Conclusions

	AnnotationComment
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Camouqfaz8	Any re-presentation, be it of an experiential “thing” or of a program of actions or operations, requires some sensory material for its execution. That basic condition, I believe, is what confirmed Berkeley in his argument against the “existence” of abstracted general ideas, for it is indeed the case that every time we re-present to ourselves such a general idea, it turns into a particular one because its implementation requires the kind of material from which it was abstracted. This last condition could be reformulated by saying that there has to be some isomorphism between the present construct and what it is intended to reconstruct. Clearly, this isomorphism does not concern a “thing-in-itself” but precisely those aspects one wants to or happens to focus on.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/D3z4577hkq	By this I mean that, as particular users of the word become more proficient, they no longer need to actually produce the associated conceptual structures as a completely implemented re-presentation, but can simply register the occurrence of the word as a kind of “pointer” to be followed if needed at a later moment. I see this as analogous to the capability of recognizing objects on the basis of a partial perceptual construction. In the context of symbolic activities, this capability is both subtle and important.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Ndkqy9lz7e	Reflecting upon experiences is clearly not the same as having an experience.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/P55yeeak0x	No act of mental re-presentation, which in this context of conceptual analysis means neither less nor more than the re-generation of a prior experience, would be possible if the original generation of the experience had not left some mark to guide its reconstruction.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Sktb6xjmvl	Hence I suggest that, pace Berkeley, we are quite able to abstract general ideas from experience and that we do this by substituting a kind of place-holder or variable for some of the properties in the sensory complex we have abstracted from our experiences of particular things.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Vop5onvlls	Hence I suggest that, pace Berkeley, we are quite able to abstract general ideas from experience and that we do this by substituting a kind of place-holder or variable for some of the properties in the sensory complex we have abstracted from our experiences of particular things.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Y3m0svglur	In my terms this means, symbols can be associated with operations and, once the operations have become quite familiar, the symbols can be used to point to them without the need to produce an actual re-presentation of carrying them out.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Zibsapwn7j	In other words, one can be quite aware of what one is cognitively operating on, without being aware of the operations one is carrying out.
Annotationen:Abstraction, Re-Presentation, and Reflection: An Interpretation of Experience and of Piaget’s Approach/Zvvv0kffkv	Hence, from his perspective, there is no linear progression without end, but simply development of method and concepts in one discipline leading to novel conceptualization and coordination in another. The recent impact of the physics of molecules and particles on the conceptual framework of biology would seem a good example.
Annotationen:Adaptation and Viability/Ax7ozflvhm	In order to survive a particular situation or change in the environment, an organism must have the required characteristics before the situation or change in the environment occurs that makes these characteristics necessary. In other words, surviving organisms are adapted before the event and it would make no sense whatever to say that they did or could change because of the event. There simply is no causal connection between the selecting event or environmental pressure and the properties the surviving organisms have acquired at a prior time through mutation or some other accident.
Annotationen:Adaptation and Viability/Dkvqwd8cv5	From an evolutionary point of view, it would be far more consistent to say that, like mutations, novel behaviors may arise for no biological reason at all and may be perpetuated from generation to generation, provided they do not diminish the organisms’ biological viability below a critical point.
Annotationen:Adaptation and Viability/Obrmbqyrkf	If something has been found to work, it is likely to work again.
Annotationen:Adaptation and Viability/Pqhlw7iuii	Hence one may also introduce the concept of reinforcement which, in phylogeny, would remain vacuous, since the only thing that could count as reinforcement on that level (i.e., survival) is not contingent upon the organism’s modification of its behavior but upon its past and therefore immutable history of genetic variation.
Annotationen:Adaptation and Viability/Umq8ebiubf	In other words, the basic operational elements were there, but their coordination into complex operational systems cannot be ascribed to natural selection, since it is demonstrably the result of learning in a very peculiar and highly sophisticated environment.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/D4a5o8h3yn	Epistemology thus becomes the study of how the mind operates, of the ways and means it employs to construct a relatively regular world out of the flow of its experience.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Ejuf8dv6qw	Just a the environment places constraints on the living organism (biological structures) and eliminates all variants that in some way transgress the limits within which they are possible or “viable,” so the experiential world, be it that of everyday life or of the laboratory, constitutes the testing ground for our ideas (cognitive structures).
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Gv8fsjs8m9	The only aspect of that “real” world that actually enters into the realm of experience, are its constraints;
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Hu8t7ivxxd	The question is unanswerable, because no matter what we do, we can check our perceptions only by means of other perceptions, but never with the apple as it might be before we perceive it.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Jcx3h525gq	Sameness, however, as we have seen, is always relative: Objects, and experiences in general, are the “same” with respect to the properties or components that have been checked in a comparison. Hence, an experience that consists, for instance, of the elements a, b, and c, can be considered the same as an experience consisting of a, b, c, and x, as long as x is not taken into account.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Jscl4gi3cs	because the success of a key does not depend on finding a lock into which it might fit, but solely on whether or not it opens the way to the particular goal we want to reach.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Nnvl495h6o	In other words, experience as well as all objects of experience are under all circumstances the result of our ways and means of experiencing, and are necessarily structured and determined by space and time and the other categories derived from these
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Oj53uotm4g	“natural selection” does not in any positive sense select the fittest, the sturdiest, the best, or the truest, but it functions negatively, in that it simply lets go under whatever does not pass the test.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Rzvf82meai	Hence, the environment can, at best, be held responsible for extinction, but never for survival.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Siqwoam8h1	either a species fits its environment (including the other species), or it does not; i.e., it either survives, or it dies out.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Wejx8rywia	Quite generally, that means that the world which we experience is, and must be as it is, because we have put it together that way.
