Excerpt: The psychology of personality is now dominated by the psychometric tradition of individual dif-ferences: how people differ along a number of specified dimensions. This, of course, is an objec-tivist approach that takes an external perspective on the person. Personal construct psychology (PCP) is a phenomenological approach to the person that focuses instead on making sense of people by attempting to understand the world from their individual perspectives.

Key words: personality, personal construct, constructivism, pragmatism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, choice, agency

Excerpt: Social construction is typically defined as an account of knowledge in which all assertions about what is the case are traced to negotiated agreements among people. Knowledge on this account is not driven by empirical fact, but what counts as fact depends on assumptions, logics, practices, and values specific to culturally and historically situated communities. Thus, observations support or disconfirm a theory, only if one accepts the a priori assumptions underlying the theory and methods of research. Social constructionism is often conflated with the term constructivism, although major contributors to constructivism frequently place the locus of knowledge within the mind of the individual person, while constructionists trace the origins of knowledgeable assertions within the social sphere.

Key words: social construction, logical positivism, constructivism, discourse, deconstruction, ideology, truth, objectivity

Excerpt: Constructivism is an epistemological approach based on the assumption that knowledge, every-thing that is known, does not prescind from an observer but is actively construed: what we con-sider reality corresponds with our experience and, consequently, with our knowledge of it. This way of thinking is absolutely revolutionary with respect to a millenary philosophical tradition (Warren, 1998), which prompts us to assume that, if an action, a notion, or a strategy leads to a previewed or wished effect, this success necessarily shows some aspects, some elements of an independent reality. In order to know the world we need only collect a sufficient number of elements and “facts.”

Key words: constructivism, reality, idealism, cybernetic, epistemology, meaning, interpretation, knowledge, experience, action

Excerpt: Primarily, neurophenomenology has become associated with Francisco Varela, and he lived the very nature of the methodology he promulgated. Varela was a Buddhist and knowledgeable of Eastern philosophy. Such knowledge seemed to influence Varela to consider the Buddhist contemplative tradition as providing access to, and awareness of, consciousness. Varela was a biologist, phenomenologist, and philosopher. The boundaries between these disciplines, similar to the boundaries between brain, body, and world, seemed to be effectively blurred by Varela in such a way as to allow him to offer sophisticated and credible accounts of the intimate, self-creating interrelationship between living systems, the human brain, physical objects, and social interaction.

Key words: autopoiesis, dynamic systems, embodiment, enaction, cognitive neuroscience, phenomenology