An Illustration of Monist Constructivism.

A presentation by Jennifer Dana Stoll, University of Liverpool.

In the first part of this presentation, an evolutionary perspective on cognitive development will be given. The common theme between all different cultures are explanatory principles, particularly transcending the explanatory principles of souls and gods. In a second part, several quotes of Lev Vygotsky, the father of social constructivism will be discussed. In part three, a cognitive model of monist constructivism will be developed, including views on paradigms, epistemology, and identity.

Transcending Souls

Animism vs. Enlightenment

A quest for science is always a quest to challenge coarse explanatory principles. In the early stages of human cognitive evolution, myths were used to described the operation of the world. The coarser one’s understanding of environmental phenomena is, for example, if atoms and fine structure of neural networks are far from being discovered yet, the more difficult it is to find reasonable models for complex behaviour of living beings or cognition (Bateson 1987). If one’s model consists of the Chinese five elements or Galen’s (n.d.) four humours, then combinations of these parts do not yield explanations for the contingent behaviour of living beings. This lack of reason leads to supernatural and mythical explanations for all complex phenomena of the world. There are two realms to which the mythical attribution can be made: the outside world, as animate matter, and the inside world, as animate ideas. Animate ideas within individual persons are typically combined into concepts of souls (Papateros, 2012).

This dichotomy between explained and supernatural phenomena, or material and phenomenal world is also known as dualism. As you might have noticed, there are several forms of dualism: Between subject and object, body and soul, matter and spirit, and many more (Stoll, 2014). Proper definitions are therefore necessary when discussing dualism. On this slide, the “I” concept of a person is displayed as a yellow box around the sense organs and thoughts. The line is dashed for the concept of inanimate ideas, because in this case the sense of I becomes a mere convention for communication. These methods, as we will see, portray a different concept of I. The process of challenging mythical explanations is also called enlightenment, or Aufklärung. It is one of the most common misconceptions that Eastern methods of enlightenment lead to spiritual mystification. Gautama Shakhamuni’s intention was rather the opposite: to challenge and abolish the myths of the Vedas (Enlightenment in Buddhism, n.d.).

When challenging mythical explanations, there are two possibilities. One can either challenge the animism of external phenomena. This is the path the Ionian thinkers have taken and that led to modern science. Or, one can challenge the animism of internal phenomena, the vitalism and concepts of souls. This route has been taken by eastern philosophers and led to introspective sciences (Burley, 2006). In the West, the new methods started out in Ionia with Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaximander. Methods called philosophy (in the original meaning of the word), logic, geometry and nowadays science opposed Greek mythos. In the East, Yoga, Taoism and Buddhism set out to challenge the ancient tradition of ritual Vedanta. The profound difference between these methods will be discussed on the following pages.

Noteworthy, today science still leads a fight against religious myths. The world as a whole still did not manage to transcend religious beliefs and work towards a global, epistemological consent based on scientific methods. During human development, each individual has to construct the knowledge necessary to transcend between epistemological boundaries of myths and science. These differences will be covered in depth in the third part of this presentation. Goal of all enlightenment is the abolishment for animist explanations of souls for both external and internal phenomena. Once this goal has been established, the resulting theory may be called a monist theory.

Disclaimer: This view is over-generalising. In Eastern and Western cultures, there have been schools and thinkers of both kinds. The bias of these slides focusses on the image, that currently is predominantly focused on in Western societies, and meant only exemplary. It therefore illegally reduces the richness of thinking of the subsumed cultures, for example, the mathematical richness of early Chinese and Indian cultures.

External Elaboration: Western Enlightenment

This slide discusses the concept of God within the path of Western enlightenment. In a first step, the causal principle is introduced to the external world. As the ultimate origin of phenomena cannot yet be inferred, one can only examine the dynamics of the outside world. One method is to infer from many observations to generalised laws, also called paradigmatic. A second method is called inductive, and tries to infer from the basic principles which are already known to all related phenomena. Using these methods, the god who animates everything is reduced to a creator god who initiates a causal chain that subsequently runs by itself. However, the god may retain the right to change the rules and remains as an explanatory principle for inexplicable phenomena. This boundary, at any point in time, contains phenomena that science has no explanation for yet, for example unexplainable changes in the seasons, waves of disease, and other black swan events that disrupt our perceptive continuity. With the advance of science towards the completeness of the known universe, theories like the Big Bang and evolution may challenge this creator principle. God is still behind all internal phenomena and the complex phenomenon life itself.