Annotationen:An Introduction to Radical Constructivism/Zrmagm8yfp	The products of conscious cognitive activity, therefore, always have a purpose and are, at least originally, assessed according to how well they serve that purpose.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/E4dke75vc7	The passage I quoted also indicates that there is more than one level of adaptation. On the sensorimotor level of perception and bodily action, it is avoidance of physical perturbation and the possibility of survival that matter. On the level of thought we are concerned with concepts, their connections, with theories and explanations. All these are only indirectly linked to the practice of living. On this higher level, viability is determined by the attainment of goals and the elimination of conceptual contradictions.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/Elrguxn0ti	The pattern of learning, however, is the same as in Piaget’s scheme theory, and once we impute to an organism the capability of reflecting upon its experiences, we can say that the principle of induction arises in its own thinking.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/H846yq7lyj	Without the conception of change there would be no use for the notion of causation.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/J8tzjlulb4	All my decisions to carry out specific actions are based on the expectation that they will bring about a change towards the desired goal.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/P519c13mit	The use of a cause-effect link in order to bring about a change is based on the belief that, since the cause has produced its effect in the past, it will produce it in the future.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/Sdo9pndh63	Anyway, the more sophisticated view of the reflex enabled Piaget to take the tripartite pattern of perceived situation, action, and result as the basis for what he called ‘Action Scheme’. It provided a powerful model for a form of practical learning on the sensorimotor level that was the same, in principle, for animals and humans. Studies of animal behavior had shown that even the most primitive organisms tend to move towards situations that in the past provided agreeable experiences rather than towards those that proved unpleasant or painful.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/Uox21p9i32	To believe that the future affects the present is no doubt a superstition, but to declare that purpose and goal-directed action must be discarded because they are teleological notions is no better. It shows an abysmal ignorance of the difference between empirical and metaphysical teleology.
Annotationen:Anticipation in the Constructivist Theory of Cognition/Uvkospj4ha	If you consider that in the context of the Darwinian theory of evolution, “to be adapted” means to survive by avoiding constraints, it becomes clear that, for Piaget, “to know” does not involve acquiring a picture of the world around us. Instead, it concerns the discovery of paths of action and of thought that are open to us, paths that are viable in the face of experience.
Annotationen:Aspects of Constructivism/D5l3rmx70s	Hence, when we intend to stimulate and enhance a student’s learning, we cannot afford to forget that knowledge does not exist outside a person’s mind.
Annotationen:Aspects of Constructivism/Eitjn1doih	Knowledge, then, could be treated, not as a more or less accurate representation of external things, situations, and events, but rather as a mapping of actions and conceptual operations that had proven viable in the knowing subject’s experience.
Annotationen:Aspects of Constructivism/Km2wat9pdg	At best one may observe that in a given number of situations their constructs seem to function in the same way, i.e. they seem compatible.
Annotationen:Aspects of Constructivism/Revr82oshc	Hence, no matter how one looks at it, an analysis of meanings always leads to individual experience and the social process of accommodating the links between words and chunks of that experience until the individual deems they are compatible with the usage and the linguistic and behavioral responses of others.
Annotationen:Aspects of Constructivism/Zcoxc69a3l	Hence, when Piaget speaks of interaction, this does not imply an organism that interacts with objects as they “really” are, but rather a cognitive subject that is dealing with previously constructed perceptual and conceptual structures.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/Frhb3rw86n	That is to say, no matter how hard investigators try to adapt their analyses to the “foreign” ways of children, the model they build up will always be a model constructed out of concepts that are necessarily the investigators’. Because children’s ways of thinking are never directly accessible, the investigators’ model can never be compared to a child’s thought in order to determine whether there is or is not a perfect match. The most one can hope for is that the model fits whatever observations one has made and, more importantly, that it remains viable in the face of new observations.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/I23sae3dn3	In other words, they must come to share some basic ideas on the process of education and the teaching of mathematics in particular.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/N5ujgpvawi	if one wants to generate understanding, the reasons why a student operates in a certain way are far more indicative of the student’s stage of conceptual development than whether or not these operations lead to a result that the teacher finds acceptable. Only when teachers have some notion of the conceptual structures with which students operate, can they try to intervene in ways that might lead students to change something in these conceptual structures.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/Nprpymwev6	therefore, they need first of all a plausible model of the conceptual structures with which students are operating at the time.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/Ts6m6p4c9i	In order to formulate even the most tentative model of cognitive change, educational scientists must witness the growth of mathematical knowledge in particular children and clarify and substantiate their interpretations by means of deliberate interventions. Conceptual analysis alone is simply not sufficient as a source of insight in model building. It is only on the basis of models of particular children, that a more general model can eventually be abstracted – and the models of particular children are a natural bridge between educational scientists and the teachers.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/V003cd9ksd	In adopting the new, cognitive paradigm, then, it becomes imperative that both teachers and researchers acquire some theoretical notions of how this “making sense” can be conceptualized.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/Wlmz0nwwa6	A model, then, “simulates reality”; it is a conceptual construct that is treated as though it gave an accurate picture of the real world, but has the actual function of making experimental results and other experiential elements compatible with the general assumptions that are inherent in the research program’s core.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/Wn9qz8ed09	Just as the interpretation of a piece of language is always guided by the individual interpreter’s experience and expectations, so the interpretation of what one observes is always governed by some theory one has in mind and a goal one has chosen.
