Radical Constructivism

It is widely accepted in the mathematics education community that pedagogies oriented toward inquiry are aligned with a constructivist theory of learning, and that these pedagogies effectively support students' learning of mathematics. In order to promote such an orientation, we first separate the idea of inquiry from its conception as a collection of methods. Then, by grounding those methods in a generally accepted theory of learning, we construct an inquiry-oriented pedagogy from a constructivist 10 perspective. We then discuss the implications of this pedagogy for the design of mathematical tasks that democratize student access to inquiry. This work has implications for educators who wish to enact an inquiry-oriented pedagogy in their classroom in order to support their students' problem solving and problem posing.

For a little over 40 years, what we label now, physics education research, has been conducted. As a result, new themes in the research in physics learning and in physics education have emerged. Some of these themes are cognitivism, qualitative research, learning as construction of knowledge, epistemological underpinnings that are not realist, student understanding-driven pedagogies, and scholarship in fields outside physics. These themes have arisen in minds of our colleagues, who focus their attention on students ’ understandings of physical phenomena, instead of how well the students do on conventional tests. Physics education research shows that alternative pedagogies result in a wider range of students making much greater changes in their understanding of the phenomena than the conventional pedagogies, far beyond mere statistical significance. Yet, these themes are still just themes and not major changes in physics teaching as a whole enterprise. Since we know these pedagogies a...

This column is a journey that considers both the failure of second-order cybernetics (SOC), radical constructivism (RC), and the biology of cognition (BoC) to achieve wide acceptance, particularly in science, and the opportunities for SOC, RC, and BoC in the social sciences and other disciplines.

Josef Mitterer behauptet in seinem Vorwort zur Neuauflage des Buchs " Geschichten und Diskurse " vom Haupt-Proponenten des Konstruktivismus in Deutschland, von Siegfried J. Schmidt, dass sich der (Radikale) Konstruktivismus in der akademischen Philosophie nicht durchgesetzt habe, weil diese immer Neuem gegenüber Vorbehalte zeige (vgl. Mitterer 2017, S. 2 ff.). Hier soll eine andere Auffassung vertreten werden: Der Konstruktivismus, insbesondere der Radikale Konstruktivismus, ist so stark von Widersprüchen durchzogen, dass es wohl eher ein Gebot der akademischen Höflichkeit war, von einer ernsthaften Auseinandersetzung bislang abzusehen. Aus ‚pragmatischem' Grund entschied sich die akademische Philosophie für Schweigen. Die Widersprüche sollen in diesem Paper anhand von vier Beispielen herausgearbeitet werden.

In building a constructivist view of language, the inherently experiential
nature of language should not be absolutized but seen rather as depending on the overlap between the first-order and the second-order consensual
domains as the sources of experience.

On November 4th, 2019, Hans-Georg Moeller delivered a presentation on systems theory at the Law School of the University of São Paulo and was interviewed about Niklas Luhmann’s theory of society, with emphasis on issues such as law, politics, and the history of philosophy. Professor Moeller is the author of important books such as Luhmann explained: From souls to systems (Moeller, 2006) and The radical Luhmann (Moeller, 2011), the latter also translated to Japanese and Italian. He also works on Chinese philosophy and is currently Full Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Macau, China.
Throughout the interview, professor Moeller situated Luhmann in the philosophical tradition of German idealism and presented the shift to second-order observation as a crucial aspect of contemporary society, in religion and politics, science, economy and law. The interview was conducted partly in writing and partly in the form of a recorded and transcribed debate

The central issue of Consciousness in the Physical World is Russellian monism, which claims that consciousness could be ontologically reduced to intrinsic properties of physical objects. In contemporary discussions, Russellian monism is more broadly defined than Russell’s original version of neutral monism, and it even becomes a family of views. In this review, based on two major distinctions between Russellian monism and Russell’s neutral monism, we point out that these current re-interpretations
not only extend Russell’s theory; some may also put a heavy metaphysical burden on Russell’s construction of matter from experience.

