Foundations Issn 1782-348X

Volume 3, Number 2 March 2008 CONSTRUCTIVIST FOUNDATIONS ISSN 1782-348X Target Article B Ernst von Glasersfeld Who Conceives of Society? With commentaries by Arne Kjellman · Siegfried J. Schmidt · Marco Bettoni · Jean-Louis Le Moigne · Reuben Hersh · Dewey Dykstra · Leslie Steffe · Vincent Kenny · Karl H. Müller · Peter Meyer · Andreas Quale · Jonathan D. Raskin · Leon R. Tsvasman · Niels Birbaumer · Martin V. Butz · Ezequiel Di Paolo · Klaus Krippendorff · Sal Restivo · Dirk Baecker · Christian Fuchs · Kenneth J. Gergen B Humberto R. Maturana The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence Book Reviews B Evelyne Andreewsky & Robert Delorme (eds.) Seconde cybernétique et complexité: Rencontres avec Heinz von Foerster, reviewed by Frédéric Erpicum B Evan Thompson – Mind in life. Phenomenology, and the sciences of mind, reviewed by Kevin McGee Advisory Board DESCRIPTION William Clancey Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an independent academic peer-reviewed e-journal NASA Ames Research Center, USA without commercial interests. Its aim is to promote scientific foundations and applications Ranulph Glanville of constructivist sciences, to weed out pseudoscientific claims and to base constructivist CybernEthics Research, UK sciences on sound scientific foundations, which do not equal the scientific method with Ernst von Glasersfeld objectivist claims. The journal is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of all forms of University of Massachusetts, USA constructivist sciences, especially radical constructivism, biology of cognition, Vincent Kenny cybersemiotics, enactive cognitive science, epistemic structuring of experience, non- Accademia Costruttivista di dualism, second order cybernetics, the theory of autopoietic systems, etc. Terapia Sistemica, Italy Klaus Krippendorff University of Pennsylvania, USA AIM AND SCOPE Humberto Maturana Institute Matríztica, Chile The basic motivation behind the journal is to make peer-reviewed constructivist papers Josef Mitterer available to the academic audience free of charge. The constructive character of the University of Klagenfurt, Austria journal refers to the fact that the journal publishes actual work in constructivist sciences Karl Müller rather than work that argues for the importance or need for constructivism. The journal Wisdom, Austria is open to (provocative) new ideas that fall within the scope of constructivist approaches Bernhard Pörksen and encourages critical academic submissions to help sharpen the position of University of Hamburg, Germany constructivist sciences. The common denominator of constructivist approaches can be Gebhard Rusch summarized as follows. University of Siegen, Germany • Constructivist approaches question the Cartesian separation between objective world Siegfried J. Schmidt and subjective experience; University of Münster, Germany • Consequently, they demand the inclusion of the observer in scientific explanations; Bernard Scott • Representationalism is rejected; knowledge is a system-related cognitive process Cranfield University, UK rather than a mapping of an objective world onto subjective cognitive structures; Sverre Sjölander • According to constructivist approaches, it is futile to claim that knowledge Linköping University, Sweden approaches reality; reality is brought forth by the subject rather than passively Stuart Umpleby received; George Washington University, USA • Constructivist approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is Terry Winograd considered beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained from; Stanford University, USA • Therefore, the focus of research moves from the world that consists of matter to the Editor-In-Chief world that consists of what matters; • Constructivist approaches focus on self-referential and organizationally closed Alexander Riegler systems; such systems strive for control over their inputs rather than their outputs; Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium • With regard to scientific explanations, constructivist approaches favor a process- Editorial Board oriented approach rather than a substance-based perspective, e.g., living systems are defined by processes whereby they constitute and maintain their own organization; Pille Bunnell • Constructivist approaches emphasize the “individual as personal scientist” approach; Royal Roads University, Canada sociality is defined as accommodating within the framework of social interaction; Olaf Diettrich • Finally, constructivist approaches ask for an open and less dogmatic approach to Center Leo Apostel, Belgium science in order to generate the flexibility that is needed to cope with today’s scientific Dewey Dykstra frontier. Boise State University, USA Stefano Franchi For more information visit the