Annotationen:Conceptual Models in Educational Research and Practice/Ygtpo8ulgm	Teachers, therefore, need an at least partially generalized theory and a model of the learner that is general enough to serve as a basis for the establishment of more than one individual model. Ideally, then, the teachers’ models of individual students will be instantiations of the educational scientists’ more general model of mathematics learning; and conversely, the individual models the teachers construct for individual students will be a continuous testing ground for the theoretical assumptions the scientists have incorporated in the more general model.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Dd1wdooq3z	In other words, if there are several kinds of disturbance and, consequently, several kinds of error signals, the system has to discover which of the activities in its behavioral repertoire is most likely to correct a particular error signal. On the simplest level this can be achieved only through inductive inference.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Ddnyagkamn	It allows us to proceed much as a bricklayer, who can devote all his energy and attention to the creation of a wall or an arch, without ever stopping to ask where the bricks he is using came from or how they were made. And just as the characteristics of the bricks (e.g., shape and size) make it impossible for the bricklayer to build certain structures, so the ready-made conceptual building blocks impose constraints on any future construction.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/E31cg4n600	To refer once more to the feedback model, one might say that assimilation, insofar as it adjusts sensory signals, reduces the generation of error signals. Accommodation, on the other hand, occurs only when there is a discrepancy or disturbance for which the organism does not yet have an established remedy.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Egekgp55vu	There seems to be no way around the assumption that, as far as the organism is concerned, an “object” must be a construct, actively abstracted from a number of experiences by holding on to a somewhat flexible constellation of characteristics and allowing each of them to vary within a certain range.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Ek33dv7qzk	Hence this use of an invariant scheme is by no means a manifestation of the concept of object permanence, because its invariance arises from and consists in the repetition of an activity and does not yet involve the invariance of an independent object.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Fb6tslteaz	Now, if the invariant can be used on the representational level, without an activity, it becomes like a program or a subroutine that is invariant in that it is stored somewhere in a memory from which it can be retrieved. It is this change of status that gives rise to the concepts of permanence and of identity, a further step in the construction of permanent objects.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/H3e51o6egn	Here I shall confine myself to pointing out that the kind of knowledge our simple organism acquires by installing connections between error signals and activities is, indeed, a form of construction, and since it deals exclusively with the proximal data of the organism’s own subjective experience, one would be justified in calling it wholly subjective.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/H9ojjvlqal	In other words, we can come to know only what we consider to be in some sense separate from our knowing selves. By questioning something, by the very act of asking what it is, we have already set our self, the questioner, apart.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Hq4m25toh1	This central item, the experiencer himself, remains mysterious.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/I27jtuivlz	Hence, mention of “steps” in subsequent paragraphs does not imply a chronological but a logical sequence. There are certain steps that are logically indispensable prerequisites for others. But the logic is our logic, an observer’s logic, and as such it applies to a model the observer is building.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/J9jqbrdr4b	Hence we may safely assume that attention can also shift between items when some or all of them are representational.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Jv9v5wdu9q	The rep- resentation, therefore, will have to be no more and no less than a hypothetical model of functions, entities, and events that could “explain” regularities in the organism’s experience. And as a cyberneticist would expect, there is no way to match the model against the “real” structure of the black box.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Nrxlcbrcl4	The indispensable limitation of this hypothesizing is that the organism can operate only with its own proximal data, i.e., with signals that can be supposed to originate within it rather than with “information” originating in what from the observer’s point of view is the organism’s environment. I would also like to emphasize that this analysis is provisional and lays no claim to being definitive, let alone exhaustive.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Pngbtm20at	The simplest learning system, thus, will have a repertoire of several different activities and at least one sense organ and one comparator that generates an error signal whenever the sensory signals do not match the reference value. What it has to learn (i.e., what is not determined by fixed wiring), is to make the error signal trigger the particular activity that is likely to reduce it.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Prpv43m9ru	In Piagetian terms, this active imposition of invariance on instances of experience that are always different in some way is the ubiquitous process of assimilation.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Rsbwwqzmpz	Hence, from the organism’s point of view, to assimilate means to modify a present experience so that it fits a hereditary or acquired scheme, i.e., a perceptual or motor pattern that already has, in some sense, the character of an invariant. In other words, invariants create repetition as much as repetition creates invariants.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/S9bexy1jtv	Both the concept of the object as prototype, with regard to which experiences may be considered equivalent, and the concept of object permanence, as a result of which two or more experiences may be considered to derive from one identical individual, involve a form of invariance. But the invariance is certainly not the same in both cases.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Spl40hlv6t	One can say that such an organism will learn only as a result of disturbance, and it will give up or modify something it has learned only when this again leads to disturbance. This mode of functioning, as we shall see later, fits very well into the Piagetian conception of the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Tmbubszdu4	Under the heading time, I said that continuity and sequence both spring from the juxtaposition of two successions of signals that are separate in the experiential field but interrelated by attention.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Y9pfk6yah9	The invariant the system achieves can, therefore, never be found or frozen in a single element because, by its very nature, it consists in one or more relationships—and relationships are not in things but between them.
