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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. +
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. +
In contrast, if archaeologists, in digging up remnants of a bygone civilization, find an unknown item and discover that it generates a flame when it is handled in a particular way, they may conclude that this was indeed its purpose. This would be conceived as the purpose of the item, in their description. +
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. +
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. +
The example of the bronze statue again offers a useful image. The shape of the statue is quite literally ‘defined’ by the mold, in the sense that the mold constrains and delimits where the liquid metal can flow. Analogously, the ‘parts of a definition’ constrain and delimit both conceptual construction and the application of concepts. +
An organism’s actions, thus, are selected and shaped according to what worked in the past. +
The way the sculptor imposes form, is by chipping away the bits of marble that do not fit into his vision. The way form is imposed on the bronze, is by pouring it into a constraining mold. Potentially, the material could end up in innumerable other forms, but the procedure of statue-making, be it chipping or casting, eliminates all but one. +
If there is no preference for not having pain and getting blisters on one’s fingers, there is no reason why the toddler should not touch the hot stove every time it happens to be near enough. +
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. +
There are, for instance, the conscious or unconscious accommodations we have to make – and make quite successfully – in the thousands of trivial routines that are indispensable in our way of living, such as retrieving the toothpaste that has fallen behind the wash basin, looking up the telephone number of a person we want to meet, locating a book on a shelf, finding our misplaced car keys, negotiating the stairs to the garage during a power failure, etc., etc. +
A simple example may illustrate this. Having got tired of buying matches, someone may decide to design a cigarette lighter. Lighting cigarettes will be the purpose prescribed for the gadget. “People do not build purposeless machines” (loc.cit.). +
As they quickly discovered, one and the same thing might be reinforcing under certain circumstances (e.g. meat pellets, when the rat was hungry) and not reinforcing under others (e.g. when the rat was well fed). +
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/Hqbpcwl9qc +
It is easy to see that a bricklayer is to some extent constrained in his building by certain basic characteristics that are inherent in the bricks he uses. In much the same way, I believe, the representation we construct of our adult experiential world is constrained by certain basic characteristics of the building blocks we are using, which is to say, the building blocks which we created during the sensorimotor period. +
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. +