With advancing science and understanding of the human body and brain, particularly the complex nature of our central nervous system, more and more of the internal and idea complexity can be explained by causality. The rise of holism, system’s theory, cybernetics, and chaos science provided new explanations where complexity can arise from simple rules by amplification of small differences, also known as butterfly effect. At this point, god becomes a god of the gaps that is pushed back to the final frontier also known as “hard problem”. God may remain as a mythical explanation for everybody who is not content with the view that explanatory principles are merely unknown areas that have yet to be discovered in a continuous process of pushing back the frontier of the unknown. (Sperry, 1980)

The unknown does not need to be attributed to Gods. In the most cases, the illusion of Gods arise from questions that may be asked with words, but do not make sense or have a corresponding reality. Let me give some examples. To ask, what was before the universe, is an illegitimate question. The question asks for a point or span in time. Time, however, is a measure of change within the universe. Time is not defined outside the universe. It is thus a nonsensical question to ask what was before the universe. Likewise, the question what will be after death is illegitimate. Being, in this case, refers to the realm of personal experience. This personal experience is only present when there is consciousness. Consciousness is likely an emergent property of synchronous electrical activity in the central nervous system. If this synchronous activity is diminished, for example by anaesthetics, deep

sleep, or death, then the experience of being ceases. So, to put it bluntly, in the scientific view there is no after death, and also nothing to worry about. Life is defined as the opposite of death, and the concept of an afterlife a nonsensical combination of concepts like asking for the shape of a colour.

Unlike concepts of gods following the Vedic cultures, the Abrahamitic notion of god arises from two driving forces: the will to live eternally, and the social pressures of leaders who use the fear of a God as a method to control people. Unfortunately, the early scientific heritage of the Ionian, Greek, and Punic culture, as well as Vedic remainders in the Celtic cultures became suppressed during the Roman Empire. First, the library at Carthago was destroyed by Roman general Scipio during the third Punic war. The war was inspired by senator Cato the Elder with his famous phrase “Ceterum censeo carthaginem esse delendam”. Under Roman leadership, Carthago subsequently became a centre of Christian influence. Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as a religion of state, superseding earlier Roman mythology, suppressing leftover Egyptian cults, and degrading science below religious doctrine. After the fall of the Roman empire, dark ages began during which mythical biblical explanations ruled the Western world, until in the 16th century figures like Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Johannes Kepler gave rise to a new wave of scientific thinking.

Following the mechanist understanding of his time, Rene Descartes still described the body as a machine that is operated by a soul. He introduced the certainty principle and paved the way for modern science. As long as ideas are innate, they may be thought of as unchangeable or predetermined. John Locke refused this idea. Locke proposed the mind starts from a blank slate at birth, a tabula rasa. Thus, ideas need to emerge and be learned, instead of being inborn or owing to attributions of being originally sinful. Following Locke’s ideas, the mind necessarily must contain emergent properties and he thus paved the way for modern developmental theories.

Internal Elaboration: Eastern Enlightenment

Opposed to the Western scientific route, some ancient Eastern paths are known for a phenomenological stance and tried to explain the coming into being of the world from an internal perspective. Consequently, when discussing disciplines like Yoga and Buddhism, one must keep in mind that the underlying causal principle is inverted. In some philosophies like Buddhism the world comes into being from the view of the observer, and the observer’s actions, or ultimately consciousness and its ripples cause the phenomena of the world including the observer. Others, like the Samkhya philosophy that Yoga adopted and Vedanta, use principles from the Upanishads, Baghavad Ghita, and Brahmasutra that superseded Vedic ritualistic texts.

Whereas the physical momentum in the material world of Western science drives outside phenomena and produces being, the karmic momentum drives consciousness and its emergent phenomena. From an epistemological point of view, there are many early occurrences of emergent thinking in classical Eastern philosophies. In difference to the good and bad principle of Abrahamitic texts, like kosher or halal, the Samkhya model knows three gunas: tamas, rajas, and sattva. The tamasic property stands for the phlegm, the inert mass property of phenomena. The rajasic principle stands for their energy and motion. The sattvic principle represents the properties of the mind and intellect (Burley, 2006). Likewise, the Chinese yin-yang may be seen as a dynamic recurring alternation between two phases rather than a categorical dichotomy. In a discrete model, yin and yang are elaborated into a model of 64 binary combinations in the I-Jing. Similarly, the Five Element model (or better five phase model) discusses two opposing closed loop forces through five phases,

crystallizing four basic triangles of direct and indirect effects (Van Nghi, N. & Recours-Nguyen, C., 1997).

The emergence of these theories may be attributed to chance, for example, it is impossible to start dichotomous thinking when the model contains an odd number of basic constituents. In this situation, a model with emergent effects or trajectories is a necessary evolution of thinking. Likewise, the Yin-Yang appears to be a unit, rather than a combination, including the combined effect that the two produce and that transcends the opposites. From the point of view of Western science, this kind of thinking is astonishing given the early date of the theories. Emergent properties, trajectories, and systemic effects only reappeared in the 19th and 20th century in Western mathematical models. During the Ionian times, there was close cultural exchange along the silk route, bringing together Greek and Indian sages. Introducing stone statues to India, an era of Graeco-Buddhism emerged with several Greek names appearing as Buddhist abbots throughout India and Sri Lanka (Falser, 2015, Lloyd, 2013).

From a psychological perspective, the early Eastern models are highly interesting due to their high degree of experiential elaboration by introspection and meditation. During the 19th century, Yoga was introduced into the Western society. It subsequently influenced early psychologists like Freud and Jung. Freud, in one paper, called the equilibrium between creative and destructive drives, between his Eros and Thanatos, a state of nirvana. Jung, on the other hand, lectured in Kundalini Yoga. Noteworthy, Samkhya elaborates on the ego-sense, and thus frames identification as one of the basic operations of the human mind. Similarly, a differentiation between manas (mind) and citta (affect) arises, paving the way to combine thought and affect as an explanation for the experiential reality of abstract concepts. Also, the principle of forms emerging from sensual perception was known to both Samkhya and Buddhism (Burley, 2006).

