ISSN 1782-348X

CONSTRUCTIVIST
FOUNDATIONS

Humberto Maturana Self-consciousness: How? When? Where?

Ranulph Glanville Construction and Design
Markus Peschl Modes of Knowing and Modes of Coming to Know:
Knowledge Creation and Co-Construction as
Socio-Epistemological Engineering in Educational Processes
Wai-lap Wong, David Watkins & Ngai-ying Wong Cognitive and
Affective Outcomes of Person–Environment Fit to a Critical
Constructivist Learning Environment: A Hong Kong Investigation
Book reviews
Konstruktivismus und Pädagogik by Holger Lindemann
Non-dualistische Medientheorie by Stefanjournal
An interdisciplinary Weber
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 3
Date of publication: July 2006
 Advisory Board DESCRIPTION
William Clancey Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an independent academic peer-reviewed e-journal without
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Ranulph Glanville constructivist sciences, to weed out pseudoscientific claims and to base constructivist sciences
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Ernst von Glasersfeld claims. The journal is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of all forms of constructivist
University of Massachusetts, USA sciences, especially radical constructivism, cybersemiotics, enactive cognitive science, epistemic
structuring of experience, non-dualism, second order cybernetics, the theory of autopoietic
Vincent Kenny
systems, etc.
Inst. of Constructivist Psychology, Italy
Klaus Krippendorff
University of Pennsylvania, USA AIM AND SCOPE
Humberto Maturana The basic motivation behind the journal is to make peer-reviewed constructivist papers
Institute Matríztica, Chile available to the academic audience free of charge. The “constructive” character of the
Josef Mitterer journal refers to the fact that the journal publishes actual work in constructivist sciences
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Karl Müller open to (provocative) new ideas that fall within the scope of constructivist approaches and
Wisdom, Austria encourages critical academic submissions to help sharpen the position of constructivist
sciences.
Bernhard Pörksen
University of Hamburg, Germany
The common denominator of constructivist approaches can be summarized as follows.
• Constructivist approaches question the Cartesian separation between objective world
Gebhard Rusch and subjective experience;
University of Siegen, Germany • Consequently, they demand the inclusion of the observer in scientific explanations;
Siegfried J. Schmidt • Representationalism is rejected; knowledge is a system-related cognitive process rather
University of Münster, Germany than a mapping of an objective world onto subjective cognitive structures;
Bernard Scott • According to constructivist approaches, it is futile to claim that knowledge approaches
Cranfield University, UK reality; reality is brought forth by the subject rather than passively received;
Sverre Sjölander • Constructivist approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is
Linköping University, Sweden considered beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained from;
• Therefore, the focus of research moves from the world that consists of matter to the
Stuart Umpleby
world that consists of what matters;
George Washington University, USA
• Constructivist approaches focus on self-referential and organizationally closed systems;
Terry Winograd such systems strive for control over their inputs rather than their outputs;
Stanford University, USA • With regard to scientific explanations, constructivist approaches favor a process-oriented
approach rather than a substance-based perspective, e.g. living systems are defined by
Editor-In-Chief processes whereby they constitute and maintain their own organization;
Alexander Riegler • Constructivist approaches emphasize the “individual as personal scientist” approach;
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium sociality is defined as accommodating within the framework of social interaction;
• Finally, constructivist approaches ask for an open and less dogmatic approach to science
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 biological–epistemological biology of cognition
OPINION

Self-consciousness:
How? When? Where?
Humberto Maturana Romesín A Instituto de Formación Matríztica, info@matriztica.org
erties of the matter or of the different forms of
Purpose: To show how is it that that which we connote with notions of self and conscious- energy that compose us and/or the cosmos.
ness are configurations of sensorialities that arise in the flow of our living in recursive coor- As molecular autopoietic systems, human
dinations of doings which eventually they guide, and not entities independent of our doings. beings are structure-determined entities. That
Approach: Following the consequences of our condition of structure determined systems is, we human beings are systems such that any
that do not distinguish in the experience whether what they live is a perception or an illusion. external agent that impinges upon us does not
Findings: That we human beings occur as relational dynamics of recursive coordinations specify what happens in us, it only triggers in
of feelings in which self and consciousness occur as configurations of sensorialities in the us some structural changes totally determined
evanescent continuous present of the the changing flow of our living which they also guide. in our structural dynamics. All that happens
Practical Implications: Thinking, acting and reflecting in the awareness that self and con- with, to or in a structure-determined system
sciousness are not physical entities or properties. arises at every moment determined in it by its
Key words: Self, consciousness, self-consciousness, language, human beings. structural dynamics of that moment. This
means that any external agent that may
Preface We human beings impinge upon a structure-determined system
can only operate by triggering in the structur-
We human beings find ourselves doing what- in the present aldetermined system structural changes that it
ever we may be doing (like asking this ques- does not and indeed cannot specify.
tion) when we ask ourselves about what we We human beings operate as self-conscious A living system as a molecular autopoietic
do. The form of the question that we ask beings when we reflect on our living and on the system exists as a dynamic molecular architec-
determines the operational and relational kind of living that we live. Self-consciousness is ture operationally closed upon itself that as a
domains in which we want an answer. The a fundamental aspect of our operation as closed network of molecular productions
form of the question that a listener hears human beings because it is self-consciousness exists in a flow of continuous changes deter-
determines the operational and relational that constitutes our operation in awareness of mined by its own dynamics, or triggered by its
domains in which he or she wants to hear an what we do and of our possibility to choose encounters with the molecular medium in
answer. The operational and relational both what kind of world we want to live, and of which it operates as a totality and is thus real-
domains in which our living occurs at any what we want do with ourselves and with oth- ized as an organism. The part of the medium in
instant changes in the flow of our living as our ers as we live the world we chose. We modern which a living system exists as an organism,
living changes, and as our living changes our human beings do all that we do, even if we are and in which as an organism it operates at
listening changes according to what is hap- not aware of this, as self-conscious beings. We every instant as a totality, is its niche. The niche
pening in our living. Thus, we may begin ask- use the words or notions of consciousness and acts as it encounters the organism in relation to
ing a question in a particular relational self-consciousness in our western culture, which it exists, as an operational locality of the
domain, but as, in the flow of our living, our whether in the domains of science, philosophy, dynamic matrix of architectural molecular
listening changes, we may end by accepting an art or daily life, under a fundamental episte- processes of the extended molecular network
answer in a different relational domain, with- mological attitude in which we implicitly or in which the organism occurs, and which we
out even becoming aware of the change. It is explicitly act as if they referred to some emer- generally call the medium. That is, the niche is
to avoid this sort of confusion that I take spe- gent property of the operation of the brain, or that part of the medium that moment after
cial care in showing explicitly the relational to some essential feature of the cosmos, or even moment remains in operational congruence
domain in which I think the experiences to some intrinsic property of matter. with the living system as this interacts as a
which are lived or are connoted when we Notwithstanding this, with our present way totality (as an organism) with the medium. In
speak of knowing and of self-consciousness of thinking, the manner or the manners in these circumstances the organism realizes and
occur. Indeed, it is to avoid this sort of confu- which the experiences that we wish to connote conserves its living as long as its recursive inter-
sion that I am always careful to make explicit or evoke with the expressions “consciousness” actions with the medium result in structural
what kind of answers I shall propose or I shall and “self-consciousness” emerge, happen or changes in the organism and medium which
accept in relation to questions that deal with operate in the flow of our living seem to elude continuously conserve the dynamic architec-
what is connoted when we speak of cognition, our understanding. We cannot show them to be tural unity organism–niche that conserves the
consciousness and self-consciousness. features of the operation of the brain, or prop- autopoisis of the living system.

Constructivist Foundations 2006, vol. 1, no. 3 91

 biological–epistemological
OPINION
Biological fundaments
revisited
Organism–niche relation
What an observer sees when observing an
organism conserving its living in its niche, is
that in general terms it behaves in a manner
which is continuously adequate to the emerg-
ing features of the changing medium in which
he or she sees it as if it acted with previous
knowledge of what was to happen, or as if it
were predicting was would happen. That is,
the observer usually sees the organisms
behaving in a manner that appears to permit
it to recursively generate the flow of doings
that would conserve its living through any
changing circumstances that it might
encounter in the recursively changing rela-
tional domain in which it lives. For the
observer, the observed organism appears to
be computing the relational and structural
changes that will take place in the medium.
However, this does not happen and cannot
happen. As a structure-determined system an
organism, including its nervous system as one
of its components, cannot make a representa-
tion of the recursively changing medium in
which it operates that would allow it to make
the computations that it needs to continu-
ously generate a behavior adequate to con-
serve of its living. That which an observer sees
when he or she observes an organism behav-
ing in a manner adequate to the changing
medium, is the actual operation of the organ-
ism in its domain of structural coupling slid-
ing in the network of relations that the
medium is following a relational path that
emerges instant after instant when its interac-
tions with the medium result in the conserva-
tion of its living. The continuously changing
relational zone of encounter of an organism
and the medium in interactions in which this
results in conserving its living, is the niche.
The niche is the changing zone of the domain
of structural coupling of an organism which
exists only as long as the interactions of the
organism and medium result in the conserva-
tion of the living of the organism. The niche
does not exist by itself.
What I am evoking in this description is
the dynamics of the arising and conservation
of the operational coherences between the
organism and the medium in the constitution
of its niche: as long as the living of the organ-
92
biology of cognition
ism is conserved in its interactions with the the organism is un-interruptedly conserved in
medium the niche arises as the relational the midst of the flow of the continuous struc-
domain in which the living of the organism is tural changes taking place in the organism
conserved, and as the niche of the organism is and the medium. In the case of the key and the
conserved the living of the organism is con- lock the actual configuration of the opera-
served. This process occurs as a circular recur- tional congruence between them is non-his-
sive dynamics. Indeed, all biological processes torical because it is the result of an intentional
occur as a circular recursive dynamics a-temporal design. The configuration of the
through which living systems arise as histori- structural operational congruence between a
cal singularities that exist only while they are key and the lock that it opens is the result of a
in structural coupling with the medium that design. In constrast to the key and the lock, the
contains and make them possible. In these configuration of the operational congruence
circumstances, what an occurring at every instant
observer sees as an ade- All biological processes between an organism and
quate behavior when he or its niche is the continuous
she observes an organism
occur as a circular result of a history of evolu-
operating in the conserva- recursive dynamics tionary phylogenic struc-
tion of its living in its through which living tural drift in the conserva-
niche is the operation of systems arise as historical tion of a particular form of
that organism in struc- living in the conservation
tural coupling in the net-
singularities of a particular configura-
work of operational tion of organism–niche
coherences of the relational matrix in which relation. The structural coupling between an
the organism–niche relation in which the organism and its niche continuously arises
organism conserves its living is taking place. without any intended design as the historical
So the adequate behavior of an organism does result of the congruent structural drift that
not arise as a computation of what will hap- occurs spontaneously in the flow of the recur-
pen in the medium but as a simple result of its sive interactions of an organism and the
operation in structural coupling in its niche medium when in the process the living of the
while this structural coupling lasts. The struc- organism results as conserved. What I have
tural coupling of the organism and the described as the manner of operation of living
medium in its operation as a matrix of systems in their respective domains of struc-
dynamic architectural relations of which the tural coupling applies to us human beings as
niche of an organism is a singular locality that well. The only thing that is peculiar to us
is at any moment the arising historical result human beings is that we are languaging
of the conservation of the particular configu- organisms, and that as we operate in struc-
ration of organism–niche relations in which tural coupling in language with other human
the living of the organism is conserved while beings, the organism–niche relation in which
all else is open to change: when the particular our living is conserved includes our operation
structural coupling between an organism and in languaging with other human beings.
the medium at its niche is lost, the organism Accordingly, when another human being
dies. observes us, he or she sees us doing whatever
In these circumstances the operational we do in language in a domain of recursive
congruence that an observer sees occurring coordinations of coordinations of doings that
between the structure of an organism and the has arisen as a domain of structural coupling
structure of its niche is of the same kind as the with other languaging beings, and in which
operational congruence that he or she sees the recursive coordinations of doings are the
between a key and the lock that it opens; both result of such a history, and do not differ in
are cases of structural coupling although dif- nature from the operational coherences
ferent in their manner of origin. Thus, the between a key and the lock that it opens.
operational congruence taking place between
an organism and its niche at every moment of Domains of existence
the flow of their recursive interactions, is the An organism exists in two non-intersecting
continuous result of the conservation of the phenomenal domains: one is the domain of
organism–niche relation in which the living of its internal molecular dynamics in which its
Constructivist Foundations
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
autopoiÈsis is continuously realized, and the
other is the relational domain in which the
organism exists operating as a totality of a
particular kind. As these two phenomenal
domains do not intersect, it is intrinsically not
possible for an observer to deduce what hap-
pens in one of them from what happens in the
other. Yet, an observer that observes simulta-
neously these two domains can notice that he
or she can make correlations between the
independent processes occurring in them.
Furthermore, the observer can realize at the
same time that those correlations are possible
because the processes that take place in those
two non-intersecting phenomenal domains
are all realized in the operation of the
dynamic architecture of the organism while
this operates as a totality in the relational
space that arises through its operation as
such. Thus, although the processes taking
place in the two non-intersecting phenome-
nal domains through which the living of the
organism as a totality is realized do not inter-
sect, the dynamic structures through which
they are realized do intersect as they arise in
the operation of the same closed architectural
dynamic that realizes the living of the organ-
ism as a totality. Accordingly, as the structure
of the organism changes through its internal
dynamics, the flow of its interactions with the
medium as it operates as a
totality changes in a man- The external world that an realization of the auto-
ner contingent to the flow
of such changes. Simulta-
observer sees around a
neously, the structure of particular living system
the organism undergoes does not exist as such for it poiesis; the phenomena of
structural changes trig-
gered in it by its encounters in the niche while
it operates as a totality and, as a result of these of the organism in its operation as a totality in
structural changes, the internal relational
dynamics of the organism changes in a man-
ner that is contingent to flow of the encoun-
ters of the organism in the medium. Since in
this process the organism remains alive only
as long as the changes taking place in its
dynamic architecture and the changes taking
place simultaneously in the dynamic architec-
ture of the medium result in the conservation
of its autopoiesis, the primary result of the
history of interactions of an organism in the
medium in which its living is conserved is
structural coupling. Although the encounters
of an organism with the medium that con-
tains it and make it possible occur at the local-
ity of its niche, the arising structural coupling
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
between the organism to the medium extends
far beyond the structural locality of the niche
because this, as a locality of the matrix of
dynamic architectures that the medium is,
participates in this matrix of dynamic archi-
tectures. Therefore, as an organism conserves
its living in its niche, it does so conserving as
well its operational coherences with the
matrix of dynamic architectures to which its
niche belongs.
A secondary result of the history of inter-
actions of an organism in the medium in
which its living is conserved is that an
observer, who sees an organism in its interac-
tions in its niche, sees it operating in a way
that continuously arises as adequate to the
changing circumstances that emerge in its liv-
ing as if it could “predict” them. The observer
in these circumstances frequently feels
inclined to say that the organism knows what
to do, and may be even inclined to speak of the
wisdom of living systems when he or she sees
them as if they were operating from the per-
spective of what he or she would call under-
standing.
So, there are phenomena that occur in the
physiology of an organism, and phenomena
that occur in the relational space that arises as
the organism operates and interacts as a
whole. The phenomena of the physiology
belong to the continuous
poiÈsis of the organism
and they are in fact the
occurrence of the auto-
the relational space per-
tain to the realization of the manner of living
the flow of its interactions with both the non-
living entities and the living beings that con-
stitute the medium which contains it and
makes it possible. The beauty of this condi-
tion of existence of living systems is that
although these two phenomenal domains do
not intersect, the independent phenomena
arising in them are integrated in the realiza-
tion of the living of an organism as both arise
through the same structural dynamics while
the organism operates as a totality with a sin-
gle bodyhood in the organism–niche relation
in which its particular manner of living is
conserved. That is, the independent processes
that occur in the two non-intersecting
domains of existence of an organism result in
biology of cognition
being correlated while the organism interacts
as a totality that conserves its structural cou-
pling in its niche because the structural
dynamics of the bodyhood of the organism
participates in the generation of both: the
phenomena of the two domains of existence
of an organism do not intersect, but the struc-
tural dynamics that generate them do inter-
sect.
Structural determinism
That we human beings as living systems are
structure-determined systems means that
nothing external to us can determine what
happens in us. In other words, all that hap-
pens in us or with us occurs as a flow of struc-
tural changes determined in us moment after
moment by our structural dynamics at that
moment. Or, in other words, our living occurs
at every instant as a flow of a configuration of
structural changes arising moment after
moment in the interplay of our dynamic
internal structural with the structural
changes triggered in it by what we observers
see as external agents impinging upon us. An
autopoietic system lives as a closed structure-
determined system in a closed dynamic of
structural changes. So, the external world that
an observer sees around a particular living
system does not exist as such for it. Living sys-
tems live whatever they live in the realization
of their living as an aspect of the closed
dynamics of structural change of their auto-
poiÈsis, regardless of whether those structural
changes are seen by an observer as arising as
part of their internal dynamics or triggered in
them by some impinging external agent. We
human beings are not different in this from
other living systems, and our living as self-
conscious beings that operate as observers
occurs in us as structure-determined systems
for which the external world that an observer
sees around them does not exist as such for
their operation. The external world of which
we speak as we operate as observers arises in
our living as the distinction that we make of
the flow of our inner sensoriality when
another observer sees us operating in a man-
ner that he or she would call distinguishing
what he or she sees as the world that sur-
rounds us, otherwise we just operate in the
flow of our living in structural coupling.
Accordingly, as self-conscious autopoietic
systems we operate in a relational space that
exists for us only as we bring it forth as a dis-
93
 biological–epistemological biology of cognition
OPINION

tinctions of the flow of our inner sensoriality encounter the medium. A basic consequence without the need or the possibility of ever
as we explain our existence as living systems of the peculiar structural intersection of the claiming anything about anything thought to
and self-conscious human beings doing what nervous system and the organism, is that exist or to occur independently of what we do
we do. although the nervous system does not as we distinguish it. We human beings do
Self-consciousness occurs as a particular encounter the medium, as it operates as a whatever we do as operations in the realiza-
manner of relational living in a relational closed network of changing relations of activ- tion of our living in the domain of the opera-
space that arises in our explanation of our liv- ities it continuously gives rise to sensory– tional coherences of the realization of our liv-
ing. As such, self-consciousness is not a fea- effector correlations in the encounter of the ing. We human beings, as all living systems,
ture of the operation of our structural organism with the medium. And he or she can exist and operate as structure-determined
dynamics in the realization of our living. also observe that those sensory effector corre- systems that in their actual operation do not
However, our operation as self-conscious lations appear to him or her as configurations know and cannot know if what they are living
human beings does not negate our condition of sensory and effector encounters of the as valid at any instant they will invalidate it
of being structure-determined systems organism with the medium under the form of later as an illusion, as a mistake, or if they will
because our operation as such is possible pre- relational behaviors. confirm it in its validity. In the experience
cisely because as organisms we exist as struc- An observer can easily see that due to its itself we do not distinguish between percep-
ture-determined systems in a relational space. manner of constitution and operation as a tion and illusion. This is not a limitation; it is
As I shall be showing, self-consciousness component of the organism, the nervous sys- our condition of existence.
occurs in the relational domain that arises as tem cannot distinguish in its closed dynamics
we human beings operate as totalities in a flow whether what happens in it at any moments Cognition
of recursive consensual coordinations of arises as part of its closed dynamics or is trig- The main cognitive consequence of structural
coordinations of doings with other structure- gered by some external agent impinging upon determinism is that as a result of our consti-
determined human beings. the sensory surfaces of the organism. A funda- tution as structure-determined living systems
mental consequence of the manner of opera- we cannot claim that we can say anything that
The nervous system tion of an organism and its nervous system as may refer to anything that we may claim exists
As is the case with all animals, one of our fun- structurally intersecting closed systems is that independently of what we do as we distin-
damental components in our operation as an organism as it operates as a totality always guish it. Yet, when we as observers in our daily
organisms interacting as totalities in a rela- lives as valid for its living whatever it lives, living make an operation of distinction we do
tional space, is the nervous system. As a com- regardless of the opinion of the observer that so in the implicit total trust that that which
ponent of the organism the nervous system is looks at the flow of its encounters with the appeared as a result of the operation of dis-
constituted as a closed network of cellular medium. A remarkable result of this for us tinction that we performed would appear
and/or molecular elements (that I call neu- human beings is that we never know, and can- again if that operation of distinction were to
ronal elements) which through their recursive not ever know in the moment that we live be performed again. In fact this is what every
reciprocal interactions whatever we live, if what living system does, what we do spontaneously
constitute the nervous sys- We living systems do not we live as valid at any given in our daily living or in our professional
tem as a closed network of need the supposition of an moment we shall later doings as scientists, philosophers or technol-
changing relations of declare was an illusion (or ogists, as an implicit fundamental and unre-
activities closed upon
external independent a mistake) or if we shall flected epistemological attitude. We act under
itself. As such, the nervous reality to live confirm it as valid when the spontaneous confidence that the coher-
system is both a closed net- we compare it with some ences of our living will be conserved and will
work of reciprocally interacting neuronal ele- other aspect of our living, the validity of be repeated in whatever we do: living systems
ments, and a closed network of changing rela- which we do not doubt: we do not know when in general and we human beings in particular,
tions of activities between its neuronal we live what we live whether what we are liv- live and act under the implicit trust or confi-
components. An observer that looks at the ing will be seen in comparison with some dence in that structural determinism will
operation of an organism and its nervous sys- other experience as a perception, as an illu- always be conserved in all circumstances, and
tem can see that the nervous system as a closed sion or as a mistake. We human beings do all that when it seems that it is not conserved, we
network of neuronal elements is in structural that we do, in science, philosophy, technol- are confident that that apparent failure is the
intersection with the organism at its sensory ogy, art, biology, daily living… we construct result of some intervening structural dynam-
and effector surfaces, and that as a closed net- flying machines, computers… or we manipu- ics in the domain of our living of which we
work of changing relations of activities late the genetic constitution of living systems were not aware before, but which we may
between its neuronal components it does not and make the most audacious operations of eventually find as an additional feature of the
interact with the medium. Moreover, the computation about the ages of the stars and coherences of our living. We living systems do
observer can also see that in these circum- the galaxies, only as operations in the domain not need the supposition of an external inde-
stances it is the organism only which interacts of the operational coherences of the realiza- pendent reality to live, nor do we human
with the medium at its effector and sensory tion of our living as living systems, without beings need such an assumption to explain
surfaces, while the nervous system never claiming, without being able to claim, and our living with the coherences of our living.

