The Construction of Reality

by Michael A. Arbib, Mary B. Hesse

In this book, Michael Arbib, a researcher in artificial intelligence and brain theory, joins forces with Mary Hesse, a philosopher of science, to present an integrated account of how humans "construct" reality through interaction with the social and physical world around them. The book is a major expansion of the Gifford Lectures delivered by the authors at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1983. The authors reconcile a theory of the individual's construction of reality as a network of schemas "in the head" with an account of the social construction of language, science, ideology, and religion to provide an integrated schema-theoretic view of human knowledge. The authors still find scope for lively debate, particularly in their discussion of free will and of the reality of God. The book integrates an accessible exposition of background information with a cumulative marshalling of evidence to address fundamental questions concerning human action in the world and the nature of ultimate reality.

Genres: Philosophy

300 pages, Hardcover

First published November 28, 1986

About the author

Michael A. Arbib is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, as well as a Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Southern California.

Reviews

[Jon L]

Cognitive science/brain theory meets the social sciences. The gains are potentially enormous if inconclusive; the material on how consciousness may have developed to meet the evolutionary demands of cooperation are intriguingly synthetic and a welcome departure from the computational cuteness of Doug Hofstadter & friends. Elsewhere the reconciliation between these disciplines, which meet in the middle in the High Concept of “schema,” does quite a bit of damage, perhaps even more than the authors intended. You gotta love a book that pokes holes in every organizing framework available to humanity—science, religion, psychology, society itself—and then throws up its hands when attempting to salvage ethics from the rhetorical wreckage. (With that said, I do agree with the authors that non-relativist morality is possible for inveterate skeptics to achieve, albeit as a series of hard-won, perpetually unresolved, and temporary agreements.) “Schema” don’t deceive so much as they tidy things up for us. I wish the book attempted to bridge more “schematic” clefts than it does—between, say, physics and biology—but that is quite a tall order for a slim volume. The authors acknowledge but never properly grapple with the inherent paradox of “schema” theory being yet another scheme, however meta. The framework is flimsy.

[Mark Wendland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly dated, but a great precursor to later writings that feature embodied knowing.