In the Samkhya model, still two versions of dualism can be described: A substance dualism that separates material world with material cause, also called Prakriti, from the mental realm, with efficient cause, also called Purusha. At a second barrier, between individual soul and universal consciousness, an existence dualism emerges posing the question whether souls are individual experiences or rather part of one big continuum that only appears to be divided into individuals. Different schools find different answers to this question, but as there is only introspection available as a method, much of it remains a philosophical discussion. What can be learned from these theories is that human identification, if introspective skills are developed, may take on every form. Some people may identify even with their possessions, but it is also possible to subsequently dis-identify from body and thoughts until only the formless space remains in which all phenomena appear. The place of identification has profound systemic effects on human physiology (ibid.).

Ways to Monism

There are several well-known theories that managed to escape the dualist paradigm: Buddhism, Advaita-Vedanta and materialist constructivism. However, they base on different causal assumptions.

Buddhism is known as a monist philosophy. In its phenomenological view, unperturbed consciousness originally is mere potentiality of experience. From it, by karmic momentum that is driven by ignorance, mental formations arise that generate the names and forms that underlie the consciousness of the sense organs and mind. Via contact, they subsequently give rise to feelings, feeling leads to craving, craving to becoming, and becoming finally to rebirth and suffering. In

difference to Western religions, Eastern spirituality did not strive for eternal life. As it assumes that undisturbed consciousness is the eternal principle, they rather want to end the cycle of rebirths that causes afflictions and suffering. The main enlightenment experience is thus that people are already conscious, thus they are already part of the one consciousness that makes up all phenomena. This inadvertently leads to a phenomenological monism that is most pronounced in Yogacara, Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Dzogchen and the Hindu school of Advaita-Vedanta (cf. Walshe, 1995, p 67ff).

The scientific way out of the materialist or determinist vs. constructivist dilemma is, in a most Eastern manner, to emphasize the method. In the West, the method is not introspection and the detailed examination of internal phenomena, but science, the detailed examination of perceived phenomena. It is similarly possible to create a causal chain that does not stop at the boundary of sense organs, but can also explain mental phenomena and consciousness. This can be achieved by combining the holistic, materialist approach with neurophenomenology or neuro-constructivism, where consciousness emerges from the synchronous operation of neural networks (Karmiloff-Smith, 2009, Varela, 1996, Wollstadt et al., 2017).

Psychology, as a discipline, faces the challenge to explore internal phenomena with the scientific method, and is thus heavily influenced by the neurosciences. As an early representative, Lev Vygotsky introduced a theory of social constructivism. Vygotsky proposed generalisation as the one constructive principle of the mind, from which all thoughts and meanings emerge. In this model, generalisation reduces arbitrariness. Thinking of behaviour, human behaviour initially is arbitrary at birth, limited by the physical properties of the human body and built in instincts and reflexes. The process of learning can be thought of as subsequent elimination of unwanted options of behaviour. The autopoiesis of the human body, where it continuously emerges in stages from earlier versions of itself, increases its internal entropy. Likewise, the reduction of options by generalisation in learning may be seen as continued entropy reduction in the brain’s network. Spanning all the range from beginning of the universe up to the explanation of conscious experience, materialist constructivism is also a monist theory.

Vygotsky: Einstein of Constructivism

Following Vygotsky’s social constructivism, understanding is a mutual, social construction that operates on language. Meaning, in this concept, always emerges observer-dependent and operates on the smallest unit, the word. This reinvention of cognition may be seen as revolutionary as Einstein’s perspective of time as an observer-relative concept with respect to the speed of light and the Planck length as a smallest unit. Likewise, Smuts formulated his holistic theory during the first third of the 20th century. Epistemologically, the turn of the century and the following years can be considered sophisticated with regard to Western thinking. However, mathematics on these units did not emerge yet. The industry around World War II was more interested in continuous phenomena. The combination of systemic thinking and differential mathematics lead to Norbert Wiener’s (1948) looped control theory also called cybernetics and Bertalanffy’s (1969) General System’s Theory.

On the following five pages, essential Vygotsky quotes will be illustrated. It is recommended that you read over the quotes before enabling the commentary via mouse click.

Page 1

Vygotsky saw cognition as something relative that is arising from the mutual interplay of beings in their environment. Early attempts at speech are completely external, and used to associate tools and other things with utterances to denote them. This denotation has the purpose of indicating things to other people. To do so, the utterance, the thing, and the other person have to be present in the current experiential context. When being alone, children may also do this process by themselves. Then, a doll takes the place of the person, and children talk to the doll. At an even later stage, an internal object of thought may reflect one’s internal dialogue. Thus, with experience, this process becomes internalized to enable abstract thinking. However, the internalization remains based on the shared history between people that has been passed on via generations from the beginning of all learning: it is a mutual social construction. The purpose of education is thus to bring people together with the essential ideas, so their thinking may fully develop. Starting from a blank slate, people have to actively learn all knowledge by experience. It is thus important to hand down the collective knowledge over generations. Each generation also produces new knowledge in the mutual exchange and adds it to the shared tradition.