94 Constructivist Foundations
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
As a matter of fact, we human beings do all
that we do, whether in our daily living, in phi-
losophy, in science, or in technology, without
ever in fact requiring the supposition of the
existence of a domain of reality independent
of our doings: we explain the coherences of
our doings with the coherences of our doings.
Structural coupling
The operational coherence between a living
system and the medium in which it lives arises
moment after moment in the flow of its living
as a result of the fact that a living system and
the circumstances of its living change together
congruently, in a spontaneous relational
dynamic flow of structural change around the
conservation of living. I have called this flow
of congruent structural changes that occurs
spontaneously when two or more systems stay
in recursive interactions “structural cou-
pling.” When I refer to the medium, when I
speak of an organism and the medium chang-
ing together congruently in structural cou-
pling, I refer to all the circumstances, living or
not living, that interact with the organism in
the flow of the realization of its living. A main
consequence of the dynamics of structural
coupling is that a living system either finds
itself moment after moment in operational
congruence with a medium that is changing
congruently with it and lives, or it does not
and dies. For a naïve observer that beholds an
organism conserving its living as it operates in
its domain of structural coupling, the ade-
quate behavior that he or she sees being gen-
erated by the observed organism appears as if
it were the result of computations that the
organism does with the use of the informa-
tion that it obtains from the medium with its
sensory organs. From the point of view of an
observer that can see and understands the
dynamics of structural coupling the situation
is completely different. Such an observer sees
that the adequate behavior of an organism in
its niche is moment after moment the result
of the conservation of the operational con-
gruence between the organism and its niche.1
And such an observer also sees that that oper-
ational congruence, that relation of structural
coupling between the organism and the
medium, occurs and is conserved spontane-
ously as long as the living system slides in its
interactions with the medium in the rela-
tional path that results in the conservation of
its living. The living of an organism is con-
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
biology of cognition
served in its interactions in the medium while a transcendental entity, nor is it a living sys-
its structural coupling in it is conserved, and, tem as such, the observer is a human being in
vice versa, the structural coupling of an the dynamics of distinguishing him or herself,
organism and its niche is conserved as long as aware that he or she is making distinctions as
its living results conserved in its interactions he or she operates in observing. The observer
in the medium. occurs as a manner of operating in the rela-
In these circumstances, one unavoidable tional space of the bipedal primates that we
cognitive consequence of our condition as human beings now are as Homo sapiens-
structure-determined sys- amans amans. Therefore,
tems is that when we claim Knowledge occurs as a the observer lives its being
that we know, we cannot manner of interpersonal observer in the flow of the
be making reference to sensoriality of operating
something supposed to relation, not as something as a human being in the
exist or to occur indepen- that one has dynamics of observing.
dently of what we do when We human beings operate
we operate as observers distinguishing it. An as observers in the doings of our daily living,
other unavoidable consequence is the realiza- or in any other already established opera-
tion that the notion of knowledge can only tional domain in languaging, in the sensorial-
refer to that which an observer ascribes to ity of feeling that the entities that we distin-
another being when he or she sees that that guish exist independently of what we do. Yet,
being behaves in a manner that he or she con- since we cannot say anything about anything
siders adequate in the domain in which he or supposed to exist independently of what we
she observes it, and does so because he or she do when we distinguish it, when we want to
thinks that that behavior satisfies some crite- understand or explain something, we cannot
rion of validity that he or she uses to accept ask the question “what is that?”, as if we could
that behavior as adequate behavior. There- talk about something in itself, but instead we
fore, knowledge occurs as a manner of inter- must ask, “what operation of distinction do I
personal relation, not as something that one perform to distinguish that which I wish to talk
has: knowledge is something that an observer about? Thus, for example, if I want to talk
ascribes to some other entity, living being, or about that which I connote when I talk of con-
to him or herself, when he or she accepts the scious experience or self-consciousness, I will
behavior of this other not ask what is conscious
being as adequate behav- The observer is not a experience, or what is self-
ior according to what he
or she thinks is adequate
transcendental entity, nor consciousness, but I will
ask,”what should I see in the
behavior in that moment. is it a living system as such operation of a person so that
As an observer ascribes I can claim that I see that
knowledge to some other being, he or she that person is behaving as a self-conscious
stops asking for the validity of the behavior of being, or is living a conscious experience?”
such being. Knowledge has nothing to do If indeed we were to ask such a question,
with something supposed to occur indepen- we would soon discover that that which one
dently of what the observer does when he or distinguishes when speaking of being con-
she claims to know; knowledge refers to the scious or self-conscious, is not something
operational coherences of the doings of the that occurs in the body, or in the dynamics of
members of a human community doing some neuronal network in the brain, but that
things together. it is something that the observer ascribes to a
person when he or she thinks that that person
Distinctions is behaving as if he or she were referring or
When I speak of the observer, or of an could refer to how he or she feels in the flow
observer, I refer to any human being that of his or her participation in such a conversa-
could be you or me in his or her operation in tion. That is, when we speak of self-con-
the flow of the recursive consensual coordina- sciousness in our daily living we connote two
tions of doings of languaging making distinc- interrelated processes: one is a conversational
tions, and who is aware that he or she makes flow in which a person appears to an observer
distinctions. Accordingly, the observer is not as making reflexive distinctions of how he or
95
 biological–epistemological biology of cognition
OPINION

she feels operating in it, the other is the con- Language and conversations things together that we now call conversation.
notation of the flow of sensoriality being What I have said above about structural deter- In this process, the human lineage arose as a
lived by the person participating in that flow minism is an abstraction of the coherences of living together in networks of conversations
of conversation. To refer to the first processes our operation as human living systems: our conserved from one generation to the next in
we must operate in self-consciousness so that operation as structure-determined systems is the learning of the children. From its very ori-
we may describe the reflexive distinctions the fundament of all that we human beings do gin humanness arose and occurs in networks
that constitute it. What we cannot do is to or claim to be able to do, whether as scientists, of conversations, and all that we human
describe the flow of sensoriality involved in as artists, as technologists, as philosophers, or beings do as human beings occurs in net-
such process; all that we can do is to connote in the realization of our daily chores whatever works of conversations. Indeed, the different
it as the configuration of sensations and feel- these may be. In other words, with the notion manners of living that we live, the different
ings that one lives in the flow of a conversa- of structural determinism I am connoting a worlds that we generate in the course of our
tion that an observer sees as constituting self- feature of our architectural dynamics which, living, all occur as different networks of con-
distinction or the experience of self-con- as an operational aspect of the structural versations, and in particular, the different cul-
sciousness. coherences of our existence as living systems, tures that we live are different manners of liv-
Without the internal dynamics of a ner- constitutes our condition of possibility. Fur- ing in closed networks of conversations.
vous system and the actual operation of some thermore, it is only as we accept our condition All that I have said so far about language
body in the flow of the recursive consensual as structure-determined and conversations I have
coordinations of doings of languaging in an systems that we can real- Language is not a property said from the perspective
interpersonal domain of interactions, there is ize and understand that or faculty of the brain or of of an observer observing
no possibility for a person to operate in inter- language occurs as a human beings in the flow
actions and relations that an observer will recursive flow of consen- what we call the “mind”. of their operation as
consider to be a flow of recursive distinctions sual coordinations of Language is not a symbolic totalities in recursive
on the distinctions that such person is doing. coordinations doings system of communication coordinations of doings
If that does not happen, the observer will not that takes place in the and emotions in the flow
see self-consciousness. Yet, as I have said relational space gener-
about entities of the world of their coexistence as
above, self-consciousness does not occur in ated by two or more liv- they language together.
the nervous system, not in its molecular or ing systems interacting with each other in a Yet, in the actual dynamics of our operation as
cellular components, nor is it a dynamic con- flow of recursive consensual coordinations of structure-determined systems, our interac-
figuration of neuronal relations of activities in doings. Language is a manner of coexistence tions give rise in us to the recursive flow of
the nervous system, and it is not embodied in in coordinations of doings, not a property or inner coordinations of configurations of sen-
the organism. Self-consciousness occurs as a faculty of the brain or of what we call the sorialities that an external observer sees in us
manner of being in a flow of interpersonal “mind.” Language occurs as a flow of recur- as the sensory–effector correlations that con-
relations that is referred to or evoked as it sive interactions between organisms operat- stitute our relational doings in the medium in
appears in a conversation as a connotation in ing as totalities; language is not a symbolic which we operate as totalities. So, languaging
languaging of the inner sensoriality of the system of communication about entities of and conversations occur as recursive flows of
persons involved. So when some one asks the the world; language is not constituted by the coordination of configurations of sensoriali-
question, “what should an observer see to doings that are coordinated; language occurs ties in the dynamics of recursive interactions
claim that he or she sees some other being in the continuously changing present of the of human structure determined living sys-
operating in self-consciousness?”, it becomes flow of living in recursive consensual coordi- tems, as they operate conserving their living
apparent that the answer can only be: “That nations of doings. Languaging does not occur in a domain of organism–niche relations that
which we connote in daily life as self-conscious- in the brain even though without a brain or consists in what an observer sees as languag-
ness is the sensoriality lived without its operational ing or conversations. All the different man-
by the living beings operat- That which does not equivalent in the genera- ners of operation of organism arise and are
ing in a conversation that tion of consensual recur- realized as domains of recursive coordina-
appear in our reflections
we as observers see as the sive coordinations of tions of configurations of sensorialities in a
flow of recursive consen- does not exist doings, languaging would dynamic of structural coupling.
sual coordinations of coor- not exist. Languaging takes
dinations of consensual doings that languaging place as a flow of recursive coordinations of The worlds we live
beings are doing when we see them living in doings in human coexistence. Moreover, as As I have just said, we generate the worlds that
reflexive distinctions of themselves.” In these language arose as a manner of living in our we live as networks of conversations in the
circumstances, if I were to say that I am aware ancestors, it arose spontaneously in the inter- dynamics of the interplay of our languaging
or conscious that I have written the previous play of the recursive coordinations of the and emotioning as different domains of
sentence, I would be referring to the particu- doings of the daily living with the background objects, entities and relations. But objects do
lar sensoriality that I feel when I say that I am of emotioning in which the daily living was not exist as entities that occur by themselves,
conscious of something. taking place, constituting the flow of doing objects do not exist independently of the

