Vico’s constructivist epistemology is compared with that of Piaget with a view to clarifying Piaget’s theory of knowledge. Piaget’s interpreters often show a lack of concern with the metaphysical foundations of cognitive structures. Vico’s emphasis on the limitations of human knowledge, therefore, is helpful in avoiding interpretive inconsistency. In Vico’s and in Piaget’s radical constructivism, knowledge is non-ontological in the sense that no claims may be made about the relation between cognitive structures and reality. Structural adequacy is derived from the consistency of the self-referencing cognitive system.

Key words: radical constructivism, history

Excerpt: The notion of fundamentality merits attention. This paper hopes to show what its successful operation would entail, and hence the reformulation that would achieve this.

Bindra’s proposal is still an attempt at “minor revision” that does not get away from the traditional tenet that living organisms are passive receivers of stimuli to which they react according to pseudo-mechanical principles A detailed analysis of what is covered by the term “gnostic organization” would, I believe, reveal the indispensability of induction and of inductively built-up representations of desirable and undesirable states and events that can then serve as goals in the assembly of adaptively modifiable behaviors

Key words: cognition, cybernetics, feedback

Key words: language, chimpanse

Key words: cognition

Network models are given for self-referential expressions in the calculus of indications (of G. Spencer Brown). A precise model is presented for the behavior of such expressions in time. The extension of Brown’s calculus by F. Varela is then shown to describe behavior invariant properties of these networks. Network design is discussed from this viewpoint.

Key words: Self-reference, networks, calculus of indications, calculus for self-reference.

I am not a linguist, I am a biologist. Therefore, I shall speak about language as a biologist, and address myself to two basic biological questions, namely: 1. What processes must take place in an organism for it to establish a linguistic domain with another organism? 2. What processes take place in a linguistic interaction that permit an organism (us) to describe and to predict events that it may experience? This is my way of honoring the memory of Eric H. Lenneberg, if one honors the memory of another scientist by speaking about one's own work Whatever the case, I wish to honor his memory not only because of his great accomplishments, but also because he was capable of inspiring his students, as the symposium on which this book is based revealed. The only way I can do this is to accept the honor of presenting my views about biology, language, and reality. I shall, accordingly, speak about language as a biologist. In doing so, I shall use language, notwithstanding that this use of language to speak about language is within the core of the problem I wish to consider.

That we cognite seems to us self-evident. In the very process of doing what I am doing, cognition appears to me as my immediate experience. I perform an act of knowledge when I act in a manner that I describe as a manipulation or handling of the world in which I exist. The cogito ergo sum of Descartes grasps this and gives to the experience of knowledge a central role: the cogito, the act of cognition, is for Descartes the starting point. Or, in other words, cognition is a human property and no question arises about cognition as a phenomenon. This I wish to change. I wish to present the way in which I make cognition a problem, and how I answer the question, “What phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition?"