In Vygotsky’s view, initial creation of meaning or decision-making is merely perceptual and happens in the direct experiential field. Afterward, the ability to recognize similar situations enables children to increasingly inhibit these direct responses. They form decisions in their minds while suppressing the corresponding motor function. fMRI scans of the brain show that during thinking, the motor cortex is activated, supporting Vygotsky’s theory of social construction. (Vygotsky, (1938/1978)

Page 2

Vygotsky termed the process that inhibits co-activation of motor-function and intentions a functional barrier. Instead, the reactive activity is now directed towards an abstract internal representation of the motor-function that Vygotsky calls an auxiliary sign. He noted that this is not a replacement, but a mediating process that has many levels of intensity. Motor activity may still be present in different degrees and be experienced as internal tension or affective state, for example as aversion or clinging, during the stages of the learning process. Vygotsky did not yet attribute these signs to the function of the neuronal system of the brain. The theory of the brain was not elaborate enough at his time to give rise to this assumption. Therefore, his theory may only called functionally monist with regard to the social construction of cognition. With current understanding of the brain, however, this view may be extended to a materialist monist constructivism.

Vygotsky coined the term “centre of gravity” of a perceptual field. He recognized that subsequent refinement of understanding changes the way in which external phenomena are perceived. What formerly has been an irrelevant spot that is attributed to the background, subsequently may become a relevant object in the individual foreground. The singling out of these figures and their operation is at the roots of the social learning process. This process does not only happen in the present moment. By generalization, multiple instances may be unified into single concepts, spanning a certain period of time. From this generalisation over instants, memory of the past arises, and future trajectories may be predicted or formulated as plans. Importantly, at this stage, options of the future may also induce a fear of the future, introducing anxiety. This anxiety is greatly dependent on prior constructions in one’s individual memory like morals, ethics, or imagined social expectations. It is also at the roots of concepts of a fear of God. Similarly, in retrospective, own performance may be compared with own behaviour when working towards an ideal or plan. This view closely relates to E. Tory Higgins’ self-discrepancy and regulatory focus theories.

From this inclusion of past and future, two basic regulatory functions arise: intention, as a

purposeful symbolic initialisation of action, and attention, as its continuously focused counterpart over time. (ibid.)

Page 3

Vygotsky saw signs as an internal representation and continuation of external tools. At the same time, social constructions may turn into individual ones. Individual constructions are thus not possible without having been bootstrapped by the prior mutual social process. Vygotsky also was a critic of reductionism. He noted, that the intrinsically abstracting property of the mind appears to generalise experiences into units, instead of dismantling them into their elements. He thus dismissed the idea that these phenomena may be explained by reductionist approaches. Whereas reductionism is good at examining elements and their combinations, it fails at constructing the meaning that emerges as systemic effect from the generalising function of the mind. Vygotsky also separates names from words. While names denote particular instances of objects, words are generalisations over classes of objects that create new understanding. The emergence of meaning and process of generalisation are two views on the same operation. (ibid.; Vygotsky, 1934/2012)

Page 4

The word forms the basic unit of meaning in Vygotsky’s theory. A concept is thus not something put together, but rather something that is generalized from a manifold into a unit. This process may be applied recursively, generalising concepts of concepts in purely abstract thinking. Vygotsky emphasizes that the abstracted quality is what supersedes a mere assembly of phenomena. In the later theory of phenomenology, the process of bracketing strips the perceptive aspect off phenomena and reduces them to their emergent meaning. It is a meta-perspective on Vygotsky’s generalisation also called phenomenological reduction. As an opposite, eidetic reduction strips away emergent meaning and reduces phenomena to their individual constituent parts.

Vygotsky also emphasized that learning different languages spawns a transition of learning similar to generalising from individual names to abstract words. The more words exist for the same phenomenon, the weaker the bond between one word and a phenomenon becomes. Consequently, definitions of terms become stipulative. Several equally valid descriptions of the same phenomenon may exist in different contexts. This view gives rise to the scientific method that thrives on formulating different models and evaluates them on their explanatory and predictive power. Thomas S. Kuhn’s paradigm shifts are an elaboration on this view on knowledge. (ibid.)

Page 5

Vygotsky also emphasizes that generalisations transcend mere associations, as an emergent meaning arises from the association. They thus cannot be seen as a mere, newly conditioned reflex, but in their formation transform the functional network of cognition as a whole. In difference to the strict coupling of structural bonds, generalisations are loosely coupled. For Vygotsky, the act of generalisation on phenomena and thoughts and the emergence of meaning in individual consciousness are to views on the same process. Vygotsky’s theory can thus be called monist from a functional point of view, omitting existential questions. For Vygotsky, existential questions are a matter of philosophical debate whereas the scientific method focuses on exploring the relationships between observed phenomena. (ibid.)

