Science & Education 9: 615620, 2000.

615
2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

A Reply to Davson-Galle

JIM GARRISON
Virginia Tech, 400B WMH, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0313, USA

I urge readers to compare my original paper with Davson-Galles response. There

I was speaking of the constructivism of Ernst Von Glasersfeld.1 In that paper I
claimed, It is a peculiarly subjectivist form of constructivism that should not be
attractive to science and mathematics education concerned with retaining some sort
of realism that leaves room for objectivity. My position remains unchanged, so I
will only say the same things somewhat differently. Our papers are so far apart
they almost define the continuum of constructivism. I suspect that most science
educators and scientists, including those who do not care for constructivism, come
closer on the continuum to my Deweyan position.
My paper sought to eliminate unnecessary mentalistic entities, specifically,
those of the kind found on the level of reflective abstraction in Piaget (see Gar-
rison 1997, p. 546). There are mentalistic predicates for the Deweyan, but they are
naturalistic in their social construction. Davson-Galle states, In so far as I follow
Garrison, he seems to construct subjectivism as being committed to some sort of
non-corporealism about the mind. Many subjectivists are so committed, but it
is the mind versus body, subject versus object, and self versus culture dualisms
that bother me most. In any case, Davson-Galle, contrary to his claims, seems
committed to all these dualsims.
First, Davson-Galle tells us, Subjective Constructivism (SuC) posits individual
agents that construct semantic and cognitive frameworks the locus of those
frameworks being within the mind. Such agents trap themselves inside their
minds. Second, given an agents perspective from within (or perhaps identity with)
his mind, there is both a semantic and an epistemic concern about how he can
manage to talk about reality external to his mind. This is the subject versus object
dualism; overcoming it established the epistemology industry that has dominated
Western thought since Descartes. Davson-Galle insists:

In the face of the futility of any hopes that any agent might have of semantic
and epistemic transcendence of her subjective realm of existence, SuC fo-
cuses inward ones conceptual schemes and frameworks of belief are to be
viewed as about ones subjective experience and, even then, an agents the-
ories are best viewed instrumentally, as ways of organizing ones experiential
616 JIM GARRISON

life such that ones various projects (excluding understanding objective reality
of course) are successfully carried out.
This position is, or strongly resembles, Subjective Idealism. Elsewhere in his pa-
per, Davson-Galle sometimes speaks as a Kantian Objective Idealist, but that does
not seem to be his position. Perhaps he is just an instrumentalist in the tradition
of logical positivism.2 Few science educators and scientists today will find this
position attractive compared to any position that defends naturalism, realism, and
objectivity.
Gathering his premises, Davson-Galle concludes:
If I have these core theses portrayed aright, then no mind/body dualism is
entailed. SuC seems rather to entail a skepticism or agnosticism about such
a non-mental realm of being. Maybe there is some such realm but, if so, it is
ineffable and thus cognitively inaccessible.
Davson-Galle overcomes the mind versus body dualism by taking a skeptical or
agnostic attitude toward the existence of the body. This is just a particular instance
of his overcoming the subject versus object distinction by taking a skeptical or
agnostic attitude toward the existence of an external natural world. This stance is
subjective idealism, or some such, which is well on its way to becoming solipsism.
Davson-Galle seeks the view from nowhere where the mind subsists in some su-
pernal realm outside natural space and time. I urge a thoroughgoing naturalism that
leaves an embodied knower within the reality of natural existence. When we live in
the natural world, we realize that there are existences external to our individual ex-
istence (food, water, and other persons) that are nonetheless internal to our healthy
functioning.
Davson-Galle concedes that if there is such a naturalistic reality we are, as
Garrison would urge, ontologically continuous with it. Nonetheless, he concludes,
An agents mere ontological continuity with protons and pulsars and pond slime
doesnt of itself make them knowable or even effable by the bit of such reality
that is that agent. Well, actually, if we are continuous with what is knowable we
may avoid Davson-Galles neo-Cartesian radical skepticism and agnosticism about
the existence of the external natural world so necessary to our internal function-
ing, and that is a good start. We may also overcome the dualisms that alienate us
from the world, including our own bodies (self-alienation), and that is considerable
progress. Finally, if human nature is continuous with the rest of nature it helps us
understand that we have other than merely cognitive relations with existence, even
when nature is cognitively inaccessible.
In my original paper, I suggested that we eschew intellectualism. This is the
belief that our only relation with the wider world of events is cognitive, or what
Davson-Galle calls a semantic and an epistemic concern regarding the reference
of our terms. It is that, of course, but it is much more. If we did not have other than
cognitive relations with the natural world, knowledge alone would have no context
to give it meaning. There are things we have and are anoetically, or noetically
A REPLY TO DAVSON-GALLE 617

