Excerpt: Fodor argues that the construction of genuinely novel concepts is impossible and, therefore, that all basic concepts available to human beings are already present as an innate endowment (1975, 1981). This radical innatism – along with related conclusions such as an innate modularity of available representations and a corresponding innate limitation in the potential knowledge that human beings might be capable of (1983) – has been seen by many as a reductio ad absurdum of Fodor’s position, and his arguments have consequently been dismissed. I will argue that Fodor’s arguments deserve much more careful attention than that: in particular, his arguments are a reductio of one of his essential presuppositions, but it happens to be a presupposition that he shares with virtually all of psychology and philosophy. Fodor’s conclusions, then, are reductios of the major portion of contemporary studies of cognition and epistemology (Campbell and Bickhard, 1987). Furthermore, even when the critical presupposition is isolated, it is difficult to construct a genuine alternative. Most attempts at correcting any part of the logical difficulties involved have inadvertently presupposed the pernicious premise elsewhere in the system (Bickhard, 1980a, 1982, 1987).

There are many varieties of epistemological and cognitive constructivism. They have in common an appreciation of the failures of centuries of attempts to realize a correspondence notion of truth and representation, and they all propose some constructivist programme as an alternative. The programmatic proposals, however, can differ greatly. Some contemporary constructivisms that are being vigorously advocated propose a social form of idealism with a consequent relativism. Such proposals risk giving constructivism a bad name. The main burden of this article is to show that such an idealism and relativism is not forced by constructivism, but, instead, is the result of an additional and questionable presupposition. Constructivism per se is a strong epistemological position that is fully compatible with realism.

Key words: cognition, constructivism, correspondence, encoding, epistemology, idealism, realism, relativism, representation

Functional and pragmatic approaches to grammar, and to language more broadly, are well known. All of these approaches, however, accept a core aspect of sentences, or utterances, as consisting of encodings of propositions. They proceed on their functional and pragmatic explorations with this much, at least, taken for granted. I wish to argue, to the contrary, that the functional characteristics of utterances penetrate even to the level of the structure – the grammar – of supposed propositional encodings. More specifically, I argue that the structure that is taken as a structure of propositional encodings is not that at all, but is instead a structure of functionally organized action. Constraints on such structures, in turn – constraints on grammars – emerge as intrinsic constraints on that functional organization. My point will of necessity be made programmatically, since to fill it out completely would be to complete a functional version of universal grammar. The mere logical possibility of intrinsic constraints on the grammatical possibilities of language refutes attempts to construe grammatical constraints as logically arbitrary. Typically, because grammatical constraints are construed as being (logically) arbitrary, some additional explanation of the constraints is required should those constraints be shown or argued to be universal. That additional explanation is usually some equally logically arbitrary innateness postulate. I will show that the possibility of intrinsic grammatical constraints invalidates standard arguments for such innateness – specifically, that such a possibility invalidates the poverty of the stimulus argument. Grammatical constraints are not the only characteristics of language that are intrinsic to its nature. I also show how phenomena of implicature, the hermeneutic circle, and forms of creative language can be understood as being naturally emergent in the functional nature of language. Most broadly, then, intrinsic constraints constitute a rich realm for exploration in attempting to understand language.

Diverse forms of constructivism can be found in the literature today. They exhibit a commonality regarding certain classical positions that they oppose – a unity in their negative identities – but a sometimes wild multiplicity and incompatibility regarding the positive proposals that they put forward. In particular, some constructivisms propose an epistemological idealism, with a concomitant relativism, while others are explicitly opposed to such positions, and move in multifarious different directions. This is a potentially confusing situation, and has resulted in some critics branding all constructivisms with the charge of relativism, and throwing out the baby with the bath water. In addition, since the epistemological foundations of even non-relativist constructivisms are not as familiar as the classical positions, there is a risk of mis-interpretation of constructivisms and their consequences, even by some who endorse them, not to mention those who criticize. Because I urge that some version of constructivism is an epistemological necessity, this situation strikes me as seriously unfortunate for philosophy, and potentially dangerous for the practice of education.

Key words: realism, idealism, empiricism, innatism, constructivism, relativism, representation, epistemology, scaffolding.

A problem of action selection emerges in complex and even not so complex interactive agents: what to do next? The problem of action selection occurs equally for natural and for artificial agents for any embodied agent. The obvious solution to this problem constitutes a form of representation, interactive representation, that is arguably the fundamental form of representation. More carefully, interactive representation satisfies a criterion for representation that no other model of representation in the literature can satisfy or even attempts to address: the possibility of systemdetectable representational error. It also resolves and avoids myriad other problematics of representation and integrates or opens the door to many additional mental processes and phenomena, such as motivation.

Autonomy is modeled in terms of the property of certain far-from-equilibrium open systems to contribute toward maintaining themselves in their far-from-equilibrium conditions. Such contributions in self-maintenant systems, in turn, constitute the emergence of normative function. The intrinsic thermodynamic asymmetry between equilibrium and far-from-equilibrium processes yields the intrinsic normative asymmetry between function and dysfunction. Standard etiological models of function render function as causally epiphenomenal, while this model is of the emergence of causally efficacious function. Recursive self-maintenance – the meta-property of maintaining the property of being self-maintenant across variations in environment – yields the emergence of representation. This model of representation satisfies multiple criteria that standard approaches – such as symbolic or connectionist, or those of Fodor, Dretske, or Millikan – cannot.

The interactivist model has explored a number of consequences of process metaphysics. These include reversals of some fundamental metaphysical assumptions dominant since the ancient Greeks, and multiple further consequences throughout the metaphysics of the world, minds, and persons. This article surveys some of these consequences, ranging from issues regarding entities and supervenience to the emergence of normative phenomena such as representation, rationality, persons, and ethics.

Key words: metaphysics, process, supervenience, emergence, normativity, function, representation, action, rationality, modality, persons, ethics

Open peer commentary on the article “A Computational Constructivist Model as an Anticipatory Learning Mechanism for Coupled Agent–Environment Systems” by Filipo Studzinski Perotto. Upshot: Interaction-based models of cognition force anticipatory and constructivist models. The CALM model offers significant development of such models within a machine learning framework. It is suggested that moving to an entirely interactive-based model offers still further advantages.