(16) Post-Modernists & Constructivist Thought

Post-Modernists and Constructivist Thought

Transcendental method points to the very assumptions and activities post-modernists will use to construct, deconstruct, or reconstruct the theory, should such movements be desired. That is, we can perform construction, et al, on the theory; and we can construct or deconstruct how the theory is expressed; however, we cannot, in the same way, construct, deconstruct, or reconstruct the fundamental process we employ to engage in such activities. Thus, though someone constructs the theory and gives it a technical-conceptual order, then deconstructs or reconstructs the theory, those performed processes spring spontaneously from the given and un-revisable cognitional pattern in that someone’s mind operating in critical fashion.

So while the theory is constructed and abstract, and while concepts can differ, the actual activities that are building up and tearing down are the theoretician’s mind, pattern, and function at work as given and, again, as itself data for similar theoretical development. As with any theory, this theory can be submitted to critical verification procedures.

Further, if understood merely as a logical argument or a series of comparative conceptual expressions, the relationship between the data and its theory can be understood as a tautology—the theory is derived from the mind and the mind is derived from the theory, ad infinitum. However, if we relate the theory to its data of concrete reference (you and me and our remarkable operations), and if we expect the theory to adequately interpret the data into a technical-conceptual formulation, then the argument is not and need not be a mere tautology. Rather, the theory takes a person and his-her personal experience as the data source, and we relate the theory to that source as an experiment-to-verify.

In this way, we can construct the theory and its expressions; however, we do not construct our own cognitional processes. Rather, those processes are given to us as, in part, what it means to be human and to construct anything. We can only direct our attention to those processes, describe them adequately making clear distinctions, name them, and relate them to one another explaining them in technical theoretical terms. The crucial issue then becomes verification of the theory and its best, most adequate expression.

Thus, we distinguish the theory from the data under examination; we point to the data; we look for consistency between theory and data; and we invite the reader to verify the data in your own mind.

So it is when we set about to deconstruct the process of deconstruction itself. The constructionist will begin somewhere--by asking and answering such questions as, “Where do we start?” Or, “What does the theory say,” and “What about the theory needs to be changed?” in terms of what principles? Further, the cognitional theory we are using, transcendental method, develops the kinds of questions we ask, one of which is the question “What?” or some such similar question for intelligence and meaning, e.g., where, how, when, who, etc.

And so the generalized question for inquiry What? (and as applied to persons: who?)of actual conscious method, and its theoretical expression in transcendental method, reveal themselves to us in the common performance of the constructionist, the deconstructionist, the person of common sense, the scientist, the philosopher, and the artist. If we eliminate from our theoretical expression that human beings question for meaning-intelligence, we also rule out the same questions that, in fact, constructionists employ in their various processes of de-constructing. For, like the natural scientist and the person of common sense, the constructionist is but one example of the human mind-at-work. Consequently, such a person provides excellent empirical data for developing a cognitional theory and a theory of knowledge that seeks to be consistent with the data under examination.

We are presented with a choice. That is, we either accept consistency between, first, empirical performance, for example, of the theorist’s mindedness and, second, a theory about such performance, or we explain why the deconstructionist’s own obvious conscious activities fall outside of the realm of our empirical-critical questions about the mind and its cognitional activities.

We can accept inconsistency between our own performance as data and our cognitional and knowledge theories; however, in doing so we open the door to complete arbitrariness by denying the need for consistency in any experimentation, or in seeking an intelligible relationship between any data and any explanation of it. Or we divorce the collection of reasonable evidence from what we mean by critical methods itself.

The implications of such a divorce are far-reaching, indeed, the least of which is the loss of any reason whatsoever to listen to and try to heed such arbitrary, extreme, and inadequate constructionist theories.

Further, in the worst case, an educational theory that is underpinned by various constructionist and de-constructionist positions, but that lacks some adequate view of the student's own knowledge-truth complex, bids students to “construct” their own meaning and be done with it, regardless of the challenge that teacher or text might present to their thought.

Of course there is some truth to such self-constructing activities, e.g., for developing different conceptual expressions and for envisioning the future students will choose to make (“construct”) for themselves. And to have learned something well, students must be able to “say it in their own words,” and they must be able to recognize similar and equivalent meaning in different expressions. Also, we must assume that the world of meaning will continue to unfold before us and our questions, as it did for our present knowledge in our educational content; and we must assume that the content of our questions defines only a small part of the meaning and intelligibility that is available in the mystery that surrounds us. Further, we must assume that new knowledge is often founded on the disintegration, transmogrification, sublation, and transformation of old knowledge--the self-corrective process continues on in the fields of human knowledge.

Thus, the student must become a good listener and remain open to a continued search for new and different meaning in a seemingly endless, diverse and meaning-full world while, at the same time, holding onto what we already know. Such is the truth of constructivist theories where nuance is king, but where (we now know) Absolute Certainty goes wanting--we cannot wait for it to claim the kind of knowledge that continues to be verifiable--as knowledge.

