Wow, there is so much in here that I could respond to, I'm not sure how this will turn out. I may just jump from point to point and make very little overall sense, or I might just zero in on one idea and forget all the others. We'll all know in about five minutes. I have recently become interested in the notion that positivism is one type of epistemology, that it is the dominant epistemology of our society but by all means not the only way of knowing something. This was starting to become clear to me this spring in a course I took at Boston College on teacher research. The very notion of teacher research equally rejects and is rejected by those looking for 'the answers' in a positivistic sense. It took months, I must confess, to begin seeing the value in this type of research. But it was when I realized—no, I was told, I'll admit—that the goal of teacher research was “insight, not proof,” that I started to see the type of hold a positivistic mindset had had on me—and I considered myself to be pretty contrarian. Guess not. In light of this type of reconsidering of how we know what we know (aka epistemology) over the past few months, it is interesting to read more about the “cognitive revolution” in Bruner's book. I had known some of the pieces and major players, but I don't think I ever realized the historical context. Last semester, I had been pontificating about how the ten psychology experiments we read about in Opening Skinner's Box had reflected a notion that our 1960's collective ethic was essentially utilitarian—in that it seemed much more tolerable then for the few to suffer if it could benefit the many—whereas since then, it seems that we have taken a much more phenomenological or humanistic turn—we generally consider the individual's experience much more in deciding what is right and wrong, and we tend to think that no human suffering is permissible no matter who benefits from the outcome. I call this pontificating, but I still think it's true. After reading more specifically about the cognitive revolution, this idea makes more sense to me. I had used the language that the 'revolutions' of the sixties had paved the way for this new communal ethics, but I had been thinking of the social revolutions, not a scientific one. But it makes more sense now, and it is interesting to think about how such abstract, esoteric branches of knowledge can indeed have major societal impacts, even if unconscious ones.
I also appreciate how Bruner rejects the claim that this post-revolution way of thinking—this phenomenology as I call it—is overly relativistic. I too think that this is a deeply troubling claim. The idea of pure relativism opens the door for brutal dehumanization—the very opposite of what the phenomenologists wants. But how do you know 'when to say when'? Bruner takes this question head-on, and if I could only remember what he said, this would be a great response! Hold on... Okay, he talks about how, first, this notion of relativism—that anything goes if you believe it—is probably not a notion that anyone seriously holds, but that it is more of a criticism made from the more positivist camp toward the more constructivist camp. He points out that the construtivist/pragmatics/phenomenological camp simply asks the question, “How does this view affect my view of the world or my commitments to it” and that that questions does not need to lead to an anything-goes type of mentality. (I realize that I have yet to make sense...). What it does lead to is an “unpacking of assumptions,” and this is where I think Bruner does a nice job of countering the accusation of relativism. Along with the notion positivism, as with any blanket epistemological claim, comes a whole knapsack full of assumptions. And part of breaking free from this mindset entails tirelessly examining these assumptions... and the ones left over after that examination... and the ones left over after that examination, etc. So what I see Bruner doing here is countering this claim of relativism with the insight that all the constructivst camp does is ask questions about the certainty of positivism, of itself, etc., but it does not simply accept any notion of truth as just as valid as any other (say, Caligula's notion of truth compared to Gandhi's). That would be relativism.
So an important theme that I see emerging so far is this idea that in the post-cognitive-revolution, there has been a backlash against the more constructivist perspective that it is too easy on any old system of truth, but that this is merely an accusations. There deeper theme seems to be this last notion of unpacking assumptions as the true answer to blind positivism, no matter what you call it. When you proceed with unquestioned assumptions, you are bound to find the answers laced with bias and prejudice, no matter how pure you deem your process to be, no matter how lily white the lab coat. Only by a rigor process of unpacking assumptions can any genuine type of reality be reveal that is not a pure reflections of the very hypothesis you had hoped to find in the first place.
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