Epistemology constructivist

The epistemology constructivist or the epistemologies constructivists , or the constructivism , are current epistemology which considers the built character of the Connaissance. This epistemological current marks a rupture with the traditional concept according to which any human knowledge should or could approach more or less a “true” representation of a independent Réalité or “ontological”. Instead of claiming that knowledge can represent a world beyond our experiment, any knowledge is regarded as a tool in the field of the experiment.

History

Antiquity

The assertion of the Sophist Protagoras according to which the man is the measurement of all things can mean that it is the man who creates the differences with regard to the language, the knowledge, the sensitivity or perceptions. Then any assertion made by a man would have absolute significance only for this man. For another sophist, Gorgias, firstly nothing exists; secondly, even if there exists something, the man cannot apprehend it; thirdly, even if one can apprehend it, one can neither formulate it nor to explain it to the others .

Pyrrhon and the skeptics underline as for them which one can compare of the experiments only with other experiments and which the human thought cannot thus be determined on the possibility of discovered of a Vérité.

Middle Ages

One can quote mainly the medieval Nominalisme of Pierre Abélard (1079-1142) and Guillaume d' Occam (1285-1347). This last declares that the order that we perceive is perhaps not the real order of nature; we cannot know reality in oneself; we know only the names, the representations of this reality .

Rebirth

Léonard de Vinci (1452-1519) produced scientific knowledge (invention of the parachute, helicopter and submarine) without having the famous Cartesian method. Vinci had it ambition never not to separate the desire to include/understand and the pleasure of making .

Lights

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), regarded as the first “true constructivist” by Ernst von Glasersfeld, proposes the ingenio , “this strange faculty of the spirit which is to distinguish to connect and unite” in the place of the method of Descartes, which aims at “encircling to divide and separate”. Vico, it also, insist on the importance of the action for cognition ( Verum ipsum factum : “Truth is to even do it”).

The Anglo-Saxon empirists were the first to undertake a thorough study in the way in which the human beings can reach the Connaissance by examining the world such as it appears to them. Knowledge, according to John Locke (1632-1704), has two sources: of with dimensions it is derived from the directions, other, reflections of the spirit on its clean operations. The second source of the knowledge of Locke, the mental operations, was studied front by George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776). The latter concluded that the relations by which the sensory details are combined to form images of our world of experiment, are not given but the result of a association .

After the lights, Emmanuel Kant (1742-1804) brings a decisive contradiction to Cartesian epistemology with the Phénoménologie.

XIXe century

Holding of the Pragmatism, American school (end 19th century-beginning 20th century), founded by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), consider that a theory is distinguished from another only by the effects which it produces once it is posed. Pierce introduces in particular the concept of abduction, by which a hypothetical rule is generated by a single case or a surprising fact. Contrary to the Induction and the Deduction, abduction is, according to Peirce, the only mode of reasoning by which one can lead to new knowledge. The two other great figures of pragmatism are William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952).

The German philosopher Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933), in his Philosophy of Als Ob (philosophy of “like if”), defends the idea that we can perceive only Phénomène S, from which we build fictional models of thought to which we grant a value of Réalité. We behave “as if” the world corresponded to our models. Vaihinger stresses that we are accustomed to regard as reality all it with what we give a name, without thinking that we can certainly allot a name to reality, but also with the unreal one .

XXe century

For the German physicist max Planck (1858-1947), the question of knowing what is actually a table does not present any direction. The same applies thus from all the physical concepts. The whole of the world which surrounds us anything else constitutes only the totality of the experiments that we have some. Without them, the outside world does not have any significance. Any question referring to the outside world which is not based in some manner on an experiment, an observation, is declared absurd and rejected like such

The French philosopher Paul Valéry (1871-1945) points out the importance of the representation and the action: Explanations were always sought when these was representations that one could only try to invent my hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality wants to say that, and nothing more the truths is things to be made and not to discover, they are constructions and not treasures .

Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) reintroduced the concept of Teleology. He insists on the question, or the problem, which precedes any theoretical construction, before concluding: And, no matter what one says some, in the scientific life, the problems do not arise themselves. It is precisely this direction of the problem which gives the mark of the true scientific spirit. For a scientific spirit, any knowledge is an answer to a question. If there no were question, there cannot be scientific knowledge. Nothing goes from oneself. Nothing is given. All is built . Bachelard stresses that in the scientific thought, the meditation of the object by the subject always takes the form of the project. It is the objectivation which dominates objectivity; objectivity is only the product of a correct objectivation .