When applied to how we go about knowing in real life, however, constructivist theories match only a small aspect of it. That is, such theories often take us too far; or they fail to take us far enough; or they are more about conceiving, nuance, and expression of meaning than they are about truth or what actually happens when we understand “what is,” and when we value, know, and apply our judgments (about what is true and known to us) to our lives in speech and act. For when I judge that it is cold outside, I put on a coat; if I do not know, I ask; and if I go out in the cold without asking, I really do get cold.

Further, such theories rightly attempt to account for the endless meaning in us and in the world, and in the oft-denied ethical-social-political-spiritual dimensions of all human life. However, these theories afford little or no explanation or connection with true-knowledge-real, or for discovering the truth of clearly defined aspects of such meaning—of nuanced human affairs--the kind that we all live in. Thus, constructivist theories show us nuance and complexity of meaning; they open us to the wealth of meaning that is indeed available to us to create with in our limited way; and they make us aware of the influence of the past on the present. However, they fail to show how, in a myriad of cases, truth can be found, or how our knowing actually closes concretely around defined aspects of that same meaning, however nuanced that meaning is. If such theories reflected how students really govern their lives, students would never know anything true about anything real, including that it is cold outside.

Moreover, constructivist underpinnings suggest to the less philosophically aware student that, on the one hand, any interpretation is an adequate interpretation; or that he or she is the sole creator, arbiter, and the end-all of knowledge and truth. On the other hand, such underpinnings leave the reflective person trapped in an untenably presumed “black box” of pure subjectivity that remains unexplained and unconnected with the leavening power of truth whether we discover it, create from it, speak it, or apply it. Indeed, critical explanation itself commonly assumes an objective referent to measure by. How, then, can “mere subjectivity” itself be explained? And if we do not assume objectivity, why bother saying anything?

Again, as variable and nuanced as constructivist theories are, and despite our forays into statistical data, with constructivism we find science’s own hard-won empirical method on the chopping block of a philosophical history that has sunk to its own lowest level, or stepped into its own vacuum and proceeded to be sucked up into it. We are breaking-up our guitars while calling ourselves musicians.

Closely related to assumptions of objectivity are assumptions of truth. As such, even the claim of constructivism and its movement towards pure subjectivity is a covert truth claim and, if it is not, again, why should anyone listen? In this way, the constructivist argument assumes what the argument itself claims is not available--truth. In other words, constructivism is not self-consistent, and needs to be so if we are to afford it the credibility that any serious philosophical position requires--or indeed, that any serious person who wants to live life fully requires.

Such self-constructing arguments mediate a lack of self-consistency, first, by espousing various forms of relativism in an outright fashion, without considering or explaining the inferred consequences of such arguments on concrete human life, including on the life of the constructivist. And so the constructivist mediates by avoiding our abiding regard for true-good and knowledge in real human living.

Second, the constructivist mediates by failing to distinguish students’ mere opinion and belief from their true knowledge--drawn from evidential regard of what is and is not so. Again, such theories afford little or no explanation of the difference between students’ opinion-belief complex and their true knowledge, not to mention true-good. In this way, such theories often purvey humility about their claims, and about their claims not-to-claim. However, they also invite an arbitrariness of spirit in readers and students who need to think their way out of the existential quandary of seriousness that, in principle, such theories cannot define.

Finally, with constructivist theories, we imply that we are in sole charge of the construction of such “evidence,” or at least we must be persuasive in our cause, whatever that persuasiveness or cause might mean. In a word, constructivism has nothing left to do but, again, render its teachers and theorists into sophists.

We need not venture far into philosophical questions to understand that, under this view, there is little or no difference between sloppy and critical thought, scholarship, theory, speech, and actions. Overlooked is that, with constructivist theory, and its epistemological assumptions and pronouncements, the self-corrective process has no real, true, or good object to be known, at least where the nuances of human affairs are concerned; and the notions of critical, correct, or incorrect become mere persuasions and superfluous to anything real, in theory if not in fact.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, students continue to collect evidence under the assumption that there are correct and incorrect methods as well as speculative and verifiable, and good and bad theories, reasonably explained. Further, though concepts differ about the same data, we continue to assume such evidence has its own principles that we must only discover, understand and apply correctly. And we continue the self-corrective process unabated as we always have. That is, we continue to critique and we arrive at judgments about what is and is not so and that, more often than not, close around clearly defined aspects of meaning. The meaning-content of such a process continues to constitute the evidence for our making such judgments, and that we continue to call knowledge of what is really true. In regular human living, the good-bad complex follows suit--that is, knowledge of what is really and truly good.

Thus, the various constructivist theories rightly have a high regard for meaning; however, in various degrees they ignore or negate knowledge and truth; they fail to match the data under review (how history unfolds and how we go about living in it); and they fail to explain how the well-worn methods of collection and observation, experimentation and verification have gone on for centuries—as employed aspects of the good-true-real in history.

There is, then, a call for a better theory of knowledge, truth, and subject-object relations. In philosophical terms, there is a call for an adequate epistemology. And so the present work devotes a chapter to a theory of knowledge that accounts, first, for the polemic between various shades of positivism and constructivism, certainty-dogmatism, and relativism, and, second, for what both persons of commonsense and scientists actually assume, and how they-we proceed towards knowledge and truth in history when we are not thinking about what knowledge and truth actually are. An analysis of the self-correction process is central to this discussion.