KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 86 (Umpleby)

Commentary 4

"CONSTRUCTIVISM AND TOLERATION"
by David Kenneth Johnson

20 March 2006, posted 25 March 2006

<1>
Oddly enough, radical constructivism (RC), a paradox-plagued popularization of perspectivalist phenomenalism, has perhaps received its greatest attention as a theory with important implications for teaching and learning. Its founder, E. von Glasersfeld, counts among the theory's blessings "a profound change of attitude toward the process of learning and the mental operations of students," with the "most important discovery" being that the student's responses "make sense in [his or her] subjectively constructed world" ("Knowing without Metaphysics").

<2>
Of course, RC is far from unique in supposing that a student's views, whether familiar or foreign to others, often are perfectly consonant with and give important clues to the subjectively constructed worldview of that student: such, in fact, are the dictates of commonsense and sound pedagogy. Commonsense and educational effectiveness are no doubt good things, but hardly the stuff of an exciting or "radical" theory. To that end, RC's unhappy marriage of subjectivist perspectivalism ("everything we say about the world is said by someone" and related truisms) and antirealism ("I can't say anything about the world" and related solipsistic musings) weds von Glasersfeld's commonplace "discovery" to the dramatic claim that our commonsensical commitment to an observer-independent ("objective" or "naturally existing") world that contains and constrains all of our subjectively constructed wordviews is both wrongheaded and inherently intolerant.

<3>
In some constructivist circles, a certain degree of intolerance of anything remotely realist is apparently a virtue. In 1993, in our first exchange in the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing, von Glasersfeld counterposed his "questions" to my "answers," implying that a democratic and inquiring (and untruthed) constructivism compares favorably with the (intolerant and truth-seeking) dogma that is realism. At the close of the exchange, he wrote:

If you feel like answering these questions we might get closer to specifying the differences between our views, rather than continue trying to prove the other wrong ("Questions Rather Than Answers," Cybernetics and Human Knowing, vol. 1, 4).

<4>
Ought I to resist answering these questions in the name of (anti-answer, anti-truth claim) toleration ? That would be foolish: von Glasersfeld is not in principle or practice opposed to answers. Even in this instance, his long list of questions contained nearly as many declarative sentences designed to provide evidence for his view and against those, like mine, that might find fault with constructivism. The passage from von Glasersfeld continues:

From my constructivist point of view, as you know, problems always offer more than one way to find a solution.

<5>
And from mine. Every interesting intellectual problem has more than one solution path. As I wrote that very same year in the journal Radical Teacher:

Mathematical knowledge - like musical and artistic abilities - is not the property of experts but the reward for concentrated individual and collective effort. When learning is our goal, creativity is more important than quickness; doing our best to find a solution is more important than getting it; and even partial understanding is to be preferred over memorization.

<6>
And

Of course, students themselves often remain unaware of their own abilities, preferring to receive (an impossibility) rather than to create (in a quasi-constructivist fashion) mathematical understanding.

<7>
These comments were designed to exhibit my well documented sympathies for much of what von Glasersfeld (and other, essentially "trivial constructivists" (TC), to use von Glasersfeld's unfortunate phrase) says about education. My point, here and elsewhere in the literature, is simply that constructivism's radicalization is logically incompatible with these claims. Hence my suggestion, dating from this original exchange, that progressive educators everywhere reject RC in favor of CR, constructivist realism.

<8>
In sharp contrast to von Glasersfeld's often nuanced forays into the field of education, one of his admirers, Dewey Dykstra, has recently penned a meandering obloquy against something called the "elitist-realist paradigm." In Dykstra's view, "elitist-realism" emerges as a "rationally and ethically" suspect paradigm -- meaning an impenetrable Kuhnian bubble of incommensurability, of course - resting at the heart of standard instructional practices and secreting its attendant, evidently evil, notions of "truth" and "reality." Though Dyskstra does provide some welcome nudges in the direction of student-centered, exploration- and/or misconception-based classroom practices, the unseemly position Dykstra describes as "realist" is simply a position of made of straw. I am referring to his contribution to the premier issue of the newly minted Constructivist Foundations; a journal that, in its very mission statement, farcically rejects in the name of a "less dogmatic and open approach," contributions critical of radical constructivist dogma. (It is hardly surprising, then, to find this bit of cake-and-eat-it-too thinking buried in the journal's "scope and aims" section:

Constructivist approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is considered beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained from.

<9>
Whoops!