Participants of the Conferences Macy: Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), one of the founders of the Cybernetic , and its text “Behavior, purpose and teleology” (1943) which rehabilitates the concept of finality through the Téléologie. Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and its reference book Towards an ecology of the spirit , 1972. Heinz von Foerster (1911-2002) which, invited by Jean Piaget with the genetic Symposium of epistemology of 1976 in Geneva, presented “Objects: takens for (Eigen-) behavior”, text which was going to become a reference for the constructivism.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980), after creation in 1955 of the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva, uses the first the expression “epistemologies constructivists” (in the plural) in 1967 in Logique and Scientific knowledge , a major text for epistemology. Jean Piaget is the figurehead of the constructivism and the rupture with the conventional ideas on the acquisition of knowledge. For Piaget, one knows an object only while acting on him and by transforming it.

Herbert Simon (1916-2001) which names “Sciences of artificial” these new sciences (cybernetics, sciences cognitive, sciences of the decision and of the organization) which, because of abstraction of their object (information, communication, decision), does not find their place in traditional epistemology with the experimental method and the refutability.

Ernst von Glasersfeld (born in 1917), prolific author of a constructivism which it will describe as radical .

Paul Watzlawick (1921-2007), figurehead of the School of Palo-Viola and promoter of the New communication , publishes in 1981 the collective work the invention of the reality which includes/understands in particular articles of Ernst von Glasersfeld and Heinz von Foerster. For Watzlawick, psychotherapy constructivist does not have the illusion to believe that it will show with the customer the world such as he is really. On the contrary, the constructivism is fully conscious of what the new vision of the world is, and can be only, another construction, another fiction, but a useful vision, less painful

Anthony Wilden

Edgar Morin and monumental work that is the Méthode , as well as the thought of the Complexité. Any knowledge acquired on knowledge becomes a lighting means of knowledge the knowledge which made it possible to acquire it. (…) Elaborative knowledge tries to know itself starting from the knowledge which it works out, and which becomes to him thus collaborating .

Jean-Louis Moigne for his work " encyclopédique" aiming at giving its noble letters to the constructivism. Knowledge implies a knowing subject and does not have a direction or of value apart from him .

Mioara Mugur-Schächter and its Method of Relativized Conceptualization (known as MCR) resulting from the Quantum physics.

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen which approaches the history of psychiatry and the psychoanalysis from the point of view constructivist.

Jean-Paul Baquiast and Christophe Jacquemin: the alleged social phenomena are not realities in oneself of a reality transcendental - either besides only the objects of the physical world. They are the constructions worked out by certain observers using certain instruments and prosecutor by doing this certain finalities which interest them into clean but which cannot claim with the universal one (an article of the review '' Intelligent Automates '', January 2007)

Currents

Although the term of current is a little too strong, some alternatives and tendencies emerge among the authors quoted above:

the genetic epistemology (Jean Piaget)
the radical Constructivisme (Ernst von Glasersfeld)
the epistemology complexes (Edgar Morin)
the formalized epistemology (Mioara Mugur-Schächter)

Description

Jean Piaget proposed to define epistemology “at first approximation as the study of the constitution of valid knowledge”, denomination which, according to Jean Louis Moigne, makes it possible to raise the three great questions:

Which is what the Connaissance (the gnoseologic question)?
Comment is it made up or generated (the methodological question)?
How to appreciate its value or its validity?

Gnoseology: What is what knowledge?

To answer this question, Jean-Louis Moigne poses two assumptions: one Phenomenologic, according to which the object or the phenomenon to be known is inseparable from the knowing subject, the other teleological one (the Téléologie studies the systems of finalization), which refers to the goal which always justifies the knowing subject. These assumptions are opposed to those of positiviste-realistic epistemology, respectively the ontological assumption, according to which reality exists in oneself, and the deterministic assumption .

No the object without subject

“Knowledge implies a knowing subject and does not have a direction or of value apart from him” Jean-Louis Moigne explains which qualifies that “the phenomenologic assumption”. What means that there is no object of study without student subject. “My hand feels touched as well as it touches. Reality wants to say that, nothing more” will say P. Valéry.

Piaget expressed it as follows: " One knows an object only while acting on him and in the transformant".

Quantum mechanics corroborated this vision of the perturbing observer besides what it observes by realizing that the velocity measurement of a particle modified the position of it and vice versa (it is the Principe of uncertainty). This “discovery” in the field of physics was certainly not new for the sociologist who had perceived well that his presence as investigating was not neutral in its environment of study.

Teleology: The subject always has a goal

This presence of the subject invites to wonder why this one advances it such or such model or theory, with a which aim, for which finality, which Jean-Louis Moigne calls the teleological assumption. Because the seeking man, modelling always has a motivation, a goal. In certain cases, the institution or the person which carries out a research is also an actor who has his own goal or interest and for which the result is not neutral, which can obviously bring a skew in the study. Gaston Bachelard expressed it perfectly by writing that the meditation of the object by the subject always takes the form of the project.