only in the vaguest qualitative ways, such as when we are ill and have a fever.
Knowledge helps us know we are sick because we have the flu; further knowledge
helps us know how to cure it. The quest for knowledge, in this case, begins with
immediate bodily states, with what we have and are, but it ends with knowledge
instrumental to enhancing what we have and are. Inquiry, including inquiry into the
nature of pulsars and pond slime always has a larger existential context, although
the inquiry itself may become its own aesthetic pleasure. I have an astronomy minor
as part of my undergraduate degree in physics, yet I still look up at the night sky
in anoetic wonder. We frequently feel the mystery of existence, often in embodied
ways, before we think it. That feeling led me to seek a degree in physics. I believe it
is that same feeling that led others to knowledge of pulsars, or into teaching about
them. It is an expression of natural piety to seek a more intimate connection with
the rest of nature including other minds, and, yes, bodies.
Davson-Galle portrays a picture of human beings as skeptical spectators of a
drama playing itself out upon a distant stage. Social constructivists such as Dewey
think that human nature is a part of nature. Neo-Darwinians, such as Dewey,
think nature is still evolving and that homo sapiens co-evolve along with every
other event in nature.3
When two natural events transact, the already actual in the first event actualizes
the potential in the consequent event, and conversely. Ontology in scientific in-
quiry is the consequence of such transactions. These transactions involve symbolic,
semantic, and concrete experimental operations. Ontology, facts, etc. are the con-
structed products of the process of inquiry, of our transactions with other events.4
It is a mistake to confuse the contingent products of the process with necessary
antecedent conditions.
Instead of a dualism between mind and body or subject and object we need
to make a distinction between existence and essence. Language, meaning, is the
bridge between existence and essence. Logical essences are the product of the
creative process of inquiry. Existence is like the naturally occurring grape.5 Lan-
guage is like grape juice. Inquiry and logic is like wine, the distilled import, the
essence, of the grape. Existence, reality, or nature exists independent of human
affairs and constrains our inquiries, but does not entirely determine them. The
meaning and essence of existence is constructed to serve socially shared needs,
desires, and purposes. The social constructivist thinks all meanings are socially
constructed, although once an individual has these meanings they may recon-
struct them in uniquely creative ways. For social constructivists, the mind itself
emerges from participating in transactions with the environment, especially the
social environment.
Language and inquiry are instruments, tools for making meaning and creating
essences. Existence is real, but so too are the tools just as grapes and the grape
press are real. Deweyans find the realism/instrumentalism debate uninteresting.
Davson-Galle thinks it is serious because he is partial to the instrumentalism of
logical positivism. How he thinks pragmatic goals are as well served by falsehood
618 JIM GARRISON

as by truth, I have no clue. We may critique our goals, our values, and argue that
someone has misidentified our needs, or the interests and purposes that contribute
to human flourishing, but that is to enter upon value critique. We must require
those who claim their needs, interests and purposes have happy consequences
to submit them to experimental testing. If the consequences prove sanguine, we
should continue on cautiously. It is here that history, including the history of sci-
ence and mathematics, is especially useful. There is no value versus fact dualism,
so experimental transactions that fix facts and essence are immensely important;
facts alone, though, do not decide value questions. The fact of the matter is that
millions of children around the world go to school every day without good health
care, but my values say that leads to a tragic waste of human potential. I wish more
governments would test this contingent hypothesis by instituting universal health
care for those of all ages, but I could be wrong.
Ontological continuity, as Davson-Galle calls it, is necessary because it puts
the worker within the world she seeks to construct. It allows her to gather materials
and refine them for her purposes, but it also puts her into contact with other persons
that construct meanings differently. That is where good scientific and value critique
begins.
The word species is the Latin for the ancient Greek word eidos or essence.
Approximately 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. In a
Darwinian world, when existences carry out transactions, things change. In such
a world, knowers and the known are constantly changing. In fact, their transactions
with each other are among the sources of change. Constructivism honors this in-
sight by admitting that meaning is constructed in our natural transactions with the
rest of existence, and the rest of existence is sometimes transformed in our relations
to it. We will never complete the quest for certainty in a contingent, ever-evolving
world. That does not mean we may not construct meanings, essences, and well
warranted truths that, like some species, endure for eons.
Davson-Galles complains that I fail to take on board the full import of Quines
indeterminacy thesis. Consequently, he claims my use of Ockhams razor is
flawed because I am the one that multiplies entities. Let me restate the principle;
it says that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity (Garrison 1997,
p. 543). This time I added emphasis to point out what Davson-Galle did not get.
It is always possible to multiply entities ad infinitum. The question is not, can
we multiply entities? Of course we can, Davson-Galle shows how, but that is the
problem. Ockham merely urged us not to multiply them beyond necessity, thereby
confusing things beyond necessity, constructing alienating dualisms that are not
necessary, and unnecessarily becoming solipsistic idealists or logical positivists. I
believe we live in an infinitely complex universe with infinite creative possibilities.
I do not believe that every possibility contributes to human prosperity; some, upon
experimentation, will prove to have evil consequences. In my paper I claimed,
Constructivism does not need the horde of psychic and mentalistic entities postu-
lated by subjectivist constructivism (Garrison 1997, p. 543). I thank Davson-Galle
A REPLY TO DAVSON-GALLE 619

