Constructivism
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Constructivism page
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Constructivism is the theory that says you construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information. Constructivism best describes how we as humans deal with reality.
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Core idea
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Arguments in favour of constructivism
Constructivism makes consciousness personal, but relative.
- At the most fundamental level, Carlo Rovelli shows that our encounter with reality is relational
- Karl Friston shows us how our brains predict this encounter and adapt according to the feedback
- Lisa Feldman Barrett explains to us how we construct our worldview but experience it as innate
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As you experience the world and reflect upon those experiences, you build your own representations and incorporate new information into pre-existing knowledge. (See also Bayes Theorem).
| Content source |
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| University of Buffalo |
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Example: 'the tango man with the red rose', Rudolf Valentino
We all know the cliché of the sensual tango of a man seducing a woman with a red rose between the lips. This image is attributed to a film by Rudolf Valentino in which he dances the tango. But, look and see for yourself: instead of a red rose a sigerette (1). In another movie, where he plays a toreador, he is confronted with a woman with a red rose between her lips (2). Why should a man (at that time) receive or even accept a red rose from a woman? Both images are constructed into the romantic idea of a man tango dancing with a rose between the lips.
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| (1) | Tango | You tube |
| (2) | Rose | YouTube |
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| Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow - The Grand Design - Random House - 2011 |
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| We shall adopt an approach that we call model-dependent realism. It is based on the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth. But there may be different ways in which one could model the same physical situation, with each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. If two such theories or models accurately predict the same events, one cannot be said to be more real than the other; rather we are free to use whichever model is the most convenient. |
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Constructivism is an cognitive premise grounded on the assertion that, in the act of knowing, it is the human mind that actively gives meaning and order to that reality to which it is responding. It comes in two varieties: individualist and social. According to the former, the individual is the source of everything; the latter, the social group, particularly the scientific community, constructs whatever it studies, even natural things such as stars.
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Personal constructivismː cognitive construct
Constructivism holds that concepts and hypotheses are human constructions rather than innate ideas or the product of revelation, perception, or intuition. Cognitive psychology has confirmed the hypothesis that all concepts and hypotheses are constructed rather than given.
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Social constructivism: building knowledge
Social constructivism, or the ‘sociology of knowledge’, is the theoretical base we use to understand knowledge. It characterises knowledge as the sets of beliefs or mental models people use to interpret actions and events in the world. This way of looking at knowledge contrasts with empiricism, a philosophy of knowledge that tells us that the way we see the world is pretty much how it actually is. Social constructivism tells us we build knowledge as ways of understanding the world and that these ways of understanding are a subset of how the world could be understood. Considering the vast diversity of world views, this seems sensible.
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| Content source |
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| Science Direct |
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Deep dive
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Arguments against constructivism
- Scientific observations are always made from a particular perspective, making it impossible to achieve a completely objective "view from nowhere"
- What can be experienced or known is limited not by an objective world, but by the observer's prior mental constructs and conceptual frameworks
- Scientific observations are inherently shaped by the observer's cognitive lens, social context, and prior experiences, challenging the traditional notion of objective, unbiased observation in science
- The perspective-dependent nature of observations may lead to varied interpretations of the same phenomena, potentially reducing the reliability of scientific findings
- A relativistic stance argues that the validity of theoretical statements can only be determined within a particular context or observation. This relativistic view challenges the idea of universal scientific truths, potentially limiting the generalizability and reliability of scientific findings across different contexts
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The parallelism with Buddhism
Dögens (zenmaster):
"At the very moment, the inside and the outside of living beings are the total existence. To be brought to realization by ten thousand things is the dropping away of body and mind.The (internal) jewels sparkle and reflect each other, their mirror images penetrate each other back and forth. Within the boundaries of a single gemstone are the boundless repetitions and reflections of all the jewels."
The individual is nothing but a node in an ever-changing network of relationships, while he, conversely, carries this entire network of relationships on his own.
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