If each subject has its point of view then how to produce a knowledge?

Methodology: How knowledge is generated?

For positiviste-realistic epistemology, two principles make it possible to build a knowledge: the analytical principle of modeling, defined by Descartes, consists in analyzing an object by breaking up it into parts, and the principle of sufficient or determining reason, thus called by Leibniz, corresponds to deductive logic.

By mirror, Jean-Louis Moigne proposes a methodology based on: the systemic principle of modeling complexes and the principle of reason dialectical or warning or deliberating.

Systemic modeling complex

The model is a tool which should not be confused with reality, because “the chart is not the territory” (Alfred Korzybski). Indeed, the world observed could not be put in equations or described completely.

Edgar Morin present in the short article “For a reform of the thought” the elements on which can be pressed a modeling complex Systémique:

“The complex thought is a thought which at the same time seeks to distinguish - but without disjoining - and to connect. In addition, uncertainty should be treated. The dogma of a universal determinism crumbled. The universe is not subjected to the absolute sovereignty of the order, it is the play and the stake of dialogical (at the same time antagonistic, concurrent and complementary relation) between the order, the disorder and the organization. ”

“The thought of the Complexité arises (…) like a building on several floors. The base is formed starting from the Information theory, the Cybernétique and system theory and comprises the necessary tools for a theory of the organization. Then a second stage with the ideas comes from Von Neumann, Von Foerster, Atlan and Prigogine on the Car-organization. At this building, I wanted to bring additional elements, in particular, three principles which are the dialogical principle, the principle of recursion and the principle hologrammatic. ”

“The dialogical principle links two antagonistic principles or concepts, which apparently should push back one the other, but which is indissociable and essential to include/understand the same reality. The physicist Niels Bohr recognized the need for thinking the physical particles at the same time like corpuscles and waves. Blaise Pascal had said: “The opposite of a truth is not the error, but a contrary truth”; Bohr translates it the made-to-order: “The opposite of a commonplace truth is a stupid error, but the opposite of a major truth is always another major truth.” The problem is to link antagonistic concepts to think the organizing and creative processes in the complex world of the life and the human history.

The principle of organisational recursion goes beyond the principle of feedback (feedback); it exceeds the concept of regulation for that of self-production and car-organization. It is a generating loop in which the products and the effects are themselves producers and causal of what produces them. Thus, us individuals, let us be the products of a system of reproduction resulting from the bottom of the ages, but this system can reproduce only if ourselves become the producers about it by coupling us. The human individuals produce the company in and by their interactions, but the company, as all emerging, produces the humanity of these individuals in their bringing the language and the culture.

The “hologrammatic” third principle finally, highlights this apparent paradox of certain systems where not only the part is in the whole, but the whole is in the part: the totality of genetic inheritance is present in each individual cell. In the same way, the individual is part of the company, but the company is present in each individual as all, through his language, its culture, its standards. ”

Moreover, the mathematician Georg Cantor showed, by the existence of an isomorphism between the subset of the real numbers ranging between 0 and 1 and the unit of all the real numbers, which it can exist parts of a whole which have the same number of elements and the same structure as the whole.

Dialectical principle of reason

A contrario of the traditional vision, Edgar Morin stresses that it is necessary to give up any hope to base the reason on only logic (the Method, volume 4) and it specifies that true rationality recognizes its limits and is able to treat them (méta-point of sight), therefore to exceed them in a certain manner while recognizing beyond a irrationalisable .

It is what already Montaigne expressed, in the Tests:

Since the directions cannot stop our argument, being full themselves with uncertainty, it is necessary that it is the reason; no reason will be established without another reason: we here with move back jusques ad infinitum.

For Jean-Louis Moigne, human reason " more than one turn in its sac" has; (Tricks of the reason): tie left the complexity of the notations symbolic (in particular discursive) which it can build, it will be able to produce of the plausible inférences by which it will give direction or intelligibility to the phenomena that it seeks to interpret . It also refers to Herbert A. Simon who will propose to call " procédurales" these forms of rationality expressing the " délibérations" spirit developing these " consciously; interactions means-end-means-ends… " who characterize the dialectical recursive one, the thought of the means of the end becoming the means of reconsidering the ends .

Value of knowledge and Reality

A knowledge “like a symphony”

Like the Postmodernisme, the constructivism was suspected, sometimes violently, of nihilist Relativisme, it with what Edgar Morin retorts that the bottom of the contemporary nihilism, I surmount it by saying that if there does not exist base of certainty from which one can develop a true knowledge, then one can develop a knowledge like a symphony. One cannot speak about the knowledge as of an architecture with a basic stone on which one would build a true knowledge, but one can launch topics which between-will tie themselves.