96 Constructivist Foundations
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
operation of distinction with which they are
distinguished by the observer that distin-
guishes them, even though we live them feel-
ing that they exist independently of our dis-
tinguishing them. Objects arise and exist in
languaging as flows of
recursive consensual Objects do not exist as
coordinations of doings, entities that occur by
and, therefore, they occur
as flows of coordinations themselves
of coordinations of sensa-
tions and configurations of sensations that an
observer sees as coordinations of doings in
some domain of conversations of the lan-
guaging organisms, which, in our case, are us
human beings. The observer is in the same
operational situation that the observed per-
son is, so what he or she connotes as he or she
talks about what he or she sees is also a flow of the different kinds of
sensations and configurations of sensations.
Therefore, if someone were to say that objects
exist in language, he or she would mean that
they occur as recursive coordinations of
doings in the flow of the coordinations of
doings of the realization of our living. But,
also, and at the same time, that person would
be implying and connoting that we live the
objects in our feeling the feelings that we feel relational space in
as we live our coordinations of consensual
distinctions and doings in the flow of lan-
guaging feeling that we do things in a domain
of existence that is external to us. Moreover,
that person would also be evoking in what he
or she says that he or she is conscious that
although we do not have access to that which
we claim in our explaining to be external to us, presence in our living. That which does not
an observer would see us coordinating our
doings through the recursive coordinations of
our sensations and feelings.
As we live our living in conversations feel- the realization of our living in our niche.
ing ourselves immersed in an independent
world external to us, we do not reflect about
how our living happens, we take for granted
the external world and the conservation of
regularities and operational coherences of
our living through which we realize, guide
and order the course of our living. It is only
when we want to explain how we do what we
do, that all that I have been talking about
becomes apparent and we begin to realize that
we exist as living systems in the closed dynam-
ics of our sensorialities. And it also becomes
apparent to our understanding that each one
of the different worlds that we live as human
beings occurs as a domain of coordination of
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
biology of cognition
configurations of sensorialities that arises as a the moment that we talk about it, even though
result of a recursion in the flow of coordina- we feel that it is ourselves. We usually do not
tions of configurations of sensorialities and pay much attention to the feeling of duality
that we begin to conserve in the relational that appears when we speak in self-distinc-
domain of our living as organisms a new con- tion, so we let it be. However, there are
figuration of sensorialities. moments in our reflections in which we
The sensorialities and con- become aware of this duality and we ask our-
figurations of sensoriali- selves about it: “Are we two entities? What
ties that we live in our feel- kind of entity is the self? Where is the self
ings as objects, relations located in our bodyhood?” However, from all
and configurations of that I have said, it is apparent that I consider
changing relations cannot be described, they that that the self, self-consciousness, and con-
can only be connoted or evoked in flows of sciousness, to be manners of living in the flow
languaging as coordinations of coordinations of our coordinations of configurations of sen-
of doings, and be lived as such. sorialities in the domain of structural cou-
The different pling in which we con-
worlds that we live as Organisms are not physical serve our living
human beings doing entities but exist in the relational through the conserva-
tion of the particular
things that we do, are space as a configuration of organism–niche rela-
different domains of dynamic relations with a niche tion in which we talk of
coordinations of con- that has arisen and has been self and of being self-
figurations of sensori- conscious.
alities that as the flow
conserved along a particular Accordingly, my
of our feelings and phylogenic and ontogenic purpose now is to
emotions continu- history of structural drift as a answer the question
ously modulate the singular configuration of “how does the flow of
configurations of sen-
which we feel our-
organism–niche relations sorialities that we live
selves living as human as self and as self-con-
beings. In these circumstances, living in self- sciousness arise in our living as structure-
consciousness is the center of all the different determined systems that do not distinguish in
worlds that we live or can live as human the experience between perception and illu-
beings because it entails the operationality sion?”
through which those different worlds have As languaging human beings we operate
feeling as a matter of course that we distin-
appear in our reflections does not exist guish things (ourselves included) as entities
because we do not live the configuration of that exist by themselves independently of
sensoriality that constitutes it as an aspect of what we do when we distinguish them. More-
over, we also feel that if we only accepted that
our feelings reveal the nature of our existence,
we could live fully trusting them as non-
Self-consciousness: reflecting animals do, and that we could die
without regret. Indeed, it is only when we
How? When? Where? doubt our senses, when we realize that we
In daily life we live what we call the self as we commit mistakes and that we live illusions
speak of ourselves, as some kind of entity that that we ask the question about the nature of
constitutes somehow the operational center that which we call self and self-consciousness.
of our doings as human beings. When we say It is when we want to explain how do we do
that we are self-conscious we speak feeling that what we do, like claiming to have a self, that
we refer to that self, connoting that we have we find ourselves in difficulty because our
that entity as the core of our being. However, feeling that knowing consists of an act of
at the same time we feel strange because we referring to “the real” as that which exists
feel that the self that is us speaking, is referring independently of what we do cannot be sus-
to an “entity” that arises as a different entity at tained because in the experience we do not
97
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
distinguish between what we call perception
and illusion. Furthermore, our difficulty
increases with our common belief that
because living systems are molecular entities,
material entities, the self and self-conscious-
ness must be explained as physical processes
or as phenomena akin to the domain of phys-
ical reality, if not in kind then in their actions. forms of the recursive coordinations of the
But organisms are not physical entities. An
organism as a living system operating as a
totality exists in the relational space as a con-
figuration of dynamic relations with a niche
that has arisen and has been conserved along
a particular phylogenic and ontogenic history
of structural drift as a singular configuration
of organism–niche relations, and not as a
kind of molecular process. So, for example,
the elephant lives its sensoriality of elephant-
ness as a particular kind of organisms in a
relational domain in which it operates as a
totality, and not as a phenomenon of its
molecular constitution. In the same manner
the kind of organism that we presently are as
Homo sapiens-amans amans, and which we
connote when we refer to ourselves as human
beings, lives its sensoriality of human-being-
ness as humanness in the relational space as a
particular configuration of organism–niche
relation conserved along a history of ontoge-
nic and phylogenic
structural drift, and not Self-consciousness does not
in its molecular consti- occur in the nervous system, began with the arising of
tution. Accordingly as
we live in our sensorial-
not in its molecular or
ity, in the feeling of our cellular components, nor is
living as we operate in it a dynamic configuration
the domain of our of neuronal relations of
humanness reflecting
about ourselves, we feel activities in the nervous
that we operate as inte- system, and it is not
grated wholes not as the embodied in the organism
dualities that may
appear in our description of what we do, and
we somehow also feel that our selfhood is not
of the molecular domain. Furthermore, we
also feel and realize that we exist as some par-
ticular kind of human being only as long as we
conserve the manner of living-feeling that
constitutes us as being of that particular kind
of humanness. It is because of this manner of
existence of whatever occurs in our living in
humanness, that we generate so many differ-
ent domains of existence, that arise and are
conserved only as long as they are lived in our
living, and disappear when they are not lived.
98
Thus, ideas, philosophies, ideologies, gods,
demons, deliria, theories, religions, technolo-
gies, manners of thinking, systems of explana-
tions, personalities, stiles, ghosts … exist as
manners of humanness that guide our struc-
tural as well as our behavioral biologico-cul-
tural living as we conserve them as different
configurations of sensorialities of our self-
consciousness .
An observer that beholds us as totalities in
our operation as human beings sees that as
organisms we exist in the flow of the interlac-
ing of our feelings and our doings in the real-
ization of our living, as all living systems nec-
essarily do. What is particular to us as
languaging human beings is that we live in
consensual coordination of feelings and
doings in an interactional dynamics that we
feel as our living in recursive distinctions that
constitute the world that we feel to be our liv-
ing in the flow of our living in language. It is in
the flow of this manner of living as we live with
other human beings, that we learn the coordi-
nations of doings that an observer will see as
recursive distinctions that distinguish the
doings of the doings which are felt as con-
sciousness, awareness, self-consciousness and
knowing. In the life of our ancestors the hap-
penings of the living in
languaging must have
the family as a small
group of individuals liv-
ing together in the plea-
sure of each other’s com-
pany, the joy of sexual
intimacy, the gathering of
food and the sharing of it
by reciprocal handing it
to each other. All this
must have occurred in the
recursive flow of consensual coordinations of
coordinations of doings that arise spontane-
ously if that manner of living is conserved
through the conservation of the well-being
that it brings to those that participate in it. As
the human being-living that we are now, we
are the present result of a systemic reproduc-
tive history of conservation of such a manner
of living in the learning of our children, as well
as in the historical transformation of our
genetic constitution. Furthermore, all this
must have occurred in an evolutionary history
in which the children of our ancestors must
biology of cognition
have lived in a flow of recursive coordinations
of coordinations of doings that followed a
course continuously guided in them by the
flow of their feelings and emotioning. More-
over, all this must have occurred in a dynamic
flow of recursive coordinations of feelings and
emotioning that generated the sensory effec-
tor correlations that gave rise to the structural
coupling that conserved the living in recursive
coordinations of consensual doings that con-
stituted a lineage of living together in a braid-
ing of languaging and emotioning under the
form of networks of conversations conserved
from one generation to the next through sys-
temic reproduction2 in the learning of the
children. Now, in our historical present, our
babies and small children learn to live in lan-
guaging and conversations in the course of
their interactions with their mothers and with
other adults and older children of their fami-
lies in the same manner as our ancestors,
namely by just living with them. Since objects3
arise in each recursion in the flow of recursive
consensual coordinations of doings, different
forms of living arise as different domains of
objects and begin to be conserved according to
the flow of the emotioning of those living
together in consensual coordinations of
doings. When this happens a manner of living
in recursive coordinations of sensorialities
arises that is seen as a domain of shared objects
that I call domain of interobjectivity because it
is lived as a world of common objects as if
these were independent entities. In this pro-
cess different worlds arise as different domains
of interobjectivity according to how the recur-
sive coordination of consensual doings partic-
ipate in the realization and conservation of the
interlaced living of the participants.
In the peculiar form of living in recursive
consensual coordinations of doings of the
mother–child relations, the play, fondling,
caressing, kissing and mumbling of the
mother with her baby or child, constitute
simultaneously a permanent, intimate, and
changing domain of coexistence in recursive
doings in coordinations of doings in which
languaging and self distinction can arise
together. We can see this easily if we observe
that at the same time that the mother hands
food or toys to her baby, she makes gestures
and sounds that in the flow of the relation
become consensual operation of consensual
coordinations of doings that the observer later
sees as naming-asking for food, for toys, or for
Constructivist Foundations
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
caring and fondling. The same occurs in the
recursive operations of consensual coordina-
tions of naming-playing, naming-handing
and other consensual coordinations of doings
and namings. This recursive flow of consen-
sual coordinations of doings-namings form
the world of interobjectivity that mother and
child generate in the intimacy of their living
together. The world of the mother–child inter-
objectivity that arises with dimensions of
recursive consensual coordinations of touch-
ing and handling of the different parts of the
bodies of the child and of the mother, as well
as of their doing-feeling in
relation to the distinctions We cannot trust our
of their interacting-doing,
is what an observer sees as sensoriality as providing
operations in a domain of us with a description of
consciousness and aware- an external world that
ness. The domain of
contains us
mother–child interobjec-
tivity is constituted in the
recursiveness of their coordinations of doings
interlaced with the emotions and feelings that
take place in their being together. In this process the recursive consensual coordinations of
the eyes, hands, feet… the sel … of the baby arise doings that is our human living as we lan-
as consensual recursive coordinations of doings
with the mother and others in the same way as
any object naming-doing arises in the play of the
mother with her baby. The mother and the
baby play with the hands, feet, fingers, eyes,
mouth... or any other aspect of what we see as
the body of the baby, in the same way that they
play with any object that arises in their nam-
ing-playing. A child learns to refer to himself, to human beings live is one of the many different
talk of him or herself distinguishing him or her-
self doing whatever he or she does, as he or she
languages the arising of all kinds of networks of
manipulative and abstract objects, in the differ-
ent domains of coordinations of consensual
doings or worlds of interobjectivity that consti-
tute the many different relational domains in
which he or she comes to exist as a relational
being with his or her mother and family.
What I have described above is the gener-
ative mechanism of the arising of conscious-
ness, of awareness, of self-consciousness and
of self-awareness, as particular manners of
human living or domains of human coexist-
ence in interobjectivity. I have not supposed
any particular property or processes of the
nervous system, or of the physical world. I
have talked only of the actual relational pro-
cesses that constitute us as human beings and
the worlds that we live as organisms that oper-
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
ate as totalities in a relational space. What I
have not described, and indeed cannot
describe because they occur in the intimacy of
their occurrence, are the feelings that we feel
while we act being self-conscious. Self-con-
sciousness occurs as the configuration of feel-
ings that we feel that we act in a way that an
observer beholding us would say that we were
acting in self-consciousness as we did what we
did, and that we would answer “yes” if he or
she were to ask us: “Did you know that it was
you who did that?” What we do as we speak of
feelings and sensations is to connote or evoke
the recursive coordinations
of consensual coordina-
tions of doings that guide
the course of the doings of
the realization of our living
(or the living of any ani-
mal) as these doings are
formed and arise in the
interplay of the different
configurations of our changing sensoriality.
Indeed, all that we connote in the flow of
guage the course of our living in coordina-
tions of doings and being-doing, are the con-
tinuously changing configurations of feelings
that we feel and that become guiding elements
in the recursive flow of coordinations of con-
sensual doings that realize the continuously
changing worlds that we human beings live.
Each one of the many different worlds that we
flows of recursive consensual coordinations
of coordinations of doings that we live in the
solitude of our sensoriality in a recursive sen-
sory dynamics that includes our feelings in
the relational domain in which we exist in our
living in languaging generating with others
and with ourselves different worlds or
domains of interobjectivity.
How does self-consciousness occur?
An observer says that the operation of self-
distinction occurs when in the happening of a
recursive operation of distinction he or she
sees that the body and the operation of the
distinguishing organism appear being distin-
guished in the operations of distinction of the
same organism that does those distinctions.
And an observer says that self-consciousness is
occurring when in the context of a flow of a lan-
guaging relation he or she sees a person operat-
biology of cognition
ing in recursive self-distinction in a way that he
or she would describes as a relational dynamics
in which such a person is operating in the sen-
soriality that could lead him or her to say that
he or she is distinguishing what he or she is
doing in distinguishing his or her doings and
feelings.
When does self-consciousness occur?
An observer says that self-consciousness
occurs when he or she sees a person living in
the sensoriality that takes place when a person
lives him or herself in the sensoriality of the
operational flow of recursive self-distinctions
and he or she is open to remain in that opera-
tional disposition.
Where does self-consciousness
occur?
An observer says that he or she sees that a per-
son is operating as a self-conscious being
when he or she sees that that person operates
in the sensoriality of a flow of recursive coor-
dinations of doings that constitute the opera-
tion of recursive self-distinctions in a rela-
tional domain of living in which he or she
distinguishes in the observed person the feel-
ings of self-distinction of self-distinction.
That is, self-consciousness is occurring in the
sensoriality that a person lives when an
observer, that could be him or herself, says that
he or she acts knowing that he or she knows
what he or she is doing.
Consciousness and self-consciousness are
manners of living in the feelings of the senso-
riality of the operation of the flow of living of
a languaging human being in recursive self-
distinction; therefore they are not relational
states of the organism, not properties of mat-
ter or of the elements of the cosmos, not some
particular manners of operation of the ner-
vous system. Our living in consciousness and
self-consciousness, as dynamic configuration
of feelings, guide the course followed by the
recursive coordinations of consensual coordi-
nations of doings of our being in languaging
and emotioning under the form of the
dynamics of feelings that give fundament to
the networks of conversations4 that constitute
the worlds that we live as modern human
beings. Indeed, all the worlds that we human
beings generate in our living arise as different
forms of cultural living that, as different con-
figurations of closed networks of conversa-
tions, constitute different forms of transcend-
99
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
ing our molecular biological identity. And the
different worlds that we live transcend our
molecular biological being as domains of
existence that are defined through the feelings
and emotions that guide our conscious and
unconscious self-conscious doings.
Reflections
1. As I have shown the self is not and cannot
be an entity that can be considered to exist
independently of the circumstances of its aris-
ing in the relational space of language in the
flow of coordinations of coordinations of
doings as an evanescent configuration of feel-
ings that guides the realization of the living of jectivity. It is only those languaging beings
the self-conscious being. When an observer
speaks of the self or of a self, he or she is con- can realize that the loneliness of living as
noting the feeling of the distinction of the
bodyhood or corporality that he or she distin-
guishes as the dynamic center of the different
operations of self-distinction that a person
does as he or she distinguishes his or her oper-
ation in self-consciousness. The self does not
arise as an arbitrary con-
struction of the observer We can create a world of
that distinguishes it; it
arises as the distinction
explanations as a network of works
of a configuration of generative mechanisms that
body feelings that guide is isomorphic with the
the flow of the recursive architectural dynamic
coordinations of doings
of the person that makes coherences of our domain
reference to the self as he of existence
or she is operating in self-
consciousness in a given languaging relational
domain. As person operates in the sensorial-
ity that an observer sees as implying the dis-
tinction of a self, the matrix of relations that
constitute the domain in which this distinc-
tion takes place arises as the background of
dynamic relations in which the operationality
of living in self-reference takes place. A careful not say anything about that imagined sub-
observer may see this matrix of relations in all
that the observed person does. A person flows
in his or her living, moving in a changing
matrix of relations continuously defined by
the domain of architectural operations and
relations in which he or she enters in the real-
ization of his or her living continuously
guided by his or her changing sensoriality.
2. We may feel a strange feeling of incom-
pleteness in the manner that I have been
speaking above, as if something concretely
100
external to us were missing as a substrate that
might operate as a universal ground that
would constitute a transcendental domain
that would unite our individual feelings with
the feelings of another human being in a total
intersubjective unity. This imagined inter-
subjectivity does not happen and cannot hap-
pen. All living beings as-structure determined
systems are closed singular molecular entities
that transcend their closure only in the rela-
tional domains in which they as organisms
and we human beings transcend our condi-
tion of molecular systems in our operation as
human organisms living with others in recur-
sive consensual coordinations doings in the
generation of a domain of relational interob-
that come to live in self-consciousness who
closed structure-determined systems is tran-
scended in living in the worlds that they may
generate together in interobjectivity. We as
human beings are beings of that kind, and our
human existence occurs as a continuous tran-
scendence of our existence as molecular
beings in the worlds that
we generate in the net-
of conversations
that we live.
3. As languaging
reflecting human beings
we can realize that as we
explain our living
through the proposition
of a generative mecha-
nism, we need for episte-
mological reasons5 some operational substra-
tum as a fundament for the generative
mechanism that makes possible the very pos-
sibility of what we do, and which would con-
stitute as such a transcendental domain in
which we could encounter with others in
intersubjectivity. Yet, we could not and can-
stratum because as soon as we attempted to
do so we would find ourselves languaging,
and, therefore, in interobjectivity as the
domain of the coordinations of coordinations
of doings of our living as living beings that do
not distinguish in the experience between
perception and illusion.
4. When we human beings reflect on our
living, we find ourselves living together as a
matter of course in the flow of consensual
coordinations of consensual coordinations of
biology of cognition
doings of languaging. Furthermore, we find
that this manner of living together, gives rise
in us to the orientations in doings that in the
flow of coordinations of doings of the nam-
ing-doing of languaging constitute a matrix
of doings, feelings and emotions, that we live
like the consensual coordinations of naming-
doings with the shared sensoriality of a coher-
ent interobjective dynamic arquitecture.
Since this manner of living happens to us
spontaneously, we do not reflect on it until its
normal coherences seem not to hold any-
more. Yet, in any case, as we reflect we find
ourselves being part of a field of operational
coherences defined by the operational coher-
ences of our living. And we also find that we
can explain all the worlds that we live with the
operational coherences of our living as we
become aware of our existence and operation
as structure-determined systems that can
operate as self-conscious beings. Moreover, in
this awareness we find ourselves as part of the
domain of operational coherences in which
our living takes place, domain of operational
coherences that we infer from the operational
coherences of our living, and which, under
the convincing presence of our sensoriality
and our desire for complete understanding,
we use as our explanatory operationality to
explain our living: we explain our living with
the coherences of our living. We cannot trust
our sensoriality as providing us with a
description of an external world that contains
us, but we can trust that it reveals to us the
architectural coherences of our domain of
existence as molecular autopoietic systems.
The operational coherences of our sensorial-
ity reveal the architectural coherences of our
domain of existence. If we believe that our
sensoriality, external or internal, reveals some
external reality to us that contains us, we can-
not explain consciousness and self conscious-
ness as fundamental aspects of our living
without having to resort to some transcen-
dental supposition. But if we think that our
sensoriality reveals to us the dynamic archi-
tectural coherences of our domain of exist-
ence as living molecular beings, we can create
a world of explanations as a network of gener-
ative mechanisms that is isomorphic with the
architectural dynamic coherences of our
domain of existence.
5. We do not construct the worlds that we
live, we just live them. We move and act in the
matrix of operational coherences that we
Constructivist Foundations
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
infer as our background of existence from the
coherences of the realization of our living in
structural coupling with the medium (niche)
that arises moment after moment in struc-
tural coherence with our changing structure
in the flow of our living as our living is con-
served. This becomes apparent as we explain
our living as self-conscious languaging
human beings with the flow of the opera-
tional coherences of our living. As reflecting
self-conscious human beings we know that
for epistemological reasons we need an inde-
pendent substratum if we want to explain the
fundaments of our existence in terms of an
independent reality, we also know that we do
not need such substratum for understanding
our living and the coherences of our opera-
tion as self-conscious beings in the different
worlds that we live. We do not construct the
worlds that we live because they arise as dif-
ferent domains of operational coherences of
our living in our living them.
6. We human beings can live and conserve
any manner of living that does not result in
the loss of the conservation of our structural
coupling in our living in our niche. Moreover,
we can live according to dictates of any theory
that does not lead us to the loss of structural
coupling in the domain of operational coher-
ences that arises through the acceptance of
that theory. In any case, we shall live only as
long as the flow of coordinations of doings
that emerge through the flow of our feelings,
sensations and emotions continuously results
in the conservation of our structural coupling
in a medium that makes us possible as it arises
through the realization of our living.
Post scriptum
1. That self-consciousness occurs in the rela-
tional space as a manner of living, deserves
some additional reflections. One of them is
that it does not matter that the borders of an
autopoietic system are operational and
dynamic, and that a result of this is that the
interactional boundaries of an organism are
defined and constituted by what emerges
operationally as its sensory and effector sur-
faces. Whatever impinges upon an organism,
whether molecules, radiations, magnetic or
electric fields, triggering in it structural
changes with conservation of living, can
become new dimensions of the domain of
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
structural coupling of the organism as long as
its living is conserved while the new dimen-
sions operate as part of the medium in which
it lives.6 The manner in which the new dimen-
sions of interactions
are lived depends on Our human existence occurs as (or their operational
the points or areas of
the dynamic architec-
a continuous transcendence of equivalents),
ture of the organism our existence as molecular
that are affected by the beings in the worlds that we
encounter with them. generate in the networks of
In any case the organ-
ism will live those
conversations that we live
encounters as novel
experiences that make sense as intrusions in
some of its normal dimensions of living, or as
sensorial disturbances which the organism
will either dismiss or include in its ordinary
living, or some other aspects of the flow of its
sensoriality and live them in its normal way as
if they were part of the normal encounters and
not intrusions at all. When these sensorial
intrusions occur to us we live them as self-
conscious human beings that reflect on what
happens to them, and we will generate expla-
nations or interpretations of one kind or
other according to whether we live them as
hallucinations, illusions, or encounters with
foreign entities depending on the manner in
which we consciously or unconsciously
choose to include them in the flow of our
ordinary living.
2. All this also means that languaging, and,
hence, operation in self-consciousness can
only occur in the flow of the recursive coordi-
nations of doings of organisms, or of any
group of discrete structurally plastic entities
that can participate in some dynamic domain
of structural coupling with each other. Fur-
thermore, all this also means that for self-con-
sciousness to arise and be conserved, it is nec-
essary to have a particular manner of living in
a history of recursive interactions that may
result in recursive coordinations of consen-
sual coordinations of feelings that give rise in
the relational domain of the organism to a
flow of doings that an observer will see as
revealing the dynamic sensoriality of what he
or she sees as self-consciousness. All the pos-
sible dimensions of interactions of an organ-
ism that occur with conservation of its living
can give rise in it to internal activities that will
be lived as sensory experiences that can be
conserved as relational fundaments for the
realization and conservation of some particu-
biology of cognition
lar manner of living in a relational domain
defined by those sensory experiences.
3. What is particularly remarkable is that if
living in languaging arises in any particular
domain of organisms
a path is
opened for the arising
of operating in self-
consciousness in a pro-
cess of recursions that
may generate an
unending diversity of
cultures that will differ
according the configurations of feelings and
emotions that guided their emergence. Of all
those possible emotions it is only love that can
give rise to what we human beings distinguish
when we speak of ethical behavior as a con-
scious manner of cultural being. Once a
human being grows as a human being operat-
ing in self-consciousness, all that he or she
does will be done in his or her operation as a
conscious or unconscious self-conscious
being.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I was born in Santiago Chile in 1928. I have
been interested in the unity of life and death
since my childhood. Following this concern
in my biological research on perception, I
developed the Biology of Cognition and the
Biology of Love as I begun to pursue the
consequences of our biological condition of
structure-determined systems and the real-
ization that we do not and cannot ever
know if what we live as valid at any instant
we shall later treat it as an illusion or as a
perception. Now I am working with my col-
league Ximena Dàvila Y. in what we call “Bio-
logical and Cultural Matrix of Human
Existence.” This work of us is the outcome
of a fundamental insight of Ximena Dàvila Y.
revealed in her statement “The pain and suf-
fering for which people asks for relational
help is always of cultural origin.” My aware-
ness of the validity of this statement lead me
to look deeper in our emotional living and
in the participation of our sensoriality as
structure determined systems in the gener-
ation of animal and human relational living.
101
 biological–epistemological
OPINION
Notes
1. The part of the medium with which the or-
ganism is in operational congruence while
its living is conserved.
2. When an organism reproduces what is
conserved from one generation to the
next, it is an organism–medium relation in
a systemic dynamics that involves the con-
servation of the biological constitution of
the reproducing organism and the dynam-
ic configuration of the medium that makes
possible the living of the organism as its
niche. So what is conserved in reproduc-
tion is the realization of an ontogenic or-
ganism–niche relation as a systemic
dynamic in which the ontogenic changing
niche is conserved as a mere consequence
102
of the actual conservation of a particular
manner of living.
3. Objects arise as coordinations of coordi-
nations of doings as doings that coordi-
nate doings in a flow of interactions in
language. Due to this, each recursion in
the flow of languaging is an opportunity
for the arising of new objects if the doings
that coordinate doings begin to be con-
served as elements of a domain of doings
in conversations.
4. I speak of conversations to refer to our op-
eration in relations of recursive coordina-
tions of languaging and emotioning. We
human beings live in networks of conver-
sations.
5. As we explain whatever we explain we op-
erate in the domain of operational coher-
biology of cognition
ences of our living, and hence in the
domain of operational coherences of our
doings that arises with our doings, so due
to the very nature of our explaining we
cannot operate or describe a transcenden-
tal substratum for our explaining.
6. When the observer speaks of interactions,
he or she refers to the dynamic of the en-
counters that result in the triggering of
structural changes in the participating or-
ganism or organisms. When the observer
instead speaks of relations, he or she refers
to the reciprocal disposition of the partic-
ipants in the circumstances of the interac-
tions.
Received: 5 March2006
Accepted: 14 Juli 2006
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS

Construction and Design

Ranulph Glanville A CybernEthics Research & University College London, UK, ranulph@glanville.co.uk

called problems in a positive manner: to be

Purpose:The purpose of the author in writing this paper is to establish the connection
what we call, using a second social meaning,
between design and constructivism.To that end, it is argued that design is a necessarily
“constructive” about them.
constructivist activity (both in terms of the design of concepts and the design of objects
In this paper, however, I am concerned to
and processes); and that design preceded constructivism by many millennia.
operate on the second of my initial levels (the
Design/methodology:This argument is made through reference to concepts and devel-
social). Indeed, in a somewhat bizarre man-
opments in second order cybernetics, and an analysis of central activities that designers
ner, I am even concerned with an assumption
perform – particularly sketching and doodling, used in the manner of holding a conversa-
of a reality such as mentioned above. Design-
tion with oneself. Findings:The parallelism between design and constructivism (and sec-
ers make objects with which they populate
ond order cybernetics) is demonstrated; and a distinction between knowledge of (a
“the real world.” The question of Mind Inde-
situation) and knowledge for (an action) is drawn. Knowledge for is the knowledge that
pendent Reality (MIR) scarcely raises its head
supports action, including the action of constructing. Original value: Design is placed at
because designers are too busy making things
the heart of constructivist activity, validated by criteria that that are sympathetic to design-
for and in their assumed real world to ask
ing.Thus, constructivist activity is reinforced by the analysis of design activity; and design
questions about it – especially to question
activity is reciprocally reinforced by the analysis of constructivist activity.
whether it “really” exists! They add what in
Key words: Black Box, circularity, conversation, design, doodle and sketch, knowledge of
common parlance might be called “real
and knowledge for, object.
objects” to the “real world.”
Designers have a way of acting that can be
very difficult question, and it is made harder studied; and which is studied, albeit implic-
A constructive position by the paradoxical requirement that to exam- itly, by most teachers of the subject. In order
There are two levels I would like to distinguish ine this experience we have to already have to help each student designer find their own
which we may be interested to investigate: both the notions of the other and of language, voice, the general teaching strategy in the
1 The individual level, on which we con- and the use of these notions. In other words, design culture I was brought up in and chose
struct the other, our connection to the we face a paradox: we are obliged to presume still to inhabit is to try to understand and
means of communication (language) in (live in) the outcome of an argument before encourage the particularity of each (student)
which we will communicate, and so on. and in order that we may make that argument. designer. This involves watching how they
On this level I believe we attempt to This paradox is similar to the paradoxical design, and giving them what may be thought
describe what is and how it comes to be problem of psychological/conceptual devel- of as tools that help them. Amongst these
what is. opment: that whenever we think in a develop- tools is the tool often identified with sketch-
2 The social level, on which we assume the mental framework, we are accounting for ing, still the central activity through which
other, assume and develop the language we what we believe was, from the position of designers find the means to tap, as the source
communicate in, and so on. On this level where we are now, which itself depends on of their acting, the individuality and unique-
we construct the shared – the domain of precisely the development we intend to show. ness they search for. Sketching leads to the
social agreement we often think of as a I accept these contradictions. In doing so, I creation of the particular and unique “new.”
“reality.” I think of this level as being straddle the paradox and thus both maintain This should be understood in contrast to the
explicitly the level of Vaihinger’s (1911) and transcend it. repeatability that is more commonly sought
“As if.” It is also possible to take the view that soci- in, for instance, science.1
In much of my work, I am interested in the ety forms the individual rather than that the In contrast to the lack of interest of most
first of these. This is the level of experience, individual, in construing other individuals, designers, the position I take, which lies
the Hereclitian stream in which we live what makes society. And it is possible to discuss the behind much of this paper, is that we cannot
we come to call (on the second level) our lives. generation of thought from language rather assert that there is a MIR. Neither can we
It is assumed that experience is personal, than the generation of language from assert there is not. This leaves us with what
unique, and lived. One question that domi- thought. There are these (and many other) Foerster (1989) referred to as an “undecidable
nates this level is how we can develop from choices. One reason for being interested in a proposition.” His noted aphorism is “Only the
this experience the means by which we can constructivist position is a wish to at least give questions which are in principle undecidable,
explore experience: which involves at least the breathing space to each, and to move beyond we can decide.”2 The question of whether we
presence of an other and a means of commu- opposition and paradox through acceptance could ever know if there were such a thing as
nication (for example, language). This is a (see Foerster, below): to do so is to treat the so- a MIR, and therefore if we had any reason to

