ABSTRACT
Now that radical constructivism has been paid the high compliment of being debunked, but, not being bunk, will not go away, it may be useful to try to improve upon it; hence this attempt at constructive criticism, some of which is radical (see Suchting, 1992, pp. 223-54). Radical constructivism holds that one constructs one's own notion of the world in accordance with a confluence of genetic and evolutionary epistemologies (Piaget, 1950; Campbell, 1974; and see Rav, 1993). One of the most important consequences of this fact is that all one can claim for one's world notion is viability, more in keeping with evolving evolutionary than with genetic epistemology (Varela et al., 1991). Being grateful to von Glasersfeld for having pointed out to me what I now accept, I have no desire to attack radical constructivism. There are, however, three ways in which I fInd it seriously, even radically, defICient, and I want in this chapter to set them out in the hope that my doing so will be some use where I, and apparently von Glasersfeld, care most about usefulness, in education. These defIciencies are a lack of due emphasis on the construction of the self, whether over against the world or as a part of it, the denial of the possibility of knowledge of the world, and von Glasersfeld's ignoring of the massive social assistance in one's construction of one's notion of the world. The latter two of these defIciencies have considerable importance for education, and that is my reason for airing my criticisms in this place.
