Singular Distinctions

Just finished reading The Certainty of Uncertainty by Bernhard Poerksen and it was a very good read on Constructivism, ie. the only thing that seems certain is uncertainty as the title implies.

In the first chapter, Poerksen interviews Heinz von Foerster  who’s opinion I probably like the most. Anyway worth a read in my view and a great find for me as I have been re-constructing for the last 33 years and only learned by reading this book that I could be called a constructivist.

So, Von Foerster suggests that the observer views the world through the lenses of distinctions such as right/wrong, good/bad, calm/angry, logic/illogical, reason/unreason or agree/disagree, etc etc. These are usually called dichotomies.

It seems to me that a way around this issue of polar views or distinctions and the conflict they can cause through dogma and absolute thinking, is by constructing a singular view.

We can do this by using right/not right, good/not good, calm/not calm, logic/non logic, reason/non reason or agree/not agree.This is just a slight tweak of the use of our language and thinking. With right, good, calm, logic, reason and agree being the object or absolutes or objective, that we presume or assume may exist, however are unknown to us as the subject or observer or subjective.

So, we are all in the state of not good, not right, not calm, non logic, non reason and not agree, but to different levels obviously, and we can use conversation for continually making sure where those level lie and letting our “non logic” stand to “non reason” for now…..maybe.