Realism - Relativism - Constructivism

Christian Kanzian, Sebastian Kletzl, Josef Mitterer, Katharina Neges, Christian Kanzian, Sebastian Kletzl, Josef Mitterer, Katharina Neges

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110523423
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

The book presents papers from leading proponents of realist, relativist, and constructivist positions in epistemology and the philosophy of language and ethics.

1Constructivism and Beyond

Krzysztof Abriszewski

Are Philosophers’ Actions Realist or Constructivist?

Abstract: In my article, I propose to discuss constructivism and realism in terms of actions instead of doing that in a usual way, in terms of theories, philosophers or general positions. To enable this, I offer two conceptual tools. First, I use modified model of four types of knowledge introduced by Andrzej Zybertowicz. It approaches any knowledge-building process as a cultural game, and recognizes reproduction, discovery, redefinition, and design of a new game. Second, I use Stanisław Lem’s model of three types of geniuses. I illustrate my approach briefly using examples from Plato, Spinoza and Berkeley.

Keywords: Constructivism, realism, cultural theory, actions, knowledge

1Who Constructs What Nowadays?

This apparently innocent question seems to be out of place when asked in presence of philosophers. Almost surely they will not recognise it as addressed to them. And when that is determined, they will inevitably shake off any responsibility. In other words, it is always others (Others) who construct, and never ‘we’. ‘We’ will never admit: “Yes, constructing X is what we excel at”. At best, ‘we’ will offer constructing this or that reasoning on a particular topic. More likely, constructing will appear in the way of reproach: ‘construct this or that’ – that is what a realist may say to a constructivist in fervour of discussion.

While the introductive question is looming in the background, I would like to ponder what philosophers may actually construct or may have constructed in the past. However, in order to take up these considerations, I must make some adjustments to our – philosophical – ways of speaking about constructing and constructivism. That is, to a certain degree I am going to enter the undefined area of discussion about realism and constructivism, but I would also like to introduce a perspective different from the dominant ones.

For the purposes of this text, I would like to adopt a very simple and general way of attributing either stance to specific statements or theories. In the vein of the tradition of George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By I am going to identify them by the prevalent kind of metaphors on which they are based (see Lakoff/Johnson 2003).

The realist stance(s) most often employ(s) the metaphor of reflection, which was thoroughly and scrupulously revealed by Richard Rorty in his classic work Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Rorty 1981). Traditionally, this genre of thought includes all epistemological stances that seek some kind of correspondence between the world (states of affairs, beings etc.) and language (propositions, claims, or – more traditionally – ideas). The constructivist approach is in turn aptly characterised by industrial metaphors of fabricating, producing, manufacturing or the aforementioned constructing. A different question is what exactly, how and by what kind of agents it is done. Radically simplified as this approach is, it nevertheless seems to grasp a certain academic convention of writing papers, conducting discussions and polemics, formulating critique and building lines of defence.

But what do we usually talk about using those labels? I dare suppose that the scope is limited: we like labelling philosophers or, more generally, scholars, by saying e. g. “Ernst von Glasersfeld was a constructivist”, “Aristotle was a realist”, etc. We are not going to hesitate to describe theories as realist or constructivist ones. For example, the latter category is likely to contain all those that we deem structurally similar to Kantian epistemology with its phenomena and things-in-themselves. In turn, realist theories will be those arguing for bridging the two in the vein of the aforementioned reflection metaphor. At last we can define the two in more detail and speak of realist and constructivist positions. This is where the cases of attributing realist and constructivist labels finish. Hence we have people, theories and positions.

For the purposes of our considerations, I would like to extend that threeentry list and attempt to also describe actions as realist and constructivist. Do we sometimes happen to treat philosophers’ work as actions of realist or constructivist nature? I claim that it is far less important what one claims to be doing, or how one describes herself – as a realist or a constructivist; it is far more important what one is doing. This kind of assessment needs a good measure, though, that is, a good theory that would allow to interpret philosophical actions with the use of the two categories in question. Let us then proceed to analytic tools.

2Tool No. 1: the Model of the Four Kinds of Knowledge-Building Processes

The first of the proposed tools is the model of the four kinds of knowledge-building processes introduced in Przemoc i poznanie (Violence and Knowledge) by Andrzej Zybertowicz, who recognises those processes as different types of cultural games (Zybertowicz 1995, 127 ff). The main advantage of this tool for us depends on embracing different epistemologies (realist, constructivist) by identifying them as elements of particular types of cultural games. If we overlook its certain flaws resulting from the author’s attachment to seeing constructing processes in terms of language, this model offers quite clear a thinking scheme, letting us articulate various knowledge-building processes in categories of culture theory. What is more, it allows us to easily switch from epistemological questions (methods of acquiring knowledge, representation of the world) to ontological (reshaping parts of the world).

Let us scrutinise those four types then.