Annotationen:Cybernetics, Experience, and the Concept of Self/Ybv6wh6231	Thus, although we can visually distinguish birds, coffee cups, tables, and hands from the rest of the visual field and from one another, it seems clear that a naive organism (i.e., an organism such as an infant that does not yet have a great deal of intermodally coordinated experiences) cannot visually discriminate between a hand and his own hand.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Am1qnogh8t	((46)) Beide Operationsweisen sind wichtige Elemente im Aufbau der Begriffswelt. Indem wir Klassen bilden, ersparen wir es uns, jeden Gegenstand, den wir erleben, als Neuerscheinung zu untersuchen.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Amy5j5prop	Kurz, alles, was überlebt. war schon im Vorhinein an die Bedingungen und Beschränkungen angepaßt, durch die die natürliche Auslese nun das Nichtangepaßte vernichtet.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Ciplaxgsma	((58)) Auf Grund dieser epistemologischen Voraussetzungen lassen sich einige Schlußfolgerungen ziehen: - Der Konstruktivismus leugnet keineswegs eine ontologische Realität, doch er behauptet, daß wir sie nicht rational erfassen können. - ‘Wirklichkeit’ ist die Welt, die wir erleben, und aus ihr allein leiten wir, auf die uns eigene Weise, Ideen und Dinge ab, sowie die Begriffe der Beziehungen, mit denen wir Verbindungen hersteilen und Theorien aufbauen, die es uns erlauben, mehr oder weniger viable Erklärungen und Vorhersagen in unserer Lebenswelt zu formulieren. - Der Begriff der Viabilität ersetzt jenen der ontischen Wahrheit; das heißt, die Bestätigung des Wissens wird nicht in einem unmöglichen Vergleich mit der Realität gesucht, sondern in seiner Brauchbarkeit angesichts der Hindernisse, denen wir beim Verfolgen unserer Ziele begegnen. Daraus folgt, daß die Lösung eines Problems nie als die einzig mögliche betrachtet werden darf; es mag die einzige sein, die wir zur Zeit kennen, aber das rechtfertigt niemals den Glauben, unsere Lösung gewähre uns Einsicht in die Struktur einer von uns unabhängig existierenden Welt. - Dieser letzte Punkt betrifft notwendigerweise auch den Konstruktivismus selbst. Wie alle Theorien, beruht er auf Voraussetzungen, doch er hütet sich, diese Voraussetzungen, seien sie bewußt oder unbewußt, als ontologische Gegebenheiten zu betrachten. Sie werden als Annahmen gedacht, um Modelle zu bauen, die sich in der Welt des Erlebens bewähren sollen.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Gindjvhwwf	((12)) Die Schlagkraft dieser Aussage beruht auf der Einsicht, daß die Richtigkeit oder 'Wahrheit' eines Weltbildes nur durch einen Vergleich mit der Welt an sich bestätigt werden könnte und daß dieser Vergleich für uns ausgeschlossen ist. Wir können unser Weltbild nur mit anderen Vorstellungen vergleichen, die wie die erste auf unserem Erleben beruhen und somit durch unsere Art und Weise des Wahrnehmens und Begreifens gebildet wurden. Alles Wissen unterliegt dieser Bedingung, denn was immer wir auch tun, wir können aus unseren Formen des Erlebens und Denkens nicht aussteigen.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Gir8vy52bm	Wir können unser Weltbild nur mit anderen Vorstellungen vergleichen, die wie die erste auf unserem Erleben beruhen und somit durch unsere Art und Weise des Wahrnehmens und Begreifens gebildet wurden. Alles Wissen unterliegt dieser Bedingung, denn was immer wir auch tun, wir können aus unseren Formen des Erlebens und Denkens nicht aussteigen.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/H33jrem2oo	((27)) Auf der kognitiven Ebene geht es nicht direkt um Überleben, sondern um 'Aquilibration', das heißt um inneres Gleichgewicht, und die Auslese ist darum weniger drastisch. Ziel der Anpassung ist hier das Vermeiden von Hindernissen und das Ausgleichen von Störungen.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Hux94mfbjz	((60)) Für mich liegt das wichtigste Anwendungsgebiet des Konstruktivismus im täglichen Leben. Mit dem Verzicht auf objektive Wahrheit verliert alles Rechthaberische seinen Sinn. Wenn man keinen Grund mehr hat zu behaupten, man wisse wie dies oder jenes ist, versteht man leichter, daß andere ihre Wirklichkeit nicht so sehen müssen, wie man die eigene sieht. Man kann zwar darüber diskutieren, ob die eine oder andere Handlungs- oder Denkweise voraussichtlich zu dem gemeinsam erwünschten Ziel fuhren wird oder nicht, aber man bleibt sich der Tatsache gewahr, daß die Frage letztlich nur in der Praxis entschieden werden kann.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Ikwep5m4go	Wenn der ‘intelligente’ Organismus nicht auf Stimuli der Umwelt, sondern lediglich auf Unterschiede zwischen Wahrnehmungen und vorbestimmten Sollwerten reagiert, um sein internes Gleichgewicht zu erhalten, dann gewinnt der Organismus kein objektives Wissen von der Außenwelt. Er kann bestenfalls lernen, sein Gleichgewicht angesichts der Perturbationen, die er wahrnimmt, einigermaßen aufrecht zu erhalten.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Iv70iak5ec	Kurz, man kann die allgemeine Regel formulieren, daß Akkommodationen und somit Lernen dann zustande kommen, wenn ein gewohntes Schema ein unerwartetes Resultat hervorbringt.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Jdpzlc97qa	((18)) Diese Bedingung der Aufeinanderfolge ist besonders wichtig, denn sie bringt die grundlegende Tatsache ans Licht, daß eine Folge nur gewußt werden kann, wenn wir ein Ding nach dem anderen erleben.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Lq40agjfqj	Das, worauf es ankommt, ist, wie der Organismus die gegebene Situation wahrnimmt. Solange sie mit dem Erkennungsmuster vereinbar ist, das der Organismus ererbt oder sich gebildet hat, löst sie die assoziierte Handlung aus. Das ist die ontogenetisch erste Manifestation dessen, was Piaget 'Assimilation' genannt hat.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/R4gyf3fihk	Die Antwort liegt nicht in den wahrgenommenen Dingen, sondern im Bereich der Operationen, die der Wahmehmende ausführt. Um eine Mehrheit zu konstruieren, muß man merken, daß man ein und dieselbe Erkennungsprozedur, die einem den Gegenstand „Tasse“ liefert, mindestens zweimal ausgeführt hat. Die Pluralform des Wortes bedingt diese Wiederholung, denn sie bezieht sich nicht auf Elemente der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung, sondern auf die Art und Weise, wie man Wahrgenommenes verbindet.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Y177jn5fk6	auf Grund einer einzigen Beobachtung kann man keine Änderung konzipieren.
Annotationen:Die Radikal-Konstruktivistische Wissenstheorie/Y5jb0z8ekz	((42)) Die Sozialpsychologen haben also völlig recht, wenn sie sagen, daß die Bedeutungen von Wörtern in der Gesellschaft ‘ausgehandelt’ werden. Wichtig ist jedoch die Einsicht, daß das letzte Ergebnis dieses fortlaufenden Handels Vereinbarkeit ist, d.h. Kompatibilität im Sinne der Anpassung, und niemals eine absolute Gleichheit. Denn selbst wenn ein Lehrer oder ein Wörterbuch uns den Gebrauch eines Wortes erklärt, so beruht die Bedeutung, die wir uns aufbauen, doch auf der Interpretation unseres eigenen Erlebens. Diese Bedeutung wird dann zweifellos im Laufe sprachlicher Unterhandlungen geschliffen, verfeinert und weiter angepaßt, doch das Material aus dem sie besteht ist und bleibt das Material der subjektiven Erfahrung.
Annotationen:Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana/E12cs7qh1d	From that angle, then, it becomes clear that, in the autopoietic organism also, “expectations” are nothing but re-presentations of experiences that are now projected into the direction of the not-yet-experienced.
Annotationen:Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana/Kr99ppmmzt	For that reason, a meticulous investigation such as Maturana’s, can only show that, regardless of where we step into the circle, we can neither come to an end of the path, nor, if we retraced our steps, to a beginning.
Annotationen:Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana/R51yk7xdty	In my terminology that means the observer must be capable of reflection.
Annotationen:Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt at Interpreting Maturana/Xb6s2cnbe9	To observe oneself as the maker of distinctions, therefore, is no more and no less than to become conscious of oneself.
Annotationen:Homage to Jean Piaget (1896–1980)/E1csgrzbn1	We know that we can reflect, but we do not know how.
Annotationen:Homage to Jean Piaget (1896–1980)/Waq0mnarlo	To put it generally, an organism must fit, i.e. be viable within the constraints of the environment.
Annotationen:How Do We Mean A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics/Olvapcssex	Whatever one assumes to be genetically determined in children, it is they themselves who must actively isolate units in their experiential field and abstract them into concepts.
Annotationen:How Do We Mean A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics/Pht7smbl07	The point I want to make is that it is the experiencer who generates the image, the configuration that becomes the “representation”, and that this configuration is always one of several others that are equally possible within the constraints of the sensory material. This, I claim, goes for all the experiential units or things to which we give names, and it is the reason why I maintain that meanings are always subjective. They are subjective in the sense that they have to be constructed by the experiencer.
Annotationen:How Do We Mean A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics/Qyxq84o1xl	The point I want to make is that it is the experiencer who generates the image, the configuration that becomes the “representation”, and that this configuration is always one of several others that are equally possible within the constraints of the sensory material. This, I claim, goes for all the experiential units or things to which we give names, and it is the reason why I maintain that meanings are always subjective.