Este texto tiene su origen en la lectura de una breve recensión, escrita por el profesor John Searle (2011), acerca del libro de Paul Boghossian, El miedo al conocimiento (Madrid, Alianza, 2009). Si este último se esfuerza en su libro por desmontar las tesis relativistas, Searle traza apenas unas pinceladas en muy pocas páginas mostrando su apoyo a los argumentos de Boghossian y reforzando con nuevos argumentos aquellos aspectos en que lo encuentra deficitario. Mi lectura inicial de Searle se llenó rápidamente de signos de admiración, comentarios al margen y tachaduras, y me animó, no sé si en buena hora, a escribir esta extensa respuesta. Siguiendo el orden del texto inicial, iré tratando de argumentar en contra de sus afirmaciones y poniendo en evidencia algunos supuestos que en su discurso son necesarios, pero que no podemos aceptar desde posiciones construccionistas. La disputa se resolverá necesariamente en tablas.

Constructivism in the Anthropocene, in: Radikaler Konstruktivismus. Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft. Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917-2010), Theo Hug, Josef Mitterer, Michael Schorner (eds.), Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press 2019, 395-409.

Endereço: https://www.cle.unicamp.br/eprints/index.php/cadernos/article/view/744

'Construtivismo' é um termo adotado por diversas abordagens filosóficas contemporâneas. Surgiu com a obra de Piaget, e desde então vem sendo apropriado por abordagens das mais diversas orientações ontológicas e epistemológicas. Este artigo analisa parte das mais significativas dessas com base em três problemas: o do realismo, o da possibilidade e o da fonte do conhecimento. São analisados o construtivismo piagetiano, o socioconstrutivismo, o construtivismo lógico, o construtivismo radical e o construtivismo social. O objetivo é oferecer uma melhor definição do termo, que faça jus a sua origem histórica e ao mesmo tempo ajude a esclarecer seu uso indiscriminado. Parte da confusão conceitual que cerca o termo é resolvida com a dissolução das falsas polaridades entre realismo e construtivismo e entre objetivismo e relativismo. Conclui-se que as posições analisadas alternam entre realismo e antirealismo e criticismo e ceticismo. Encontra na questão da fonte do conhecimento os denominadores comuns de todas as alegações de construtivismo: a rejeição ao objetivismo de matiz empirista e a adoção do sentido kantiano da metáfora da construção. Podemos definir positivamente construtivismo como a tese epistemológica que defende o papel ativo do sujeito na criação e modificação de suas representações do objeto do conhecimento.
Palavras-chave: construtivismo, construtivismo social, construtivismo radical, Jean Piaget, objetivismo.

Abstract
'Constructivism' is a term adopted by many contemporary philosophical approaches. It appeared with the work of Piaget, and since then it has been appropriated by many approaches with different ontological and epistemological orientations. This article examines some of these major contemporary appropriations on three issues: the problem of realism and the problems of possibility and source of knowledge. Piagetian constructivism, socioconstructivism, logical constructivism, radical constructivism and social constructivism are analyzed. The purpose of this study

Abstract

Defining NGO organisational effectiveness
in Indonesia:  an unfolding journey

This paper summarizes a two-year field study aimed at discovering how Indonesian NGO managers perceived, interpreted and implemented constructs of organisational effectiveness (OE) in their workplace. The findings--reflecting emerging trends within Indonesian civil society during a period closely following intense domestic violence and unrest, and growing distrust of Western policies and practices within Indonesia-- were compared with the more established views of OE conceptualized by Western for-profit (FPO) and not-for-profit (NPO) organisations.

The research indicated a bifurcated view of effectiveness with two-thirds of NGO managers interpreting OE that were similar to their western counterparts. However, another third of the responses held radical views on management that focused on ideology, desire for political agitation and endorsement of elusive, nonhierarchical organisational structures of a utopian nature. These alternative, politicized, ideological conceptions reflect Indonesia’s larger political and social concerns and are affecting the work of local NGOs in their communities.