Constructivist Foundations 2006, vol. 1, no. 3 103

 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
decide one way or the other, is undecidable.
We therefore can from moment to moment
freely chose how we will respond to this
“structural uncertainty.” For Foerster, there
were two choices: to act as if there were a MIR;
and to act as if there were not. The choice
between these, he reminds us, does not have
to be made once and for all: it may (perhaps
even must) be made from moment to
moment. It is arguable that one may take both
positions at once and that this is what design-
ers do (see the comment on straddling the
paradox, above).3
I consider there is another course open to
us: that is to maintain the undecidablility.
This is, in essence, the position of the great
super-sceptic, Pyrrho of Ellis.4 My position is
that I chose to try to act as a guardian of the
undecidable question, guarding against the
forces that seek to force a decision (one way or
the other, and usually permanently) on oth-
ers, as a so-called “truth:” to maintain, and
then sit on the fence, rather than to decide
which side to stand on. It may be that this is,
in effect, the position that is necessary not
only so that we can chose one side or the other,
but also so that we can occupy both positions
at once, as designers may do.
Therefore, I neither affirm a reality that
exists independent of the mind (MIR).
Nor do I deny it.
I maintain undecidability.
By doing this, I hope to avoid entering into
an irresolvable argument, and to maintain the
freedom to chose that is the result of this
undecidability. In maintaining this freedom,
it may be that I also aid the designer, who (it
has been suggested) often straddles the unde-
cidability.
Design
There are many ways of talking about design,
and, indeed, the word has recently been
appropriated in any number of fields, some-
times improperly. In the case of one university
I know, social sciences joined a design school
in order to benefit from working with design-
ers, only to insist that the designers were
wrong about design and that their (social sci-
ence) appropriation was correct. Elsewhere I
have seen research methodologists insist that
design education is wrong because it fails to
satisfy the criteria of the research methodolo-
104
gist. Both are examples of the all-too-com-
mon application of theory from other fields
onto design (Glanville 2005a). It is therefore
doubly important that I explain how I, as a
designer and design educator, understand
what design is.
Design is the quintessentially constructive
activity. For thousands of years mankind has
created new objects and processes (more or
less physical), and has developed ways of
doing this. It is the novelty sought through
this activity that brings the particular quality
those who call themselves designers pride
themselves on. What is important is the giving
of form – new form. Designers construct
(new) realities at all scales from tiny compo-
nents to cosmologies and theologies. They
mostly do so in a world that is understood as
being real in a most conventional sense, by
creating realist objects. Designers, who con-
struct realities, largely do so without ques-
tioning the conditions of the reality within
which they construct these realities, or the
nature of reality itself: it is an irony that they,
with thousands of years of experience as con-
structivists, have not as a profession chosen to
question whether they construct the reality in
which they know they construct (new) reali-
ties. Nevertheless, in recent times, questions
of the “reality” of that reality have become less
avoidable, specially as we explore so-called
“virtual reality” (meant in the widest sense
and including computer games, the internet
and mobile phones). Perhaps working with
more virtual realities will give designers the
opportunity to expand their conceptualising
beyond their conventional view of reality.
Design, as I use the term, is intended pri-
marily in the form of a verb. The word design
in English is both a noun and a verb.5 This
ambiguity is confusing, all the more so since
the general interpretation of the word design
seems to have become the noun form. I, how-
ever, speak as a designer, and teacher of
design. I shall argue, later, that we are all
designers.
Difficulties with the word do not, however,
end with the ambiguity concerning which
part of speech the word design takes. Design
is also often confused with fashion and style,
which are not at all what I intend in this
paper.6
The etymological root of the word design
doesn’t help much, either. Design+are, its
Latin origin, is as a verb closely related to the
contemporary English verb, designate. It is
connected with the concept of sign. And that
is also not what is intended in this paper.
So design, as used here, is a verb, indicating
an action that leads to making something
new. Quite how this is intended I will demon-
strate later.
How we do design
I am here concerned with what I think of as
the central creative act that designers do: or,
rather, how they do this. This is the act of form
giving (one Dutch translation of design is
vorm+geving: literally, form giving). Thus, I
am not concerned with all those contingent
activities and their associated problems and
areas of influence (such as function, safety,
production and cost) that, while critical to the
success of a design project, are ancillary to this
central act, and will not, in this paper, explore
either how they are handled or how their han-
dling fits in with the central act of designing.7
Designers create form: they give form to
the unformed, informing it, bringing it into
form (hence the ancient design as in-form-
ation). Design is, perhaps surprisingly, prop-
erly considered the original in-form-ation
science, where science is meant in its older
and less specialised sense of knowledge.
Because it is concerned with giving form to
the unformed, it is necessarily creative.
Designers learn to give form as unique and
one off: their work is purposely and purpose-
fully original. Thus, the familiar criterion of
repeatability has no place in design.8 I know
this both because I am a designer and because,
as a teacher, I meet and discuss with designers
at all levels and from many different sub-pro-
fessions all over the world, which experience
allows me to assert this categorically.
Over the years, I have used a metaphor to
explain this process (Glanville 1978). This is
it:
With a picnic hamper in hand (there is a
purpose to the activity, but it’s not the
main point), I enter a wood. I have nothing
in mind except that I hope, eventually, to
find a place to have my picnic. I’m wander-
ing. Without any particular reason I move
onward in some direction, and after a
moment something catches my eye. I fol-
low it, and making an unpredictable num-
ber of difficult to justify choices, I eventu-
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
ally find myself somewhere lovely. It’s just
perfect. I sit down, open my hamper and
enjoy my picnic. I can now (after the
event) explain how I got here, but at the
time there was no reasoning. I just ended
up at this wonderful place, eating my pic-
nic. It’s bliss! It may not, of course, be the
best place for a picnic, who knows where
that is: but it’s good enough, it fits the
moment, and it’s magic. In this sense (and
only in this sense), it is perfect.9
Some would describe the above as an
essentially emotional process, believing
words such as “good enough,” “magic” and
“perfect” raise the question of where emotion
is in design. The use of an emotional language
to describe activities is currently on the
upsurge. I have not, until recently, thought of
using such a language, but am inclined to
believe that it may soon offer great under-
standing and insights.10
The well-spring of design is, traditionally,
the sketch11 (or doodle) which is created in a
manner that can be precisely mapped onto
the wandering activity I described in the pic-
nic example. Interestingly, composers also
refer to the way they compose (= design) their
music as sketching. The dictionary is more
useful, here: to compose is to place together.
And it better reflects the designer experience,
when defining sketching: to sketch is to draw
roughly or incompletely.
To doodle is (again according to the
Oxford American Dictionary) to scribble
absentmindedly; a doodle is a rough drawing
made absentmindedly. It is this purposeless-
ness and lack of traditional seriousness that
exactly captures the difference in quality in
the way of working through sketching. Do not
be confused: the lack of explicit traditional
seriousness does not mean the work is not
serious but that the seriousness is expressed in
a different manner. It is important to me that
this is recognised, hence the choice of this
apparently dismissive term.
The process of doodling
and sketching
The process of doodling works like this. The
designer makes some mark on a piece of
paper. This mark is more of a question than a
statement: it is tentative and uncertain – and
almost certainly an absent minded-scribble.
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
It may be any shape that comes to mind, or
even a quite undirected shape. Looking at it,
the designer draws some more, often empha-
sising bits of the original, changing bits, add-
ing, drawing over or erasing, wondering
about (and through) it. Sometimes the bits of
interest are copied and the doodle is started
again. Sometimes an alternative is produced.
Sometimes the process is an enrichment: add-
ing in aspects that are directed to make a
richer project. Sometimes the original is dis-
carded. At some point the doodle becomes
more particularly focussed: a particular form
is being developed and explored. At this point
we might say that the doodle has become a
sketch.12
If the designer works in a group with oth-
ers (who need not be in proximate location –
or even time – or associated with one design
company), they may all draw on each other’s
doodles and sketches, borrowing from, and
giving to, each other. Indeed, the design stu-
dio, where this activity frequently takes place,
is one environment where the stealing of the
ideas of others is considered good practice
and, consequently, theft is legalised!13 This is
one way of sharing (and thus individually
increasing) available ideas. It is also a reason
that we need to reconsider notions such as
copyright, to recognise origination without
granting ownership: what is there to own and
who could own it?
It is this pointless, undirected, seemingly
purposeless, playful and dreamy activity that
is at the heart of design. Designers are told to
think with their pencils, and, if you talk with
designers, you will find that many will doodle
throughout your conversation, just playing
with form, practising their central creative
act, keeping in touch with the well-spring.
Doodling is a practice that helps us create
form and which allows us to enrich our pro-
posals.
This process cannot, in any conventional
sense, lead to an “optimal” solution. To start
with, the problem is not defined and, I would
argue, is not definable. (Any viable definition
will come into being after the event: the solu-
tion defining the problem.) Attempts at defi-
nition contain contradictions as well, for
there are many opinions and misunderstand-
ings to be supported. There is no measurable
means of comparison between alternative
proposals. It is always possible to continue
with the process, perhaps producing a more
satisfying outcome, perhaps not. The notion
of “satisfying” depends on the judgement of
the designer involved, or of some design or
client peer group (hence the common use of
“juries” to judge work). Indeed, it is the
notion of satisfying that is central: the ques-
tion is not is this optimal, is it the best; but is
it good enough? – as in the case of wandering
in the wood. This is how adequacy is and can
be determined, in designing.
What is a doodle/sketch?
In one sense this question has already been
answered. But there is another way of charac-
terising the act of designing that can help us
understand how design and constructivism/
cybernetics14 go together, and, through this
conjunction, will throw light on the manner
in which the doodle/sketch work as (necessar-
ily constructivist) design acts.
Doodling/sketching as circular
The process followed in doodling and sketch-
ing, as described above, is formally a circular
process. It is important to try to be specially
clear about the manner in which it is circu-
lar.15 That which I claim is circular is the route
followed between drawing and viewing,
returning to drawing again: if you like, the
drawing and viewing aspects. Often these two
complementary activities go hand in hand
(one views as one draws and one draws as one
views), but there is a division of labour. Some
would prefer to consider the path followed a
spiral: that is, the drawing and redrawing
demonstrate an activity that, while it may pass
over earlier points, is nevertheless somehow
above them in that there is a continuous
change in the path, indicated by the number
of times circled, which leads, potentially, to
recursive enrichment. This also holds if you
are concerned with the history of the paths
drawn, or the path as message. But that is a
way of describing which is interested in the
“product” at each point, rather than the route
which goes from one activity to the other and
back again. Formally, in terms of the roles, the
process is circular: I, as designer, move from
drawing to viewing to drawing, in a poten-
tially endless circular switch between the two.
The difference in these views may be thought
similar to that between a wheel (circular) and
the trace a wheel may leave (spiral) (Glanville
105
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
1998). It can also be thought of (as already
suggested) as the difference between circular-
ity and recursion, where circularity indicates
the form and recursion the value of the mes-
sage passed around the form.
Doodling/sketching as conversation
This circularity is, however, not the whole of
the matter: for a conversation is being held.16
Conversations are also circular, in the manner
described. Most commonly, they are held
between a minimum of two participants. The
great advantage of a conversation is that it
does not assume that meaning is transmitted
between the participants, but that partici-
pants build their own meanings which seem,
to the other participants, to function in a sim-
ilar enough manner to be taken to be the
same. (Thus, it is as if they are the same).
However, though they function similarly, the
meanings cannot be the same, because they
are made by and belong exclusively to differ-
ent individuals. These individually generated
differences in understanding are expressed,
and thus effectively offer other participants in
the conversation insights and ways of seeing
that are initially foreign to them. In effect
these offerings are gifts: each participant, hav-
ing created his or her own meanings,
expresses them so that the other participants
can create their own meanings from them,
and these meanings are likely to contain the
previously unthought of, the unconceived.
Thus, conversation is a potential source of
perpetual individual novelty and refreshment
(Glanville, in press).
The designer:Taking two roles
Some might argue that the design conversa-
tion as described above (often) only has one
participant, the single designer – making the
notion of the conversation irrelevant/inap-
propriate, because it requires at least 2 partic-
ipants.
I can offer two responses to this observa-
tion. Firstly, design is generally carried out in
teams, so there are always other people
involved, even if sometimes they are not
present in person at the time of exchange. Very
few designers are ever without conversational
partners, in the conventional understanding.
Secondly, and much more importantly,
designers learn to take the two roles them-
selves.17 They learn to switch between viewer
and drawer, sometimes very rapidly (one
106
views as one draws and
BOX 1: COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN
one draws as one views).
In the extreme, some may The question arises concerning what will happen to those who,
even consider that they do working with computers, generate form in a quite different way
both simultaneously. (see note 12); just as the question arises, with computers, of
This is hard to determine. what will happen now that repetitive and mindless tasks such as
Regardless, the designer cross hatching have been automated. In the case of cross hatch-
takes both roles and can, ing, what is lost has at least two aspects: firstly the element of
therefore, hold a conver- hypnotic tension reduction that doing a mindless repetitive task
sation with him/herself brings to people who work in very dangerous environments
via paper and pencil. (designers – as opposed to problem solvers – deal with the
The conversation that vastly complex, the contradictory and the ill-defined, challenges
I claim is the means by often considered undesirable for good mental health); and sec-
which what designers do ondly the trance-like removal of conscious purpose and inten-
can be understood, is a tion which allows the “back of the brain” to get on with the task
primary cybernetic sys- at hand, uninterrupted by conscious acts and will. Both these
tem. It is the circularity aspects benefit from a “trancy” involvement (which can also
which is at its centre that, describe the activity of doodling/sketching (the absent-minded-
above all, makes this so. ness), and is perhaps relevant to any moment when we are
Cybernetics studies the totally lost in the work we do, to the extent that we are hardly
circular: the earliest con- present at all, as personae). This seems essential to the sort of
temporary writings in the creative involvement being sought in designing. The use of the
subject,18 infused with computer may not allow these “trancy” moments and, as a
the notion of feedback, result, there may be an increase in bad mental health and a
are clearly involved in cir- reduction of sensitive form giving: we do not yet know, but we
cularity (feedback feeds a may do well to look for computer-based equivalents to sketch-
sense of the output of a ing and doodling; ways of working in the computing medium
system back to its input, that support this sort of mindlessness.
normally with the inten-
tion of making the result-
ing, next output of that system better match The obvious outcome is designed
some goal). Circularity is the essential quality objects19 – where the nominal form of the
of cybernetic systems. Designing is a circular word “design” is converted for use as an adjec-
process, and, for this reason, cybernetics is its tive. Normal use of this concept would not
suitable bedfellow (Glanville 1981, 2005a). include everything that we make: the word
This is not a matter of forcing a theory from “design” tends to be reserved for more exclu-
one subject onto another subject, but of find- sive objects, with a higher than usual inten-
ing a central concern (circularity) that is in tional aesthetic content (and price). When
one case examined and in the other used, so design is being used as a synonym for style
that circularity, as it appears in each subject, and fashion, this is particularly so. But we
may inform the understanding of circularity should not allow ourselves to be trapped by an
in the other (Glanville 2005b). interest in outcome, which is essentially a dis-
traction, any more than we should allow one
area of application of design to pre-emptively
Outcomes of this determine all. While not all objects produced
by humans are the product of design, many
process are. Apart from those which are simply
If we consider this circular, conversational, shoddy and where no one has bothered, those
cybernetic activity to be at the heart of design, that are not designed tend to be those where
we may ask what sort of outcome there might there are overriding (and generally rather
be when we act in a circular, conversational, simple and/or unique) problems that can be
cybernetic manner; and, by contemplating clearly defined and which have to be solved.
these outcomes we may consider just how But even such objects can often be designed,
important, how basically human, is the as, for instance, is the case in most of the
designer’s way of acting. world’s great bridges.
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
The point is not, anyhow, to argue about
this. The point is that design as a process prac-
tised by designers leads to the production of
many objects (and processes). How many, as
a percentage of human production, is a matter
of definition and conjecture.
Rather less obvious is the second use: con-
cepts. I maintain we design concepts. If this is
so, then we (humans) are, according to the
argument of this paper, necessarily and ines-
capably constructivists.
Conversation, the Black
Box and objects
To argue, here, what I wish to argue, about the
design of concepts, I need to revisit the con-
versation and ask what we know of what goes
on in the mind of our conversational partner,
who we believe is making their own meaning
of/from what and how they hear our utter-
ances? The answer is we don’t know. Indeed,
I have yet to meet anyone who would strongly
claim to know what’s going on in even their
own head. We make descriptions of what we
believe might be happening, but the key point
about a description is that it is not the thing it
describes (de Saussure 1966): for if it were the
thing it would not be the description of the
thing and could not perform its function in
describing.20
There is a powerful way of looking that
allows us to consider that we don’t know what
is going on in something (that we are essen-
tially ignorant), permitting us to depend only
on behavioural changes while we learn to
explain the changes of behaviour we observe,
understood as inputs that, through change,
become outputs – and that is the Black Box.
Although some who use this concept talk of
whitening the Black Box, the source of its
effectiveness lies in its blackness, a blackness
that derives from it being an invention (of an
observer, who also locates it, thus creating the
input and the output) which, while allowing
change to be treated as input and output, is
nevertheless also a phantasm – an invention,
a thought experiment: there is no Black Box
other than the one I have imaginatively
inserted.21
When we hold conversations with an
other, we can describe what goes on as a
change in (observed) behaviour that we may
understand as an output appearing from
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
(consequent upon) an input. This is a Black
Box description: we are making no claim
about what “actually” happens. Rather, we
assert that we can make a description that
accounts for our observations, which we
hope will continue to account for what will
happen (the optimism of belief, not the
mechanism of certainty). This sort of
description we call an explanation. We con-
sider the outputs as resulting from the inputs,
and try to construct and describe a relation-
ship that accounts for this. To test our under-
standing we can feed the output back as a new
input and predict the new output that will
appear: if our prediction is correct, we may
well believe we understand the behaviours we
observe, that are converted by our application
of the Black Box into input becoming output.
The more we can account for, the more stable
the relationship we have described seems to
become.
Now let us consider what happens in the
case of the conversation with the self (as both
speaker and listener, drawer and viewer). Is
there a difference? Scarcely! The moment we
consider (as I have argued above is the case in
design) the paper and pencil (or whatever
else) we use – together with our ability to
switch roles – as behaving like our conversa-
tional partner, we are holding a conversation
with ourselves. And we still don’t know how
the change we observe from what we thought
we were drawing to what we view we have
drawn takes place; yet it nevertheless stabi-
lises in the lines we draw that begin to indicate
to us, the designers, a form. We have effec-
tively used what we may think of as a Black
Box in order to end up with a stable form: an
object that is reproduced through our con-
stant (recursive) redescription (redrawing) of
it. This, I have insisted, is strongly analogous
to how we design.
But we now see it also as a way of generat-
ing reflexive recursive descriptions that form
what are Piaget’s constant, conserved objects
(Piaget 1955) – the (mental) objects that he
claimed we construct as concepts and with
which we populate our worlds of experi-
ence.22
And, therefore, I argue that the develop-
ment of the concepts that constitute Piaget’s
conserved objects is a design activity, being
exactly the situation described by Piaget as he
accounts for the way that children develop
their notions of conserved objects, upon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ranulph Glanville studied architecture at
the Architectural Association School
(where he was mainly interested in elec-
tronic performance music), followed by
cybernetics (his PhD was examined by
Heinz von Foerster, his supervisor was Gor-
don Pask) and then human learning (PhD
examined by Gerard de Zeeuw, supervisor
Laurie Thomas). He has published exten-
sively in all three fields. He has taught in Uni-
versities around the world. Although he
took early retirement from the University of
Portsmouth School of Architecture, he is a
professor and senior visiting research fellow
at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technol-
ogy University, Melbourne, Australia, where
he visits twice a year and had has a major
responsibility in the development of post-
graduate studies. He is also a regular visitor
at several other Australian universities (and
others worldwide). He is vice president of
the American Society for Cybernetics and is
on the editorial board of several journals
and the committee of several conferences.
In the UK he has a post as a specialist tutor
at University College London He has pub-
lished more than 250 papers. He researches
the fundamental position of cybernetics and
the implications of this, relating this to the
activity of design and how we might do
research within design. His hobby is which-
ever of his interests he is not currently actu-
ally doing. He lives on the English south
coast with his Dutch wife (a physiothera-
pist), ginger cat, and near his Finnish son
(who works in digital video post-produc-
tion).
which ability our other mental abilities rest.
At the base of our thinking, we are designers:
design, the making of form, the bringing of
something out of nothing, the creation (at
least to the designer) of the new – the unique
– the stabilising of an actuality out of poten-
tial and the reification of experience. Seen in
this light, design is to be understood as the
most fundamental of human activities, as the
way we think and work.23
In this view, we design our world. We cre-
ate our concepts from which we can conserve
our objects. This is our world. It is designed.
Thus, it is constructed.
107
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
Assembling concepts
There is another aspect of the design of con-
cepts which I must mention, if briefly. It is the
assembly together of different concepts such
that we can form new concepts or we can
organise the different concepts we have
designed into heterarchical organisations (I
picture the composing together of George
Kelly’s 1955 Personal Constructs). This act of
construction, whether concerned essentially
with the organisation of concepts or with the
creation from several concepts of new, more
general concepts, or the splitting of concepts
into new, smaller and more detailed concepts,
is also a design act.
In what manner are these modes of assem-
bly design? They all involve the iterative and
critical circular process that is at the centre of
design, for the assembly is always by trial and
error and is always subject to reconstruction:
a new organisation, a new assembly of parts
and sub-parts, often involving the creation
(construction, design) of further new con-
cepts or the radical revision of older ones.
This need is a major component in Kelly’s def-
inition of pathologies that arise from prob-
lems experienced in how we have constructed
the heterarchies in which we locate our per-
sonal constructs.
Types of knowledge
We can now return to what I see as the main
question on which constructivism sheds a
new light, which concerns how we can know
(and, therefore, what we can know); the ques-
tion is essentially epistemological. In taking a
constructivist position, however, a secondary
Notes
This paper is based on an invited presentation
at the annual conference of the American
Society for Cybernetics conference held in
Washington DC, October 2005.
1. I will not argue the point about novelty, or
how it is achieved through conversation
(and/or variety imbalance), in this paper.
I have covered both in recent lectures, and
written extensively about variety and (up
to now) rather less about conversation.
108
question arises that concerns the type of
knowledge24 that might be created from that
position. Von Glasersfeld (1990), for instance,
writes of the “viability” of knowledge pro-
duced within a constructivist framework.
However his interest is a little different from
mine in this paper.
I have been arguing that design is a con-
structivist action not so much because of an
unresolvable question about the nature of the
connection of an observation to a so called
Mind Independent Reality, but rather because
it is concerned with making the new (by defi-
nition, unknowable before it is made); and
the (sort of) knowledge that would support
this. Furthermore, designers make their
designs in virtual worlds: it is rare that design-
ers actually make (in the physical world) what
they design, and designs exist, before it is
manufactured/constructed, only in the vir-
tual world of imagination, and paper, model
or (nowadays) electronic “representation.”
(How exactly you can present again some-
thing that is not yet is a moot point.) It can be
argued, in the world of the design profession,
that design is needed precisely because man-
ufacture is at one level of remove.
Thus, designers are involved in a very spe-
cial type of activity that is based in action.
There have been many ways of distinguishing
types of knowledge, including those con-
cerned with a similar distinction between
these two types of knowledge, but I like to use
“knowledge of ” what is (Ko) and “knowledge
for” acting (Kf) (Glanville 2005a). The sort of
knowledge that we have been used to collect-
ing (and valuing) in research is not intended
as knowledge for action, but knowledge of what
is. The importance of the designer’s knowl-
edge for has, I believe, been underestimated.
2. Foerster was Particularly fond of apho-
risms. A collection may be found at this
url: http://www.cybsoc.org/heinz.htm,
accessed 26 February 2006.
3. I owe this insight to one anonymous re-
viewer who suggested “the argument
might be be strengthened if the author
maintained undecidability by allowing
that both Mind Dependent [Reality]
(MDR) and Mind Independent Reality
(MIR) might coexist as working assump-
tions in minds of many designers. The
There are not many fields that have specifi-
cally nailed their flags to the mast of action,25
and yet we live in a world of action and, at a
more banal level, our task masters constantly
ask us to show usefulness (applicability) of
our research and philosophical and academic
work. It therefore seems to me that the notion
of Kf (or any of its close relatives) may be crit-
ical, to be urgently developed, perhaps using
as a base the often tacit knowledge designers
use in their quest to create the new.
I believe that Knowledge for is the knowl-
edge for action. It is important that it is not
studied and developed as knowledge of knowl-
edge for, but as knowledge for knowledge for (in
the manner of second order cybernetics – the
cybernetic study of cybernetics). In other
words, that it is examined in a manner that
reflects what it is. And this is another place
where design and construction intersect, or
(as I would prefer it) are essentially the same.
This sort of knowledge, Kf, is actually the
knowledge that constructivists use: for they
make their worlds, rather than recording
them: and making is the action of the
designer.
Conclusion
Design is clearly, even in the associations of
every day language, both closely connected
with and a form of construction. In this paper
I have explored how design is a constructivist
activity, how it is explicitly concerned with
making the new, and how as an activity it is
all-pervasive. It is perhaps worth bearing in
mind, as a souvenir to take away from this
paper, that one German word for design is
Gestaltung.
constructs that are used to predict the be-
haviour of MIR in the virtual world of de-
sign (for example, finite element
structural analysis) could be thought of as
very different to the properly teleological
MDR knowledge that relates to the social
appreciation and understanding of de-
sign.”
4. Von Glasersfeld often points to the Roman
Sceptics, but earlier the Greek super-scep-
tic, Pyrrho of Elis (ca. 365–275 B.C.)
maintained “…a form of extreme scepti-
Constructivist Foundations
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
cism which held that judgement must be
suspended about whether it is possible to
know true reality. Pyrrhonism asserted
that suspension of judgement (epoché, a
Greek term which refers to a cessation)
about the true nature of reality leads to se-
renity and equanimity… See Scott, http://
www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/skep-
ticism.html, accessed 25 February 2006.
5. Dictionary comments are based on the
Oxford American Dictionaries included
in Apple’s Mac OS 10.4, Tiger.
6. The classic definition of design comes via
Architecture from Vitruvius. In the En-
glish translation of Sir Henry Wotton, it is
made up of three components: firmnesse
(well constructed), commodotie (func-
tional) and delight. See Wootton (1968).
7. See note 6 on Vitruvius/Wootton.
8. Which is not to say that the object or pro-
cess resulting from the act of designing
may not be produced in multiples.
9. I.e., the fit (in a true Darwinian sense) is
perfect: this is the fittest.
10.I am grateful to the second anonymous re-
viewer, who reminded me of the develop-
ment that sees a language of emotion enter
into studies of design.
11.The first “regular” academic to recognise
the distinctive value in what designers do
and how they do it (including the impor-
tance of doodles and sketches) is Donald
Schön (1985). Of course, designers had al-
ready known this for millennia.
12.There are societies that do not draw, doo-
dle, or sketch in this manner. But they
have similar processes even if they use dif-
ferent technologies. For instance, they
may make multiple variations on a bowl
until they, as a society-that-is-designing,
reach the form they find ideal, and then re-
produce it in a sort of hand-made multiple
– a craft production line. One reason we
draw is that many of the things we make
cannot sensibly be made on a trial and er-
ror basis – for any number of reasons, in-
cluding danger and cost. New computing
technologies may change the detail of how
we doodle but will not, I believe, change
the form or substance.
13.As a student at the Architectural Associa-
tion School in London, I enjoyed an ex-
treme, pre-electronic version of this. The
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
Ching’s Head, a student cafeteria in the
school, had white melamine covered ta-
bles that acted as a remarkable prototype
of the shared, collaborative white board.
Students would sit together at these tables,
drawing their designs in new-fangled felt
tipped pen. As the day wore on, more
drawings were added, including ones
drawn over, and often incorporating part
of earlier drawings. There was a sort of col-
lective generation of architecture prac-
tised, institutionalising the free borrowing
of ideas, which would migrate to drawing
boards in the studios upstairs.
14.I will not argue, here, the close relationship
that many (including Ernst von Glasers-
feld and Heinz von Foerster), as well as I,
believe holds between cybernetics and
constructivism.
15.While not forgetting that it is the listener
who makes the understanding and is
therefore responsible for it, not the speak-
er. How each of us likes to listen to (and
understand) what I write is clearly up to
us, the listeners.
16.I use the term conversation here in the
sense of Gordon Pask. Pask’s use was
based on an everyday English understand-
ing, but had a strong formal element. It be-
came, in his hands, a very powerful way of
understanding communication and inter-
action. Pask’s work is currently difficult to
access, but good a introduction can be
found in Pask (1975), and Scott (2001).
See also my short web piece describing his
work at: http://projects.isss.org/Main/
GordonPask
17.The role switching here was first devel-
oped in my work in the Theory of Objects.
Objects (in my technical usage) are self ob-
serving structures or entities that, by ob-
serving themselves, become participants
in a universe of observations and thus
themselves observable by other Objects.
They provide a structure that supports us
believing that, while we all observe differ-
ently, we believe that, nevertheless, we ob-
serve the same “thing.” The switch in roles
also gives rise to (observationally generat-
ed) time, and a logic based on time in ob-
serving (Glanville 1975).
18.The origins of cybernetics can be taken
back to Ancient Greece. The modern sub-
ject is usually dated to Norbert Wiener’s
1948 book, Cybernetics. But there are ear-
lier examples even by Wiener, such as
Rosenblueth, Wiener & Bigelow (1943).
Another path takes the origins back to the
Macy Conferences on “Circular and Caus-
al and Feedback Systems” (Pias 2003)
19.And, on occasion, processes.
20.There may be special conditions when the
difference is, at most, slight: one example
that exercised de Saussure is onomato-
poaeia. But these special conditions have
no relevance to the argument.
21.The Black Box is a conceptual device de-
veloped by the Scottish mathematical
physicist, James Clerk Maxwell. It has
been used in engineering, where the con-
cept of revealing what is happening
through study leading to a whitening of
the Black Box. For some time I have ar-
gued that the Black Box cannot be whit-
ened: its nature is that it is black. I claim its
power (and its use in helping us under-
stand design and constructivism) comes
from exactly this interminable blackness
(Glanville 1982, 2005a).
22.This process can also be seen in Heinz von
Foerster’s Eigen forms, and it is taken to be
the form of what I have called Objects
(Foerster 1976). I am currently finalising a
draft on this topic, “Design and Menta-
tion: Piaget’s Constant Objects.”
23.The assembly together of different con-
cepts (conserved objects) is a similar mat-
ter. We can now say: thinking is designing,
and designing is thinking. “L’intelligence
organise le monde en s’organisant elle-
mÍme,” as Piaget tells us.
24.I do not like the word knowledge, which
suggests to me that what is known can exist
without a knower. I prefer the word know-
ing, but will stick to conventional usage,
here, so as not to (further) muddy the wa-
ters.
25.There is, of course, a special field for con-
verting Ko to Kf: technology. But this re-
quires an extra stage, and there is no
necessary connection between Ko and an
ability to act (i.e., Ko may not be translat-
able). With the term Kf, I am talking
about knowledge directly intended for
action. Technology does not convert Kf
to Ko.
109
 philosophical-epistemological radical constructivism & second order cybernetics
CONCEPTS
References
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Received: 26 February 2006
Accepted: 13 June 2006
Constructivist Foundations
 educational radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Modes of Knowing and

