Vörös, Sebastjan. (2015). "Dubious Dichotomies and Mysterious Mysticisms - A Reply to Quale". Constructivist Foundations 11 (1): 135-137

Radical Constructivism Dubious Dichotomies and Mysterious Mysticisms Sebastjan Vörös Dubious Dichotomies and Mysterious Mysticisms Sebastjan Vörös University of Ljubljana, Slovenia sebastjan.voros/at/gmail.com > Upshot • I address two topics that I consider particularly problematic in Quale’s target article. First, I question the purported distinction between cognition and non-cognition, and second, I inquire into a rather vague construal of “mystical philosophies.” Given that both topics play important roles in the overall argumentative chain, their unfoundedness threatens to have serious consequences for the main conclusions of the article. « 1 » Andreas Quale’s target article “Religion: A Radical-Constructivist Perspective” is a welcome contribution to the ield of constructivist studies, as it tries to lesh out a radical constructivist perspective on “an important ontological dimension of human experience,” namely “religion” or, more precisely, “religious belief ” (§2). he article is, as duly pointed out by the author, concerned primarily with “theistic / deistic Abrahamic conceptions” (ibid). herefore, it can hardly be said to address religion in its entirety – an elusive conceptual beast, if ever there was one – but nevertheless, it provides interesting preliminary relections and paves the way for subsequent research. In my commentary, I will focus on two aspects that I believe to be insuiciently dealt with in the article, namely the distinction between “cognition” and “non-cognition” (§§8–13), and the idea of “mystical philosophies” (§31). « 2 » he purported distinction between “cognition” and “non-cognition” plays a central role in Quale’s argument. It is used to characterize religious knowledge as a type of “non-cognitive knowledge” (§16), whose realist tendencies are then ontologically and epistemologically juxtaposed to cognitive-and-realist science (or scientism? §28) and cognitive-and-relativist constructivism (§38). However, there are good reasons to believe that this dichotomy is not as self-evident as it might seem at the irst glance. To begin with, it is dubious whether the two categories are separable in principle. Although Quale briely acknowledges the issue by paying lip service to contemporary debates on the topic (§9), it is far too pressing – ater all, it does constitute the central premise in the author’s argument – for it to be merely brushed aside unanswered. Giovanna Colombetti (2014), Colombetti & Evan hompson (2007), and Luiz Pessoa (2008) have put forward convincing arguments that the classical distinction between cognitive and emotive processing is, in fact, untenable. More speciically, it has been claimed that, on both the neural and psychological levels, these two aspects are closely intertwined, if not completely inseparable. « 3 » Criticisms of this type have been especially prominent in the so-called “4EA approach” in cognitive science. he 4EA approach originally developed as a reaction to the classical cognitivist / computationalist model of the mind that loomed large in the 1970s and 1980s. unlike the classical model, which construes cognition as data-processing involving algorithmic (rule-based) manipulation of (brain-instantiated) symbols, the 4EA approach conceives of cognition as: ƒ extended – “cognitive states and processes can extend beyond the boundaries of the cognizing organism,” ƒ embedded – dependent on “facts about our relationship to the surrounding environment,” ƒ embodied – dependent on “facts about our embodiment,” ƒ enactive – “dependent on aspects of the activity of the cognizing organism,” and ƒ afective – “dependent on the value of the object of cognition to the cognizer” (Ward & Stapleton 2012; cf. vörös 2014). In this view, then, cognition is not so much a matter of information-processing and rule following as it is a matter of “sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment” (Stewart, Gapenne & Di Paolo 2010: vii); it is not something that involves (only) the dis-embodied rational (analytical) reasoning, but something that emerges against the backdrop of the back-and-forth engagement of the organism with its milieu (varela, hompson & Rosch 1991; hompson 2007). « 4 » his enactive / dynamic aspect is relected in the fact that learning something rarely proceeds in the manner described by Quale: We do not learn the rules irst and then go on to solve puzzles, but normally learn the rules (as well as the general meaning of equations, etc.) by solving puzzles, i.e., engaging with concrete examples, getting corrected, learning useful heuristics, etc. – and all these have to be somehow demonstrated (exempliied, en-acted etc.), not merely communicated (passed on in the form of well-deined rules that one can follow, etc.). Also, note that, according to enactive / embodied model, this dynamic dimension isn’t merely preparatory work for “real learning,” but constitutes the integral part of cognition itself – understanding is not acquired by means of following a