Annotationen:How Do We Mean A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics/Uigwach9pn	The point I want to stress is that from our perspective it is attention and above all its movements that generate the conceptual structures and thus the things we talk about. These items, as I said before, cannot have an existence of their own but originate through the operations of an experiencer or observer.
Annotationen:How Do We Mean A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics/Z6pnfx3p0k	What speakers of a language have constructed as the meanings of the words they use, is at best compatible in the linguistic interactions with other speakers; but such compatibility remains forever relative to the limited number of actual interactions the individual has had in his or her past. What speakers have learned to mean always remains their own construction.
Annotationen:How Do We Mean A Constructivist Sketch of Semantics/Zkhy51itjb	The problem of meaning thus comes down to the problem of how we generate units in our experience such that we can associate them with words, and how we relate these units to form larger conceptual structures.
Annotationen:Knowing in Self-Regulating Organisms (A Constructivist Approach)/Ca15tuuxgp	This, I believe, is as close as a constructivist can come to “objectivity”.
Annotationen:Knowing in Self-Regulating Organisms (A Constructivist Approach)/Pyr8jth46d	If knowledge can be considered the result of the adaptive effort of cognitive organisms in their struggle to maintain their equilibrium in the face of perturbations, it does not seem reasonable for them to use this knowledge to compete with one another. On the contrary, it seems that in order to maintain not only their own equilibrium but also that of the planet on which they find themselves living they would have to foster in every conceivable way every kind of mutual collaboration.
Annotationen:Knowing in Self-Regulating Organisms (A Constructivist Approach)/Rgsagcgxj3	The salient point in all this is that, since this “reality” manifests itself only in failures of our acting and/or thinking, we have no way of describing it except in terms of actions and thoughts that turned out to be unsuccessful.
Annotationen:Knowing in Self-Regulating Organisms (A Constructivist Approach)/S1dg1cdpih	Thus, we need Others.
Annotationen:Knowing in Self-Regulating Organisms (A Constructivist Approach)/Uonkg7x2bd	Scientific knowledge, then, does not and could not yield a picture of the “real” world; it provides more or less reliable ways of dealing with experience. Hence it may be viable, but it can make no claim to “Truth”, if “Truth” is to be understood as a correspondence to the ontologically real world. On the other hand, this way of looking at knowledge, be it scientific or other, makes it immune against the sceptics’ perennial argument. Since this constructivist notion of knowledge does not claim to provide a picture of something beyond experience, the fact that one cannot compare it with such a something, does not detract from this kind of knowledge - it is either viable or it is not. Indeed, as a constructivist, I tend to go one step further: Since we have access only to experience and cannot get outside the experiential field, there is no way one could show that one’s experiences are the effects of causes that lie outside the experiential world.
Annotationen:Knowing in Self-Regulating Organisms (A Constructivist Approach)/Yd8rs5pexe	Constructivism, thus, does not deny the “existence” of Others, it merely holds that insofar as we know these Others, they are models that we ourselves construct.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Cakas2wfvu	This, of course, is the reason why the best teachers have always paid more attention to the sources of mistakes than to the how of students’ correct answers.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Faufc0pgou	That is to say, teachers must try to infer, from what they can observe, what the students’ concepts are and how they operate with them. Only on the basis of some such hypothesis can teachers devise ways and means to orient, direct, or modify the students’ mental operating. This is a context in which the constructivist approach and its analysis of conceptual development seemed promising.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Iksre2deu2	Thus the inside becomes ‘self’, the outside the individual’s ‘universe’.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/J3len2nz3t	If a prediction, made on the basis of imputing to another person a scheme of acting or thinking that one has found to be viable for oneself, turns out to be correct, then that scheme and the conceptual structures it involves achieve a level of experiential reality that cannot be reached without the social context. Indeed, this kind of ‘corroboration’ produces the only objectivity that is possible in the Radical Constructivist view.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Jkeg7bli5o	In other words, the self we come to know and the world we come to know are both assembled out of elements of our very own experience.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Mrkitz3yc3	The models of another’s conceptual operating that one can build on the basis of observable behavior, thus, are and remain hypothetical;
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Oczp7q8gfi	To know, thus, is not to have ‘correct pictures’ but, viable procedures or, as Maturana said (1988: 53), ‘to operate adequately in an individual or cooperative situation’.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Roj6vedf4k	I claim that we cannot even imagine what the word ‘to exist’ might mean in an ontological context, because we cannot conceive of ‘being’ without the notions of space and time, and these two notions are among the first of our conceptual constructs.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Rr6ajt0u6w	The experiential environment in which an individual’s constructs and schemes must prove viable is always a social environment as well as a physical one. Though one’s concepts, one’s ways of operating, and one’s knowledge cannot be constructed by any other subject than oneself, it is their viability, their adequate functioning in one’s physical and social environment, that furnishes the key to the solidification of the individual’s experiential reality (von Glasersfeld, 1985).
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Tgr4tpc6ol	Concepts, therefore, have no iconic or representational connection with anything that might ‘exist’ outside the cognizing system; and the raw material out of which concepts are composed or coordinated cannot be known to have any such connection either. To call the basic elements of our cognitive conceptual constructions ‘distinctions’ is, I think, the least misleading way of speaking about them. From the distinguisher’s point of view, what is actually distinguished depends not on what might be there before the activity of distinguishing is carried out, but on what the organism is able to distinguish and chooses to distinguish in the given experiential context.
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Tipqfppga9	I am in agreement with Maturana when he says: ‘an observer has no operational basis to make any statements or claim about objects, entities or relations as if they existed independently of what he or she does’ (1988: 30).