KEYWORDS: 
Indonesian NGOs
Organisational effectiveness
Radical management
NGO management

This chapter is about managing sociotechnological risks. It is in the 70s that the notion of ‘high-risk’ (or ‘safety critical’) systems started to be distinguished and grouped into an independent category including industries such as the nuclear, aviation, marine, petrochemical or the railways. Any attempt such as this one to introduce this background in a few pages is necessarily restrictive, partly unfair but also a simplified account. And, there are of course many different strategies to do so. One option is to consider the field through the scientific disciplines involved, say sociology, engineering, psychology, ergonomics, management, etc. A second one, quite related to the first, is to introduce pioneers who, from different disciplinary backgrounds, produced seminal contributions used as shared references among various research communities interested in the safety of complex sociotechnological systems. A third one is to look into industry (aviation, nuclear or petrochemical) in order to illustrate and to differentiate the diversity of problems related to sociotechnological risks and how they materialise. Another option is to identify core concepts that sometimes cut across a range of disciplines, authors and industry which offers also good insights into the issues involved with sociotechnological risks. In any case, it is a very challenging task. The intention in this chapter is to combine a bit of these strategies in order to offer the reader a broad vision, and to follow editors’ guidelines specifying the following structure: first, key concepts, second, major debates and third open questions/perspectives.

Design thinking is not thinking about design, but rather a re-focus on the way we think, about the world in general, and in this cybernetic process the real self can be brought into being. Gramma/topology is the social structuration of a theory-as-ontology framework with the ability to function as a design educational model that could enrich the teaching and learning of design in all its diverse applications. To paraphrase and deconstruct Derrida, I shall call this model gramma/topology; since such a peculiar field-of-knowing does not exist, in any particular form, before the model is used, no one can say with certainty what the outcome would be, but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance for both designer-Dasein and design-Dasein.

The book „Radical Constructivism. A Brief Introduction” concisely introduces the reader to the history and lines of argumentation of a particular type of constructivism, the founders of which are, among others, Ernst von Glasersfeld and Heinz von Foerster. It turns out that the view according to which we do not have access to an independent
reality is present in the Western philosophical tradition since the presocratics,
and it finds its fullest expression in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In the following parts of the book, the author presents the components of the concept of autopoiesis by Humberto R. Maturana, which as a theory of the organization of life, is the starting point of constructivist epistemology. The concept of the brain as a self-referential
system, which constructs the world known to consciousness solely on the basis of reactions to its own states of excitation, is derived from Maturana’s concept which is the part of the long development of systems theory.
Later in the book, the author outlines the constructivist concept of communication that emerges from the model of how the brain and mind work. He recalls the views of the classics of constructivism, indicating that communication is based on the parallelization of the structures of the brain’s operation, leading to the creation of a virtual consensual space.

The effect of the individual analyst on research findings can create a credibility problem for qualitative approaches from the perspective of evaluative criteria utilized in quantitative psychology. This paper explicates the ways in which objectivity and reliability are understood in qualitative analysis conducted from within three distinct epistemological frameworks: realism, contextual constructionism, and radical constructionism. It is argued that quality criteria utilized in quantitative psychology are appropriate to the evaluation of qualitative analysis only to the extent that it is conducted within a naive or scientific realist framework. The discussion is illustrated with reference to the comparison of two independent grounded theory analyses of identical material. An implication of this illustration is to identify the potential to develop a radical constructionist strand of grounded theory.

By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realisation of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as the world — as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness.

Niklas Luhmann określa swoją koncepcję społeczeństwa jako „radykalnie antyhumanistyczną”. „To nie człowiek komunikuje (się) – stwierdza - tylko komunikacja komunikuje”. Ale czym jest komunikacja i na czym polega autoreprodukcja systemów komunikacji? Niniejsza książka przedstawia socjologiczne i filozoficzne wątki Luhmannowskiej teorii systemów społecznych. Obok oryginalnego ujęcia nowoczesności, zagadnień z dziedziny socjologii polityki i socjologii religii znajdziemy w niej analizy teoriopoznawcze oraz propozycję nowego zdefiniowania podstawowego elementu tego, co społeczne.

My commentary has three aims. Firstly, to provide additional support to Konrad Werner’s correct insight that radical constructivism is based on a radical distinction between experienced reality and ontological reality. This is a strong metaphysical statement. Secondly, that radical constructivism is implicitly rooted in Cartesian ontological dualism. Thirdly, that Whitehead’s process ontology provides a fruitful foundation for Werner’s thesis that perceptions are metaphysically significant.

