Good overview and introduction to the debate between constructivism and objectivism. Drawing from the description in this paper allows me to draw the distance between my own thought and constructivism.
- CRLF
- Constructivist: "There is a real world that sets boundaries to what we can experience. However, reality is local and there are multiple realities." My position: there may be a real world, but my experience of it is personal and may be only partially commensurate with the experiences of others. CRLF
- Constructivists: "The structure of the world is created in the mind through interaction with the world and is based on interpretation. Symbols are products of culture and they are used to construct reality." My position: my understanding of the world is not so much a product of interpretation as it is a reflection; I do not 'interpret' experience, I filter it and recombine it. CRLF
- Constructivists: "The mind creates symbols by perceiving and interpreting the world." My position: symbols are the consequence of successive abstraction along one or more dimensions of experience; this abstraction is typically a passive process rather than an act of intention. CRLF
- Constructivists: "Human thought is imaginative and develops out of perception, sensory experiences, and social interaction." My position: social interaction is only a subset of sensory experience and not a different kind of experience; imagination is the reflection and recombination of (filtered) experiences. CRLF
- Constructivists: "Meaning is a result of an interpretive process and it depends on the knowers' experiences and understanding." My position: 'meaning' is the property assigned to observable communicative entities (such as words) and is exhibited (and understood) solely through one's use of such entities.
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