journal’s website University of Auckland, New Zealand http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal Timo Honkela Helsinki Univ. of Technology, Finland Theo Hug SUBMISSIONS University of Innsbruck, Austria Urban Kordes Language: Papers must be written in English. If English is a foreign language for you Institut Jozef Stefan, Slovenia please let the text be proofread by an English native speaker. Albert Müller Copyright: With the exception of reprints of “classical” articles, all papers are “original University of Vienna, Austria work,” i.e., they must not have been published elsewhere before nor must they be the Herbert F. J. Müller revised version (changes amount to less than 25% of the original) of a published McGill University, Montreal, Canada work. However, the copyright remains with the author and is licensed under a Markus Peschl Creative Commons License. University of Vienna, Austria Author’s Guidelines: Before submission, please consult the guidelines at Bernd Porr http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/guidelines.pdf University of Glasgow, UK John Stewart Submissions are continuously received Univ. de Technologie de Compiègne, France Send all material to Alexander Riegler, [email protected] Wolfgang Winter Univ. of Cooperative Education, Germany Tom Ziemke Cover Art: Untitled (stacked) 2004, 19 × 8 inches, waterbased paint on rag, mounted on University of Skövde, Sweden wood. With kind permission of the artist, Anne Seidman, http://anneseidman.com cognitive-psychological radical constructivism CONCEPTS Target Article Who Conceives of Society? Ernst von Glasersfeld A University of Massachusetts <[email protected]> The problem with the relation that we call R 6 Problem – How can constructivists speak of social interaction or communication with “reference” becomes particularly transparent others, when, as they claim, their experiential world is their own construction? This ques- in the case of caricatures. The kind of carica- tion is frequently asked and is perfectly reasonable. The present paper is intended as an ture I have in mind is a spare drawing showing R answer. Solution – After providing an outline of the constructivist approach to percep- a few lines, each of which seems indispensable. tion and the generation of recognizable objects in the experiential field, I argue that “oth- The drawing evokes the re-presentation of a ers,” too, can be explained as an individual’s creation; a creation, however, that is just as face or a figure that we recognize at once as constrained by the condition of viability as are the physical objects with which we furnish familiar. The remarkable feature is that the our world. Consequently, “society” too can be considered an individual construct rather lines of the drawing do not represent at all R than an ontological given. Benefits – The exposition may help to clarify the construc- what we would see if the person stood before tivist position with regard to social interaction and communication. us. The lines constitute a crafty simplification R Key words – Sociology, linguistic communication, conceptual analysis. of the perceivable. In other words, they are a graphic embodiment, for example, traces of how-it-was, it cannot be denied that this graphite on a sheet of paper that afford us the 1. The creation of thing actually happened.’ (p. 86). Since we possibility of interpreting them as something patterns have photography, ‘the past is as certain as that we have already experienced, even though the present’ (1985, p. 97)” (Schmidt 1996, we have never actually seen this simple pattern 1 If you examine how the notion arose that p. 171, my translation from the German of lines. our image of the world is the representation text). 7 But what are these lines, in which we see of a reality that exists in itself and indepen- 4 Photographs are visual experiences. In the character of a person? One might say they dently of any observer, you will sooner or English there is the old indestructible cliché: are particles of pigment that are distinguish- later also come to question the relation “Seeing is believing.” (Sehen heißt glauben). able from a neutral background. But the mate- between a thinking subject and the society to This is not limited to photographs. Any visual rial is irrelevant. The caricature would have which he or she believes they belong. I can image will be interpreted as a representation the same effect if the lines were white on black, think of no better way to approach this prob- of something that has its own existence, thinner or thicker, or of another color. What lem than to examine how patterns arise from something that is actually there, regardless of matters is their arrangement. What caricatur- the perception of disconnected

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