rattus rattus’ blog

At several occasions, Heinz von Foerster presented a numerical sequence which, in a modesty, I shall call “Heinz von Foerster’s sequence”. Given the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3 … up to 9 how would you complete the following ordered sequence:

8 — 5 — 4 — 9 — 1 — …

If you prefer to read about the riddle in detail have a look into Heinz von Foerster’s article “Perception of the future and the future of perception” published in Instructional Science 1 (1972) 2: p31-43.

Here is a variant of “Heinz von Foerster’s sequence”, again for numbers 0 to 9:

8 — 3 — 1 — 5 — 9 — …

Constructivism is easy to explain: Don’t!¹

Assumption

The basic assumption (or condition) is that there is you. From this it follows that there’s something which — or somebody who — is not you.²

Corollary

In order to know you need to know about what is not you. Thus, whatever you want to know about what is not you needs to find some way into you.

The English language has a huge number of terms for these “ways”: Learn, observe, perceive, watch, hear, realize, comprehend, get, … you name it. Their essential aspect is that something is happening (on the way). Let’s call this the “process of perception” (but you may call it whatever you prefer).

That’s it.

In other words, constructivism acknowledges that — if you assume that there is you and something or somebody who is not you — there is something in between. For instance, a medium (that needs to be passed), some time (that goes by), an act of observation, sensory receptions, a recognition, maybe a translation, a calculation, or a memorization, and probably some thinking. Or else, you wouldn’t be able to know about what is not you.

The visual system (like of human beings), as well as any other sensory system, or a close look into a human eye illustrates the multitude of processes which is involved with the “process of perception”.

Varieties of constructivism

The specifics of the “process of perception” are interpreted and described in varying ways by the many facets of constructivism. Also, some forms of constructivism confine their theories to less general distinctions of you versus what is not you (e.g. social constructivism examines mostly social relations like you and a friend, groups of people, or societies, and how those perceive each other and everything else).

[Radical constructivism] starts from the assumption that knowledge (…) is in the heads of persons, and that the thinking subject has no alternative but to construct what he or she knows on the basis of his or her own experience.
— Ernst von Glasersfeld³

Concluding

Constructivism offers ways of perceiving perception.
If you prefer other perceptions of constructivism, welcome aboard.

—-

1) The presented text is no explanation apart from the fact that you might view it as a plain representation flattened out on a computer screen or paper.
2) If for whatever reason you cannot agree here, either because you think there is only you, or because you think nothing exists independently of you, then you can stop reading since you are already thinking in a most constructivistic manner.
3) Ernst von Glasersfeld: Radical Constructivism. A Way of Knowing and Learning. London: Falmer Press 1995. Page 1.

[Ratta, too, couldn’t but accept her lying.]

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it,
does it make a sound?
— George Berkeley (1561-1626)

Enough people, it might seem, wrote about the term attention whore. The Urban Dictionary expressively explains attention whore. The Uncyclopedia shows some imagery. Wonderful writer Cairo Otaibi pretended to out herself in a comment to No comment is a comment. Google lists a gazillion of results, and even more so, quite a number of people say: We are all attention whores.

I agree!
For it is such a nice example of a lying liar. And of course, we are all attention whores. Assuming some aren’t we wouldn’t know about them, would we?

Attention! A digression: If we are all attention whores, and if we cannot know about those who aren’t, might this prove that we are all liars because we wouldn’t know of people who tell the truth?

Attention again! An answer: Truth is that those telling the truth are the actual liars. — I wonder who could read this out of George Berkeley’s writings.

Thinking of perception, like in how we perceive a tree, does the tree create a mental notion, or does our mind create the tree? Is attention an attention whore’s service, or is she paid by it?

Ouroboros, you are her mother.