It is well of a new design of knowledge that it acts, formulating a new paradigm.

An “actionable” knowledge

Taking as a starting point the Pragmatism, Jean-Louis Moigne employs the expression “knowledge actionable” in the work Constructivisme, T. 3: To model to include/understand .

“Explanations were always sought when these was representations that one could only try to invent”, Paul Valéry said. Thus the constructivism proposes a knowledge seen like a representation, or a model, which by comprehension that it brings to us on a phenomenon, enables us to take an action on him.

Giambattista Vico just like expressed it by writing that “truth is to even do it”, Paul Valéry: “the truths are things to be made and not to discover, they are constructions and not treasures”.

A Reality represented

Following Kant, epistemology constructivist sees objective reality, reality in oneself like a limit impossible to reach. Reality that we can apprehend is seen like a representation, while objectivity is seen replaced by a " inter-subjectivité".

This position, in particular, is judiciously justified by work of Mioara Mugur-Schächter formulating what it calls a Méthode of Relativized Conceptualization (MCR) which extends the glance resulting from the Quantum physics to the other disciplines.

Thus, Mioara Mugur-Schächter explains why the concept of `knowledge of physical reality such as it is in itself' is car-contradictory because the expression `such as it is' says she imply qualifications , while the expression `in itself' denies any accomplished qualification , but any description (...) implies an object of the description and qualifications of this object, which constitute description of it.

Moreover, Montaigne made a similar demonstration by noticing, in the Tests, that:

to judge appearances which we receive from the subjects, we would need an instrument judicatoire; to check this instrument, it is necessary demonstration for it for us; to check the demonstration, an instrument: us here is with the wheel.

Scientific Constructivism and disciplines

It is often starting from specific scientific disciplines that epistemology developed. Among the references of the constructivism, one notes that several authors referred at different times with “new sciences”: Giambattista Vico and its work the scienza nuova since 1708, Gaston Bachelard and the new scientific spirit (1934), Herbert Simon and the news science of artificial the ( The science off the artificial , 1969).

Constructivism and physical science

The Méthode of Relativized Conceptualization (known as MCR) suggested by Mioara Mugur-Schächter and resulting from the Quantum physics can clearly be classified like a method constructivist.

Herbert Simon and “sciences of artificial”

By this expression, Herbert Simon understands to indicate these disciplines whose object of study is created by the man and nonresulting from nature, namely: starting from the information theory, the Cybernetic , the Data-processing , the automatic, but also sciences of cognition, decision, etc… These disciplines, which did not find place in the traditional classification of sciences observing nature, are seen reinstated by the constructivism. Indeed, this one considers any object of study as built by a subject, therefore including traditional sciences " naturelles".

Constructivism in psychology

In psychology, the constructivism is regarded as a theory of the Apprentissage, is developed, inter alia, by Jean Piaget in reaction to the Behaviorisme.

Social constructivism

In Sociology, the social constructivism is with the crossing various currents of thought and was presented by Peter L. Shepherd and Thomas Luckmann in their book The Social Construction off Reality (1966) following work of Alfred Schütz. This last seeks to discover the way in which social reality and the social phenomena “are built” i.e. the way in which these phenomena are created, institutionalized and transformed into Tradition S. In its work Choses known as , the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu proposes to give to its sociological theory the name of “structuralism constructivist” or “structuralist constructivism”, posting by there its will to exceed the frequent opposition in sociology between the Structuralisme (which affirms the tender of the individual to structural rules) and the constructivism (which makes social world the product of the free action of the social actors).

However, it is necessary to specify, as sometimes singularly notes it Marc Loriol in the article “Reflections on the concept of “social construction””, that the design of the reality of the sociologists using the concept of “social construction” is varied, moving away from the design of the reality of epistemologies constructivists.

Economy and constructivism

Claude Mouchot present in his work economic Methodology what can constitute an approach constructivist in economy. Evoking the epistemological designs resulting from physics, it titrates: " The point of view dominating today: the constructivism ". It shows in particular that the " representations of the economy belong to the économie".

Robert Delorme did work on complexity in economy.

Contribution of the constructivism

The constructivism proposes to exceed the traditional discrepancies idealism/empiricism, subject/object etc

This position exceeds the scientific Réalisme while avoiding the trap of the Relativisme.

While seeking to produce actionable knowledge, " who marchent" , the constructivism rehabilitates the concept of Analogie and gives its noble letters to the disciplines " appliquées" like the Engineering and the Management. One century before the method of Descartes, Léonard de Vinci invents on paper the parachute, the helicopter and the submarine. It is thus a symbol of the intelligence designing a valid model by the drawing: it is the disegno in Italian who gave design in English.

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