for providing so many good illustrations of just why they are neither necessary nor
desirable.
Let me mention that Quine himself is renowned for applying Ockhams razor.
One of his most quoted quips comes from an observation regarding the Platonic
riddle that non-being must in some sense be. Quine (1953) responds, This
tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Platos beard; historically it has proved
tough, frequently dulling the edge of Ockhams razor (p. 2). I do not believe
psychic entities of the kind described by subjectivist exist. I know that experience
is so underdetermined that many can designate their experience using that kind
of discourse; I think it is a mistake. Generally, what Quine urges is ontological
expediency wherein, The expedient is an application, in a local or relative way,
of Ockhams razor; the entities concerned in a particular discourse are reduced
from many . . . to one where possible for our purposes (p. 70). In logical practice,
Quine uses Ockhams razor to eliminate modal logics with their intensional con-
cepts. I happen to think he is wrong about these. We do need them. Upon further
examination, Quines arguments, or someone elses, may some day convince me
otherwise. If that ever happens, I will recommend shaving intensions off too. Of
course I would say the same for subjectivist constructivism. Knowing that we can
multiply entities ad infinitum is not incompatible with the application of Ockhams
razor. If anything, it is more likely to help one appreciate the need for a good shave.

Notes
1 I wish Von Glasersfeld himself had responded. My disagreement with him is a family feud in
which he is the father.
2 Ernest Nagel (1961, pp. 129144) provides an excellent overview of instrumentalism. Nagel writes
that for instrumentalists a theory is held to be a rule or principle for analyzing and symbolically
representing certain materials of gross experience, and at the same time an instrument in a technique
for inferring observation statements from other such statements (p. 129). Compare this to what
Davson-Galle says about inference engines employing only observational propositions and relations
among them. Nagels list of instrumentalists includes the famous positivist, Moritz Schlick, and
Nagels teacher, Dewey. Dewey, though, completely rejected positivism. Davson-Galle lumps Dewey
with the realists against the instrumentalists, but realism may include instrumentalism.
3 I deliberately avoid saying thing or object. Wolfgang Schadewaldt explains the origin of
physis:

When we turn to the root word physis, it must first be pointed out that the Greek term is
never used, as nature now is in common speech and scientific terminology, to designate a
realm of objects. Physis is never that nature out there where people make Sunday excursion,
in which this and that occurs or this and that is such and such. Physis comes form the
Greek verb phyo, which means something like bring-forth, put forth, make to grow
. . . Moreover, the noun physis, like all Greek constructions with -sis . . . does not mean some
object or material thing, but a coming-to-pass, an event.

Deweys naturalism comes close to the original meaning of physis.

4 W.A. Suchting (1994) offers a production account of the role of knowledge in culture. This
account refuses to demarcate theory from practice and admits a preference for pluralistic and
620 JIM GARRISON

naturalistic holism. There is a great deal of overlap between his account and Deweyan construct-
ivism (See Garrison 1994). Suchting (1992) criticizes constructivism stridently, but he directs his
critique at subjectivist constructivism. What he would say about Deweyan social constructivism is
unclear. It would come down to whether he thinks existence consists of meaningful objects before
inquiry. Suchtings work clarifies the issues separating Davson-Galle and me and is readily available
to readers of this journal.
5 Because this analogy is in language, and starts with a name for the antecedent existential condition,
it is only an analogy.

References
Garrison, J.: 1997, An Alternative to von Glaserfelds Subjectivism in Science Education: Deweyan
Social Constructivism, Science & Education 6(6), 543554.
Garrison, J.: 1994, Suchtings Production Account of Science: Implications for Science Educa-
tion, Science & Education 3(1), 5768.
Nagel, E.: 1961, The Structure of Science, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York.
Schadewaldt, W.: 1979, The Concepts of Nature and Technique According to the Greeks, in Paul
T. Durbin (ed.), Research In Philosophy & Technology, JAI Press Inc, Greenwich, CN.
Suchting, W.A.: 1994, Notes on the Cultural Significance of the Sciences, Science & Education
3(1), 156.
Suchting, W.A.: 1992, Constructivism Deconstructed, Science & Education 1(3), 223254.