Page 6

As a final level of generalisation, consciousness may turn its generalising function onto the activity of consciousness itself. This enables to examine internal phenomena with the scientific

method. This notion has also been at the roots of early Eastern introspective disciplines. While consciousness does not appear to be able to experientially loop back onto itself, it appears to be able to loop back to its activity. Conventionally speaking, one cannot observe the internal observer, or get behind that which is perceived in observation. Wherever one’s identification is placed, there always remains the impression of an observing subject, however subtle its identity may have become. They may in theory be argued to be an illusion that arises from one, monistic process. However, as the end of a recursive loop of generalisation onto generalisation, this final bracketing can be done towards infinity. However, it remains possible to observe the activity of consciousness, creating the concept of an ego as an actor in the outside world. (Vygotsky, 1934/1987).

A Cognitive Hierarchy of Units

An abstract cognitive hierarchy of emerging units regarding the operation of cognition may be formulated. In each step, the concepts of prior phases are turned onto themselves and generalised in the process.

Originating in perception, forms arise as a generalisation of perception. Subsequently, an idea arises as form of form. When an idea of ideas is created, a concept of a mind arises. Different states of mind are subsequently generalised into identities. Several acts of identification can further be generalized into the concept of a complex person. Person, here, is used in the original sense of the word, the persona that actors assume on a stage. Following this path, different personas can be generalised into acts, and their active identification with the act produces an actor. An actor reduces arbitrariness in personas. In different contexts, different personas may be assumed, thus personas are generalized into an actor. An observer reduces arbitrariness of actors. The common theme of observation is generalisation over initiating action, and responding action, which reflects the principle of causality. Once it is accepted that causality can also be responsible for the concept of an actor to emerge, at the same time the need for an actor vanishes. The common theme behind all actors is observation or conscious awareness of causal phenomena.

Human beings cannot introspectively experience an end-point to this recursion. Any act of observation is an observation of something that creates an impression of a subject-object duality between an observer and the observed. Buddhas have been conceptualised as ideal beings that may transcend this duality experientially. The monist Advaita-Vedanta uses the introspective question “Can the observer be observed?” to arrive at this experiential insight, because one cannot (Moojiji, 2007). The Tibetan Dzogchen emphasizes that as a final step, one has to realize that this impression of an observer is not an entity, that one is not this observer existentially, to transcend the this dual chain.1 This reduces the final ideal to the raw potential of conscious awareness. Constructivists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela likewise propose an observer as the final end-point of the sequence of autopoietic constructions, but propose a neurophenomenological aetiology (Maturana & Varela, 1992).

Building Blocks of Monist Constructivism

Form: The Act of Distinction

Imagine looking at the displayed outside scene. Note, that as a first act, you turned your eyes towards the displayed picture. Now, having selected your field of view, your attention may further be caught by a specific part. By selecting a part of interest, you have made a distinction. Distinctions can be thought of as imaginary boundaries. The boundary distinguishes by excluding the outside. Whatever remains becomes the object of attention. Names denote the content, for 1 H.E. the 7th Dzogchen Rinpoche, Jigme Losel Wangpo, in private conversation.

example you could call it Eric. Names denote things. In the non-innatist tradition of Enlightenment following John Locke (1690), this process starts from a blank slate. You have also created an abstract form. Form is a generalisation of what you see. Distinction is a form of generalisation, two perspectives of the same operation, and intrinsic feature of human consciousness. Distinction creates meaning for you as an observer. Words together with forms are called concepts or ideas. Concepts only retain fundamental characteristics of the things they represent. Words are forms of sound and conventional tokens for communication.

George Spencer-Brown (1971) described this approach to logic in his laws of form. They are compatible with Vygotsky’s (1978) principle of generalisation. The laws of form have influenced many constructivist thinkers, for example, Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, and Francisco Varela.

Operations on Form

Once one has constructed the concept petal, multiple similar occurrences of the same thing can be identified. Recognizing juxtaposition is a basic function of intelligence. As an ordering function, it enables counting, algebra, set theory and other disciplines of mathematics. One can also construct a thing called flower. Flower is a concept composed of petals and other parts. Compositions that exceed the sum of their parts and construct emergent meaning are called systems. The contributing parts step back behind the meaning of the system. Composition enables thinking in hierarchies (cf. Maruyama, 1980, Spencer-Brown, 1971). Composition and juxtaposition are basic forms of abstract thinking.

If meaning is the generalising property of our neuronal system, then meaning precedes knowledge. Meaning is the experience that comes with generalisation. During the initial stages of learning, all things to be associated need to be present in one’s field of view (Vygotsky, 1978). Visual perception consumes a large part of the human brain. Formation and generalisation, however, apply to all perceptions, for example food and the sound of a bell.

