I cannot claim to be an expert at many of the things of which Martin
speaks, but I can say without reservation that it is highly likely that von
Glasersfeld would not agree that it is in any way an adequate description
of radical constructivism to say that it focuses on "building expertise in
the ways of [a] community." (This is training and Ernst has frequently
talked about the difference between training and education, with me
personally, in many presentations and in his writing.) This "building
expertise in the ways of [a] community" statement might be a realistic
statement about trivial constructivism, the most prevalent form of
constructivism, as it is "practiced," but it is not what von Glasersfeld's
radical constructivism is about nor, I think, what he points to in Kant or
Piaget.
Of course, it makes sense that one might have such an impression of
constructivism since the majority of what one hears, sees, reads is from
educators whose constructivism is "trivial" and see their role primarily as
training their students to fit into society, as opposed to education. I do
not happen to include Paul Cobb or Jere Confrey in this group of educators.
>Both Piaget and von Glasersfeld, the two figures most often cited as the
>sources of constructivism, link their work to Kant, whose philosophy was
>notorously dualistic. Kant assumed an ontology of two realms, of the
>subject and an independent world.
The adjectives, "trivial" and "radical," for two categories of
constructivism were introduced a while back by von Glasersfeld to indicate
that what he and some others are talking about is profoundly different when
the term, "constructivism," is used. The two adjectives are not meant to
be perjorative, but descriptive, referring to the extent to which the
philosophical position on the nature of knowledge and knowing differs from
what might generally be called realism. If this distinction is not made
when refering to "constructivism," then it would be most accurate not to
invoke von Glasersfeld or Piaget for that matter, I think, as somehow
responsible for constructivism (undifferentiated).
I don't think that one can say that von Glasersfeld really includes an
ontology of an independent world, at all. The fact of the matter is that
if you look closely at what he is saying, it does not make sense in his
view that the ontology of an independent world is knowable: i.e., that our
thought (explanatory constructs) can never be known to be a veridical
description of that independent world. This is the point of *radical*
departure from realism, at the very foundations of the two views. To put
it briefly, in von Glasersfeld's radical constructivism, "construction" is
a *consequence* of this starting point, *not* the starting point itself.
In trivial constructivism, the we "construct" what is out there and at some
point we will finally get "it;" i.e. we "can" know what that independent
world really is, hence a *trivial* difference between it and realism.
Finally, I find it hard to imagine that if one looks closely at the writing
of the names "dropped" here (Cobb, Confrey, Piaget, and von Glasersfeld) or
took the opportunity to question those still living, one would really find
evidence that they really see the "epistemic subject" as having an
"unchanged existence" in *any* of its interactions.
Just contributing what I can...
Dewey
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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University dykstrad who-is-at bsumail.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper
"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938.
"Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
--E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.
"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
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