Excerpt: My purpose in this paper is to show that the two major options on which the current debate on the interpretation of quantum mechanics relies, namely realism and empiricism (or instrumentalism), are far from being exhaustive. There is at least one more position available; a position which has been widely known in the history of philosophy during the past two centuries but which, in spite of some momentous exceptions, has only attracted little interest until recently in relation to the foundational problems of quantum mechanics. According to this third position, one may provide a theory with much stronger justifications than mere a posteriori empirical adequacy, without invoking the slightest degree of isomorphism between this theory and the elusive things out there. Such an intermediate attitude, which is metaphysically as agnostic as empiricism, but which shares with realism a commitment to considering the structure of theories as highly significant, has been named transcendentalism after Kant. Of course, I have no intention in this paper to rehearse the procedures and concepts developed by Kant himself; for these particular procedures and concepts were mostly adapted to the state of physics in his time, namely to Newtonian mechanics. I rather wish to formulate a generalized version of his method and show how this can yield a reasoning that one is entitled to call a transcendental deduction of quantum mechanics. This will be done in three steps. To begin with, I shall define carefully the word “transcendental,” and the procedure of “transcendental deduction,” in terms which will make clear how they can have a much broader field of application than Kant ever dared to imagine. Then, I shall show briefly that the main structural features of quantum mechanics can indeed be transcendentally deduced in this modern sense. Finally, I shall discuss the significance, and also the limits, of these results.

My purpose in this paper is to show that the transcendental approach, first formulated by Kant, and then elaborated by generations of neo-Kantian thinkers and phenomenologists, provides Buddhism in its highest intellectual achievement with a natural philosophy of science. I take this highest achievement to be the Madhyamaka dialectic and soteriology,{1} which was developed in India from the second century C.E. to the seventh century C.E. by masters such as Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, and Candrakīrti. Relevance: This is an anti-realist interpretation of quantum mechanics related to the work of Francisco Varela.

Emergence is interpreted in a non-dualist framework of thought. No metaphysical distinction between the higher and basic levels of organization is supposed, but only a duality of modes of access. Moreover, these modes of access are not construed as mere ways of revealing intrinsic patterns of organization: They are supposed to be constitutive of them, in Kant’s sense. The emergent levels of organization, and the inter-level causations as well, are therefore neither illusory nor ontologically real: They are objective in the sense of transcendental epistemology. This neo-Kantian approach defuses several paradoxes associated with the concept of downward causation, and enables one to make good sense of it independently of any prejudice about the existence (or inexistence) of a hierarchy of levels of being.

Key words: emergence, inter-level relations, anti-foundationalism, transcendentalism, objectivity, anti-realism, quantum mechanics.

Context: Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems is increasingly receiving attention in the scholarly dispute about constructivism. Problem: The paper explores the transition from Kant’s “transcendental/empirical” to Luhmann’s “system/environment” distinction to provide a deepened understanding of Luhmann’s constructivist approach. Method: Luhmann’s construction of reality via the system/environment distinction is discussed with respect to preceding concepts provided by philosophical and system/cybernetic scholars such as Kant, Husserl, Piaget, von Glasersfeld, von Foerster, and Maturana & Varela. The innovativeness of Luhmann’s approach is then critically evaluated. Results: Luhmann’s contribution to constructivism is innovative only in the context of his stringent theory architecture of autopoietic meaning-based systems. Implications: The text is a contribution to the positioning of this approach as part of the philosophical and systems/cybernetics constructivist heritage.

Key words: Theory of social systems (TSS), observation, autopoiesis, self-reference & hetero-reference, meaning

The main focus of this paper is on ways in which Kantian philosophy can inform proponents and opponents of constructivism alike. Kant was primarily concerned with reconciling natural and moral law. His approach to this general problematic was to limit and separate what we can know about things (phenomena) from things as they are in themselves (noumena), and to identify moral agency with the latter. Revisiting the Kantian problematic helps to address and resolve long standing epistemological concerns regarding constructivism as an educational philosophy in relation to issues of objectivity and subjectivity, the limits of theoretical and practical reason, and the relation between human experience and the world. It also serves to address ethical concerns regarding liberation from limited self-interests and contexts conditioned by localised beliefs and inclinations. In light of revisiting the Kantian problematic, both Glasersfeld’s radical view of constructivism and Jardine’s social critique of constructivism are found wanting. Beyond constructivism, Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena and the limits of reason that follow from it are briefly considered in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s novel double- embodied notion of flesh as an ontological primitive – as a matter of being both in, and of, the world – with an aim to more intimate connections between epistemology and ethics.