Generalisation

Via continued generalisation, prior concepts may be merged into new concepts, creating new meaning. All pattern recognition is a form of generalisation. Ducks, for example, may be generalised to animals. As a system, the concept family implies a certain relationship between the ducks. If the word animal is the sole object of consideration, no information about one distinctive animal is available. (Spencer-Brown, 1971, Vygotsky, 1978)

Today, the generalising operation of the mind is thought to arise from the networked action of neurons in the brain. In the materialist-monist view, every change in ideas, that is, shift in meaning, must be reflected in a change in biology. In Vygotsky’s functional monism, the biological base of ideas is not relevant. Vygotsky was interested in the functional relationship between external and social perception and the construction of internal reality. For this purpose, it is enough to say that generalisation operates on biology and that the relationship to a social reality does exist. Vygotsky assumed holistic operation of this functional network, transforming itself into new realities. (Liu, & Matthews, 2005).

From Perception to Conscious Awareness

Sensations are reduced by sense organs to eidetic images. Eidetic images are comparable to photographic representations, and generalised to forms, concepts, and more abstract concepts. More generalized concepts are forms of forms. Concepts are superimposed on subsequent

sensations, meaningfully changing the perception of reality, for example, changing the anchors for eye movement (Abrahamson et al., 2015). As an abstract organ for thoughts, the mind has been invented. When consciousness itself becomes object of conscious awareness, the impression of an independent observer arises. In the monist-constructivist view, this observer has no independent existence, but is another concept created by the generalising mind (Liu, & Matthews, 2005).

This observer-concept is used as a convention for communication. It would be more appropriate to speak of “the conscious observation of the idea of the form that generalizes the sensation,“ but it is easier to conventionally write: “I”. Spencer-Brown (1971) argued that all distinctions are a form of closure. They may thus be an intrinsic feature of our looped neuronal network. This model of perception has been around for at least 3000 years, for example, in the classical Indian Samkhya. It has influenced psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung (Burley, 2006).

Developing Constructions of Ego

The generalising process of learning can be seen as a subsequent retraction of identification whenever new phases of cognition emerge. As more and more phenomena are discovered as objects of observation, the identifying subject subsequently retracts into an increasingly generalized perspective. Infants identify with the phenomena they see. Most children transcend the identification with objects that are outside the boundaries of their physical body, and perceive themselves as a social entity starting from about 18 months of age. This initial de-identification paves the way for scientific treatment of the external world. From a psychological point of view, the further retraction of identification behind thoughts, the mind, and personas is of equal interest. To enable the scientific method for psychology, the acts of consciousness itself must be subject to observation (Miller, Church, & Poole, n.d.).

These three fundamental transitions are depicted as different loop backs of consciousness on this slide. At the first stage, consciousness loops back onto eidetic perceptions and primitive forms that create a notion of being or existence. At the second transition, an identifying ego emerges as a social entity. At the last step, this identification is reduced to the raw consciousness of an ever-present observer, as long as there is consciousness. This symbol for an observer as the final closure of consciousness onto conscious action will be used in subsequent slides to signal the emergent monist character of the model.

Personas

This slide shows an example for personas to emerge from different identities with regard to contexts. The underlying identities in these examples are “one who is polite”, “one who does work”, and “one who has fun and dances”. The same actor may appear as different personas regarding the social context. Internally, however, there is a contingency to retract behind and generalise personas, sometimes conceptualised as an overarching host personality. In some conditions, this generalising function is inhibited and the emerging personas appear to be split, sometimes even constructing their own memories. In this case, the functional unit of the brain’s network does not appear to operate in a holistic, but a fragmented manner (cf. Lee et al., 2016; Muller, 1992).

Beliefs vs. Knowledge: Dogma vs. Science

An idea one is not willing to check for congruence with experience is called belief. A hypothesis is an assumption that one is willing to check for its validity. Knowledge arises from the congruence of ideas with experience, also called truth. Firmly held beliefs that one is not willing to experientially verify hinders the construction of knowledge, which is also called learning. Knowledge

is the subject of science. In this view, Bandura’s vicarious learning by observing others forms assumptions about their knowledge that may be useful if they are true. The observation of others qualifies as experience of behaviour (cf. Bronstein, 2016). To declare individual knowledge a fact, one must first try hard to find contradictory evidence. In contrary to yes-or-no beliefs, scientific truth is a probability. Paradigms generalise individual facts into fundamentals of a periodically shifting social consensus (Kuhn, 1996). This cultural co-construction of knowledge, founded on practical experiment and starting with rudimentary tool use is at the roots of Vygotsky’s social learning theory. Assumptions that cannot be proven belong to philosophy, and from the point of view of physical science contribute to confusion.

As emphasized by Vygotsky (1978), this distinction is important for psychology, because many early theories have been borrowed from philosophy. The strong influence of the neurosciences is a scientific improvement in psychology.

Scientific vs. Phenomenological Psychology

In this image, one can see the general problem of stimulus-response theory or behaviourism. As only behaviour is measurable from an external point of view, the complexity of internal ideas may only be inferred from behaviour: The same is true for two observers agreeing on specific assumptions. From a phenomenological point of view, all ideas equally contribute to the reality experienced by the observer, whether they are beliefs, assumptions, individual knowledge or accepted facts (Heider, 1958). The main discipline that drives more detailed exploration of cognition from an external perspective while being able to minimize interaction is neuroscience. A different method is to apply the primitives of chaos and network theory to cognitive phenomena. These analogies are possible due to the self-similar, scale independent nature of chaotic systems and can guide thinking towards new scientific discoveries. The primitives of chaos science can help detect and elaborate reductionist approaches to complex phenomena. From a constructivist point of view, Maturana and Varela (1992) point out that anything that is said is said by somebody, thus is a social negotiation of subjective experience. This conscious experience, however, emerges from the underlying biology.