2.1Reproduction

This is the first and simplest kind of knowledge-building process in Zybertowicz’s model. (Zybertowicz 1995, 128f). It includes all the practices in which individuals absorb ready-made knowledge, undergo socialisation within the framework of stabilised cultural reality, enter the area of games whose rules they internalise in order to join them. Zybertowicz describes this scope of learning as follows:

An individual learns the culturally produced world, stratified into ready-to-use categories. This world contains, as its integral component, definitions of situations that are in force there: words and meaning attributed to them. An individual is learning categories firmly established in the social practice network and in culturally regulated perception. He or she absorbs certain content of culture. (Zybertowicz 1995, 128)

He also points at the fact that within this type of learning the individual experiences reaching the truth awaiting her, which, according to the model, is related uniquely to how stabilised the area of knowledge being reproduced is. Consequently, we can say that the individual is learning to reproduce particular practices, and as a result, the reproduced content keeps up to circulate. Zybertowicz also stresses the significance of ‘contexts established and rendered objective by institutions’ in which the individual operates (Zybertowicz 1995, 128). The individual experiences a ‘collision’ with reality: the degree of stabilisation makes reality very resistant to non-standard manipulation. In this context let us think about students who produce an incorrect solution of an equation at physics classes, wrongly locate the capital of Austria on the map or mistakenly quote the definition of Kant’s categorical imperative. No doubt that these areas of culture owe their stability not only to lasting institutions and situation definitions, stressed by the author, but more than anything to perpetuation through things and practices (institutions may be construed as combinations of things and practices of sorts). Therefore learning by reproducing is taking part in re-presentation (of events, phenomena, things etc.) We might say that reproduction is a significant element in the circulation of various elements of culture and contributes to stabilising them, by minimising changes (distortion) in consecutive representations. Speaking in terms of Josef Mitterer’s nondualistic philosophy, reproduction is exercise in repeating stabilised transitions from descriptions so far to descriptions from now on (Mitterer 1992, 2001).

Reproduction is the least interesting kind of knowledge-building process. Nothing new emerges here. The whole game is about repeating, as faithfully as possible, something that has already existed in culture. It is a trite observation that for philosophers knowledge reproduced this way is not an interesting subject, although it is what widespread examples refer to (the cat is on the mat, it is raining, snow is white etc.), which must be considered erroneous in view of what the following models are distinguished for. Reproduction is by no means a model process for other types of knowledge-building processes, or for knowledge in general. Zybertowicz, after Anna Pałubicka, puts forward a thesis that positivist epistemology is a philosophical theory of knowledge reduced to reproduction (Pałubicka 1977, Zybertowicz 1995, 129).

2.2Discovering

The second type is discovering: Zybertowicz speaks about “discovering the content of pre-existing cultural games” (Zybertowicz 1995, 129 ff). We encounter discovering wherever we have to do with a relatively stable area of public life which still has not gained its epistemological representation. We already have an experience but we still do not have its description – we have a certain kind of practices but we are not able to speak about it yet, we have phenomena but we cannot formulate their theory etc. This is how Zybertowicz puts it:

Knowledge-building processes of this kind depend on attributing concepts to states of affairs that have already been appointed (pre-formed) by the matrices of our culture / practice. In other words, discovering is reaching truths for which the space has already been established but which have not yet been articulated in a particular culture. (Zybertowicz 1995, 130)

In discovering it is important that we still have to do with a stabilised area of culture, although it has not yet created a sufficient reflection mechanism (to use Anthony Giddens’s term, see Giddens 1990). Here is an example: books considered part of philosophical canon (works of Aristotle, Kant, Spinoza and others) have existed for many years (decades, centuries), but it takes feminists to stumble upon the idea of looking up what the classics say about women and putting it together instead of habitual omitting the topic as insignificant for the main course of thought (see for example Freeland 1998, Schott 1997, Gatens 2009).

It seems that learning by discovering is a very heterogeneous category. It is a function of former stabilisation and recognition of a given area of culture. Hence there may exist well stabilised and quite well known areas, which expect to be subjected to relatively standard research procedures. There may also be equally stabilised areas but so far little examined, whose exploration (discovering) is to prove greater a challenge and supposedly more fruitful. This type of knowledge-building processes may also be treated as realist, as its essence is mapping an area which is already there and whose boundaries are well defined.

2.3Redefining Games

Whereas discovering gave us an image of the most frequent kind of knowledge-building practices that introduce new elements, redefining takes us to an utterly new level. To put it in the most general way, if a particular cultural game is played by a certain set of pre-defined rules (explicit or not), then the process of redefining infringes those rules, diverts the course of the whole game (Zybertowicz 1995, 141 ff).

If the former two types operated in a stabilised area, here we begin to take into account alternative images of a specified domain, it ceases to be a homogeneous, or relatively homogeneous, field, in which epistemological objectives are clear beforehand, one knows what is important and what is trivial, which is worth pursuing and what is uninteresting or even does not belong to the field of interest. Here knowledge-building activities not only add new elements simply by filling blank spaces, applying colours to white patches, but they shape a new discipline, prove that the game is about something else than it has been believed, there is a different prize at stake, or the rules are in fact different. Or all of the above. If we recall the familiar figure of Janus introduced by Latour in Science in Action redefining will stand on the side of Janus’s young face, for example when the young face asks what ‘efficiency’ is, whereas the old face strives to build a possibly efficient machine (see Latour 1987).

Although the author of Przemoc i poznanie draws attention to institutional mechanisms and the role of authority and violence in knowledge-building, as well as that of different definitions of situation, here I would like to reshape and extend his model by practice and materiality. Let us note that if work in the redefining mode disturbs the environment (a complex assemblage of...