Annotationen:Knowing without Metaphysics: Aspects of the Radical Constructivist Position/Ubaxm0s76d	Language does not transport pieces of one person’s reality into another’s – it merely prods and prompts the other to build up conceptual structures which, to this other, seem compatible with the words and actions the speaker or writer has used
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Brsz38tooa	Knowledge, thus, is usually assumed to be knowledge of the environment.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Eku7n1qmir	For constructivists, then, studying the genesis of the concepts that allow us to organize our experience is not a sin but a necessity; and the way in which that genesis will be studied should undoubtedly be part of psychology, even if the psychological establishment, with the exception of Piaget and his Geneva School, has hitherto not done very much in that direction.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/F0mf2bs6rs	In other words, we cannot help realizing that our experience is subject to constraints that are altogether outside our control.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/F3mnmypox8	Hence, if our senses distort what they are supposed to “convey,” we have no way of ever discovering that distortion.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Ffnlniggh4	The radical constructivist, therefore, must not be thought to do away with “objectivity”—he merely defines it in a different way. Any concept, event, theory, or model will be considered “objective” if and only if it has proved to be viable not only in one’s own organization of the experiential world, but also in the particular area of conceptual organization that proves to be a viable model for the experiential worlds one imputes to others.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Hi9cganhtq	But success is relative.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/I1w826em8p	Pyrrho, a little later, formulated the argument that quickly became and still remains the cornerstone of all kinds of philosophical scepticism. How, he asked, could we ever tell whether or not the pictures our senses “convey” are accurate and true, if the only way they can be checked is again through our senses? The question is, indeed, unanswerable.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/J3jyk1t96t	Given this central notion of fit, the radical constructivist theory of knowledge is essentially a cybernetic theory in that it is based on the principle of adaptation to constraints rather than the principle of causation.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Jvbbgirs3v	That notion, in fact, is no less an ontological assumption than the realist’s assumption that the experiencer-independent ontic reality should have a knowable structure. The character of experiential reality will have to be explained, not as a result of preordained ways of experiencing (Kant’s Anschauungsformen), but as a result of the experiencer’s coordinatory and conceptual operations.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Ny31x2tjef	The self, thus, is an experiential entity to which the experiencer attributes a number of specific properties, abilities, and functions.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Umj2wwlxyn	“Knowledge” and the process of cognizing are therefore seen as inseparable. They reciprocally entail one another in the same way as drawing a “figure” entails categorizing the sheet of paper as “ground.” Knowledge, thus, becomes the product of an active, constructive mind.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Vz9cv6boae	The scenario, in which the knower is supposed to acquire “true” pictures or representations of the real world, is thus inherently unsatisfactory. If the knower can never be sure that the picture of the world which he or she distills from experience is unquestionably a correct representation of a world that exists as such, the knower is cast in the role of a discoverer who has no possible access to what he or she is expected to discover.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/X3553l47nw	Similarly, the problem-solver attempts to conceive a method that will successfully open a path to his or her goal. Any method that does this will serve as well as any other, and to the extent that the problem-solver is successful, his or her know-how is functionally adapted to the constraints of unknowable ontic reality. Note that considerations as to how well a method serves its purpose are secondary in that they require reflection on what has been done as well as the introduction of ulterior values, such as speed, economy, ease of execution, compatibility with the methods used for other problems, etc.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/X7bfcmsiir	In other words, one takes for granted that what one has come to know had its own independent existence before one captured it by a cognizing effort. Given that perspective, it is indeed difficult to avoid asking just how well the knowledge one has acquired “corresponds to,” “depicts,” or “represents” what it is supposed to correspond to, depict, or represent, namely Reality.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Y8edpp9u4p	Knowledge, therefore, was knowledge of the things that caused one’s experiences, the things that were given, the data, and it could all be put together as a picture of Reality.
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Z5oo5zzrj0	First of all, it is important to realize that there are several levels of reality that differ largely in the material that is used to construct the items that are then considered “real.”
Annotationen:Knowledge as Environmental Fit/Zom8a1siz5	In the cognitive realm of conceptual structures, then, the concept of viability applies to those structures which, in the cognizing organism’s past experience, have led to success.
Annotationen:Learning and Adaptation in the Theory of Constructivism/Gnftdj3fe7	This means that learning is an activity that we, consciously or unconsciously, have to carry out ourselves. In contrast, the basic meaning of adaptation is not an activity of organisms or species.
Annotationen:Learning and Adaptation in the Theory of Constructivism/Hc3ugdvv23	Eventually this perspective led him to the conclusion that the function of intelligence was not, as traditional epistemology held, to provide cognitive organisms with ‘true’ representations of an objective environment. Rather, he began to see cognition as generator of intelligent tools that enable organisms to construct a relative fit with the world as they experience it.
Annotationen:Learning and Adaptation in the Theory of Constructivism/Lm8p20ek75	the adaptedness of living organisms can be credited only to accidental variations.
Annotationen:Learning and Adaptation in the Theory of Constructivism/Twposv16hf	This addition was legitimate because, although reflexive action patterns are ‘wired in’ and remain fixed for a certain time, they can eventually be modified or even dismantled by the organism’s experience. Adults, for instance, no longer manifest some of the reflexes that helped them to find the mother’s nipple when they were infants.
Annotationen:Learning and Adaptation in the Theory of Constructivism/V69skpy6zw	The urge to know thus becomes the urge to fit, on the sensorimotor level as well as in the conceptual domain, and learning and adaptation are seen as complementary phenomena.
Annotationen:Of Knowing, Telling, and Showing/Hhavmsx0r7	Understanding language, therefore, requires continuous checking and evaluation of the re-presentations the other’s words call forth.
Annotationen:Of Knowing, Telling, and Showing/Y3a08kbbyn	The crucial difference, for me, is this: Whatever is called forth by the piece of language, the items it refers to, are items that have been abstracted from experience. They may, but need not, have any immediate link with sensory-motor experience that is going on, nor any link with present or future manifest behavior. Yet, what is said or heard is not without effect. But the effect is on the language users’ acts of representation.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/C2rcic5sas	To interpret an utterance or a written piece of language (be it a message or a text) requires something more than the construction of its conventional linguistic meaning. In fact, to interpret an utterance requires the insertion of whatever we consider its conventional meaning into a specific experiential context.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/Go8jrkwg07	The viability of an interpretation, after all, can be assessed only from the interpreter’s point of view.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/Iw7yv8nvtb	Any prediction based on the interpretation of an experiential item that is taken as a sign pointing to a not yet experienced item, will be judged according to whether it is or is not confirmed by actual subsequent experience.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/Ji0byrkvz3	a linguistic message, under any circumstances, can be interpreted only in terms of the receiver’s experience.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/Kwdz4yohqd	I submit that whatever one might choose as the measure of justification, plausibility, or correctness when one is concerned with literary interpretation lies beyond the realm of linguistic competence (which is taken for granted as prerequisite) and involves relations one establishes between the conceptual structures called forth by the text and the conceptual network that constitutes one’s own experiential world. These relations, by definition, are subjective, in the sense that they cannot connect anything but the reader’s own conceptual structures with the reader’s own experiential world.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/P7byiq9npw	and again, any such adaptation and abstraction must be based on the individual construction of patterns of concepts and actions which turn out to be compatible with actions and reactions of other users of the language.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/Rpj5obhbh1	It is important to realize that the compatibility of two items does not entail their identity.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/U2h79k3m8t	At the beginning of the 18th century, Giambattista Vico formulated a constructivist epistemology by saying that humans can know only what humans can construct.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/Wf0rr6vccx	Compatibility is a matter of avoiding clash, passing between obstacles, fitting into space that is not encumbered by the conditions that have to be complied with.