<10>
And, mimicking von Glasersfeld, Dykstra embarrassingly warns would-be critics against attempting to "prove RC wrong," rather than to "understand" it, as, apparently, none of his critics by definition ever will. Consider also H. Maturana who, despite a crippling penchant for confusing the most obvious of epistemic notions (like objective validity) for a purported feature of "the real," hopes to persuade the rest of us to reject all truth-claims on the basis of his truth-claim that each and every claim is nothing other than an illegitimate "demand for obedience":

Whenever we want to compel somebody else to do something according to our wishes, and we cannot or do not want to use brutal force, we offer what we claim is an objective rational argument. We do this under the implicit or explicit pretense that the other cannot refuse what our argument claims because its validity as such rests on its reference to the real. We also do so under the additional explicit or implicit claim that the real is universally and objectively valid because it is independent of what we do, and once it is indicated it cannot be denied ("Reality: The Search for Objectivity or the Quest for a Compelling Argument?").

<11>
In a similar fashion, Stuart Umpleby writes in TA 86:

One implication of the notion that each person constructs his or her own reality on the basis of experience is that one should not impose one's views on another person by force or coercion. Efforts to influence others should be limited to conversation and persuasion, to comparing and interpreting experiences. That is, given what we know about the biological basis of knowledge, no one is justified in believing that he or she has a correct understanding of the world and that others are wrong. Some views or theories may be superior to others in that they fit a larger range of phenomena, but no view can be shown to match "the way the world really is." Hence, even the creators of highly regarded scientific knowledge should be suitably humble about their achievements.

<12>
"One should not impose one's views on another," not because of our prior commitment to some ethical principle or other that forbids it, but because "each person constructs his or her own reality" ? Given "what we know" about the biology of cognition, "no one is justified in believing that he or she has a correct understanding" of anything ? And, the world (really) is such that "no view can be shown to match the way the world really is" ? How ought one, in the name of toleration, reply to such a dizzying barrage of non sequiturs ? (I am not, of course, assuming that Umpleby supports in fine detail each of the positions he outlines.) Acquiesce to its illogic and accept the invitation to proselytize in favor of Maturana's antinomous autopoiesis ? Take refuge in the cozy, solipsistic confines of one's paradigmatic bubble, all the while insisting that one's constructed "others" - especially those pesky "critical others" -- do the same ? Better simply to point out that RC's very radicalism tragically subverts that theory's every claim to toleration. More formally, here is the Maturanian position I reject:

(1) To claim to know S is to be intolerant toward those who do not claim to know S. (The "intolerant realist")

(2) Not to claim to know S is to be tolerant toward those who do or do not claim to know S. (The "tolerant constructivist")

<13>
The problem is that neither (1) nor (2) is at all plausible. Intolerance is not a property of just any knowledge claim, but arises in connection with claims to know some proposition S, where S is a defense or instance of intolerant behavior. Moreover, those who oppose intolerance cannot but accept as true claims that oppose intolerance. (And there are truth- and reality-claims aplenty in Maturana's missive against truth claims above.) Truth is a coefficient of toleration, notwithstanding these antirealist divigations. The case against intolerant behavior or beliefs entails identifying and attacking pro-persecution premises, not, as Maturana would have it, knowledge in general. Notice, for example, that RC's claim that all views are "equally legitimate" views is, of course, just one view among other equally legitimate views, including the intolerant view that only one view is legitimate and the realist view that many, but not all, views are legitimate. (I do not, of course, deny that I find RC - and not its defenders or their legal and moral right to believe what they wish -- an illegitimate, because self-reflexively inconsistent, epistemological view.) In this sense, RC must remain silent about the relative merits of its own view. What is worse, however, is that RC is again self-inconsistent, for the view that all views are equally legitimate requires that we do what is certainly impossible, namely, accept as equally legitimate the opposing view that not all views are equally legitimate.

<14>
A radically constructivist view of toleration founded on the wholesale rejection (pace Maturana and the quote from Umpleby) of truth, objectivity, and the real, provides no justification for persecution or intolerance, nor any check upon them. Rather, it is specific convictions or beliefs thought to be true -- in particular, the beliefs that persecution and intolerance are wrong or should be avoided -- that render us tolerant toward others and provide the theoretical space for a plurality of critical discourses. Obviously enough, in recommending CR as an antidote to RC ills, I neither deny nor consider my own position exempt from the influence of constructivism. As I wrote in the final paragraph of TA 75:

RC has proven itself to be an immensely popular doctrine. The explanation offered here is that most self-described constructivists are in fact committed only to a trivial version (and, therefore, to a constructivist version of realism), while the antirealist excesses simply go unnoticed. It is possible that still others enjoy the sense of novelty and radicalism that often accompanies the wholesale, yet flawed, rejection of tradition (in this case, traditional realist epistemology and metaphysics). Of course, trivial constructivist claims, together with the constructivist realism that substantiates those claims, are entirely compatible with the progressive focus, in educational theory, philosophy, and social life generally, on diverse perspectives, versions, and ideas of the world.

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David Kenneth Johnson