> Context • The alleged dichotomy between mind and matter is pervasive. Therefore, the attempt to explain matter in terms of mind (idealism) is often considered a mirror image of that of explaining mind in terms of matter (mainstream physicalism), in the sense of being structurally equivalent despite being reversely arranged. > Problem • I argue that this is an error arising from language artifacts, for dichotomies must reside in the same level of abstraction. > Method • I show that, because matter outside mind is not an empirical observation but rather an explanatory model, the epistemic symmetry between the two is broken. Consequently, matter and mind cannot reside in the same level of abstraction. > Results • It then becomes clear that attempting to explain mind in terms of matter is epistemically more costly than attempting to explain matter in terms of mind. > Implications • The qualities of experience are suggested to be not only epistemically, but also ontologically primary. > Constructivist content • I highlight the primacy of perceptual constructs over explanatory abstraction on both epistemic and ontic levels.

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

In linking evolution, biosemiotics and languaging, analysis of meaning is extended by investigation of natural innovation. Rather than ascribe it to internal or external content, meaning comes first. Ecological, evolutionary and developmental flux defy content/ vehicle distinctions. In the eco-evo-devo frame, I present the papers of the Special Issue, pose questions, and identify a direction of travel. Above all, meaning connects older views of semiosis with recent work on ecosystemic living. Whilst aesthetics and languaging can refer to evolving semiotic objects, nature uses bio-signals, judging experience, and how culture (and Languages) can condition free-living agents. Further, science changes its status when meaning takes priority. While semiotics shows the narrowness of laws and recurrent regularity, function brings semiotic properties to causal aspects of natural innovation. By drawing on languaging one can clarify, for example, how brains and prostheses can serve human cyborgs. Indeed, given a multiscalar nexus of meaning, biosemiotics becomes a powerful epistemic tool. Accordingly, I close with a model of how observers can use languaging to track both how selffabricated living systems co-modulate and also how judging (and thinking) shapes understanding of changing 'worlds.' In certain scales, each 'whole' agent acts on its own behalf as it uses epigenetic history and adjusts to flux by engaging with an ecosystem.

Context: In the literature concerning the theory of social systems, interest in epistemological and ontological questions has increased in recent years. The controversies regarding a realist vs. constructivist interpretation of Luhmann’s theory, as well as the concept of many realities that correspond to many ontologies, deserve attention. Problem: The paper discusses interrelated ontological and epistemological problems in Luhmann’s systems theory, such as ontology and de-ontologization, realism vs. constructivism, contingency and its limits and one vs. many realities. Method: The paper proposes an interpretation, according to which systems theory is based on an epistemology - radical operative constructivism. Results: Luhmann is not a realist. The last word belongs to radical operative constructivism, and naïve realism with reference to social systems has only a preliminary, methodological significance. However, taking a position in the dispute between realism and constructivism inevitably involves an ontological “vocabulary,” that is, usage of the reality/construction distinction. Furthermore, operative constructivism formulates the necessary conditions of the possibility of cognition, which limit the contingency of the theory and constitute one reality that is a construction of systems theory. Luhmann rejects ontology, but he does not renounce epistemology, and consequently the project of de-ontologization remains incomplete. Implications: The paper offers a new, coherent interpretation of ontological and epistemological questions in Luhmann’s theory, and also throws light on some problems of radical constructivism in general, such as the ontological implications of epistemology or the constructivist self-reference of theories. Key words: Radical operative constructivism, social systems, Luhmann, ontology, reality, contingency.

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

Context • In the past three decades, the work of Varela has had an enormous impact on current developments in contemporary science.
Problem • Varela's thought was extremely complex and multifaceted, and while some aspects – notably his contributions to the autopoietic theory of living and enactivist approach to cognition – have gained widespread acclaim, others have been ignored or watered down.
Method • We identify three dimensions of Varela's thought: (a) anti-realism of the " middle way " ; (b) anti-foundationalism of the circular onto-epistemology; and (c) ethical/social implications of the circularity. The discussion of these dimensions is followed by a concise overview of the individual target articles in this issue and the topics they cover. Finally, we discuss in what ways the articles extend and relate to Varela's work. We do this by means of a concrete example: the relation between " enac-tion " and " enactivism. "
Results • We show that the ignoring-cum-watering-down process of Varela's contributions to science is at least partly linked to these three dimensions of Varela's thought. On the basis of our examination, we also find that the more narrow research topics are always interrelated with broader philosophical reflection. Researching into ignored and watered-down aspects of Varela's work enables us to not only gain fresh insights into Varela's overall philosophy and rekindle interest in the topics and themes that have been brushed aside, but also cast a fresh light on those that are currently flourishing.
Implications • Reviving interest in Varela's work in toto could lead to fruitful research and discussion in numerous scientific fields. To illustrate this idea, we delineate, tentatively, three domains – theoretical, empirical, and existential – where Varela's contribution to philosophy and science could instigate a productive exchange of views.
Constructivist content • All three dimensions of Varela's philosophy have strong affinities with the radical constructivist critique of realism and some of its epistemological and ethical implications.

