Dewey,
Your suggested article beginnings reminds me of my thoughts in reading
Herbst's Co-Genetic logic. Have you heard of it? His idea is that in a
triad there is "p", "not p", and "p and not p" as the whole. Neither exist
without the other; this would be the reality. Yet, people have the
capability of abstracting this reality and so can think of the parts that
make up the whole, even though the whole cannot exists as independent
entitities.
eric
"It appears that people have formed a conception that the two possibilities
form a kind of "Aristotelian" pair, p and not p, and that these are the only
two possibilities. One could argue that this conception of things is so
prevalent due to the overwhelming realist orientation of our language. By
realism, I am thinking of statements such as: "…we postulate the objective
existence of physical reality that can be known to our minds…" (de la Torre &
Zamorano, 2001) It is not too surprising then when people immersed in realism
read a radical constructivist suggesting the idea that we cannot know by our
thinking what "physical reality" is they see what appears to them to be not
p. For them not p is solipsism. They conclude the radical constructivist is
talking about solipsism cloaked in a new jargon. Radical constructivism takes
neither of the positions offered in the "Aristotelian" pair. It is not
solipsism. It comes out of a long skeptical tradition.
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