Modes of Coming to Know
Knowledge Creation and Co-Construction as
Socio-Epistemological Engineering in Educational Processes
Markus F. Peschl A University of Vienna, Austria, franz-markus.peschl@univie.ac.at

Developing and teaching general cognitive

Purpose: In the educational field a lack of focus on the process of arriving at a level of abilities seems to be at least as fundamental as
profound understanding of a phenomenon can be observed.While classical approaches in training particular technical skills. That is
education focus on “downloading,” repeating, or sometimes optimizing relatively stable why a pedagogical model which tries to inte-
chunks of knowledge (both facts and procedural knowledge), this paper proposes to shift grate these two poles will be presented in this
the center of attention towards a more dynamic and constructivist perspective: learning paper. The key to this approach is to focus on
as a process of individual and collective knowledge creation and knowledge construction.The goal the operation of understanding. Understand-
of this process is to profoundly understand a phenomenon in its multi-dimensionality and ing is the most profound operation of our
complexity and to reflect on the processes that have lead to this understanding.The issue thinking/cognitive system and, at the same
we want to tackle in this paper is how this profound understanding can be brought about time, the foundation for any reflective and
in a technology-enhanced learning environment. Design/Structure: Part 1 of this paper responsible application of a technology or
explores strategies of technology-enhanced knowledge sharing/creation in the field of method. How can this operation be sup-
higher education. Part 2 presents a successful blended learning scenario that illustrates the ported and developed in an educational set-
implementation of these learning strategies in a concrete course design. In this case study ting?
students are involved in active theory construction processes by conducting virtual exper- The approach taken in this paper is to
iments with a virtual organism. Part 3 elaborates on the epistemological implications of develop an understanding of teaching and
this case study. Findings: A constructivist framework for modes of knowing and modes of learning processes which are “knowledge-
coming to know is developed. It is shown that – in order to reach a profound understanding based,” i.e., where the processes of teaching
of a phenomenon – it is essential to take into account the multi-facetted character of and learning are re-interpreted in the light of
knowledge and to use the strategy of double-loop learning. Conclusions:This leads to an individual and collective knowledge construc-
understanding of learning/teaching as a process of socio-epistemological engineering. Fur- tion and knowledge creation. It reveals that
thermore, the role of the teacher changes in such a constructivist setting of learning/teach- concepts from knowledge management and
ing:Their primary task is to provide a “pedagogically (and technologically) augmented organizational learning, as well as from con-
environment.” They are responsible for creating an atmosphere of collective knowledge structivism play a central role in this
construction and reflection. Beyond the role of a coach and moderator the teacher has to approach.
act as a facilitator or “enabler” for the (individual and collective) processes of double-loop It will be shown that the strategy of dou-
learning. Keywords: Blended learning, collaborative co-construction, collective learning, ble-loop learning (e.g., Argyris &
double-loop learning, eLearing, individual learning, knowledge construction, knowledge Schön 1996) is essential for the process of
creation, organizational learning, socio-epistemological engineering, university teaching. understanding and knowledge construction.
It takes into account both the constraints of
environmental dynamics and the necessity
bildung”). Many fields in high-tech indus- to reflect on the framework of reference, the
1. Introduction tries, especially, have very high demand for goals, the premises, and the methods which
highly specialized and trained workers. The are applied to this process of knowledge con-
Our educational systems are being forced to reaction of our education system is to “pro- struction.
develop in more and more specialized direc- duce” well-functioning specialists that exactly Furthermore, we will see that conducting
tions. Due to economic pressure, practical fit the required profile. double-loop learning on not only an indi-
skills and competencies have become more From cognitive, human, and a long-term vidual level but also in a group/team envi-
important than general education (vs. “train- perspectives, the success and the effectiveness ronment of cooperative knowledge con-
ing”; cf. discussion about “Bildung” vs. “Aus- of such an approach is highly questionable. struction amplifies the effect of the learning

Constructivist Foundations 2006, vol. 1, no. 3 111

 educational
CONCEPTS
environmental
structures
individual
knowledge
externalization internalization
negotation “downloading”
knowledge creation
knowledge construction
innovation
organizational/scientific
shared/collective
knowledge
knowledge e.g., artifacts, technology, …
“objectification”/creation of
publicly accepted artifacts
© Constructivist Foundations
Figure 1: Elements and processes involved in the process of collaborative knowledge sharing
and knowledge construction/creation (cf. also Huysman & de Wit 2003).
process. Due to collective processes of reflec-
tion, completely new and unexpected spaces 2. Sharing and
of understanding and knowledge are opened
up on both an individual and on a collective constructing knowledge
level. in technology-enhanced
The first part of this paper establishes an
understanding of teaching/learning as a pro- environments
cess of cooperative knowledge construction
and knowledge creation that is embedded in a 2.1 Knowledge sharing
continuous sharing of knowledge. The sec- What are the elements involved in such a con-
ond part presents a concrete case from a uni- text of educational socio-epistemological
versity course that demonstrates how such a engineering? Almost every teaching/learning
process of understanding can be imple- situation can be seen as a situation of knowl-
mented in a constructivist educational set- edge sharing in one sense or the other. The
ting. The third part of this paper develops a goal of this process of knowledge sharing is to
theoretical and epistemological framework individually and collectively construct and
for this constructivist approach to achieving a create (new) knowledge as well as to develop
profound understanding of a phenomenon. a deeper understanding of the phenomenon
The capacity for understanding something under investigation. Figure 1 shows the ele-
profoundly in an educational setting is shown ments and the processes which are relevant in
to be the result of a process of “socio-episte- this knowledge-sharing cycle.
mological engineering”: physical, social, Knowledge sharing always takes place
intellectual, technological, etc. factors and between the poles of (i) individual knowledge
constraints act as enablers that facilitate this (including all the cognitive processes leading
process. to this knowledge), (ii) currently shared
112
radical constructivism
knowledge (in the particular group working
at a concrete moment together), and (iii)
organizational knowledge (comprising of
artifacts, etc.). In the domain of university
teaching, organizational knowledge is real-
ized as scientific knowledge in most cases.
Contrary to shared/collective knowledge, sci-
entific/organizational knowledge remains
“alive” after the process of knowledge sharing
and negotiation between the members of the
group has come to an end. This is realized via
artifacts that hold the potential to be inter-
preted as meaningful chunks of (explicit
externalized) knowledge.
The whole process is organized as a knowl-
edge-sharing cycle that aims to construct
knowledge. As Huysman and de Wit (2003)
point out, this process is similar to Nonaka
and Takeuchi’s (1995) knowledge creation
cycle of socialization, externalization, combi-
nation, and internalization.
From the knowledge-sharing cycle of Fig-
ure 1, three types of knowledge sharing can be
derived (see also Huysman and de Wit 2003;
Scharmer 2000, 2001). They are crucial for
any educational process and are:
(i) Knowledge retrieval/downloading:
knowledge retrieval is basically “download-
ing” already existing knowledge in the form of
artifacts (e.g., from books, eLearning lectures,
etc.). It is a process of knowledge retrieval
from external explicit knowledge (artifacts)
to individual knowledge. Most of our teach-
ing processes are located in this domain.
(ii) Knowledge exchange: knowledge
exchange takes place in the negotiation and
externalization processes between individual
cognitive systems leading to a space of shared/
collective knowledge. Individual knowledge
is shared in a learning process that is realized
in a communication setting.
(iii) Knowledge creation: the ultimate goal
of knowledge sharing-processes (i) and (ii) is
to generate and to create new knowledge. The
construction of new knowledge is based on
the combination of different sources of indi-
vidual, collective and organizational knowl-
edge.
The whole cycle is organized as a feedback
process where the result of one cycle is the
basis for the next round of knowledge cre-
ation. As will become evident in the following
sections, these types of knowledge sharing
determine how teaching and learning pro-
cesses are organized.
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
2.2 Strategies of knowledge sharing/
construction
Each of these types of knowledge-sharing can
be associated with knowledge-sharing and
educational technologies (in a broad sense).
These technologies give educational pro-
cesses particular flavors and favor certain
types of learning/teaching strategies and
knowledge processes. Sharples (2006) intro-
duces a differentiation relating strategies of
knowledge sharing and learning/teaching
with specific media (see Table 1).
In the era of mass print literacy, the text-
book (and its related form in the domain of
eLearning) was the medium of instruction
(Table 1, A). This implies an understanding of
learning as knowledge transfer and down-
loading of mental models. Whereas in the
knowledge transfer perspective, the goal of
the learner is to repeat such knowledge or
models, “advanced” learning strategies aim at
individual and collective knowledge con-
struction and modeling (see Table 1, B).
Learning is a process of “coming to know”:
learners, in cooperation with peers and teach-
ers, construct knowledge and models which
can be interpreted as transiently stable inter-
pretations of their world (e.g., von
Foerster 1972; von Glasersfeld 1984, 1989,
1995; Scott 2001; Sharples 2006). Most of the
eLearning technologies that are presently in
use support these processes by providing plat-
forms for presenting knowledge, for enabling
communication and for virtual collaboration
and cooperation.
Going one step further, (Table 1, C) learn-
ing is extended “back to its roots”: this mode
of learning and knowledge sharing/construc-
tion takes into account that each learner is not
only embedded in an intellectual framework
and in a virtual and artifactual environment,
but also in their physical and social context
(e.g., Pask 1975, 1976; Scott 2001). Further-
more, this approach respects the fact that they
are not only a more or less passive recipient of
the knowledge that constructs their mental
models, but that the learner is also actively
interacting with their environment. In other
words, the learner is capable of actively
changing environmental dynamics and struc-
tures (e.g., by conducting experiments, by
creating artifacts). In that sense, learning
becomes a kind of conversation/dialogue in
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
radical constructivism
Strategy of knowledge Medium, technology,
sharing and learning/teaching and context
A [Learning as knowledge transfer [Print, textbook
[Learning as downloading and [Download style (e)learning (“first generation
repeating of (well-established) eLearning”)
mental models
B [Learning as (individual and [eLearning + collaborative aspect (virtual
collective) knowledge cooperation, communication, etc.)
construction, modeling
C [Learning as dialogue/ [Being embedded in a (concrete, physical, etc.)
conversation in context context
[+ creating/changing context
[Embodiment in environment + in social context +
in technological context
[Immediate/direct experience with environment
and changing reality
[Mobile learning (technologies)
[“Socrates-like learning,” “peripatetic learning”
[Concept of “Ba”
Table 1:The relationship between strategies of knowledge sharing (teaching/learning) and the
medium applied (adapted from Sharples 2006).
context; it is dialogue and conversation on virtual collaborative space where participants
multiple levels: with other learners, with feel safe to exchange and develop new knowl-
external reality, with external knowledge, etc. edge. “We define ba as a shared context in
In such a context mobile learning technologies motion, in which knowledge is shared, cre-
become highly interesting and effective tools ated, and utilized… Ba is a phenomenological
that support these kinds of situated learning time and space where knowledge, as “a stream
processes. Furthermore, “dialogue” is under- of meaning” emerges. New knowledge is cre-
stood, in this context, to have the specific ated out of existing knowledge through the
meaning of D. Bohm’s and others’ concept of change of meanings and contexts… Ba is an
dialogue (cf. Bohm 1996; Schein 1993). existential place where participants share
Finally, it has to be said that these three their contexts and create new meanings
modes of learning and knowledge-sharing do through interactions.” (Nonaka & Toyama
not exclude each other. Rather, mode C 2003, p. 6f)
(“learning as conversation in context”) is In that sense, the concept of “ba” goes far
based on knowledge-downloading processes beyond purely technological or educational
– to some extent. issues – it concerns the general question of
knowledge construction and knowledge cre-
2.3 The concept of “ba” ation; more specifically, the conditions
If learning and knowledge-sharing processes enabling and facilitating these processes. If we
are understood in such a way, we have reached start to understand university teaching and
a relatively sophisticated level of knowledge educational processes in general in such a
work: namely the domain of knowledge cre- way, the character of both the knowledge
ation. It can be compared to a concept well taught1 and of the learning strategies will
known in knowledge management, which is change dramatically. In the following sec-
referred to as “ba” (cf. Nonaka & Konno 1998; tions, the nature of these changes will be
Nonaka & Toyama 2003). It is a physical or developed in more concrete detail.
113
 educational
CONCEPTS
3. Case study: Enabling
understanding via a
process of collective
theory construction in a
virtual environment
This section presents a learning/teaching
example that illustrates the implementation
of learning strategies B and C (Table 1) in a
concrete course design. It is based on an exist-
ing, well-developed, successful blended learn-
ing scenario that was developed as a medium-
level course at the University of Vienna.
3.1 Virtual experiments and theory
construction
The following example is a sub-project in the
course “Internet Seminar on Philosophy of
Science.” This seminar has been held with
minor changes and adaptations several times
since 2002. The target group is students at the
end of their bachelor degree (3–4 semesters at
the university, average age: 21–23 years). The
Figure 2: Screenshot of the virtual organism.
114
interesting, and at the same time, challenging
feature of the task is the highly interdiscipli-
nary background of the participating stu-
dents. Most of them come from the fields of
educational sciences, psychology, and sociol-
ogy. About 25–30% are students from the nat-
ural sciences (mostly biology and physics);
15% are from the field of computer science.
The group size is about 20–25 students with
an average of 60–65% female students.
The task of the student project is to develop
a theory or model of the behavioral dynamics
of a virtual organism: first in a process of indi-
vidual and, second, of collaborative/coopera-
tive virtual and f2f (“face to face”) knowledge
construction. The conceptual and philoso-
phy-of-science background of this task can be
outlined as follows: “What are the epistemo-
logical characteristics of a theory or model?”;
“Which processes are involved in developing
and constructing a theory?”; and “Which
modes of knowledge and knowledge genera-
tion are involved in this process?”
Whenever we observe the behavioral
dynamics of an object we are interested in
radical constructivism
finding an explanation for its behavior, i.e.,
we observe a black box and try to make it
“transparent” (in the sense of Glanville’s
“black/white box,” Glanville 1982). Hence,
almost every theory tries to offer a mecha-
nism (acting as an “explanation”), which is
responsible for generating the externally
observable behavior. Epistemologically
speaking, the problem is that we do not have
direct access to this mechanism in our object
of investigation2 in the real world; thus, the
goal of almost every scientist is to “look
behind this curtain” (Kosso 1992) and to
construct a theory or model that “explains” or
“predicts” the behavior that has been
observed in the investigation of the black box.
The student’s task in this project is to expe-
rience what it means to make an experiment
from the scratch: starting with observations,
then interpreting them, attempts to find
some structure and patterns in these observa-
tions, construction of hypotheses, develop-
ment of more and more sophisticated models
and predictive mechanisms, testing these pre-
dictions and – in case of falsification – start-
ing this circle again. This project is realized as
a virtual experiment in which students can
interact with a web/cgi-based virtual organ-
ism (see Figure 2) by exposing this organism
to a stream of input/stimuli. The sequence of
the stimuli can be chosen freely by the student
(see buttons at the bottom of Figure 2). These
inputs are transformed into a pattern of
behavioral responses that are displayed on the
screen, i.e., every stimulus triggers a behav-
ioral response.
Technically speaking, this virtual organ-
ism is realized as a finite automaton that has
internal states, which correspond to the exter-
nally shown behavior in a homomorphic
manner only (i.e., one single externally
observable behavior can be realized by two or
more different internal states, which are
indistinguishable from the outside). This
architecture implies that the organism does
not follow a simple stimulus–response
behavior pattern, but that it has non-linear
behavioral dynamics, which leads to some
confusion and perplexity in the course of the-
ory construction. If students are not familiar
with the concept of an internal state or of a
non-trivial machine (von Foerster 1972) this
task is the ideal setting for discovering and
understanding these notions, which are
highly relevant for almost every field in both
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
the natural sciences and the humanities. By
making these virtual experiments, students
are challenged to construct knowledge that fits
into these observed behavioral dynamics.
What are the specific learning goals in this
project?
[ Learning how to conduct a (virtual)
experiment.
[ Learning to observe by making as few
assumptions as possible (problem of the-
ory-ladenness).
[ Learning how to construct regularities in
the virtual interactive experiment (in rela-
tion to the patterns of chosen inputs).
[ Individual construction of hypotheses
and testing these hypotheses (“single-loop
learning”).
[ Developing an adequate modus of pre-
senting the resulting model in a manner
that can be followed and understood by
other “scientists” or colleagues.
[ Virtual presentation of one’s own theory
in the group (via communication plat-
form) and confrontation with different or
even opposing models and approaches.
[ Defending and negotiating one’s own the-
ory in the space of a virtual community
(social competencies).
[ Reflecting and reaching an understanding
of what it means to construct a theory and
of which processes and difficulties are
involved in this procedure;
[ Collective reflection on the process of the-
ory construction leading to a deeper
understanding of the process.
[ Transfer of these experiences into one’s
own background and discipline.
The whole project is situated in a blended
learning setting: on the one hand students
have to individually construct their models
and theories by conducting online virtual
experiments with the artificial organism. We
do use a specific platform for the organism –
it is programmed especially for that course.
On the other hand, students have to discuss
their ideas and hypotheses about the organ-
ism’s behavioral dynamics with their fellow
students via a discussion board (both the
open source “Discus” and the “WebCT Vista”
discussion board are used). During the
phases of presence/f2f, the processes of both
theory construction and online discussion
are discussed and reflected on. In the final ses-
sion of the seminar, a presentation of the
results and a final reflection on the whole
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
project and its intellectual and social pro-
cesses is made. This final reflection has turned
out to be extremely important because stu-
dents learn to see and understand differences
in approaches, assumptions, and methods
from looking at the diversity of results (that is
due to the highly interdisciplinary audience).
This final phase is essential for consolidating
the results and discourse, as well as for the
social structure of the group.
3.2 Experiences, discussion,
and reflection
The results and feedback of this blended
learning scenario are manifold and it is possi-
ble to give details on only a selection of sub-
jects:
Establishing the field as “ba”. Establishing a
space of “ba,” as presented above, is a prereq-
uisite for a successful collaborative knowl-
edge-construction process. Students are
engaged in examining their own (disciplin-
ary) premises, their mental models, and their
ways of constructing knowledge and of
understanding a phenomenon. In order to do
this, it is necessary to create a socially and
intellectually safe environment where they
feel free to start these sometimes quite per-
sonal explorations. That is why it is necessary
to have several f2f sessions before starting
that online project. In these sessions, the stu-
dents have the chance to get to know each
other and to develop a level of trust in a
uncompetitive atmosphere: an atmosphere
of exploration, of jointly searching for expla-
nations and understanding, of listening,
mutual respect, and openness was estab-
lished.
“Experiencing” constructivism. Feedback
from students showed that many of them
have, for the first time in their university
career, hands-on experience of actively devel-
oping a scientific theory/model. Above that,
they have stated that they have the experience
of what “constructivism feels like,” i.e., they
experience various modes and stages of
knowledge construction in a very concrete
and direct way. It is important, however, that
this process is accompanied by a theoretical
discussion about constructivist issues and by
a reflection on the concrete knowledge-con-
struction processes. Leaving behind rather
naive and “realistic” beliefs about (scientific)
radical constructivism
knowledge is only one of the insights that
have been gained in the project.
Understanding fundamental concepts
(e.g., concept of internal states)
Although the groups of students are highly
heterogeneous (regarding both their disci-
plinary backgrounds and their study
progress) almost all of them have reached an
understanding of fundamental concepts such
as the role of internal states, the role of the
behavioral/stimulus history, network repre-
sentations, formal methods for structuring
the behavioral dynamics, innovative ways of
describing the mechanisms which are respon-
sible for generating the observed behavioral
dynamics, etc.
Understanding and abstraction. Feedback in
the phase of reflection and concrete results
(i.e., models and their descriptions) have both
shown that this project has had a deep impact
on the students” understanding of the process
of knowledge/theory construction and of
what it means to develop concepts and
hypotheses and to perform operations of
abstraction. The construction of a concept is
vital to the capacity for abstraction as one has
to cognitively move from a singular event or a
particular observation to an abstract concept,
which has (a) a universal and (b) a construc-
tive character and (c) essentially contributes
to understanding the observed phenomenon.
The keys to bringing about profound
understanding are manifold: students have to
do something practically in a very concrete
project; above that, they have to perform an
intellectually challenging task that is closely
related to problems they are confronted with
in their life; and hence, they have to under-
stand the meaning and the goal of this exercise
(which is important for their motivation).
There is a good balance between the phases of
individual research and of cooperative knowl-
edge construction.
Integrating know-how, know-what, and reflec-
tive knowledge. Due to its roots in epistemo-
logically-founded knowledge didactics, the
focus of this project is on learning to under-
stand; understanding always implies the inte-
gration of various forms of knowledge and
learning (see also 4). The design of this
project forces the students to go through all
stages of knowledge construction, in which
they are confronted with a range of different
115
 educational
CONCEPTS
types of knowledge and at the same time have
to reflect on these operations.
This strategy ensures that a high level of
understanding is reached by integrating vari-
ous practical activities with intellectual/cog-
nitive tasks, social skills, and with a continu-
ous process of reflection. The simulation of
the organism as well as the situation of social
simulation of a scientific knowledge-con-
struction process both act as a motivation for
performing such a challenging integration.
The collective dimension of understanding and
knowledge construction. Introducing the di-
mension of (social) interaction, communica-
tion, and cooperation between the students
increases the learning impact of this project.
By mutually confronting their results from
individual theory construction, students are
not only trained to defend their models, but
they are also led to deep insights about their
own assumptions, premises, theoretical/disci-
plinary background, and scientific or intellec-
tual cultivation.
Most of these processes happen in peer-to-
peer communication and learning: the teacher
only has to observe these discussions for a final
reflection. It is very important to summarize
and reflect the whole process of theory con-
struction, plus the phase of cooperative
knowledge construction and negotiation in a
face-to-face phase, in order to consolidate the
essential points and learning outcomes.
Interdisciplinarity: Integrating approaches from
the natural sciences, humanities, and philoso-
phy (of science). One of the most interesting
experiences from this project has been the dis-
covery of the richness of solutions and
approaches. Due to the heterogeneous back-
ground of the participants, the results of this
project, as well as of other projects in this sem-
inar, have been highly diverse. What seems to
be a weakness has turned out to be an absolute
asset of this course: students are confronted
with completely divergent and unfamiliar
approaches and results from their peers and
what is felt as an irritation in the first step facil-
itates a process of discussion and reflection on
exactly the diversity of these results. As an
implication, the reasons and the assumptions
that lead to these results and their diversity are
the focus of this debate. In these discussions,
the collective mode of double-loop learning is
realized (see 4.2.3 for further details).
116
Simulating scientific procedures and social
competencies. Apart from cognitive compe-
tencies, this project focuses on acquiring
social skills and insights into the (social
dimensions of) cooperative processes of sci-
entific theory construction. It is a kind of
social engineering or social simulation in
which the participating students are fully
challenged in their roles as “scientists.”
4. Modes of knowing and
of coming to know
When we learn, we are said to acquire “knowl-
edge.” In CT (conversation theory), as a radical
constructivist theory, “having knowledge” is under-
stood as a process of knowing and coming to
know. It is not the “storage’ of “representation.”
(Scott 2001, p 348)
What are the theoretical and epistemological
implications of the learning design that has
been presented above? What can we learn
from and for a constructivist perspective?
Apart from trivial statements, such as
“knowledge is the result of construction pro-
cesses,” it is necessary to take a closer look at
two points: (i) Which types of knowing/
knowledge have to be differentiated in educa-
tional and scientific knowledge creation pro-
cesses (see 4.1)? (ii) Which modes of learning/
teaching lead to a profound understanding of
a phenomenon and how are these two points
related (see 4.2)?
4.1 Modes of knowing
From the example above, it has become evi-
dent that knowledge and knowledge con-
struction have to be considered as the heart of
educational and knowledge-sharing pro-
cesses. In order to understand and improve
learning/teaching processes more pro-
foundly, we have to take a closer look at the
modes of knowing and knowledge that are
involved in these processes. Table 2 gives an
overview of these modes. This table identifies
three domains describing (i) the level of
knowledge (in the sense of which realm of the
phenomenon/enviroment this level refers to),
(ii) the cognitive activities which are neces-
sary to construct and explore this realm, and
(iii) the characterization of the knowledge
which is the result of these construction pro-
cesses.
radical constructivism
4.1.1 From observations to causes. Level 1
concerns the “superficial” properties of a
phenomenon: our primary observation, per-
ception, and cognitive processes bring about
a rather superficial and singular (in the sense
of referring to a single concrete object or phe-
nomenon) kind of knowledge at first. This
knowledge is realized as a list of observations,
description of behaviors or behavioral
dynamics, and as a list of data, facts, etc. It is
not about the more general and universal
properties of the observed phenomenon, but
describes this phenomenon on its behavioral
level.
Taking this descriptive knowledge as a
point of departure and progress in the pro-
cesses of construction, we reach the level of
(emerging) patterns, trends, and relationships:
they are not “directly perceivable” by our
senses. In order to arrive at that level, more
complex and active construction processes are
necessary. This is usually the domain of the
(natural) sciences, where first relationships are
constructed between facts and descriptions,
and behavioral patterns begin to emerge, i.e.,
these patterns are the result of more or less
complex inductive and constructive processes
(in most cases being realized as statistical pro-
cedures). Most so-called (scientific) explana-
tions are situated on this level: they offer cog-
nitive, mental, or even physical mechanisms
that make explicit the relationship between
hidden (theoretical) structures and observed
phenomena.
These mechanisms are assumed to be
“responsible” for generating the observed
phenomena (cf., for instance, Maturana’s con-
cept of scientific methodology; Maturana &
Varela 1980; Maturana 1991). One can also
offer an explanation for the constructed pat-
terns and regularities by providing such a pat-
tern-generating mechanism. Hence, the
resulting knowledge is mainly concerned with
the “how” and the dynamics of the observed
phenomena. In many cases it has the form of
“recipe-knowledge.”
The cognitive activities leading to this kind
of knowledge have strong structural similari-
ties with the processes of theory/hypothesis
construction that are well-known from the
natural sciences (e.g., Kolb 1984, p. 32;
Peschl 2001). From a learning perspective,
these construction processes can be consid-
ered as epistemological optimization aiming
at finding the best possible level of functional
Constructivist Foundations
 educational radical constructivism
CONCEPTS