Annotationen:On the Concept of Interpretation/X30bxs5up8	The constraints within which it attempts to achieve viability are set by the text alone and not by any external area of experience. Hence, the quest for the interpretation of a text turns out to be a futile undertaking.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/Eergdxo8a1	Insofar as we remember these structures, we can recall them—and then they are Re-Presentations. I write this with a hyphen, to indicate that they are pieces of experience we have had and are now reviewing. They are not pieces of an external reality.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/Is7gqnhdx9	In other words, reality leaves sufficient room for them to work in our experiential world.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/K3oyc0qges	One can therefore say: in perception, sensory signals call up a concept, in re-presentation, on the other hand, a concept calls up sensory impressions. In neither case is the experience caused by what philosophers want to call “reality”.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/Osb51lk0i4	so, to have survived does not tell the biological organisms anything about the constraints they have not met, i.e., the constraints that eliminated those that could not survive.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/U69ct8sl0q	According to the neurophysiologist’s model of the nervous system, it therefore appears that the discrimination of sensory modalities—seeing, hearing, touching, etc.—must be the result of the system’s own computation. From this perspective, then, whatever sensory structures, patterns, or images a living system compiles are its own construction, and the notion that they represent something that was there beforehand, has no empirical foundation.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/W0er5ff75u	The argument that our concepts, which we abstract from experience, cannot grasp anything that lies beyond our experiential interface, applies not only to the divine but also to any ontological reality posited as independent of the human experiencer.
Annotationen:Piaget’s Legacy: Cognition as Adaptive Activity/W6kg6avstq	Compatibility, to repeat it once more, means no more and no less than to fit within constraints. Consequently, it seems to me that one of the most demanding tasks of A.I. would be the plausible simulation of an organism’s experience of social constraints
Annotationen:Reflections on Cybernetics/Allfaemdcq	This principle is, indeed, universal. If there is something we would like to create or have, we look for some specific event or action to which experience has tied the desired item as ‘effect’. If we find it, we try to implement its causal function, hoping that it will produce what we wanted.
Annotationen:Reflections on Cybernetics/Hwbrfwl7ct	To my mind, this illustrates what is perhaps the most valuable feature of the cybernetical analysis of phenomena in general, and of 2nd-order Cybernetics in particular. It leads us to think in terms, not of single causes and effects, but rather of equilibria between constraints. This helps to avoid the widespread illusion that we could gather “information” concerning a reality supposed to be causing our experience; and it therefore focuses attention on managing in the experiential world we do get to know.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Bfxz6nkolt	Consequently there is no past experience of steps that led towards it or actions that brought it about. There are no abstracted cause-effect relations that one could try to implement to reach an unfathomable end. In short, even for those who believe that knowledge does not pertain to anything beyond the realm of experience, a cause that lies outside has no explanatory power.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Bxxwxcth41	Definitions set conditions which the abstract form we call concept must satisfy, and it is the same conditions that some experiential material must fit in order to be accepted as a proper instantiation of the concept.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Csbic9bgys	Prediction, in one form or another, permeates our living, and the expectation that the efficient causes we have isolated in the past will have their effects also in the future, is the key to whatever success we have in managing our experience.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Feuye9k6by	Prescriptive purposes, therefore, are there prior to their embodiment, which then has the particular purpose in it.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Nbtl2adohh	Though the sequential frames that compose the concept of efficient cause are obviously abstracted from prior experience and therefore lie in the past, they can, and often are, projected as predictions into areas that have not yet been actually experienced.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Odh64ljwcj	Hence, it was unfortunate, to say the least, that the term teleological was indiscriminately applied to the explanation of actions that are in no way determined by something that lies in the future, something that still awaits to be experienced.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Oh7ux4a16x	Hence it is quite legitimate to call the attainment and maintainment of the projected state the purpose in the mechanism.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/P45fqlsyeq	That is to say, neither of these two basic elements in the construction of our experiential world is conceivable unless we segment experience into separate discrete frames and then focus attention on similarities or differences between the segments.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Ptohla9ckc	Where evolution is concerned, then, there is no harm in using ‘purpose of’ as a descriptive tool, provided one does not mistake it for the purpose for, which would imply a guiding outside force that intentionally designed the thing one is describing.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Pycvf4uyiy	Hence, an external agent with powers that override the constraints we run into in our experiential world, would have to be supernatural and therefore out of bounds for science.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Qomofcfayh	According to this break-down, change is a relational concept and, as such, requires more than one segment of experience, as well as a comparison. It also manifests what I consider a basic presupposition of all conceptual analysis: Segments of experience, insofar as they reach the level of conceptualization and rational description, always appear sequential. This sequence is usually interpreted as a temporal one.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Sm4e3gn8n1	Thus it is, indeed, an inductive procedure, because ‘what works’ is seen from the organism’s point of view and selected within the organism’s own experience.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Szvmnrm7i9	Thus there was no proper causal connection between reinforcement and subsequent behavior, because it was to some extent the rat who decided what it considered reinforcing and what not. Taylor wants to turn the effects of a feedback mechanism’s behavior into a ‘causal factor’, but he overlooks that one and the same effect does not always generate the same subsequent behavior.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Tx7yla5vz9	An organism’s actions, thus, are selected and shaped according to what worked in the past.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Xazuanz5mw	From this, one is led to conclude that the scientific search of efficient causes is fueled largely, if not entirely, by our intention to use them for the attainment of goals.
Annotationen:Teleology and the Concepts of Causation/Zyymiew3sa	The analogy, of course, does not stretch to include the sculptor. The natural environment that carries out the selective process has no more a vision of the forms that are left than the sculptor’s chisel has a vision of the statue it helps to peel out of the marble. Such a vision may be attributed to the sculptor. It would constitute a telos or goal, which will be discussed when we come to final causes.
Annotationen:The Concepts of Adaptation and Viability in a Radical Constructivist Theory of Knowledge/Gvn1s8aexn	In order to remain among the survivors, an organism has to "get by" the constraints which the environment poses.