Turkey’s journey towards one-man rule and a new political system without checks and balances turned a new corner with the disputed national referendum on 16 April 2017. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won new powers from voters, which confirmed his consistent efforts over years to transform Turkey from a secular Western democratic country into a political Islamist and authoritarian police state. Erdogan once said that democracy, for him, is not the objective but rather a tool, comparing it to a bus within a journey. “Once I get to my stop, I will get off.” Apparently, after highly controversial elections, Erdogan has arrived at his stop, and he has gotten off the democracy bus. Many scholars agree that the secular Republic of Turkey as it has been known does not exist anymore, and it is not coming back under the Erdogan dicta.

As a consequence, the West now has to deal with a political Islamist police state with a large portion of radicalised citizens. The priorities should be set to assist and help the people suffering in Turkey at the hands of Erdogan’s regime, many guilty of nothing more than not supporting the status quo. The West, when dealing with Erdogan, should seriously consider extending their support to the people suffering inside Turkey. Europe has ample leverage against Erdogan, including travel sanctions against individual members of the Turkish government, economic sanctions, refusal to sell arms, and politically pressuring the Erdogan regime. All these tools should be considered to assist the suffering Turks in the name of humanity and for the future bilateral and peaceful relationship between Turkey and Europe after Erdogan’s departure. European countries should also consider taking the allegations against the Turkish president listed in this article to the International Criminal Court at The Hague for the crimes against humanity. Europe must prioritise a sincere approach in order to neutralise threats coming from the Erdogan regime and his supporters and extend their hands to the brave citizens who did not accept becoming part of Erdogan’s dicta. While many Turkish citizens have found refuge in Europe, thousands are still being tortured, raped and even killed in Turkey. The world must find a way to stop this misery before it becomes a tragic loss of life reminiscent of the worst crimes in world history.

http://www.orient-online.com/

http://www.orient-online.com/issues/ORIENT-III/2017

The so-called Islamic State and the (slow but steady) Radicalisation of Turkey. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318066367_The_so-called_Islamic_State_and_the_slow_but_steady_Radicalisation_of_Turkey [accessed Jul 5, 2017].

> Context • The relationship between design and science has shifted over recent decades. One bridge between the two is cybernetics, which offers perspectives on both in terms of their practice. From around 1980 onwards, drawing on ideas from cybernetics, Glanville has suggested that rather than apply science to design, it makes more sense to understand science as a form of design activity, reversing the more usual hierarchy between the two. I return to review this argument here, in the context of recent discussions in this journal regarding second-order science (SOS). > problem • Despite numerous connections to practice, second-order cybernetics (SOC) has tended to be associated with theory. As a result, SOC is perceived as separate to the more tangible aspects of earlier cybernetics in a way that obscures both the continuity between the two and also current opportunities for developing the field. > Method • I review Glanville's understanding of design, and particularly his account of scientific research as a design-like activity, placing this within the context of the shifting relation between science and design during the development of SOC, with reference to the work of Rittel and Feyerabend. Through this, I summarise significant parallels and overlaps between SOC and the contemporary concerns of design research. > results • I suggest that we can see design research not just as a field influenced by cybernetics but as a form of SOC practice even where cybernetics is not explicitly referenced. > implications • Given this, design research offers much to cybernetics as an important example of SOC that is both outward looking and practice based. As such, it bridges the gap between SOC and the more tangible legacy of earlier cybernetics, while also suggesting connections to contemporary concerns in this journal with SOS in terms of researching research. > Constructivist content • By suggesting that we see design research as an example of SOC, I develop connections between constructivism and practice.

