Response to the Commentaries

Louis Fourcher proposes an intriguing alternative to the dichotomy of NCR/CCR. I am less concerned with the threat of “objective idealism” than with the influence of constructivist rhetoric on psychoanalysis as illustrated in the following statement by Schwaber: “The challenge for us as analysts is . . . to come to terms with the idea that we do not know one more ‘true’ reality and that the patient’s view even about us, is as real as the one we believe about ourselves. . . . [O]ur view . . . reflects only our own psychic reality and it is neither more nor less ‘correct’ than the patient’s” (390) which I found in Rosenblatt (1997, 400). Rosenblatt documents the confusion introduced into psychoanalytic clinical theory by constructivism. The question is not whether Hoffman is “guilty” of espousing objective idealism but whether his social constructivist paradigm offers any coherent epistemological thesis.

Zucker (1993) accuses Hoffman of ignoring reality, and Hoffman (1994) persuasively rebuts this charge. What Hoffman fails to provide is a resolution of the inconsistencies resulting from his antirealist statements which hint at a radical constructivism. Hoffman (1983) says his new paradigm distinguishes radical from conservative critics of the blank screen on the basis of relativism. Without a clear definition of “relativism,” this claim is meaningless. Consequently, the NCR/CCR dichotomy is not a mere “rhetorical device,” but central to my argument. Fourcher misinterprets me as saying that scientists are different from most people because science “has access to some nonculturally relative truth.” Noncontroversial relativism applies to scientists and nonscientists alike.

A similar misunderstanding is expressed by Phillips, who thinks I believe “these influences of history and culture, etc., on our beliefs, can be recognized and discounted so that the real thing out there beyond the beliefs can be reached.” Let me try to clarify this point. When I characterize NCR as “trivial,” I mean it only in the epistemological sense, because no philosopher disputes it. The influence of a viewpoint on a person’s beliefs is of immense importance. Phillips asks what warrants that our beliefs correspond to reality if these influences cannot be discounted. The answer is argument and evidence, but the warrant is never one of certainty. The misleading impression that the NCR/CCR distinction is a narrow “strait-jacket” may result from the failure to appreciate that it deals only with the questions of what is relative and what is constructed while remaining neutral on many other epistemological controversies.

Perhaps I can illustrate this point concretely by making a series of judgments from my own viewpoint. While nobody can escape the limitations of a viewpoint, having a viewpoint is compatible with knowledge. Viewpoints both inhibit and facilitate the acquisition of knowledge. A scientific education provides access to certain kinds of knowledge, while other kinds of education yield different kinds of knowledge. To the extent that a science education includes the false theories of a given historical period, it may inhibit the acquisition of knowledge. Reading newspapers and watching television provide vast amounts of knowledge as well as the distortions of the media. Before the invention of the telescope, scientists were limited in their access to knowledge. Each new advance in the technology of observation has changed the viewpoint of the scientist with respect to accessible knowledge, including Freud’s invention of the method of free association. Since no viewpoint has privileged access to the truth, all of the preceding statements may be false.

Despite unresolved philosophical issues, most philosophers favor a correspondence theory as a definition of the nature of truth—not as a method for discovering or justifying our beliefs about the truth. We discover the truth by speculating and reasoning from information provided by our senses. Although sensory information provides a foundation for knowledge, it does not have the certainty required by Foundationalism as defined in philosophy. Coherence is of enormous importance in reaching a consensus on truth and may sometimes override purported sensory evidence. There is no certainty that we have any knowledge of reality. But if we were never right about reality, it is hard to see why belief-forming mental mechanisms would have evolved through natural selection...