Between facts as beliefs and facts as the result of experiments lies an epistemological boundary. This boundary has been copied into many pseudo-scientific theories, for example, growth mindsets, agile mindsets, entrepreneurial mindsets, and many others. The fundamental transition that happens is to redefine facts from prior presumptions to results of tested hypotheses within a scientific context. This procedure requires many attempts, and failure is a successful step of learning. In belief systems, however, failure has a negative connotation. Maruyama conceptualised this epistemological transition as going from hierarchical to probabilistic assumptions of truth. Maruyama called the epistemological types he characterized mindscapes.

More Epistemological Types

Maruyama (1978, 1980) was one of the first thinkers to generalise epistemological transitions into four prevailing epistemological types that he called mind-scapes. Each mind-scape produces a profoundly different perspective on experience, and thus influences action and meaning. As a first step, linear causal and discrete models of reality are formed. Maruyama called this mind-scape hierarchical. The metaphor that is widely used when talking within this mind-scape is military. This type of thinking is tightly tied to military command and control, but is also widespread in modern business organisations. This ubiquity limits the perspective that organisations may develop on their environment, and is tightly tied to the monetary hierarchy of capitalism. Identification in

this epistemological type is tightly tied to status and position.

The emergence of continua creates probabilistic mindsets that are based on independent events, rather than hierarchical structure. the prevailing concept is entropy. Science that is based on linear statistics operates within this mindset. Here, many different views on the same reality are possible and may be evaluated regarding their utility within the applied context.

If looped causality is assumed, different mind-scapes emerge. Instead of assigning significance to single observations, the long-term trajectories of phenomena become relevant. Homeostatic thinking sees all stability as the result of an equilibrium of constructive and destructive forces. The prevailing metaphor are organisms, whose organs act independently within the homeostasis of the organism as a whole. Within societies, homeostatic mindsets emphasize harmony over mere facticity. Scientific consensus becomes a phased eigenvalue generalised from individual theories, that transcends from one equilibrium into another and is reflected in Thomas S. Kuhn’s paradigm shifts.

Assuming looped causality, but properties that emerge in discrete phases rather than continuous trajectories, one arrives at morpho-genetic thinking. Here, stable phenomena are transient steady-states, border phenomena in an otherwise chaotic process. Due to small changes, highly similar initial conditions may develop into greatly different emergent phenomena. As nothing in nature may be termed as exactly the same, even the tiniest amount of difference may stack up to very different results. This process is thought to drive the autopoiesis of beings, for example, when similar stem cells differentiate into different types of cells within different environments. In this type of thinking, new phenomena may only emerge when the homeostatic equilibrium of organisms is broken by fixing one of its variables, and thus new diversity emerges. As this type of thinking has not been around for a very long time in Western societies yet, it appears to lack appropriate metaphors within the general public.

The Problem of Synonyms and Homonyms

Different epistemological assumptions create challenges for experiments in psychology. Experimenters may only formulate their experiments within their epistemological models. Subsequently, one will only measure results that can create meaning within this mind-scape. Everything foreign creates conflict within this mind-scape, is difficult to understand, and creates the impression of being too complicated and needs to be further simplified. Also, phenomena that cannot be explained within the current mind-scape either remain unseen or the explanatory principles that stand for them never become challenged. This phenomenon is known as ignorance of the second order, that is, one does not know what one does not know. Consequently, researchers who use verbal tests may not be able to explore the subtleties of people who grew up in different cultures with different languages.

To add to the confusion, the same words may have different meaning under different epistemological assumptions, creating homonyms. The idea of food, in a scientific context, may be termed as organic material which by observation and experience has been termed edible. Under hierarchical assumptions, food may be something that is allowed by religious doctrine, or something that tastes good. Under homeostatic assumptions, food may be something that promotes the long-term equilibrium of the organism who eats it. Under morpho-genetic assumptions, food is something edible that is occasionally available within the current context, regardless of personal preferences or other considerations. The same applies to assumptions on what constitutes a fact. Simplistic lexical methods, like factor analysis on the IPIP pool that underlie the Big Five personality

traits may not account for epistemological differences, or prime epistemological assumptions by the manner or order the questions are posed. Similarly, sampling university students for psychological tests limits the epistemological assumptions of the participants. Following Maruyama, the four proposed mind-scapes are not equally distributed over societies. Thus, prevailing epistemological types may cover other, meaningful assumptions that do not show up in linear statistics. This may contribute to the low strength of factorings in personality psychology. (Maruyama, 1994; Maruyama, 1999)

Synonyms are equally problematic. They do not generalise new properties that are distinct and thus create pointless arguments about terms. Most of the times, synonyms are words that originate in different contexts and are transferred to another context to make language less repetitive. Doing so, synonyms introduce different notions and blur the original meaning. This feature is important in a creative process and enables people to transfer concepts between contexts. A unit, for example, in its literal sense means something that is united. Vygotsky thus used it to characterise systemic emergent wholes. Mathematics, however, uses units also as smallest, atomic elements to measure on a scale. Due to the widespread use of maths, the original meaning of the word unit has been lost, and Smuts preferred to talk of wholes instead of units in his theory of holism. Likewise, enlightenment in the new-age era is often conceptualised as having to do with beings of light or pure energy, whereas the early translators of Buddhist texts wanted to refer to the Enlightenment, also known as Aufklärung. The list of misunderstandings that arise from the reuse of terms in different contexts is endless.