Preface/Introduction

The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself.

What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only).

I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism.

Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.)

“Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In con-trast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones are assumed to do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness.

As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imagi-nary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210)

Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers).

I am very grateful to Huping Hu, editor, for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries.

References

Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Hu-man Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP.

Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Gregory M. Nixon
University of Northern British Columbia
Prince George, British Columbia, Canada

The way that George Kelly treats moving from an act of love to an act of hate, via his formulation of the construct of hostility, may indicate how far apart Kelly’s model and embodied intersubjective approaches stand concerning the issue of the fundamental integrity of experiencing. All feeling and emotion for Kelly expresses an awareness of the relative ongoing success or failure in relating new events to one’s outlook. But his definition of hostility stands out from his account of guilt, anxiety, fear and threat in that it consists of a two-stage process. Kelly defines hostility as “the continued effort to extort validational evidence in favor of a type of social prediction which has already proved itself a failure.” Notice that this definition combines awareness of a validational event(invalidation) with a response to that event(extortion of evidence). Furthermore, as we will see, the way in which the first step is understood determines the sense of the second step, and vice versa. The crucial importance of interpretation in fathoming what Kelly meant by hostility can be demonstrated in the following questions: How far-reaching did he mean his definition to be? Is hostility the same thing as anger, and if so, is there such a thing as healthy, adaptive, anger, or do all forms of anger extort evidence? And what about subtle forms of affective perturbation like irritation and annoyance? Are these also forms of hostility?

In what follows, I suggest that, against most theories of time, there really is an actual present, a now, but that such an eternal moment cannot be found before or after time. It may even be semantically incoherent to say that such an eternal present exists since “it” is changeless and formless (presumably a dynamic chaos without location or duration) yet with creative potential. Such a field of near-infinite potential energy could have had no beginning and will have no end, yet within it stirs the desire to experience that brings forth singularities, like the one that exploded into the Big Bang (experiencing itself through relative and relational spacetime). From the perspective of the eternal now of near-infinite possibilities (if such a sentence can be semantically parsed at all), there is only the timeless creative present, so the Big Bang did not happen some 13 billion years ago. Inasmuch as there is neither time past nor time future nor any time at all at the null point of forever, we must understand the Big Bang (and all other events) as taking place right here and now. In terms of the eternal now, the beginning is happening now and we just appeared (and are always just appearing) to witness it. The rest is all conscious construction; time and experience are so entangled, they need each other to exist

In this paper, we identify the types of issues that should be addressed in order to construct integrative theories of psychological development. These issues include assessment of the philosophical presuppositions of developmental theory; identifying an integrative unit of analyzing psychological activity; conceptualizing the meaning and nature of developmental change -- and especially transformations in the contextualized structure of action; developing dynamic methodology to assess trajectories in the structure of action over time; assessing multiply-nested processes that spur developmental change, and assessing the self-organization of complexity at multiple levels of analysis. An integrative model of psychological development is a dynamic model that acknowledges that any given human act reflects a the moment-by-moment integration of biological, psychological and socio-cultural processes.

Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) — all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In so doing, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination or if Whitehead's controlled unfolding process actually denies a truly creative present.

This article considers the nature of the theoretical legacy-the system theory-of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. The author focuses on three topics: first, he briefly describes Luhmann's ideas in the context of the contemporary sociological thought; second, he identidies how Luh-mann's works are perceived today; third, he presents a new reflection on Luhmann's works. Paradigmati-cally, Luhmann's ideas can be attributed to the system theory, neo-functionalism and radical constructivism due to his efforts to find inspiration in natural sciences. At the same time, Luhmann found himself in the close position to the traditions of the German philosophical idealism. Although the system theory is holistic in nature, Luhmann used for its elaboration elements of the individualist-oriented approach (based on Max Weber's ideas). Thus, in Luhmann's conception, systems become holistic entities that, like individual subjects, are capable of making decisions and managing themselves. One of the strengths of Luhmann's conception is determined by his evolutionary theory consistent with random (in Luhmann's terms-contingent) development connected with the idea of an open future. As with Parsons, in Luh-mann's conception we find emphasis on the consensus ensured by communication processes. However, what is missing, are the topics of work, production, conflict, struggle and violence. The current decline in the interest in Luhmann's works has been reinforced by the fact that he was unable to translate his conceptions into instruments for the empirical sociological research. Nevertheless, Luhmann's theory of a functionally differentiated society and its consequences still represents a significant stimulus for the contemporary sociological thought.

