Alhadeff-Jones M. (2010) Challenging the limits of critique in education through Morin’s paradigm of complexity. Studies in Philosophy and Education 29(5): 477–490.
This paper is inspired by Edgar Morin’s paradigm of complexity and his constructivist and non-dualistic critique of scientific and philosophical forms of reductionism. It aims to challenge the fragmentation and the reduction framing the understanding of the notion of “critique” in educational sciences, and more broadly in the academia. Based on a review of the literature identified in French-speaking and English-speaking critical traditions in education, several factors determining the way the idea of critique is reduced are highlighted. Stressing the tacit character of those variables challenges the limits of traditional conceptions of critique in contemporary education. According to the constructivist, complex and non-dualistic position adopted, this paper illustrates the relevance of an epistemological framework integrating more systematically the conditions of emergence, the limitations, as well as the antagonistic, complementary and contradictory relationships, that connect educational theories of critique to one another. Based on this position, this paper finally suggests that a distinction be made between “hypocritique” and “hypercritique” as a semantic artifact, stressing the importance of challenging educational research and theories according to the level of complexity that one may attribute to them.
Baron P. (2013) A Conversation with My “Friend” Technology. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 20(1–2): 69–81. https://cepa.info/3525
ICT does not have the ability to integrate into the daily life of its users owing to its lack of both consensual communication commands and social skill. The daily use of multiple ICTs imposes dysfunctional communications on its users. This paper highlights the limits and dangers of ICT and focuses on its non-neutral nature. A first-order change is presented in the form of a communications secretary by introducing a top down approach to ICT centered on the end user’s needs. This change is required for humans to take responsibility for their place in the ICT link instead of passively being conditioned by the goals of technology, thus enabling a second-order shift to occur by changing the rules of ICT and hence the system itself.
Bell T. & Lodi M. (2019) Authors’ Response: Keeping the “Computation” in “Computational Thinking” Through Unplugged Activities. Constructivist Foundations 14(3): 357–359. https://cepa.info/6053
Abstract: The commentaries provide useful questions and responses that help us understand better how unplugged activities serve as scaffolding to engage students in computer science. They help us to consider how activities relate to computational thinking, particularly by connecting the scaffolding in the activities to the limits of computation. This in turn helps us to navigate the somewhat disputed boundary between activities that clearly use computation as it occurs on physical devices, and metaphors that could potentially be misleading.
Bich L. & Damiano L. (2007) Question 9: Theoretical and artificial construction of the living: Redefining the approach from an autopoietic point of view. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 37(4–5): 459–464. https://cepa.info/4560
In this article, we would like to discuss some aspects of a theoretical framework for Artificial Life, focusing on the problem of an explicit definition of living systems useful for an effective artificial construction of them. The limits of a descriptive approach will be critically discussed, and a constructive (synthetic) approach will be proposed on the basis of the autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela.
Bich L. & Damiano L. (2008) Order in the nothing: Autopoiesis and the Organizational Characterization of the Living. Electronic Journal of Theoretical Physics 4(1): 343–373. https://cepa.info/2318
An approach which has the purpose to catch what characterizes the specificity of a living system, pointing out what makes it different with respect to physical and artificial systems, needs to find a new point of view – new descriptive modalities. In particular it needs to be able to describe not only the single processes which can be observed in an organism, but what integrates them in a unitary system. In order to do so, it is necessary to consider a higher level of description which takes into consideration the relations between these processes, that is the organization rather than the structure of the system. Once on this level of analysis we can focus on an abstract relational order that does not belong to the individual components and does not show itself as a pattern, but is realized and maintained in the continuous flux of processes of transformation of the constituents. Using Tibor Ganti’s words we call it “Order in the Nothing”. In order to explain this approach we analyse the historical path that generated the distinction between organization and structure and produced its most mature theoretical expression in the autopoietic biology of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. We then briefly analyse Robert Rosen’s (M, R)-Systems, a formal model conceptually built with the aim to catch the organization of living beings, and which can be considered coherent with the autopoietic theory. In conclusion we will propose some remarks on these relational descriptions, pointing out their limits and their possible developments with respect to the structural thermodynamical description.
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.
Brier S. (1993) A cybernetic and semiotic view on a Galilean theory of psychology. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 2(2): 31–33. https://cepa.info/3983
From the perspective of second order cybernetics this paper examines in which respects psychology can claim to be a science. It focuses on the limits of mechanistic description in the behavioral sciences. Through the Danish psychologist Iven Reventlow’s works, the article analyzes the use of the Galilean concepts of law in psychology. Reventlow attempts to create basic methods and concepts for a Galilean (law determined) psychology in the tradition of Kurt Lewin through work with animal models in the tradition of ethology. His standard experimental model is the male Stickleback guarding its nest – a small fish in its partly self-created world. Reventlow’s aim is to describe the “behavioral personality” of the organism keeping description and causal analysis and explanation on the behavioural level. To this end he works with a statistical model which do not hide the individuals characteristics by rolling them into an average. In this process, however, he finds that he cannot make a final separation of the organism and the environment. It is not possible to carry through either the mechanistic or the dualistic point of view. This finding is discussed in the light of von Foerster’s and Maturana’s second order cybernetic positions on the observer, observation, autopoiesis and the multiverse. The limitations of these theories carries the analysis further. A realistic, non-reductionistic and constructivistic viewpoint is developed from some of N. Luhmann’s formulations.
Brooks M. G. & Brooks J. G. (1999) The courage to be constructivist. Educational Leadership 57: 3: 18–24. https://cepa.info/7597
Attempting to capture the complexity of learning on standardized state assessments severely limits student knowledge and expression. Inevitably, schools reduce the curriculum to what is covered on tests. Students control their learning. Constructivist teachers structure lessons around big ideas, value relevance, and strive to challenge students’ suppositions.
Campbell S. R. (2002) Constructivism and the limits of reason: Revisiting the Kantian problematic. Studies in Philosophy and Education 21: 421–445.
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.
Cariani P. (1993) To evolve an ear: Epistemological implications of Gordon Pask’s electrochemical devices. Systems Research 10(3): 19–33. https://cepa.info/2836
In the late 1950's Gordon Pask constructed several electrochemical devices having emergent sensory capabilities. These control systems possessed the ability to adaptively construct their own sensors, thereby choosing the relationship between their internal states and the world at large. Devices were built that evolved de novo sensitivity to sound or magnetic fields. Pask’s devices have far-reaching implications for artificial intelligence, self-constructing devices, theories of observers and epistemically-autonomous agents, theories of functional emergence, machine creativity, and the limits of contemporary machine learning paradigms.