Level Activity Resulting knowledge

1 Behavioral level [Observing [Description of the observed object, its behavior (-al dynamics),
[Detecting & registering its external and superficial properties (e.g., material, etc.)
[Describing [List of observed properties (“data,” “facts,” etc.)
2 Level of (emerging) [Searching for, constructing, and [“Explanation” of the observed behavior by making use of
patterns of behaviors “discovering” regularities and patterns internal mechanisms (which are postulated and “projected”
and relationships [Projecting patterns into the observed behaviors)
[Quantitative induction [Know-how
[Constructing patterns [These mechanisms are considered to be responsible for
[Single-loop learning generating the constructed (behavioral) patterns (i.e., the
mechanisms that are the “pattern generators”)
[“Recipe knowledge,” skills & algorithmic knowledge
3 Level of causes and the [Searching for, constructing, and [Understanding the observed phenomenon
“source” discovering causes, meaning, finality, etc. [Understanding its meaning and the “source”/causes which are
[Activity of “radical questioning” behind the mechanisms
[Constructing the intangible dimensions of [Knowledge about the intangible dimension of the observed
the environment phenomenon
[Constructing the “deeper source,” the [Know-what/why
“substance” [“Deep knowing/knowledge,” knowledge about the core of a
phenomenon
[Knowing “from within”
[“Metaphysical knowledge” (in the sense of knowing the
“substance”)
4 Level of potentiality, [Exploring and developing the potentials of [Artifacts, technology
change, and design a phenomenon [Changing social, scientific, and cultural realities
[Making use of and bringing “deep [Organizations
knowledge” and the mechanisms to the [Visions + their realizations
domain of application
[“Facere” and design
[Changing a phenomenon according to
knowledge
5 Level of reflection [Reflecting [Knowledge about the following questions:
(on the causes, source, [eframing [What are the assumptions/premises behind these causes/
patterns, processes of [Radical questioning of own mental models, source?
knowledge premises, etc.) [What are the mental models behind the observed behaviors,
construction, etc.) [Reflecting on the learning and patterns and their source?
construction process itself [How can these premises and mental models be changed and
[Reflecting on the design-process itself what effects would these changes have on the understanding of
[Double-loop learning the whole phenomenon?

Table 2: Levels of knowledge, modes of knowing, and the (cognitive) activities necessary for developing these modes.

fitness (in the constructivist sense; e.g., von
Glasersfeld 1984, 1991, 1995): they are real-
ized in a single-loop learning cycle (see
also 4.2.2).
On level 3 we go one step further; on this
level, more qualitative issues are at stake.
While level 2 is mainly concerned with rather
quantitative and measurable matters, con-
struction processes on level 3 aim at the realm
of a phenomenon that goes beyond its mate-
rial, measurable, and tangible properties, such
as its meaning, finality, etc. Philosophically
speaking, this level concerns the exploration
and the construction of causes (for instance, in
an Aristotelian sense [1989]). It can be reached
by applying intellectual tools, such as radically
questioning, exploring the meaning, or trying
to reach “deep understanding” of a phenome-
non. The resulting knowledge, in a way, is the
source for a deeper understanding of a phe-
nomenon, i.e., the construction of a kind of
“deep knowing/knowledge” (e.g., Scharmer
2000, 2001; Senge et al. 2004) or knowing a
phenomenon “from within.” From a con-

