Ernst von Glasersfeld: Quotes about reality

Ernst von Glasersfeld was German philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on reality.

Ernst von Glasersfeld: 18 quotes 0 likes

“From an explorer who is condemned to seek 'structural properties' of an inaccessible reality, the experiencing organism now turns-into a builder of cognitive structures intended to solve such problems as the organism perceives.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld

Von Glasersfeld (1983) cited in: Gary D. Phye (1996) Handbook of Academic Learning: Construction of Knowledge. p. 360

Problem , Reality

“Once knowing is no longer understood as the search for an iconic representation of ontological reality but, instead, as a search for fitting ways of behaving and thinking, the traditional problem disappears. Knowledge can now be seen as something which the organism builds up in the attempt to order the as such amorphous flow of experience by establishing repeatable experiences and relatively reliable relations between them. The possibilities of constructing such an order are determined and perpetually constrained by the preceding steps in the construction. That means that the “real” world manifests itself exclusively there where our constructions break down. But since we can describe and explain these breakdowns only in the very concepts that we have used to build the failing structures, this process can never yield a picture of a world that we could hold responsible for their failure.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld

Glasersfeld (1984) "An Introduction to Radical Constructivism", as cited in: Frederick Burwick, Walter Pape (1990) Aesthetic Illusion: Theoretical and Historical Approaches. pp.26-27

World , Way , Search , Failure

“What we call knowledge does not and cannot have the purpose of producing representations of an independent reality, but instead has an adaptive function.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld

Source: Von Glasersfeld cited in: E. John Capaldi, Robert W. Proctor (1999) Contextualism in psychological research?: a critical review. p. 10

Knowledge , Reality