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Abstract
Is von Glasersfeld's constructivism actually radical? In this article, I respond to this question by analyzing von Glasersfeld's main works. I argue that the essential theoretical move of radical constructivism – namely the assertion that reality is the construction of a human mind that only responds to the subjective perception of ‘what fits’ – results in a conservative vision of reality, knowledge, and education. To the extent that the friction with, and the challenge of, reality is eliminated, knowledge remains only a subjective affair and the world is reduced to a living tautology. In this way, von Glasersfeld constructs a theory of ethical disengagement in which personal responsibility is de facto denied. Thus, to the extent that education entails (and, in a sense, is) responsibility, change, and comparison, radical constructivism is a theory that is unsuitable for education. I also attempt to argue that the equivalence between radical constructivism and relativism and nihilism that many support is incorrect; relativism and nihilism, indeed, stem from a strong moral stance; thus, they may be educationally promising.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the reviewers for many valuable comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The use of the term ‘head’ is very significant. Due to space constraints, I cannot discuss the absence of the body in von Glasersfeld's theory and how this absence relates to his account of knowledge; however, I believe it is clear how removing the body, namely our ‘physical’ being, from any account of knowledge is strictly functional to von Glasersfeld's argument against the existence of the physical world.
2. With respect to this point, there is also the need to recall how negative statements about the existence of something – i.e., ‘a world independent of the subject does not exist’ – are ontological statements.
3. Due to space constraints, I cannot fully discuss how von Glasersfeld's account of communication is a repetition/reduction of Dewey's theory. I wish only to note that von Glasersfeld's concept of ‘consensual domain’ is no more – and, perhaps, something less – than the question of communication framed by Dewey as ‘not just ego-centrically.’ As Dewey stated, a communication between two persons occurs such that, ‘B's understanding of A's movement and sounds is that he responds to the thing from the standpoint of A. He perceives the thing as it may function in A's experience, instead of just ego-centrically. Similarly, A in making the request conceives the thing not only in its direct relationship to himself, but as a thing capable of being grasped and handled by B. He sees the thing as it may function in B's experience. Such is the essence and import of communication, signs and meaning. Something is literally made common in at least two different centres of behavior’ (Citation1929, 178).
4. In this respect, von Glasersfeld seems to present his theory as an alternative to the whole philosophical tradition of the West (von Glasersfeld and Cobb Citation1983, 1).
5. Due to space constraints, I can only quote another example of von Glasersfeld's simplification/instrumentalization of Western thought: ‘Nearly all thinkers who have pondered problems of epistemology have explicitly or implicitly adopted the view that the activity of “knowing” begins with a cut between the cognizing subject and the object to be known. That is, they assume an existing world, an ontological reality, and once this assumption has been made, it follows necessarily that the knower will have this world as his environment and it will be his task to get to know it as best he can. Knowing, thus, becomes an act of duplicating or replicating what is supposed to be already there, outside the knower’ (von Glasersfeld and Varela Citation1987, 6). We all know that the issue of ‘ontological reality’ and the relationship between knower/knowing/reality has been a perennial question of Western thought since the work of Gorgia and since the ‘weight’ of skeptical thought have become the ‘mainstream’ of postmodern philosophy, having increased over the past two centuries starting from the work of Nietzsche. Thus, von Glasersfeld's account of Western thought seems to be an instrumentalist one, as it works as the foundation upon which to validate his theory.
6. Joldersma's critique of constructivism based on the Heideggerian question of truth as aletheia is substantial: the Heideggerian concept of truth as aletheia, namely world disclosure, is a question that, in Heidegger's understanding, underlies truth as correctness or correspondence and thus underlies von Glasersfeld's account of knowledge. At several points in his works, Heidegger argues for a different stance toward truth, a stance beyond ‘Plato's fatal relocation of truth away from concrete things themselves as they naturally show and reveal themselves in the richness of our vernaculars toward the idea of the exchange of equivalents’ ([Citation1945] 2002, 36). von Glasersfeld's work in locating knowledge away from such original openness lies within the idea ‘of the exchange of equivalents.’