CONSTRUCT
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 650 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
A mental way of ordering a number of elements, observations or data in some manner coherent with previously structured knowledge.
In E.von GLASERSFELD words: “… constructs… are results of mental operations” (1988. p.4).
This does not mean that constructs are independent from what we call “reality”, but only that they are something different from it. This is thus no idealist Berkeleyan proposition.
The concept of construct starts from the understanding that a simple incoherent collection of any kind of elements, observations or data would be useless for any purpose and that the observer is necessarily ordering them somehow. This “somehow” depends on an organizational closure process, i.e. of the internal physiological, psychical and mental (seemingly in that order) organization of the observer.
The physiological part has to see with the specific ways of sensorial perception, which impose by themselves constraints and thus, coherence (J.J. GIBSON, 1986). The process proceeds through psychical and mental ordering in the endocrine and nervous subsystems, which again implies specific ways of ordering.
So-called “facts” are elemental constructs, corresponding to something “out there”. Memories, hypotheses, algorithms, models, theories, languages, etc… are more elaborated constructs.
Constructs gain social value through conversation and consensus. They are always falsifiable in POPPER's sense.
See also
Ontological skepticism.