prescribed set of procedures, but rather by skilfully engaging with concrete examples. For this reason, it is questionable whether Quale’s schematic image of “cognitive” knowledge acquisition actually (ever) occurs in practice (moreover, given the speciic embodied nature of human beings, it questionable if it could occur even in principle). « 5 » But even if we were to accept the purported dichotomy and were to concede that it is, in fact, possible to distinguish at least analytically between cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, it is far from clear whether “cognitive knowledge” can be reduced to the use of “rules and procedures that can be agreed on between knowers, and thus demonstrated and communicated (say) from teachers to students” (§8). First, it is not at all clear whether rule-following equals (or entails) understanding, as exempliied by, e.g., John Searle’s well-known Chinese room (Searle 1999), in which a person who knows absolutely no Chinese is locked inside of a room with two windows. his person has access to transformational rules (written in English) that enable him to match each set of Chinese characters received from one window with the appropriate set of Chinese characters handed out from the second window, so that, for someone who is standing outside of the room, it seems as if the “room” (or the person within it) speaks luent Chinese. But even though the person in the room clearly knows how to manipulate rules that enable him to correlate appropriate incoming characters with appropriate outgoing characters, it seems questionable whether he might be claimed to really know Chinese and therefore understand what he http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/11/1/119.quale 135 THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS IN RADICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM 136 is saying. Or take a skilled mathematician who gets a sudden insight into a pernicious problem she has been working on without following a systematic, well-deined set of procedures. Perhaps she is, at least initially, even unable to structure and communicate her insight in the form of clear rules. But would we really want to claim that she has gained knowledge only ater she has been able to structure and communicate them in such manner? hese examples might be (overly) simplistic and perhaps (at least the irst one) a tad eccentric, but I believe they get the message across: rule-following and understanding are not, at least prima facie, identical, so it will simply not do to presuppose that they are. « 6 » Also, there are good reasons to believe that the categories of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, at least as construed by Quale, are problematic in themselves. On the one hand, the “cognitive” category seems to be too narrow, as it precludes the title of “cognitive” to many, if not most, instances of what is commonly referred to as knowledge in natural sciences. Barring Quale’s paradigmatic cases (i.e., mathematics and physics) – and even here, one is let to wonder why mathematics should be classiied as a natural science (does the same apply to logic? why?) – can we really claim that, say, neuroscience, physiology, biology, or even biochemistry coincide with this model? Sure, there are “facts” and “heuristics” that can be expressed and communicated in these sciences, but rules on par with Ohm’s law? Hardly. On the other hand, the category of non-cognitive knowledge seems to be too broad and diverse – so much so, in fact, that it is depleted of almost all explanatory value. It is questionable whether the category of “non-cognitive knowledge” is as homogenous as the author wants it to be: maybe I cannot communicate my emotions, but is this also true for, say, my volitions, preferences, and motivations? However, if so, it stands to reason that some of the phenomena in the non-cognitive category are more akin to, and perhaps overlap with, those in cognitive category (if there, indeed, be such a category). But which ones, and why? « 7 » note that all this has direct bearing on Quale’s overall argument. To take just one, and arguably the most blatant, example: no convincing reasons are given as to why COnSTRuCTIvIST FOunDATIOns vol. 11, n°1 religion is supposed to fall into the noncognitive category, especially if theology is to be included in its ranks (as Quale leads us to believe in §28). Take, for instance the following passage, in which William James summarizes a chain of reasoning that was typical for theology at the end of the 19th century: God is First Cause […] he difers from “all Since his creatures in possessing existence a se. From this ‘a-se-ity’ on God’s part, theology deduces by mere logic most of his other perfections. For instance, he must be both necessary and absolute, cannot not be, and cannot in any way be determined by anything else. his makes Him absolutely unlimited from without, and unlimited also from within; for limitation is non-being; and God is being itself. his unlimitedness makes God ininitely perfect. Moreover, God is one, and only, for the ininitely perfect can admit no