I am not particularly fond of ontological questions in philosophy, but I would like to clear up a misunderstanding surrounding so-called “radical constructivism,” and in order to do so, I have to refer to an ontological perspective.
Ontology has always concerned itself with the question of what exists and what does not.
I have a thesis to contribute which may sound audacious at first, but which is based on scientific principles.
The core of the thesis is this: Some of the things we believe ourselves to be observing do not exist.
The reason is that they are perspectival misconceptions. Some are simply ruled out by physics; others are merely misrepresentations produced by the particular perspective of our minds.
My most important object of consideration is a beam of light emitted by a laser.
If I move a laser pointer faster than 44.7° per second, assuming a rotational motion, I could produce a spot of light on the Moon that moves faster than light.
Since nothing can move faster than light, the consequence is this:
The spot of light I observe does not exist.
Ultimately, this simply means that the spot of light is not an entity.
The apparent unity of the light spot is a construct of our minds. We attribute an existence of its own to it, but in reality there are only individual photons raining down on the lunar surface. None of these photons has moved faster than light.
The superluminal motion of the light spot results from an attribution that we make: namely, the attribution that the point, or spot, is a “thing” - something that can be considered in its own right and treated as a whole.
Ultimately, the same applies to the laser beam itself. The spot of light is merely its endpoint. Depending on the speed of rotation, beyond a certain distance the beam itself would appear to move faster than light. But this is physically impossible. Ergo: the laser beam has no self-contained existence of its own. Only the individual photons exist.
The same is true of shadows. A shadow is the non-existence of photons.
To assert the existence of darkness is like dividing by zero:
How many times do zero photons exist at a given point of complete darkness?
The quantity of zero photons exists infinitely many times at every point in the darkness, if one insists on putting it that way. The calculation is meaningless - not incorrect, but meaningless.
Darkness is not a thing and not an entity, and as such it does not exist.
The same, in this sense, applies to the future.
By definition, the future cannot exist, because it cannot exist in the here and now.
I know there are arguments according to which the future, in some faraway galaxy, already exists because of relativistic effects, depending on the direction in which I am moving.
But these are fallacies. In such arguments, physicists use our language for something that language was simply not designed to express. In the same way, one cannot simply draw a hat and then claim that it is a hat. It will never be a hat; it will always only be the image of a hat.
Such semantic pitfalls are readily ignored by physicists when they claim that the future exists, using the present tense like a child innocently playing with a real, loaded gun.
Very few physicists who use the word “exist” in such a context have ever used the word “ontology,” yet they speak about “existence” like a child playing with a real weapon.
There is therefore no need to be overly impressed when cosmologists claim that the future or the past somehow exists in an immutable way.
What does all of this have to do with constructivism?
It provides one possible point of entry for understanding that our brains are constantly making attributions and declaring apparent things to be entities. These attributions are constructs that lead to a distorted perspective.
The misunderstanding is this: It is often claimed that the constructivist denies the existence of reality. That is a recklessly reductive characterization.
The constructivist sees the laser beam just as we do, and they will not deny that this phenomenon exists. But for them, the beam’s status as an entity is an illusion.
Likewise, they acknowledge that the stage we call reality exists. But for them, the attribute “reality” is an illusion.
The construct of reality is so saturated with erroneous implications that it could serve as a good example of Maya - the veil that prevents us from seeing things as they truly are.