2006, vol. 1, no. 3 117

 educational
CONCEPTS
structivist perspective, this may sound rather
metaphysical, and, in fact, is very close to
metaphysics in the original sense
(Aristotle 1989; Philippe 1991). However, it is
not in contradiction to a constructivist
approach. Rather, it makes a statement about
how classical natural-science-inspired (and
limited) construction processes can be over-
come and lead to a more qualitative
understanding3 of a phenomenon, e.g., by
exploring and constructing its finality. This
type of knowledge, which is not taken into
consideration in most approaches in technol-
ogy enhanced learning/teaching settings, is
rather difficult to acquire. It cannot be “trans-
ferred” from A to B. Hence, for the design of
(e-)learning processes it is not so much a ques-
tion of how to transfer this knowledge to the
student, but rather that the learner him/her-
self has to take a path of intellectual discovery
and construction in order to reach that level of
insight. Technology plays only a supporting
and accompanying role on that path (cf. the
case study form above in section 3).
4.1.2 Creating realities, innovation, and reflec-
tion. It is that level of deep knowing which also
reveals another dimension of a phenomenon,
namely, its potential(ity) with regard to
change, i.e., each phenomenon is in a certain
state at every point in time and that state can
change over time. Hence, there exists a space
of potential change(s) at every moment: a
space of possible changes which can happen or
which can be induced to that phenomenon. As
a simple example, think of a stone that is given
a new form by an artist: a process of “transfor-
mation” into a sculpture according to the art-
ist’s plan or knowledge. This sculpture is one
possible instantiation in the space of potenti-
ality of that stone. Only if one has a profound
knowledge (level 3) about an object, a phe-
nomenon, etc., is it possible to explore, con-
struct, and develop the full potential of that
phenomenon, i.e., on level 4 we change our
perspective from the mode of (constructive)
perception and “contemplation” to the mode
of externalization and “facere”/doing. Both
modes are construction processes (internal
and external). The interesting point is that this
level of knowledge not only explores the space
of potentiality, but also realizes (some of)
these possibilities. In other words, we do not
remain in the space of intentionality/knowl-
edge by constructing only new knowledge;
118
rather new physical realities are created or
existing (physical) realities are changed as a
result of applying knowledge from levels 1–3
and by externalizing or instantiating this new
knowledge in(to) reality.
In a way it is a “materialized constructiv-
ism” where artifacts, design, technology, etc.
are a product of this level-4 knowledge process
in the same way as is creating cultural, scien-
tific, social, etc. phenomena. This mode of
knowledge is the key for most processes of
knowledge creation, of innovation, and of find-
ing and instantiating a vision.
Finally, level 5 knowledge brings in a com-
pletely new quality to the process of knowl-
edge construction: the dimension of reflection.
This step has the potential of fundamentally
questioning the knowledge that has been con-
structed so far by reflecting on the knowledge,
its premises, and on the construction and
learning processes that have led to that knowl-
edge. The cognitive activities, methods, and
“epistemological technologies” that are
applied in that process include processes of
deep reflection and questioning, systematic
reframing, questioning the premises and ide-
ologies, the construction processes, uncover-
ing mental models and hidden assumptions,
etc. This level of knowing introduces a com-
pletely new dynamic into the whole process of
knowledge construction and knowledge cre-
ation, because it is situated on a meta-level and
it can bring up completely unexpected results
and new perspectives which have not been
considered so far (cf. also case study in
section 3). As will be shown in section 4.2.3,
this mode of knowing and knowledge acquisi-
tion can be realized in the double-loop learning
strategy – it is especially powerful when it is
performed in a collective setting.
Rogers (2001) gives a good overview of the
role of reflection in higher education: the
author shows the importance of this concept
for the levels of knowledge that have been
developed above.
4.1.3 Profound understanding:
Complementarity of know-how and
know-what
Most approaches of teaching/learning aim at
level 2 (and 3), i.e., skills, know-how and
competencies (even at the university level).
From an epistemological perspective it can be
shown that these approaches do not really aim
at the peak of human cognitive capacities:
radical constructivism
generally speaking, skills concern rather
superficial knowledge on the level of func-
tionalities, algorithms, “know-how,” tech-
niques, “systems,” “recipes,” guidelines, meth-
ods, etc. Yet the human mind is “designed” to
penetrate much deeper into the phenomenon
of interest. Our intellect is not satisfied with
being able to grasp the functional aspects of a
phenomenon (e.g., the dynamics of a partic-
ular system) or to predict certain aspects.
Rather, both our cognition and most complex
tasks in almost every field (of science, eco-
nomics, technology, etc.) call for a profound
understanding of the object under investiga-
tion first. Only then can one start making seri-
ous decisions, predictions, or take action (in a
responsible manner).
So, what do we mean by the term to “pro-
foundly and deeply understand” a phenome-
non? In fact, this question is as old as philos-
ophy and has a wide spectrum of possible
answers. In general, one can summarize that
our intellect is interested in the meaning and
the deeper sense of a phenomenon (cf. level 3,
4, 5 in Table 2). All of our intellectual efforts
aim at achieving and constructing a profound
answer concerning the understanding of the
“what” (and the “why?”) of a chosen phenom-
enon of interest (Pask 1975, 1976;
Resch 1977; Scott 2001). Above that, we are
capable of reflecting both on the understand-
ing of the phenomenon itself and on the (con-
struction) processes that have led us to that
understanding. Only when we have reached
this level of operation we can claim to have
come to a kind of profound judgment on a
particular aspect of a phenomenon.4
From a constructivist perspective, it is
clear that the aspect of the “how?” or func-
tioning of a phenomenon is an important
contribution to the process of understanding
it (in the sense of functional fitness). How-
ever, as has been well known since ancient
philosophy and metaphysics (e.g.,
Aristoteles 1989; Philippe 1991), there is
(intellectual) primacy of meaning of and
understanding a phenomenon (e.g., “causa
formalis”) over having some idea about its
functioning. One can only fully understand
the functioning of a phenomenon if one has
reached or constructed some understanding
of its meaning, of its “what?,” and/or its final-
ity. Remaining on the level of functioning
means that one has not penetrated very deep
into the phenomenon: one has just arrived at
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
some understanding of the dynamics and
behavioral patterns (cf. level 2 of Table 2) of
the phenomenon under investigation with-
out having a profound understanding of its
meaning.
This focus on the process of (constructing)
understanding (in its most profound sense) is
a point that has almost been forgotten in most
educational approaches nowadays. Only if
one takes into consideration issues from epis-
temology, the deficiencies of such a reduction
to the functional aspects become evident.
Hence, a profound pedagogical approach also
has to be based on concepts from epistemol-
ogy and theory of knowledge, as well as from
cognitive science (e.g., Peschl 2003). As is
shown by, for instance, Pask (1975, 1976),
Scott (2001), Rodgers (2002), Rogers (2001)
and many others, these modes of knowing are
complementary: it is their combination that
leads to a profound understanding of a phe-
nomenon. Reducing knowledge to only one
or two of these levels perhaps leads to highly
specialized and efficient “optimizers” and well
adapted “recipe applicators,” but surely will
not bring forth persons with a highly open
attitude, with exceptional potential for inno-
vation and developing radically new perspec-
tives, and with a high level of reflection.
4.2 Modes of coming to know – from
downloading to reflected knowledge
construction
Apart from types of knowing the world, we
have to take a closer look at the modes of how
these types of knowing come about. This
question concerns the domain of strategies of
knowledge construction/creation and learn-
ing.
4.2.1 Mapping instead of construction. From
a rather naïve and unreflective perspective,
learning is considered to be a process of down-
loading or mapping knowledge from a source:
one aspect of a phenomenon is transferred
into the student’s memory/knowledge in a
linear process of mapping. The teacher plays
the role of transferring prefabricated items of
knowledge from “their brain into the stu-
dent’s brain.” This approach is based on a
rather straightforward concept of learning,
knowledge, and cognition. It has its roots in
the GOFAI approach (“Good old fashioned
artificial intelligence”) in cognitive science
(e.g., Boden 1990): knowledge is represented
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
in symbols that have a fixed and externally
determined meaning.
Classical fact learning (“drill-and-prac-
tice”) is a realization of this mode of learning.
It is not really efficient from an intellectual
perspective, as the level of understanding is
not necessarily very high. This is due to the
focus on syntactical structures rather than on
the semantic dimension. An aspect of the
environment is mapped passively to the
learner’s knowledge structure via “borrowed
chunks of knowledge” (since they are the
result of the teacher’s or another person’s/
researcher’s cognitive processes). The learners
themselves do not have a chance to learn the
deeper meaning of these chunks unless they
try to establish some kind of personal seman-
tics that relate the content to their experience.
The process of learning is rather passive and
externally driven and, hence, not very satisfy-
ing and long lasting.
Epistemologically speaking, this approach
to learning/teaching is implicitly based on a
realistic perspective following a rather static
notion of knowledge that is based on the fol-
lowing (implicit) assumptions: (a) knowl-
edge is dealt with as an object that has a stable
and “objective” meaning; (b) the origin of this
meaning is not really clear; (c) the origin is
more or less independent of its (cognitive)
carrier and their experiences; (d) in the learn-
ing process this object is transferred from A to
B like a parcel; (e) above that, it is reduced to
linguistic structures in most cases.
4.2.2 First-order constructivist learning.
Downloading knowledge does not guarantee
a process of deep understanding, because the
focus of this learning process – if it can be con-
sidered “learning” at all – is on reproducing
syntactical structures or abstract patterns.
Whereas the focus of linear learning is on
mapping more or less static and prefabricated
chunks of knowledge from one brain to
another brain, the alternative approach of sin-
gle-loop learning aims at emphasizing the pro-
cess of actively constructing, creating, and
developing knowledge. Knowledge is not pre-
determined, but has to be constructed in an
active process of personal/individual and collec-
tive construction. This first-order constructivist
mode of learning has its roots in Piaget’s learn-
ing models (learning and knowledge as adap-
tive functions) or in Kolb’s (1984) experien-
tial learning.
radical constructivism
As is shown in the inner loop of Figure 3,
learning is embedded into a circular process:
this epistemological loop is realized as a pro-
cess of continuous interaction and feedback
between the dynamics of the cognitive sys-
tem’s knowledge and cognitive structures and
its external and internal environment. The
goal is to construct structures of knowledge in
such a way that they fit into the environmental
dynamics. This is realized in a circular feed-
back process of adaptation and construction.
Via processes of perception and primary con-
struction knowledge, structures are built up
in the cognitive system. In a particular con-
text, this knowledge is externalized in the
form of behavior that fits more or less into the
environmental constraints, i.e., at this point
of externalization it becomes evident whether
the internal model/knowledge has been suc-
cessful or not. In other words, if the behavior
fits into the environmental dynamics or not, if
the predicted phenomenon takes place or not,
if a particular desired effect of the behavioral
action is achieved or not…
The learner’s knowledge has to be changed
and adapted according to the success/failure
and (mis-)match between the expected/
desired results and the real environmental
dynamics. This epistemological pattern is well
known from the classical approach to knowl-
edge construction in the natural sciences. It
has been described by Popper (as “the process
of falsification”; Popper 1962) or in the area of
constructivist philosophy of science (e.g., von
Glasersfeld 1984, 1995; Maturana & Varela
1980; Peschl 2001). Abstractly speaking, this
procedure can be interpreted as a kind of
“epistemological optimization and adapta-
tion process.” The goal is to continually adapt
the structures of knowledge in a feedback loop
until an “epistemological homeostasis”/fit
between knowledge, externalized behavior,
and environmental dynamics has been
reached (cf. also von Glasersfeld’s concept of
functional fitness, von Glasersfeld 1989,
1995). While linear learning is driven by an
external teacher and their pre-fabricated
knowledge, single-loop learning is an inter-
nally driven and self-controlled learning pro-
cess.
From these considerations it is clear that
the structures of knowledge that are devel-
oped in such a loop are the result of an active
interaction with the environmental dynamics
and, thus, are highly dynamic. Contrary to the
119
 educational
CONCEPTS
change of knowledge knowledge behavior
over time knowledge
knowledge
knowledge
changes
dentermines reality
structures phenomenon…
modulates
changes
premises, mismatch
paradigm
difference
framework of correction
reference reflection (cognitive)
radical questioning
© Constructivist Foundations
Figure 3: Double-loop learning: single-loop learning is extended by a second external learning
loop that is responsible for the dynamics of the framework of reference.
process of learning by downloading, an alter- them (e.g., in the form of concrete predic-
native notion of knowledge is employed in tions, algorithms, etc.). That is what hap-
single-loop learning: a shift from understand- pened on a superficial level in the case study in
ing knowledge as an object towards under- section 3.
standing knowledge as process has occurred in
this approach (e.g., Glanville 1998; Pask 1976; 4.2.3 Introducing reflection as a learning strat-
Scott 2001). egy. Single-loop learning clearly has some
This procedure is structurally equivalent limitations, such as its rather conservative
to the processes of knowledge acquisition and character (implying a low chance of acquiring
theory formation as can be found in the natu- radically new knowledge), its limitation to a
ral sciences. More specifically, single-loop predefined learning/concept space, primacy
learning describes the process of what Kuhn of projection, lack of reflection, etc. As has
refers to as “puzzle solving” (Kuhn 1970): it is been shown in the context of the discussion of
a process of learning and adaptation within a “Ba” (see 2.2), it is necessary to provide a well-
chosen (scientific) paradigm. In other words, orchestrated pattern of constraints so that a
the more or less consciously chosen premises deep understanding and profound change
and assumptions predetermine a space of pos- can be achieved in knowledge work. In order
sible “solutions,” theories, knowledge and the to overcome some of the limitations of single-
learner has only to explore (in the sense of loop learning, an extension is introduced: a
making explicit) this pre-structured knowl- second feedback loop is introduced which
edge space. realizes a kind of meta-learning strategy. This
This learning strategy tries to go beyond learning paradigm is referred to as double-
the behavioral level (see Table 2) and to loop learning. It is also known as “two-cycle
develop knowledge about the dynamics and learning model” (cf. Rescher 1977;
the functioning of the observed phenome- Scott 2001) extending Kolb’s (1984) model
non. This is achieved by constructing mecha- with a second loop (the inner loop is referred
nisms (= knowledge) that “explain” the to as “how-loop/knowledge” and the external
observed behavioral patterns by generating outer loop as “why loop/knowledge”).
120
radical constructivism
This second (outer) feedback loop takes
into consideration that any kind of knowl-
edge is always based on assumptions, pre-
mises, or a paradigm (Kuhn 1970). In general,
knowledge always has to be seen as being
embedded in and pre-structured by a partic-
ular framework of reference. Knowledge
receives its meaning and structures from this
framework of reference. Thus, understanding
of a phenomenon can only be reached if this
framework is taken into account because it
provides the context and the “semantic infra-
structure/background.” This framework of
reference plays a key role in the process of
learning as it determines the structure of the
space of potential knowledge and gives mean-
ing to its basic dimensions. The role of the
framework of reference is never made explicit
in the context of single-loop learning. It seems
that this framework of reference is stable; due
to this seeming constancy it is a kind of “blind
spot” in our thinking, perception, and under-
standing. This implies that we do not nor-
mally have a conscious experience of these
premises, assumptions, etc. on which our
thinking is implicitly based. Taking a closer
look reveals, however, that this framework of
reference is not as stable as it seems.
The double-loop learning strategy takes this
potential for changes in the framework of ref-
erence into consideration by introducing a
second feedback loop (see Figure 3; cf. “why-
loop”; e.g., Rescher 1977; Scott 2001). This is
implies that a completely new dynamic
becomes possible in the whole process of
learning and knowledge creation: each modi-
fication in the set of premises or in the frame-
work of reference causes a radical change in
the structure, dimensions, dynamics, etc. of
the space of knowledge. By that process, a new
space of knowledge opens up so that com-
pletely new and different theories, knowledge,
interpretation patterns, perspectives, etc.
about the phenomenon under investigation
become possible. In the context of science, this
process can be compared to what Kuhn refers
to as a scientific revolution (Kuhn 1970).
The role of reflection. The method applied to
this process is basically the technique of
reflection (e.g., Bohm 1996; Depraz, Varela et
al. 2003; Rodgers 2002; Rogers 2001;
Scharmer 2002; and many others). It is a
process of radically questioning and changing
the premises and studying their implications
Constructivist Foundations
 educational
CONCEPTS
for the body and the dynamics of knowledge.
Double-loop learning has its roots in cyber-
netics, learning theory, cognitive science,
and the domain of organizational learning
(e.g., Senge 1990; Argyris & Schön1996).
What are the goals and some of the basic
implications of the mode of double-loop
learning?
[ Blind spots, ideologies, unconscious and
perhaps unwanted assumptions, preju-
dices, or biases are uncovered and become
evident in such a process of radical ques-
tioning and reflecting.
[ Due to changes in the realm of premises,
the number of possible knowledge spaces
and knowledge dynamics explodes expo-
nentially.
[ Reflection is used as a “weapon” against
single-minded and mono-disciplinary
approaches and learning processes.
[ Double-loop learning and reflection not
only encourages inter-/transdisciplinarity,
but makes a multi-disciplinary approach
a necessity.
[ The profound and deep understanding of a
phenomenon is supported in this process.
By systematically taking different posi-
tions and by reflecting on these positions,
the “what” and “why” of a phenomenon is
revealed in a radical manner (cf. also
Pask 1975, 1976; Argyris & Schön 1996).
The learner is forced to go beyond pure
functional descriptions and penetrate
into deeper layers of that phenomenon.
[ Focusing on and sharpening the cognitive
capacity of perception and observation. Due
to a rigorous process of questioning and
reflecting, the capacity of one’s perception
is constantly trained as well. One is forced
to take new perspectives on the same phe-
nomenon: by that multi-perspective
approach, blind spots are uncovered and,
what counts even more, new dimensions
and new categories are discovered that
include not only categories concerning the
particular phenomenon under investiga-
tion, but also new categories concerning
the processes of how to observe, perceive,
and interpret in general! This is extremely
important for almost every process of
knowledge management/sharing, as mul-
tiple perspectives and their reflected con-
solidation are the foundation for every
successful process of sharing meaning and
understanding.
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
[ Meta-learning. Double-loop learning
forces reflection on the learning process
itself and, hence, allows a critical perspec-
tive on the learner’s own processes,
assumptions, and habits of knowledge
construction and knowledge acquisition.
The mode of double-loop learning
unfolds its full effectiveness if it is performed
in the milieu of a group or a team (under the
assumption that the members of the group
are ready and motivated to listen and learn
from each other). Findings from organiza-
tional learning (e.g., Argyris & Schön 1996,
Senge 1990, etc.) show that collective reflection
is one of the most powerful instruments in the
process of achieving both an individual and a
mutually-shared understanding of a phe-
nomenon or of a problem. Apart from the
double feedback loops of this learning proce-
dure, an additional feedback loop is intro-
duced between individual and collective
learning and knowledge processes. This addi-
tional feedback loop enables an even more
radical process of questioning premises, as the
space of possible perspectives and frame-
works of reference is not limited to an individ-
ual, but to the variety of the participants”
knowledge backgrounds. Apart from the
readiness of the group’s participants to listen
to each other and to share knowledge, an
atmosphere of mutual trust is a “conditio sine
qua non” for the success of such a collective
reflective setting. The “social technology” of
Dialogue has turned out to be a highly effec-
tive tool for supporting these processes of col-
lective reflection and breaking up each others
premises (e.g., Bohm 1996; Schein 1993).
5 Concluding remarks
Looking back on the concept of “ba” that was
introduced in section 2.2, one can see that
collective double-loop learning is the core
strategy for this kind of space-of-knowledge
creation. “Good ba enables actors to detach
themselves from day-to-day routines, exter-
nalize their personal knowledge, and to view
a given phenomenon from various points
simultaneously. In short, ba enables a dialec-
tic process among actors… One way to
achieve synthesis in ba is to have dialectical
dialogues among participants who bring in
various viewpoints based on various back-
grounds. Dialectical dialogue is content-
radical constructivism
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Markus F. Peschl is professor for Cognitive
Science and Philosophy of Science at the
Dept. of Philosophy of Science, University
of Vienna, Austria. He spent two years at the
University of California, San Diego (UCSD,
cognitive science, neuroscience, and philos-
ophy department) and 1/2 year at the Uni-
versity of Sussex for post-doctoral research.
Furthermore, he studied philosophy for
1 1/2 years in France.
His focus of research is on the question of
knowledge (creation/innovation, construc-
tion, and representation of knowledge) in
various contexts: in natural and artificial
cognitive (neural) systems, in science, in
organizational learning settings, in educa-
tional/knowledge transfer processes, as well
as in the context of knowledge technologies
and their embedding in social systems. He
follows a radically interdisciplinary approach
integrating concepts from the natural sci-
ences, philosophy, from the humanities, as
well as from (knowledge) technology.
Working on the concept of “socio-episte-
mological engineering” he integrates con-
cepts of knowledge creation/innovation,
knowledge technologies, knowledge “trans-
fer” with new media (alternative
approaches to [e-]/blended-learning pro-
cesses, “knowledge didactics”, etc.), with
epistemological and social aspects of knowl-
edge creation/construction and social engi-
neering. Furthermore he works in the fields
of personality development for highly tal-
ented/gifted students (persons with high
ability), as well as in curriculum develop-
ment (e.g., cognitive science, “studium gen-
erale”, etc.).
He has published 6 books and more than 70
papers in international journals and collec-
tions. For further information see: http://
www.univie.ac.at/wissenschaftstheorie/
peschl/
based… Questions such as “What is the
essence of this thing/event?” or “Why do we
do this?” let participants of ba see things and
themselves from viewpoints that are rooted
deep in their own beliefs and values, and from
other’s viewpoints at the same time.” (Nonaka
& Toyama 2003, p. 8)
121
 educational
CONCEPTS
As has been shown in the case study in
section 3, mutually revealing one’s knowledge
and premises to each other induces a com-
pletely new dynamic to the knowledge cre-
ation and learning process. It opens new
aspects and, sometimes, dimensions in think-
ing and cooperative knowledge construction.
One of the main conditions for such an emer-
gent process is an atmosphere of openness and
trust in the group of participants. It is the
responsibility of the teacher or moderator to
establish such an atmosphere, which facili-
tates these processes of developing shared
understanding, shared meaning, and perhaps
shared vision.
One of the implications of double-loop
learning concerns the role of the teacher,
Notes
1. In fact, we will no longer be able to speak
of “knowledge taught”; rather, the notion
of “learning as conversation context” sug-
gests the use of cooperative knowledge-
construction processes.
2. This does not only apply to objects inves-
tigated by the natural sciences (e.g., ani-
mals or human behaviors), but also to the
domain of the humanities. Think, for in-
stance, of a piece of literature which is
studied by a scientist. They are interested
in what is “behind” this text, the meaning,
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123
 education radical constructivism
EMPIRICAL

Cognitive and Affective Outcomes of

Person–Environment Fit to a Critical
Constructivist Learning Environment:
A Hong Kong Investigation
Wai-lap Wong & David Watkins A University of Hong Kong, hrfewda@hku.hk
Ngai-ying Wong A The Chinese University of Hong Kong

their own intuition and experience which

Purpose:The aim of this research was to test whether Hong Kong science students would
may be at odds with those held by experts and
prefer a learning environment based on critical constructivism and whether a closer pre-
their teachers (Brown, Collins & Duguid
ferred-actual fit to such an environment would be associated with better learning out-
1989). From this perspective the teacher’s role
comes. Method:The participants were 149 Hong Kong secondary school Chemistry
is to assist students to modify their views to
students aged 16–19 years.They completed actual and preferred forms of a Chinese version
become more in line with the latter groups.
of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey and measures of self-efficacy and intrin-
According to Appleton and Asoko (1996), a
sic value of their Chemistry course.Their Chemistry examination scores were also
typical learning environment reflecting a cog-
obtained at the end of the course. Findings: Analysis showed that these students would
nitive constructivist approach would involve
prefer their Chemistry classrooms to be more personally relevant, to allow students more
the teacher becoming aware of the preconcep-
say and to share more control, and to encourage more negotiation with their teacher.
tions of his or her students; the teacher clearly
Regression surface analysis showed that congruence of person environment fit did not
defining conceptual goals for the students and
influence examination results but was associated with greater valuing of the course and
understanding the processes needed to
higher student self-efficacy. Research implications: Further research with a wider sam-
achieve these goals; challenging the initial
pling from Hong Kong and elsewhere and focusing on other subject areas will be necessary
views of students and helping them become
to assess the generalizability of these findings. Practical implications: It seems that edu-
aware of alternative views; and providing
cational reforms based on critical constructivist principles may be of value in non-Western
opportunities for students to try out new
contexts. Original value: Educational reforms in Hong Kong and elsewhere currently are
ideas in a non-threatening class atmosphere.
based on traditional constructivist principles. But this is the first research to support a
A contrasting approach, building on the
more radical approach in what is usually regarded as a relatively conservative Asian educa-
work of Vygotsky (1978), is often referred to
tional context. Key words: Learning environments, chemistry, Hong Kong Chinese
as social constructivism. According to this
view, cultural experiences and interactions
This issue is complicated because of with others in social settings mediate each
Introduction changing conceptions of what is meant by individual’s constructions of meaning (Cole
constructivism. Windschitl (2002, p.140) 1990; Scribner 1985). Instructional
Reforms in education in many countries have points out that this is an important issue as approaches congruent with this perspective
typically encouraged a change from tradi- depending on which paradigm a teacher pre- include “communities of learners” advocated
tional teacher-centred, transmission-oriented fers, the goals, learning activities, and even by Brown (1997) and computer-supported
learning environments to more student-cen- the culture of the classroom can differ dra- collaborative knowledge building (Scarda-
tred, constructivist ones (e.g., American Psy- matically. malia & Bereiter 1994).
chological Society 1994; Education Commis- First to become well-known was cognitive However, these conceptualisations of
sion of Hong Kong 2000). The primary reason constructivism. Influenced by the work of constructivism have been criticised in recent
usually given for the need for such changes is Piaget (1971), this view argues that meaning- years for not sufficiently recognising the role
that such environments encourage more con- ful learning requires learners to construct of the cultural context in influencing the
fident, creative, independent, problem-solv- rather than receive knowledge. Individual learning environment as advocated by pro-
ing, life-long learners. But the validity of such learners develop concepts about different ponents of radical constructivism (Glasers-
a claim has seldom been fully investigated. aspects of the world around them based on feld 1993), also known as critical constructiv-