Social Constructivism: Vygotsky Revisited

Social constructivism may thus be an ongoing social muddle that stabilizes consensus into transient paradigms. The concept of this muddle was hilariously illustrated by Sociologist Gregory Bateson in his dialogues with his daughter, in an attempt to enlighten on explanatory principles (1987, p. 24ff). Thus, individual forms and knowledge are not only socially constructed, but they continue to emerge in a mutual social construction of a consensus. The social muddle does not only holistically transform individual assumptions, but the assumptions of society.

This consensus is bound to the underlying epistemological assumptions of the society. Conflicts arise, when two groups of differing epistemological assumptions compete at almost equal numbers within the same social context, or few individuals with differing epistemology are forced to operate under foreign premises. The normative power of one group over the other creates cognitive dissonance. Religious doctrine and scientific approaches are known to have led this fight for more than 2000 years and today continue to do so (Maruyama, 1994, p 47ff). The pressures of globalisation aggravated this conflict at the end of the 20th century, and its outcome remains open.

Learning: Reduction of Arbitrariness

On this final slide of this presentation, Vygotsky’s theory of learning is reflected against one of the most basic functions that is known to chaos theory. This consideration does not intend to try to create a coherent theory, but is aimed at inspiring to thinking in complex phenomena regarding learning. The exact function may be substantially different. There is, however, evidence that the different layers of visual perception may be modelled with the use of quadratic maps (Pashaie & Farat, 2009).

If learning is modelled as a reduction of arbitrariness, then the quest for knowledge may be considered a competition of alternatives about the limited resource of meaning within our brains. To illustrate growth phenomena in discrete steps within a limited resource, the quadratic map may

serve as a means of illustration. This discussion is not meant to be a model for learning, but for formal illustration. The quadratic map is well-researched and its study one of the basic contributors to chaos theory. The quadratic map is a limited growth sequence. The result xn of each prior step of computation is subsequently inserted into the function to compute xn+1. Generally, this function shows four different kinds of behaviours. If the growth factor r is between 1 and 2, it quickly approximates its asymptotic value. If r is between 2 and 3, it still approximates its final value, however, there is considerable fluctuation before the approximation. If the growth factor becomes greater than 2, then the function no longer approximates but periodically alternates between several values. The greater the growth factor, the more alternative values are oscillated. If r becomes greater than about 3.569, the behaviour of the function becomes chaotic, and no structural pattern may be recognized in its behaviour.

The different states of the behaviour of the quadratic map are indicated in the bifurcation diagram to the right. For this illustration, consider r to be a measure of sophistication. High values of r, as in trajectory point 1, stand for coarse ideas and little behavioural regulation, where the individual may only act with either minimum or maximum force. Given this high amount of activation, the resulting behaviour is chaotic, or arbitrary. Traversing from chaos to order, several phenomena may be illustrated: At point 2, there is a basin of apparent stability or order. However, further learning reintroduces chaos as new ideas must be integrated. This transition may correspond to a shift in paradigms. As illustrated, several such basins of stability exist until point 3 is reached. Traversing to point 4, the resulting alternatives are quickly reduced and just four alternative models remain. At point five, everything is integrated into one single alternative and one behavioural alternative starts to crystallize.

There are two different learning strategies that can be discussed based on this illustration. For high values of r, which corresponds to low skill, from an individual point of view trial and error appears to be the only reasonable option, to falsify and shut out undesired alternatives. However, consider r between 2 and 3. If one can build on an existing skill and introduce new stimuli only to the extent that the sophistication of a response does not exceed values of 3, then the resulting behaviour can still stabilize, and with practice increase its sophistication. This zone of activation illustrates Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development that builds on prior skill and limits the arbitrariness of newly presented behaviour by expert assistance. In this model, the ability to remain still in the presence of stimuli and the ability to sophisticated thinking appear to be driven by the same biological basis.

Summary

In the first part of this presentation, the boundary problem between science and religion was illustrated as a continuous shift of explanatory principles that creates dualistic epistemologies. Subsequently, two approaches to arrive at a monist theory have been discussed, one from a phenomenological and one from a materialist perspective.

In the second part, Vygotsky’s epistemological assumptions have been examined and a cognitive hierarchy of units has been crystallized from all before-discussed theories. In the third part, modern-day epistemological conflicts have been explained within the model of social constructivism.

Finally, elementary patterns of chaos theory have been proposed as an illustration of the complex phenomena of learning.

Thank you for your attention.

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