, como eje para trasladar el problema hacia una un trasfondo particular: ya sea desde la complejidad o desde el orden. En primer lugar, la visión del orden observa la naturaleza como una serie causal de hechos que tienen como base una realidad objetiva, externa al sujeto, lo cual posibilita una comprensión de los fenómenos naturales de manera analítica, y permite, en el caso del Derecho, una referencia a un sustrato extrajurídico (de orden divino, natural o cósmico). En segundo lugar, la perspectiva de la complejidad entiende la naturaleza como excedente de posibilidades de selección: no priman, aquí, las esencias de las cosas sino el acto mismo de entender algo como una cosa. En este punto, recurrimos a la distinción sistema/entorno la cual tomamos como “distinción directriz”: el entorno es entendido como condición de posibilidad del sistema, pero sin formar parte de este; el sistema crea un orden propio -rompe la correlación punto-por- punto con su entorno-. En suma, la sociedad es entendida como un sistema social, cuyo elemento primordial es la comunicación(autopoiesis/sociopoiesis) y cuyo entorno lo constituyen las personas (sistemas psíquicos). Así, el sistema jurídico es observado, también, como un sistema sociopoiético (Arnold-Cathalifaud) que produce su propio sentido –distinto al sentido que producen otros sistemas sociales, por ejemplo, la economía, la ciencia o la religión–, y que cumple, además, una función social: mantener expectativas de conducta aun y cuando estas se defrauden. Por otro lado, en el ámbito de la la teoría jurídica entendemos que la moral tiene, en sí, una función que desempeñar: la necesidad de asegurar que el derecho se subordine a estándares mínimos de justicia (que muestre a sí mismo y frente a la sociedad, como justo); tomamos este valor y lo generalizarlo transversalmente a todos los sistemas sociales para obtener la fórmula de los Derechos Humanos: la inclusión jurídica y social de personas. A lo anterior, sumamos una problematización de las normas morales como obstáculo a la inclusión en situaciones complejas y de diversidad social. Finalmente, desde una perspectiva posmoderna, resaltamos la importancia de la pluralidad en una sociedad democrática donde coexisten valores y creencias multiculturales y heterogéneas.

Este texto tiene su origen en la lectura de una breve recensión, escrita por el profesor John Searle (2011), acerca del libro de Paul Boghossian, El miedo al conocimiento (Madrid, Alianza, 2009). Si este último se esfuerza en su libro por desmontar las tesis relativistas, Searle traza apenas unas pinceladas en muy pocas páginas mostrando su apoyo a los argumentos de Boghossian y reforzando con nuevos argumentos aquellos aspectos en que lo encuentra deficitario. Mi lectura inicial de Searle se llenó rápidamente de signos de admiración, comentarios al margen y tachaduras, y me animó, no sé si en buena hora, a escribir esta extensa respuesta. Siguiendo el orden del texto inicial, iré tratando de argumentar en contra de sus afirmaciones y poniendo en evidencia algunos supuestos que en su discurso son necesarios, pero que no podemos aceptar desde posiciones construccionistas. La disputa se resolverá necesariamente en tablas.