124 Constructivist Foundations

 education
EMPIRICAL
ism (Taylor 1996). According to this view
there are
major cultural myths that can counteract
the development of constructivist learning
environments, such as powerful cultural
myths rooted in the histories of science or
mathematics and of schooling. (Taylor,
Fraser & Fisher 1997, p. 293)
The two main cultural myths underlying
the traditional teacher-centred approach
according to these latter authors are an objec-
tivist view of the nature of knowledge and an
accompanying technical controlling view
which focuses on the curriculum as a product
to be transmitted.
Taylor (1996; Taylor, Fraser & Fisher 1997)
argued that unless these “myths” are acknowl-
edged and guarded against a true constructiv-
ist learning environment was not possible.
Following the ideas of Habermas (1972, 1984)
they advocate the development of a new kind
of communicative relationship between
teachers and students referred to as “open dis-
course.” Such discourse is aimed at develop-
ing understanding and requires respecting
the meaning perspectives of others. In educa-
tional terms it involves giving opportunities
for students to negotiate the form of their
learning activities with their teachers; to par-
ticipate in their own assessment by helping to
set assessment criteria and to then conduct
self- and peer-assessment; to be involved in
collaborative, open inquiry with their peers;
and to negotiate the social norms of the class-
room.
“Critical constructivism” therefore goes
much further than advocacy of the active role
of the learner to build his or her own meaning
either in an individual or a social context as in
traditional cognitive or social constructivism.
Indeed some advocates of the critical, radical
perspective have referred to this as “trivial
constructivism” (Glasersfeld 1993). The
“critical” view is seen to require
a powerful counter-vailing emancipatory
ethos that gives rise to opportunities for
teachers and students to become critically
aware of the influence of the repressive
myths of objectivism and control that gov-
ern the social realities of schools and class-
rooms. (Taylor, Fraser & Fisher 1977, p.
295)
The ultimate test of an approach to teach-
ing and learning such as critical constructiv-
ism is whether it results in higher quality
2006, vol. 1, no. 3
learning outcomes than the traditional
teacher-centred approach or other forms of
constructivist-based teaching. There is much
research which has shown the value of a cog-
nitive constructivist approach in this regard.
See, for example, research supporting cogni-
tive strategy instruction (Pressley 1990),
reciprocal teaching (Rosenshine & Meister
1994), and conceptual change (Hewson &
Thorley 1989). The worth of teaching
approaches based on social constructivism has
also been supported in studies on communi-
ties of learners (Brown 1997), cognitive
apprenticeship (Collins, Brown & Newman
1989), and collaborative knowledge building
(Scardamalia & Bereiter 1994). However,
non-Western research evidence is limited. As
far as the authors are aware, the value of
teaching based on a critical constructivist
approach for enhancing high quality learning
outcomes, although often promulgated has
yet to be demonstrated empirically in any
culture.
The Hong Kong context
Current educational reforms in Hong Kong
have advocated more student-centred con-
structivist teaching methods (Education
Commission of Hong Kong 2000) (these new
approaches had only been partially imple-
mented at the time of this research). The main
need for such changes has been a perception
that too many Hong Kong students are prone
to rote learning and lack creativity, the class
sizes are too large, and teacher-talk is used as
the default teaching method (see Watkins &
Biggs 1996 for a fuller discussion). This view
is supported by findings of recent interna-
tional comparisons of educational achieve-
ment in science and mathematics (Holbrook
1990; Leung, Yung & Tso 2002). Typically
Hong Kong students do comparatively well in
mathematics and just above average in science
compared with other developed countries.
However, they are comparatively weak in
solving items involving more real life prob-
lems and verbal explanations.
There have been claims that constructivist
teaching approaches are not appropriate for
Hong Kong classrooms as Chinese culture has
emphasised more teacher-centred, transmis-
sion methods with the teacher regarded as an
authority not to be questioned. Indeed
research in Hong Kong has shown that class-
rooms described by students as “teacher-led”
radical constructivism
were more likely to encourage deeper level
approaches to learning (Ma 1994; Chan &
Watkins 1994).
However, Biggs (1996a) has argued force-
fully that, while at specific levels of abstrac-
tion cultural differences are evident, but at
more general levels the principles of good
teaching are universal. In particular Biggs
points to the underlying constructivist nature
of effective teaching in both Chinese and
Western classrooms. Thus in both contexts
the focus of good teaching is appropriate
individual and social learning activities, as
advocated by both cognitive and/or social con-
structivism. Indeed a number of examples of
successful teaching innovations based on
such constructivist principles are reported by
Watkins and Biggs (1996, 2001). These
include Problem Based Learning (Stokes
2001); conceptual change interventions
(Chan 2001; Ho, Watkins & Kelly 2001); com-
puter supported collaborative learning
(Chan 2001); collaborative learning (Tang
1996); and teacher education based on
“reflective practitioner” principles (So 2001;
Tang 2001). Ching (2001) also showed that a
change to a cognitive constructivist teaching
approach led to more higher order cognitive
strategies and learning outcomes in an exper-
imental class than a control class of Form 3
Hong Kong Chinese secondary school His-
tory students.
So it seems that teaching and learning
based on traditional cognitive and social con-
structivism principles are appropriate for
Hong Kong classrooms. But would Hong
Kong students prefer a critical constructivist
learning environment with its emancipatory,
open discourse characteristics? Also would a
closer actual-preferred fit to such an environ-
ment be related to better cognitive and affec-
tive learning outcomes as has been demon-
strated for traditional constructivist
classrooms?
Person-environment fit research
Through the writing of Kurt Lewin (1936)
social researchers came to realise the impact
of the environment in which people lived on
the behaviour they displayed. In particular
educational researchers have long demon-
strated the influence of the psychosocial
classroom learning environment on student
learning (Fraser 1986; Haertel, Wallberg &
Haertel 1981; Moos & Trickett 1974).
125
 education
EMPIRICAL
An important focus within this research teachers were chosen to maximise the chance
has been on student affective and cognitive of different environments. There were 40, 37,
learning outcomes as a function of person– 31, and 41 students in classes 6A, 6B, 6C, and
environment fit. The typical finding, in line 7C (ages ranging from 16–19 years), respec-
with theoretical predictions, was that a stu- tively. All four classes followed the same sylla-
dent tends to achieve better in a learning envi- bus content but the first two classes were
ronment closer to his or her preference. Thus taught at slightly greater depth.
Fraser and Fisher (1983a, 1983b) used regres-
sion surface analysis to show that the actual- Instruments
preferred environment interaction A new version of the Constructivist Learning
accounted for the variance in cognitive aca- Environment Scale (CLES: Taylor, Fraser &
demic outcomes significantly beyond what Fisher 1997) was developed to monitor the
could be attributed to relevant pre-test vari- critical constructivist learning perspective.
ables, general ability, and the actual environ- This version involves five scales designed to
ment. This finding was shown to have cross- tap five important indicators of a constructiv-
cultural validity in a study of Hong Kong Chi- ist learning environment: personal relevance,
nese mathematics classrooms (Wong & Wat- uncertainty, critical voice, shared control, and
kins 1996). student negotiation. The CLES contains 30
However, the above studies of person– items in total with six items tapping each of
environment fit, like most research in this these scales. The response alternatives for each
area, were based on investigations of tradi- item are to be answered on a five-point scale
tional classroom environments. Would the from “5 = almost always” to “1 = almost never”.
same be true of a critical constructivist envi- The CLES has four forms: student actual,
ronment in a Hong Kong educational context? student preferred, teacher actual, and teacher
preferred, measuring student and teacher
perceptions of the actual and preferred learn-
Method ing environments in accordance with critical
constructivism. The Chinese version of the
Participants student actual form of the CLES used in this
study had been validated by Chen, Taylor and
The setting for this study was an average abil- Aldridge (1998) in Taiwan and more recently
ity band, Chinese medium of instruction in Hong Kong by Fok and Watkins (2006).
Hong Kong public secondary school. Four Based on the Chinese version of the student
senior Chemistry classes taught by different actual form of the CLES, the student preferred
Scale Sample items in the student Sample items in the student
actual form preferred form
Personal Relevance I learn about the world outside of I wish that I learned about the
school world outside of school
Uncertainty I learn that science has changed I wish that I learned how science
over time. has changed over time.
Critical Voice It’s OK for me to ask the teacher I wish that it was OK for me to
“why do I have to learn this?” ask the teacher “why do I have to
learn this?”
Shared Control I help the teacher to plan what I wish that I could help the
I’m going to learn teacher to plan what I’m going to
learn.
Student Negotiation I get the chance to talk to other I wish that I got the chance to talk
students. to other students.
Table 1: Sample items from the student actual and preferred forms of CLE scales (Taylor, Fraser
& Fisher 1997)
126
radical constructivism
form was translated from English to Chinese
by the first author and then back translated
into English by a local English teacher not
involved in the study (a similar method was
used to provide Chinese versions of the two
motivation scales). The items in the English
versions from back translation were found to
have similar meaning with those in the origi-
nal English versions. Table 1 shows a sample
item from each scale of the student actual and
preferred forms. In this research responses to
items of both forms of the CLES scales showed
fairly satisfactory internal consistency as esti-
mated by coefficient alpha. The alphas ranged
from 0.67 to 0.89 (median = 0.75) and 0.79 to
0.92 (median = 0.87) for the actual and pre-
ferred forms, respectively.
The Motivated Strategies for Learning
Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich & De Groot
1990) was used to assess two student motiva-
tional beliefs supposed enhanced by a con-
structivist learning environment: self-efficacy
and intrinsic value. The students were asked to
answer the MSLQ with respect to their current
Chemistry course. Thus the two MSLQ scales
were intended to measure affective factors
related to this class rather than stable traits. In
this research the coefficient alphas for
responses to these MSLQ scales, both of nine
items with seven-point 1–7 response scales,
were 0.77 for Self-Efficacy and 0.83 for Intrin-
sic Values, respectively indicating very ade-
quate levels of internal consistency. The stu-
dents’ scores on their end-of-year Chemistry
examination were also obtained. The exami-
nation consisted of short answer items tapping
subject knowledge and longer items requiring
the students to apply this knowledge to real life
problems. As these examinations were differ-
ent for each class achievement outcomes were
analysed separately for each class.
Procedure
The questionnaires were administered by the
Chemistry teachers to their classes early in
second semester, 2003 (the students had thus
been in the same Chemistry class for four
months). The teachers were briefed by the
first author about the purpose of the survey
and the procedure in administering the ques-
tionnaires. Students were reminded that they
should answer the questions in accordance
with their perceptions of the actual and pre-
ferred classroom environments their current
Chemistry classes.
Constructivist Foundations
 education radical constructivism
EMPIRICAL

Analysis tests showed that signifi- Actual Preferred

Regression surface analysis was employed cant p < 0.01) differences
here following the approach of previous per- were found for all but the CLES Scales Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
son–environment fit studies (Fraser & Fisher Uncertainty scale with Personal Relevance 2.80 0.49 3.79 0.77
1983a, 1983b; Wong & Watkins 1996). In sim- rather large effect sizes
ple language, regression equations of the form (eta-squared) varying Uncertainty 3.05 0.61 3.14 0.74
Y = a + b1A + b2 (A × P) were calculated where from 0.61 (Student Nego- Critical Voice 2.81 0.65 3.46 0.79
a is the constant term and b1, b2 are the tiation) to 1.67 (Shared
unstandardised beta coefficients of the regres- Control). Shared Control 2.02 0.63 3.29 0.89
sion equation, Y = cognitive / affective out- The results of the Student Negotiation 2.93 0.66 3.37 0.78
comes in turn, and A and P represent per- regression analyses to
ceived actual and preferred classroom investigate the link Table 2: Means and standard deviations of student (N=149) CLES
environments, respectively. Large positive between person–environ- scales for actual and preferred classroom learning environments
statistically significant b2 coefficients indicate ment fit and both cogni-
that congruence between the preferred and tive and affective learning
actual classroom environment is associated outcomes are shown in Tables 3 and 4, respec-
with better learning outcomes. Whereas a tively. It can be seen that one aspect of the Discussion
large b1 coefficient shows a strong association actual learning environment, as represented It would seem that these senior secondary
between the actual environment as perceived by b1, was significantly associated with better school students would prefer their Chemistry
by students and their learning outcomes. examination results in three of the four classes classes to be more personally relevant and to
(different for each class: Uncertainty for 6A, allow students more say, to share more con-
Shared Control for 6C, and Personal Rele- trol, and to negotiate more with their teacher.
Results vance for 7C). However, none of the corre- A larger, more representative sampling of
sponding b2 coefficients were statistically sig- pupils, schools, and subject areas is necessary
The means and standard deviations of CLES nificant indicating that congruence of to determine the generalizability of a prefer-
scale measures of the student perceptions of person–environment fit was not associated ence for such characteristics of a critical con-
the actual and preferred classroom environ- with examination performance. structivist learning environment for other
ments are presented in Table 2. It was found For affective outcomes a very different pic- Hong Kong secondary schools, less mature
that the students’ mean preferred scores of all ture emerged. Only one of the b1 coefficients students, and other subject areas. The prefer-
five CLES scales were higher than their actual was statistically significant (negatively), three ences go much further than the current edu-
perceived scores. of the five b2 coefficients (Personal Relevance, cational reforms in Hong Kong which are
One way MANOVA with the five CLES Uncertainty, and Critical Voice) were signifi- based on traditional constructivist principles,
scales as dependent variables and the actual or cant and positive for both affective outcomes. however, it seems that Hong Kong students
preferred environment as a repeated mea- Thus it seems that congruence between these may relish the more emancipatory version
sures factor showed that there was an overall three actual and preferred aspects of the espoused by critical constructivist advocates.
statistically significant difference between learning environment was associated with Whether Hong Kong teachers would be pre-
these means (Wilks’ Lambda = 0.29; 1, 144 higher student perceptions of self-efficacy pared to accept a less controlling role for
d.f., F = 71.90; p < 0.01). Univariate follow-up and intrinsic value. themselves than at present is another matter.

CLES Scales Class 6A Class 6B Class 6C Class 7C

b1 b2 b1 b2 b1 b2 b1 b2

Personal relevance 4.51 –0.79 4.30 0.42 4.51 –0.97 15.90* 0.41
Uncertainty 12.42* –1.37 2.82 –1.09 5.11 –0.37 1.50 0.54
Critical voice 0.04 –0.32 –11.61 1.98 4.64 0.70 –0.62 0.05
Student negotiation –3.18 0.79 –12.62 1.38 11.50 –1.40 5.91 –0.81
Shared control 7.27 0.97 –8.46 0.58 14.81* –1.80 –5.88 0.34

Table 3: Coefficients obtained in regression equations per class with examination results as dependent variable. b1:
unstandardised regression coefficient loaded on actual environment. b2: unstandardised regression coefficient loaded on actual/
preferred environment interaction. * p < .05 ** p < .01

2006, vol. 1, no. 3 127

 education
EMPIRICAL
CLES Scales Self-efficacy
b1 b2
Personal relevance –0.31 0.09**
Uncertainty –0.36* 0.07*
Critical voice 0.05 0.06*
Student negotiation –0.03 0.05
Shared control 0.25 0.00
Table 4: Coefficients obtained in regression equations with self-
efficacy and intrinsic value as dependent variables. b1: unstandardised
regression coefficient loaded on actual environment. b2:
unstandardised regression coefficient loaded on actual/preferred
environment interaction. * p < .05 ** p < .01
Also educational reformers in Hong Kong
and elsewhere need to clarify which version of
constructivism they are advocating.
This research has extended previous
research on person–environment fit to
learning environments based on critical con-
structivism, and in a non-Western context at
that. While congruence of person–environ-
ment fit had little impact on their examina-
tion results it seems that greater congruence
in terms of personal relevance, degree of
uncertainty, and critical voice was associated
with affective outcomes in terms of greater
intrinsic valuing of the course and greater
self-efficacy of the students. Thus some sup-
port for the critical constructivist position
was found. Moreover, the relatively low
actual-preferred fit reported in this paper
may have led to the underestimation of the
influence of such a fit which may be found in
more emancipated classrooms.
Different aspects of the actual environ-
ment were significantly related to academic
performance in three of the four classes, per-
haps indicating that students in these classes
were differentially affected by aspects of the
actual environment. In-depth research
would be necessary to identify such aspects.
The overall relationship between actual per-
ceptions (and actual-preferred fit also) and
the examination scores may well be greater if
these scores reflected understanding of the
curriculum more strongly, rather than fac-
128
Intrinsic value tual knowledge as at
present (Leung, Yung
b1 b2 & Tso 2002). Biggs
–1.20 0.11** (1996b) has empha-
sised the importance
–0.17 0.07* of “constructive align-
0.19 0.06* ment” where the
assessment is designed
0.14 0.05 to evaluate learning
0.12 0.03 outcomes based on
constructivist princi-
ples if students are
likely to benefit from
such an approach.
Previous research
in Hong Kong has
shown that it is possi-
ble to implement a
change in the instructional approach to
encourage learning environments with char-
acteristics of critical constructivism (Fok &
Watkins 2006). However, this approach was
more successful in improving the learning
approaches of the more able students who
were most aware of the changed environ-
ment (see also Wong & Watkins 1996). This
suggests that further changes designed to
enhance constructivist learning might work
best if students are explicitly made aware of
the aims of the new approach and may be
most suitable for high ability students with
higher levels of metacognitive awareness.
O’Connor (1998, p. 35) points out that a
major implication for teaching of the radi-
cal/ critical position is that:
each child’s constructions will be depen-
dent on what has preceded them, and
given that they are uniquely the product
of experience, the pedagogical implica-
tion arises that one must start teaching
from “where the child is”. This requires
that one first find out where the child is in
order to teach effectively, and that fur-
thermore one must find out where each
child is. Just as important, one must have
some idea of how the child is to get from
where she or he is to the target state, as
well as an idea of the nature of that target
state. This requires a deep and detailed
knowledge of what it means to under-
stand or know the target.
radical constructivism
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Wai-lap Wong, M.Ed., is a former secondary
school science teacher but is now a School
Development Officer, Centre for University
and Schools Partnership, The Chinese Uni-
versity of Hong Kong.
David Watkins is a professor in the Faculty of
Education at the University of Hong Kong.
He is a cross-cultural researcher whose
interests include student learning, concep-
tions of teaching, and self-concept. His Ph.D.
is from the Australian National University.
Ngai-ying Wong, Ph.D., is a professor in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His
research interests include classroom learn-
ing environment, mathematics education,
conception of mathematics and Confucian
Heritage Culture Learner's Phenomenon.
Unfortunately recent research with Hong
Kong secondary school teachers (Watkins
2004) showed they had little understanding of
their students” conceptions of learning at a
group let alone an individual level. This is
clearly an area where staff development would
be needed if critical constructivist teaching is
to be implemented successfully in Hong
Kong. As Asian educational contexts are far
from homogeneous, the adoption of such a
teaching approach in other Asian countries
would need to be evaluated carefully. In-
depth qualitative research utilising interviews
and classroom observations would enhance
future research in Hong Kong and elsewhere
in this area.
Note
This paper is based on a reanalysis of data
reported by the first author in an M.Ed. dis-
sertation submitted to the University of Hong
Kong supervised by the second author. Corre-
spondence about this paper should be sent to
the second author at the Faculty of Education,
University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road,
Hong Kong (e-mail: hrfewda@hku.hk).
Constructivist Foundations
 education
EMPIRICAL
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Constructivist Foundations
 book review
OPINION
Lindemann, Holger (2005)
Konstruktivismus und Pädagogik
Grundlagen, Modelle, Wege zur Praxis
Ernst Reinhardt Verlag: Munich, Basel
ISBN 3-497-01843-0
280 pages. Glossary, internet links,
bibliography, subject index
Constructivist Foundations 2006, vol. 1, no. 3
Konstruktivismus
und Pädagogik
by Holger Lindemann
Ernst von Glasersfeld A University of Massachusetts, evonglas@localnet.com
Thiserature
book is a welcome addition to the lit-
about constructivism. As far as I
know, it is the first serious attempt to compare
the major trends of this school of thought and
to discuss their similarities and differences
from a non-belligerent position.
Lindemann’s exposition of radical con-
structivism is thorough and accurate. Given
the details to which his explanations go and
the fact that he draws on sources in two lan-
guages, this is a major achievement. In his
first chapter, Lindemann lists seven “funda-
mental theses of constructivism” to which,
by implication, all constructivists would
agree. I cannot speak for others, but I cer-
tainly do. I have one minor suggestion for an
eventual second edition: because radical
constructivism has often been accused of
denying the existence of reality, I would
rephrase part of the first of his thesis, which
he calls “ontological scepticism.” Rather than
say that we cannot decide whether reality
exists, I would say that we have no idea what
the word “existence” should mean beyond
the domain of experience.
The other six theses deal with the subjec-
tivity of knowledge, the construction of an
internal experiential world, the notion of via-
bility, the pluralism of models and methods,
the subject’s responsibility for his or her con-
structions, and the fact that the constructivist
theory must also be applied to itself. The thor-
oughness of his exposition is exemplary and
should do much to correct the many mistaken
ideas about constructivism and its intentions.
To further explain and amplify these the-
ses, he provides in his second chapter an
excellent clarification of the concept of “sys-
tem,” which leads effortlessly to the question
of living systems and to an extended discus-
sion of Humberto Maturana’s theory of auto-
radical constructivism
poiesis and its differences relative to Gerhard
Roth’s neurobiological studies.
In the next three chapters, Lindemann
deals with problems of perception and con-
sciousness, cognitive development and com-
munication, and anthropological consider-
ations. He covers the relevant works of Heinz
von Foerster, Gerhard Roth, Gebhard Rusch,
Siegfried Schmidt, Francisco Varela, Peter
Hejl, Howard Gardner, some of mine, and
others. What he says about language fits with
the theory of radical constructivism, but does
not dwell upon the models of construction
that furnish abstract concepts, which then
function as the meaning of words such as
“motion,” “cause,” “change,” “time.” His dia-
gram “Sprachgebrauch und Sprachverständ-
nis”(p. 112) tends to give the impression that
all word-meanings are empirical abstrac-
tions. This, of course, is not the case, because
without reflexive abstractions that yield
word-meanings in the form of patterns of
mental operations a language would be prac-
tically useless.
The remaining three chapters are dedi-
cated to constructivist learning theory and
the didactic guidelines that can be developed
from it. They provide an excellent survey of
what teachers might learn from constructiv-
ism. Lindemann focuses mainly on theoreti-
cal discussions in the German-language area.
I therefore miss references to the successful
implementation of constructivist methods at
schools in the United States by people like
Paul Cobb, Grayson Wheatley, Les Steffe, and
SRRI at the University of Massachusetts.
However, given the theoretical character of
the text, this is a minor criticism. Linde-
mann’s book is a competent and very valuable
introduction to the ideas of constructivism
and their application to pedagogy.
131
 book review
OPINION
Non-dualistische
Medientheorie
by Stefan Weber
Roland Graf A St. Pölten Univ. of Applied Sciences, Austria, lbgraf@fh-stpoelten.ac.at
Weber, Stefan (2005)
Non-dualistische Medientheorie How(“reality”)
phenomena arise not by themselves
but by interference of specta-
Eine philosophische Grundlegung tors (“interpretation”), is a well-known ques-
UVK: Konstanz tion that is almost trivial for everybody
ISBN 3-89669-474-X involved in constructivism. But it is not so
370 pages common for every discipline. Therefore, Ste-
fan Weber, bridging the gap between advanced
communication theory and practical journal-
ism, disseminates a concept rather unknown
to media philosophy. His new book, Non-
dualistische Medientheorie bears a modest title
for the task of the published “habilitation”
(postdoctoral thesis), which offers an exciting
new framework for media studies.
Non-dualism, the pillar of Weber’s study,
was established by Josef Mitterer as an attempt
to overcome the comparison between reality
and interpretation (or narrative) as basis of
most western truth concepts. Rethinking this
spatial interpretation model (in Wittgenstein-
ian terms: carrying around small world
objects, fitting or unfitting the “world”), Mit-
terer proposed a sequence of world concep-
tions that are always based on already-existing
descriptions, and not on the common concept
of objects as something categorically different
from our descriptions. The consequence of
distinguishing descriptions “so far” from
descriptions “from now on” is an epistemic
concept rooted in time. For that reason it
allows cultural diversity as well as changes of
semiotic traditions or subcultural interpreta-
tion of (media) information.
Nevertheless, Weber is well aware that he
first has to give a sound analysis of the diffi-
culty in western truth concepts in order to
establish the seemingly revolutionary switch
from spatial to temporal explanation. Not
only in a theological framework did the
“katabasis” style form the classical way of
thinking of a gain in knowledge: gradually we
step up to the higher, the only, the mere, the
better, the “truer” truth. A dualism nearly
always involves a kind of superiority in time
132
non-dualism
and/or place, differs action from reaction, and
subjects from objects. To name just a few of the
topics hinted at for media philosophy are the
question of reliability (e.g., eye witnesses/for-
eign correspondents/talk show hosts) and cul-
tural hegemony as well as the “markers of
truth.” Referring to often-used phrases in dis-
cussions (like “the truth is…”, “in fact…”,
“that’s your opinion, but…”, “more likely” and
so on), the ideological use and the adherence
to a traditional concept of fixed, knowable
truth is unmasked. This also leads to a refram-
ing of the questions of gatekeepers of informa-
tion, manipulation in TV formats such as
“reality shows” and different media literacy. A
digital immigrant, as media tycoon Rupert
Murdoch called the illiterates of the computer
age, is not “farther away” from the possible
knowledge in networks; he simply relies on
other world descriptions, which are sufficient
for his understanding.
To be precise, Non-dualistische Medientheo-
rie raises a lot of questions known to construc-
tivists, but not to communication theory
(which often enough still sticks to Shannon/
Weaver or McLuhan), before arriving at the
final chapters 5 and 6, which are dedicated to
practical analysis of media. Truth and fiction,
reality and simulation, esse and percipi, dis-
course and meaning are all rooted in a dualistic
worldview, which limits the possibility of glo-
bal communication. As in Nietzsche’s problem
with the “grammar” of metaphysics, the media
“grammar” is hard to get rid of. A helping hand
in doing so – at least in my opinion – is offered
by Weber’s book, which does away with the
overcome, but seemingly indispensable truth
concept behind every medium. Reporting real-
ity does not mean rigidity but accepting chang-
ing (the) realities by reporting. The new “basis
theory in media studies” (p. 351), which is the
aim of the author, is due to find a widespread
field for practical use – or at least it should, in a
world not biased by dualistic thinking.
Constructivist Foundations 2006, vol. 1, no. 3