Niklas Luhmann died in November 1998. He had been elaborating his theory of the society for more than thirty years which has been well received in many quarters of society in the modern world. Yet somehow we are only now beginning to read him when he is no longer there to be asked. And we are beginning to discuss his work although we cannot invite him to lecture us anymore. The following article takes up Luhmann’s very recent small and comprehensive book on Husserl and places him, as he did himself, in a tradition of “enlightenment” which aims for a self-critical constitution of reason.

Enactivism is an emerging perspective both in cognitive science and in cultural psychology. Whereas the enactive approach in general has focused on sense-making as an embodied and situated activity, enactive cultural psychology emphasizes the expressive and dynamically enacted nature of cultural meaning. This chapter first situates enactivism within a tradition of expressivist thinking that has historical roots both in radical Enlightenment thought and Romantic reactions against the rationalization of human nature. It will then offer a view of our human biology that can be reconciled with an account of meaning as irreducibly normative. By emphasizing the consensual rather than the supposedly shared nature of meaningful conduct, enactivism avoids some of the classical pitfalls in thinking about culture. In the conclusion a genetic enactive psychology will be presented, which understands sense-making not as a mediated activity, but as a competence acquired through cultural training and personal stylization.

Key words: Enactivism, expression, consensual coordination, emotion, normativity, cultural training.

Excerpt: Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”

Excerpt: I will take you on a tour through the idea of reality construction by travelling back and forth between the two intellectual strands in the process of modernization: the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The major part of our tour will be spent in the land of Romanticism, accepting without argument the kind of irrealism propounded by constructivists like Nelson Goodman, Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida. But throughout I will try to give the Enlightenment its due by pointing out the important roles of technology in the processes of reality construction: in material constructions, as a basis for thought experiments, as provider of intellectual tools, and as a source for constructivist ideas in general.

Key words: Enlightenment, Romanticism, Goodman, Rorty, Derrida, irrealism, social constructivism, material construction

By what empirical means can a person determine whether he or she is presently awake or dreaming? Any conceivable test addressing this question, which is a special case of the classical metaphysical doubting of reality, must be statistical (for the same reason that empirical science is, as noted by Hume) Subjecting the experienced reality to any kind of statistical test (for instance, a test for bizarreness) requires, however, that a set of baseline measurements be available. In a dream, or in a simulation, any such baseline data would be vulnerable to tampering by the same processes that give rise to the experienced reality, making the outcome of a reality test impossible to trust. Moreover, standard cryptographic defenses against such tampering cannot be relied upon, because of the potentially unlimited reach of reality modification within a dream, which may range from the integrity of the verification keys to the declared outcome of the entire process. In the face of this double predicament, the rational course of action is to take reality at face value. The predicament also has some intriguing corollaries. In particular, even the most revealing insight that a person may gain into the ultimate nature of reality (for instance, by attaining enlightenment in the Buddhist sense) is ultimately unreliable, for the reasons just mentioned. At the same time, to adhere to this principle, one has to be aware of it, which may not be possible in various states of reduced or altered cognitive function such as dreaming or religious experience. Thus, a subjectively enlightened person may still lack the one truly important piece of the puzzle concerning his or her existence.

Medicine is a science of control and should, therefore, be a subject that is particularly open to cybernetic investigation and enlightenment, for cybernetics is concerned with control and communication. Yet, in previous columns, I have reported cases that originate in the cybernetic literature and with the grand old men (yes, I’m afraid, men) of cybernetics, who have discussed systems that are in essence uncontrollable.

Die Erwiderung nimmt den Anspruch R. Gehrkes ernst, im Namen aufklärerischer Prinzipien den radikalen Konstruktivismus, die Autopoiesetheorie und die Empirische Literaturwissenschaft zu kritisieren. An Gehrkes Ausführungen zur Leib-Seele Problematik wird gezeigt, daß er faktisch eine gegenaufklärerische Position vertritt. Die in seiner Kritik enthaltene politische Denunziation wird zurückgewiesen und der manipulative Gebrauch von Zitaten deutlich gemacht. \\The rejoinder takes seriously Gehrke’s claim to criticize radical constructivism, the theory of Autopoiesis, and empirical studies of literature from an enlightenment position. Taking up Gehrke’s remarks an the mind-body problem, it is shown that he in fact argues from an anti-enlightenment position. The political denunciation contained in Gehrke’s critique is rejected and his manipulative use of citations is demonstrated.

Context: This essay contends that radical constructivism makes a mistake in focusing on cognition at the expense of where cognitive phenomena surface: in the interactive use of language. Goal: It grounds radically social constructivism by exploring the conversational nature of being human. It also urges abandoning the celebration of observation, inherited from the enlightenment’s preoccupation with description, in favor of participation, the recognition that speaking and writing are acts of continuously reconstructing reality, which is only partly conceivable yet is interacted with. Method: It distinguishes between conversation as observed and conversation as articulated by its participants. It postulates accountability as a chief conversational move through which conversations can regain their natural flow when disturbed and construct inherently ethical realities for their participants. Unwillingness to repair problematic conversations amounts to acquiescence to constraints that are typical of discourses and the construction of institutional realities. Implications: It suggests that the ultimate institutionalization consists of replacing institutional artifacts with computational ones, which was the aim of early cybernetics. Computational artifacts have no agency and cannot be held accountable for what they do. This essay proposes a continuum of possible discourses between authentic conversation and computation. It concludes by calling for the drawing of finer distinctions within that continuum and expresses the hope for not closing off the possibility of returning to authentic conversation where humans realize their being human – rather than institutional actors or machines.

Key words: language, institutions, conversation, computation, participation, cybernetics

Although Luhmann formulated with modesty and precaution, for example in Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (1990: 412f.), that his theory claims to be universal because it is self-referential, the “operational closure” that follows from this assumption easily generates a problem for empirical research. Can a theory that considers society – and science as one of its subsystems – operationally closed nevertheless contribute to the project of Enlightenment that Popper (1945) so vigorously identified as the driver of an open society? How can a theory that proclaims itself to be circular and universal nevertheless claim to celebrate “the triumph of the Enlightenment” Luhmann, (1990: 548)? Is the lack of an empirical program of research building on Luhmann’s theory fortuitous or does it indicate that this theory should be considered as a philosophy rather than a heuristic for the explanation of operations in social systems?

The present article undertakes a systematic exposition of three divergent domains, ranging from core topics of radical constructivism up to current options of the historical sciences. In the first part, a constructivist explication of various concepts is performed which centres around notions like memory, remembering, time or communication. In a second step, a brief review is presented on major perspectives with respect to the philosophy of history, starting from the unexpectedly modern views within the enlightenment period and leading to the objective approaches of German historicism and, finally, to the current postobjectivist traditions. In a final section, two radically different options for contemporary historical sciences are outlined, namely, first, a literary departure of historiography and, second, a new orientation of the historical sciences as a theory of large-scale dynamical systems.