Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: In his target article, Werner focuses his efforts on finding a metaphysical paradigm in which it would be suitable to embed - as he puts it - some movements in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science, and especially radical constructivism and the embodied cognition approach. In my commentary, I shall briefly discuss the question of metaphysical grounding or embedding of radical constructivism, and make an attempt to show that the author has failed to explain what this grounding is supposed to be, and that radical constructivism has to remain characteristically an anti-metaphysical doctrine. Of course, I do appreciate the ingenious efforts to find the metaphysical grounding of radical constructivism, as far as the question of cognitive access to and the knowability of reality is concerned, but I would like to undermine the key tenet of the article that radical constructivism is in the pressing need of a metaphysics of some sort.

Open peer commentary on the article “Consciousness as Self-Description in Differences” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: I focus on Gasparyan’s claim that consciousness should be understood analogously to the performative speech acts. I am inclined to agree with her position, but shall, at the same time, try to show that there is no need to maintain a relational character of consciousness, where the relation would be taking place between an act of consciousness and its content. A non-relational character of consciousness could be - according to my view - based upon a modal nature of consciousness and mental states, conceived on the model of sensory modalities.