peer. He is spiritual, for were He composed of physical parts, some other power would have to combine them into the total, and his aseity would thus be contradicted. He is therefore both simple and non-physical in nature. He is simple metaphysically also, that is to say, his nature and his existence cannot be distinct, as they are in inite substances which share their formal natures with one another, and are individual only in their material aspect. (James 2009: 254) ” « 8 » his, I feel, is a clear example of the “rule-following” procedure, if ever there was one. One could argue, of course, that the basic presuppositions in this chain of reasoning are faulty, but this is an issue related to evidentiality, not to rule-following. now, I have not chosen this quote because I believe the content of the quote to be correct, but to underline an important point: there is little, if anything, in Quale’s conception of “cognitive knowledge” that would prevent us from classifying at least some dimensions of religious knowledge as cognitive. Rule-based reasoning has to end somewhere (even in logics and mathematics), and we may argue about the proper criteria for accepting a given set of basic axioms, but the latter are not likely to be fully reducible to rule-following procedures (think of the “principle of noncontradiction”). So, either we accept that all cognitive knowledge (even mathematics and logics) ultimately stems from non-cognitive knowledge or we allow that some aspects of religious reasoning are (genuinely) cognitive in nature. « 9 » So much for the cognitive / noncognitive dichotomy. Let us now take a brief look at “mystical philosophies.” In his text, Quale uses the term only once and does not suiciently elaborate on it, aside from stating that it encompasses “certain trends in Zen Buddhism and some other spiritual traditions” that “explicitly emphasize that there is no ‘truth as such’ – that all religious systems are merely models, and that all realisation of truth resides in the mind” (§31). his omission is regrettable for several reasons. First, mysticism seems to have been a recurring, if fringe, topic in the writings of the early proponents of constructivism. For example, it pops up on several occasions in Ernst von Glasersfeld (1995); it occurs in a paper on “Scientiic and Poetic Knowledge,” where von Glasersfeld argues that “a proper balance of the scientiic and the mystical is crucial for the future of our world” (Glasersfeld 1998: 199); and occurs in an interview with Bernhard Poerksen, Heinz von Foerster even refers to himself as “a mystic” (Poerksen 2004). Regrettably, “mysticism” in these instances is rarely explicated – and when it is, the explications are provisional and / or equivocal –, so there is a pressing need to ill up this gap and embed the topic into the broader constructivist framework. « 10 » Secondly, and more importantly, the notion of “mystical philosophies,” at least in its current construal, seems to serve as a convenient conceptual receptacle for all religious elements that do not sit well with Quale’s profered interpretation. For instance, there are currents within diferent religious traditions that caution against literal interpretations of sacred texts and instead opt for allegorical and / or performative readings, i.e., readings that embed the meaning and signiication of these texts within the realm of everyday experience and explicitly shun supernatural interpretations. Further, there are prominent currents within religious traditions that explicitly deny the existence of absolute reality “out there” and opt for either idealist or nondualist interpretations of experience (e.g., certain schools of Buddhism, Daoism, and Hinduism). Also, there have been inluential mystics within theist traditions, whose accounts of “the Absolute” might, at least Radical Constructivism Issues in Relation to Learning About Religion Hugh Gash prima facie, seem radically diferent from how we normally conceive of these traditions. Yet, despite these seeming inconsistencies, they have not broken of from their confessions, but have maintained that their personal insights correspond to the respective doctrinal frameworks, which leads us to believe that the latter can be interpreted in very diferent ways. In other words, it would seem that Quale can posit the clearcut distinction between constructivism and religious traditions only by ignoring or brushing aside those elements that contradict his blatantly bipolar view, elements that may perhaps serve as better candidates for a more meaningful dialogue between the two parties. Despite its originality and relevance, the reader of Quale’s article is therefore apt to be let with a feeling that the end result is, indeed, a construct – but not necessarily of a constructivist type. Sebastjan Vörös is an Assistant Professor and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His main topics of interest encompass philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of science, cognitive science, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of a book The Images of the Unimaginable: (Neuro)Science, Phenomenology, Mysticism (in Slovene). Received: 25 September 2015 Accepted: 14 October 2015 Issues in Relation to Learning About Religion Hugh Gash Dublin City University, Ireland hugh.gash/at/dcu.ie > Upshot • Quale ofers a way of cat- egorizing religious discourse based on radical constructivism. This commentary raises questions about the inter-relation of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, the role of testimony in learning about religion, and whether knowledge and belief have diferent roles in cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, and suggests that Quale’s analysis opens a tolerant perspective on religious discourse. Introduction « 1 » Radical constructivism (RC) has been principally concerned with the construction of rational knowledge (Glasersfeld 1984). Much constructivist work has focussed on maths and science, though Ernst von Glasersfeld’s early academic work was on the semantic analysis of concepts such as causality (Glasersfeld 1974). Andreas Quale’s radical constructivist perspective on religion ofers an important dimension to discussions about religion at a time when such discussion about religious diference can tend to the intransigent. « 2 » One of the hallmarks of the RC approach is the view that the individual knower constructs their knowledge (Quale §6). Jean Piaget’s book title To Understand Is to Invent (1974) emphasises the importance of both understanding and invention. his position has the inevitable corollary that learning results from children’s experimentation, and this emphasis on the child’s role rather than the teachers’ has been a source of criticism of constructivism (Tobias & Duffey 2009). « 3 » Additions to both the cognitive and experimental emphases in constructivist education have led to a number of signiicant new approaches. hese include the role of emotion and non-cognitive knowledge (target article and Quale 2014), the role of testimony in learning (Harris & Koenig 2006, Harris 2012), and the relation between knowledge and belief (Riegler 2015). Finally, Quale’s comments on John Robinson’s book Honest to God (§35) suggest an RC approach to religious doctrine. he aim of this commentary is to examine Quale’s article in the context of each of these strands. Reason and emotion « 4 » Quale’s (§8) distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge is aligned to the distinction between the categories of reason and emotion (§13). I wonder if a case could be made for a less divisive relation between cognitive and non-cognitive knowing? Certainly, not having “rules and procedures that are agreed” leads to non-rational experience and disagreements that are deep. Yet, there seem to be varieties of non-cognitive experiences. « 5 » For example, not having access to rules and procedures might be a function of being in new cognitive territory and inding ones’ existing rules and procedures inadequate for the experience. A person might need time to think and allow some cognitive distance to emerge so as to have appropriate and adequate categories to discuss the experience. Or alternatively, not having access to rules and procedures might imply an emotional experience that deied explanation and description. he former case implies an emotional impasse that resolves with time and the emergence of new ideas. he latter case does not have a cognitive solution. Bearing in mind that recent work on neuroimaging shows that cognitive and emotional processes play crucial and sometimes competitive roles in the domain of moral judgment (Greene 2015), it may be useful to see non-rational knowledge as having different degrees of emotional awareness with varying impact on cognitive knowledge. A question for the author is whether he sees the non-rational as a set of irreducibly noncognitive emotional experiences that defy analysis. Or alternatively, do some non-cognitive emotional experiences trigger cognitive change, so facilitating movement from the non-cognitive to the cognitive? Testimony « 6 » he RC approach appears to prior- itise discovery, invention, and experiment. How does the author see the constructivist approach (§6) applying to the development of religious thinking? Paul Harris and Melissa Koenig (2006) seem to challenge the constructivist model by drawing attention to the importance of testimony, particularly in the domains of science and religion. Harris (2012) provides evidence that children are critical users of adult testimony, seeking out testimony from others in whom they have conidence. While they readily distinguish history from fable, they appreciate the gravitas with which religious testimony is presented. his suggests children in their meaning making learn not only from their own experimental activities but also from testimony that allows them to adjust their concepts to it better with experience. Telling examples are provided for the case of scientiic testimony in children’s learning about germs and in the case of children’s spontaneous religious questions about why people who die are both buried and go to heaven. http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/11/1/119.quale 137