Annotationen:The Concepts of Adaptation and Viability in a Radical Constructivist Theory of Knowledge/Mv3evgsza0	Any construction, be it physical or mental, is subject to certain constraints that spring from the material that the constructor employs.
Annotationen:The Concepts of Adaptation and Viability in a Radical Constructivist Theory of Knowledge/Neaky5p1rt	A rather convincing case can be made for the notion that all practical learning may be considered the result of a process of induction.
Annotationen:The Concepts of Adaptation and Viability in a Radical Constructivist Theory of Knowledge/O8h5mfjw3o	It seems, then, that there is simply no way around the assumption that organisms construct their representations of their world, their environment, or whatever one chooses to call what is outside them. In other words, an activity of construction has to be assumed regardless of whether one wants to be a constructivist or not.
Annotationen:The Concepts of Adaptation and Viability in a Radical Constructivist Theory of Knowledge/Qcgycyjn3c	Thus we can say that the only indication we may get of the "real" structure of the environment is through the organisms and the species that have been extinguished; the viable ones that survive merely constitute a selection of solutions among an infinity of potential solutions that might be equally viable.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Hkoswpb9l6	“Knowledge is construction.”
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Kceifrus1i	To me, therefore, time is not, as Prigogine said, an illusion. If I called the construct of time an illusion, the entire world that I know, the world that I live in, would also have to be called an illusion. And that is not the way I would characterize it. Although my entire world is a construction, I can still make a useful distinction in it between illusion and reality. But remember that for me “reality” always refers to experiential reality, not to the ontological reality of traditional philosophy. If we want to construct a rational reality for ourselves, time and space are indispensable building blocks, and I would rather call “illusion” any claim to knowledge beyond the field of our experience.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Mgjvl83yka	After a while you conclude that each group may be right for itself and that there is no rightness outside the groups.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Osa2a5qoli	In this changed perspective, then, knowledge does not provide a representation of an independent world but rather a map of what can be done in the experienced environment.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Rokbai5kv3	To be viable, a new thought should fit into the existing scheme of conceptual structures in a way that does not cause contradictions. If there are contradictions, either the new thought or the old structures are deemed to require changing.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/T32kgxwkn8	So we are trapped in a paradox. We want to believe that we can know something of the outside world, but we can never tell whether this knowledge is true.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Wm8c66fbki	It is therefore unwarranted to maintain that we distinguish things because we receive “information” from what we usually call the outside world.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Xy8dgydyu4	There is no constructing unless you have some form of reflection.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Yehw74dp6p	Therefore there must be some place beyond my field of experience where the glass could be while I was busy experiencing other things or asleep.
Annotationen:The Construction of Knowledge/Yuucuatq22	Communication, therefore, works when two people send each other a telegram and they have previously established a code outside that communication system.
Annotationen:The Constructivist View of Communication/Lqt3uy4hk3	We all develop a repertoire of conceptual items and connections, and learn to fit them to the syntactic structures that have become customary among the users of a given language.
Annotationen:The Constructivist View of Communication/Pea2tu7jgh	As Tomasello and a few before him noticed, Children do not produce their utterances with the help of grammatical rules. Even adults rarely rely on abstract syntactic rules to guide their speech. They know how they have segmented their experience and the praxis of living has shown them useful ways of linking the segments.
Annotationen:The Constructivist View of Communication/Z5i8w1rev8	From the constructivist point of view, it is important to stress that it does not matter if the thing I perceive when I follow the direction in which the other is looking is not quite the same as the thing he or she perceives. What DOES matter, in order to link a word to a percept, is that, whenever he or she utters a specific word, I see something that I can consider the repetition of what I saw on similar previous occasions. The crucial feature is the coordination of attention.
Annotationen:The Control of Perception and the Construction of Reality: Epistemological Aspects of the Feedback-Control System/K0ahsljmye	The key point is that we may be able to analyze the structure of our experience without making the unwarranted assumption that to perceive must be a process of passive reception rather than a process of construction
Annotationen:The Control of Perception and the Construction of Reality: Epistemological Aspects of the Feedback-Control System/Pkmy35hasn	There is no good reason to believe that our senses somehow provide a one-to- one correspondence with something which we do not perceive.
Annotationen:The Control of Perception and the Construction of Reality: Epistemological Aspects of the Feedback-Control System/S72d8v4u89	And, if we apply the model to ourselves as organisms, we too cannot have access to our own environment because our experience, whatever it may be, lies on this side of the dashed line and can be composed only of the signals within our neural network.
Annotationen:The Control of Perception and the Construction of Reality: Epistemological Aspects of the Feedback-Control System/Ubbllti36g	there can be a “response” (i.e. activity) without a stimulus. Activity is triggered by an error signal, and an error signal is generated not only when there is a change in the sensory signal but also when there is a change in the reference value.
Annotationen:The Control of Perception and the Construction of Reality: Epistemological Aspects of the Feedback-Control System/Uf9f16stpl	Human knowledge in general, and science in particular, is not engaged in uncovering certainty, truth, or reality, or any of the bugbears of dogmatic science.
Annotationen:The Control of Perception and the Construction of Reality: Epistemological Aspects of the Feedback-Control System/Y1fflsoldg	This part of the loop, however, is not accessible to the organism itself, because, as Powers has said, the organism can perceive nothing but its own sensory signals
Annotationen:The Development of Language as Purposive Behavior/Cd6ty5fmwl	In other words, what the observer calls an “object”, is for the organism an inseparable component of an activity cluster. Nevertheless, at this point the stage is set for a momentous step that opens the way to a new kind of operation. No doubt, this step, like every other in the process of evolution, is fostered by the selective pressure of the environment; but for the functioning of the organism, it constitutes a discrete novelty like the opening of a new pathway in its processor.
Annotationen:The Development of Language as Purposive Behavior/Cl29d1aelt	According to the view I am proposing, communicatory behavior is a mode of action, its function is to link concerted activity, and it is indispensable because without these links there could be no unified social action. Thus it is an instrument which is to say, a tool.
Annotationen:The Development of Language as Purposive Behavior/Jnn3h8oxj3	For induction, whether it is conscious in the form of a conclusion we draw, or unconscious in the form of a behavior that becomes established because of its success, springs always from the same root: a more or less regular recurrence in past experience.
Annotationen:The Development of Language as Purposive Behavior/Joziuyyrdi	It is in this sense that communication must be considered “instrumental”, “goal-directed”, and therefore “purposive”.
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