Key words: autonomy, constructivism, epistemology, ethics, glasersfeld (ernst von), jardine (david), kant (immanuel), merleau-ponty (maurice), mysticism, reason.

Contemporary constructivism is not a totally new idea. On the contrary, there is a long-standing tradition of constructivist ideas in philosophy, in the philosophy and practice of education, and also in empirical research on students” preinstructional conceptions in science. Steffe (1990b) briefly outlined some aspects of the history of constructivism. For instance, he pointed out that Kant (1724–1804) held major constructivist ideas. Jung (1985) interpreted Bacon’s (1561–1626) ideas in Novum Organum within such a framework.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, advances in experimental psychology and the physiology of the sense organs inspired so-called ‘Back to Kant’ Neo-Kantians to articulate robustly psychologistic visions of Kantian epistemology. But their accounts of the thing in itself were fraught with deep tension: they wanted to conceive of things in themselves as the causes of our sensations, while their own accounts of causal inference ruled that claim out. This paper diagnoses the source of that problem in views of one Neo-Kantan, F. A. Lange, and argues that it is solved only by Ernst Mach. No less than Lange and other Neo-Kantians, Mach was inspired to develop a psychologistic account of the foundations of knowledge, but his account also includes a coherent denial of things in themselves’ existence. Finally, this paper uses this account of Lange and Mach on things in themselves to illuminate Mach’s relation to a certain strain of the Neo-Kantian philosophy of his own time: his views constitute a more fully coherent version of the psychologistic theory of knowledge Back to Kant figures tried to articulate.

Key words: ernst mach, f. a. lange, things in themselves, causality, explanation, neo-kantianism

An understanding of Piaget’s theoretical position on the knowing process is necessary in order to appreciate fully the impact of his research. His theory of knowledge has many significant points in common with that of the German philosopher Kant. This article sketches the epistemologies of the 17th and 18th century movements of rationalism, empiricism, and romanticism which preceded Kant, Kant’s revolutionary conclusions concerning reality and the knowing process, and some parallels and areas of divergence between the Kantian and Piagetian theories of knowledge

Current research on spontaneous, self-generated brain rhythms and dynamic neural network coordination cast new light on Immanuel Kant’s idea of the ‘spontaneity’ of cognition, that is, the mind’s capacity to organize and synthesize sensory stimuli in novel, unprecedented ways. Nevertheless, determining the precise nature of the brain-cognition mapping remains an outstanding challenge. Neurophenomenology, which uses phenomenological information about the variability of subjective experience in order to illuminate the variability of brain dynamics, offers a promising method for addressing this challenge.

For several decades, a diverse set of approaches to embedded, embodied, extended, enactive and affective cognition has been challenging the cognitivist orthodoxy. Recently, the prospect of a combination of ecological psychology and enactivism has emerged as a promising candidate for a single unified framework that could rival the established cognitivist paradigm as “a working metatheory for the study of minds” (Baggs and Chemero, 2018, p. 11). One obstacle to such an ecological-enactive approach is the conceptual tension between the firm commitment to realism of those following James Gibson’s ecological approach and the central tenet of enactivism that each living organism enacts its own world, interpreted as a constructivist or subjectivist position. Baggs and Chemero (2018) forward the concept of Umwelt, coined by the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, as a conceptual bridge between the two approaches. Inspired by Kant, Uexküll’s Umwelt describes how the physiology of an organism’s sensory apparatus shapes its active experience of the environment. Baggs and Chemero use this link between the subject and its objective surroundings to argue for a strong compatibility between ecological psychology and enactivism. Fultot and Turvey on the other hand view Umwelt as steeped in representationalism, the rejection of which is a fundamental commitment of radical embodied cognition (Fultot and Turvey, 2019). Instead, they advance Uexküll’s “compositional theory of nature” as a conceptual supplement for Gibson’s ecological approach (von Uexküll, 2010, p. 171; Fultot and Turvey, 2019). In this paper, I provide a brief overview of Uexküll’s thought and distinguish a crucial difference between two ways of using his term Umwelt. I argue that only one of these ways, the one which emphasizes the role of subjective experience, is adequate to Uexküll’s philosophical project. I demonstrate how the two ways of using Umwelt are employed in the philosophy of cognitive science, show how this distinction matters to recent debates about an ecological-enactive approach, and provide some critical background to Uexküll’s compositional theory of meaning.

Key words: enactivism, ecological psychology, umwelt, jakob von uexküll, embodied cognition, philosophy of nature