Morris's Arc (1988) for String Quartet flows; it flows with substance, and with purpose. By flowing, I don’t just mean in the trivial sense that all music flows because it is unfolding in time and time flows. Rather I mean that there is continuity to its various surges of eventfulness; these surges are not disjunct or sudden. And by substance I mean both that its sound is as a sensuous fluid material and that the unfolding of its constituent events presents a coherent organization, thus binding together into a statement that seems meaningful in retrospect. By purpose I mean not only that there is a local logic to the consequence of one note following another, but also that the flow of events enables the material to organize into processes that forge a trajectory toward a goal.
    The analysis first focuses on local details considered in terms of pitch and pitch-class formations as arising from twelve-tone rows; then it delves into aspects of form, process, and texture. These are considered in terms of emergent properties in flux. The modeling of these properties and their flux employs some mathematical formalisms, but the reader can rely on the fact that every mathematical definition and formula is described carefully in prose as well.
    In Arc, the twelve-tone pitch class details and the surging emergent qualities projecting form are not completely separate from each other. Rather, all these features interact. Thus not only does the article weave together connections between such facets as form, process, and texture, but it also connects these to the twelve-tone rows and pitch-class configurations that are more straightforwardly part of the compositional plan (and more usual in analyses) of Morris’s music.

[Download the pdf below, or contact the author jmailman@alumni.uchicago.edu, for a digital offprint. It can also accessed through JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/10.7757/persnewmusi.52.2.0249 ]

Basado en la aplicación del método funcional, utilizado en la arquitectura de la teoría de sistemas sociales (Luhmann), se presenta una alternativa al método funcionalista causal. Se traza una distinción (Spencer-Brown) y con ello se identifica un punto de referencia. Se parte de la discusión clásica sobre la relación entre el derecho y la moral, como eje para trasladar el problema hacia una un trasfondo particular: ya sea desde la complejidad o desde el orden. En primer lugar, la visión del orden observa la naturaleza como una serie causal de hechos que tienen como base una realidad objetiva, externa al sujeto, lo cual posibilita una comprensión de los fenómenos naturales de manera analítica, y permite, en el caso del Derecho, una referencia a un sustrato extrajurídico (de orden divino, natural o cósmico). En segundo lugar, la perspectiva de la complejidad entiende la naturaleza como excedente de posibilidades de selección: no priman, aquí, las esencias de las cosas sino el acto mismo de entender algo como una cosa. En este punto, recurrimos a la distinción sistema/entorno la cual tomamos como “distinción directriz”: el entorno es entendido como condición de posibilidad del sistema, pero sin formar parte de este; el sistema crea un orden propio -rompe la correlación punto-por- punto con su entorno-. En suma, la sociedad es entendida como un sistema social, cuyo elemento primordial es la comunicación(autopoiesis/sociopoiesis) y cuyo entorno lo constituyen las personas (sistemas psíquicos). Así, el sistema jurídico es observado, también, como un sistema sociopoiético (Arnold-Cathalifaud) que produce su propio sentido –distinto al sentido que producen otros sistemas sociales, por ejemplo, la economía, la ciencia o la religión–, y que cumple, además, una función social: mantener expectativas de conducta aun y cuando estas se defrauden. Por otro lado, en el ámbito de la la teoría jurídica entendemos que la moral tiene, en sí, una función que desempeñar: la necesidad de asegurar que el derecho se subordine a estándares mínimos de justicia (que muestre a sí mismo y frente a la sociedad, como justo); tomamos este valor y lo generalizarlo transversalmente a todos los sistemas sociales para obtener la fórmula de los Derechos Humanos: la inclusión jurídica y social de personas. A lo anterior, sumamos una problematización de las normas morales como obstáculo a la inclusión en situaciones complejas y de diversidad social. Finalmente, desde una perspectiva posmoderna, resaltamos la importancia de la pluralidad en una sociedad democrática donde coexisten valores y creencias multiculturales y heterogéneas.