The Middle Way and Conventional Reality:

Spencer A. McWilliams

California State University, San Marcos

Paper presented at the XVIth International Congress on Personal Construct Psychology

Columbus, Ohio, July 2005.

Revised version published as:      McWilliams, S. A. (2009).  Interdependence, essence, and conventional reality: Middle way Buddhist and constructivist perspectives.  In L. M. Leitner & J. C. Thomas (Eds.).  Personal constructivism: Theory and applications (pp. 365-383).  New York: Pace University Press.

The question of the relationship between human experience and beliefs and ultimate reality has an extensive history in philosophy and psychology.  Philosophers have long debated the question of whether we may regard our phenomenal experience, as perceived through our senses and reflected upon rationally, as bearing a relationship to something that might exist independently of the senses.  Although not represented by a single point of view, in general, constructivist approaches to psychology propose that humans create meaning from their phenomenal experience, rather than that meaning or theories exist in the universe on their own.  Constructivist approaches tend to adopt philosophical assumptions suggesting that, whether or not we believe the existence of a permanent reality independent of human experience, human knowledge does not reflect an independent reality but rather consists of human-constructed ideas and beliefs that serve to organize phenomenal experience and lead to predictions of future events. 

I aim to explore some of these constructivist concepts by briefly relating them to historical philosophical discussions, noting some of the current views within constructivist psychology, and then proposing that similar and convivial views in Buddhist psychology and philosophy might prove useful in explicating some implications of constructivism and their application to addressing human concerns. 

Philosophical Contexts

The long history of debate on this topic includes a wide and complex variety of perspectives.  At the risk of gross oversimplification, we might view the essential elements of the debate along a dimension with realism, the belief in the existence of an independent reality that our knowledge represents and reflects, at one pole and contrast it with a variety of terms that might occupy the other pole, such as nominalism, idealism, nihilism, or solipsism, which, in a variety of ways, hold that nothing exists apart from our conscious experience and our ideas and beliefs about it. A good deal of discussion has focused on attempts to identify a perspective that avoids the extreme of each of these poles.  Further, we can see the debate as addressing both questions of ontology (what actually exists) and epistemology (what can we know and how can we know it). 

Western philosophers have addressed the issues since at least the Ancient Greeks (Hergenhahn, 2005), and many have articulated a view compatible with that of constructivists.  Heraclitus viewed phenomena as constantly changing and questioned how we could possibly know something that changes.  The Sophists saw truth as a function of the perceiver, culturally and personally determined, and viewed words as descriptions of beliefs rather than reality.  The Skeptics could find no reliable way to choose among competing claims of truth and showed that in order to say that knowledge was final we would have to be able to compare it with an independent picture of reality that did not require human participation, which they saw as impossible.  Both the Sophists and the Skeptics emphasized conventional ways of describing our experience and the importance of communication skills in persuading others of the validity of our views. 

Many centuries later (Hergenhahn, 2005), Peter Abelard discussed the fallacy of reification, our tendency to confuse words with things, and suggested that we can invent concepts to describe patterns of experience but they do not represent universal essences.  Abelard and William of Occam both emphasized how knowledge reflects our experience of similarity and recurrent patterns rather than independent essence.  Hume, agreeing with the skeptics, emphasized that we can’t know anything for certain, and that ideas and beliefs refer to recurrent patterns in our phenomenal experience.  Kant stated that humans create their ideas and concepts, which we can consider “real” for practical purposes, and emphasized that we can’t know “things” as they might be “in themselves.” 

More recently, these views have been elaborated effectively by philosophers and historians of sciences such as Popper (1982), Kuhn (1970), and Polanyi (1962), who, each in his own fashion, argue against the idea that science discovers ultimate truth and emphasize the deeply personal involvement of the human scientist in the creation of theories and beliefs.  We can see this long lineage of debate, and the tradition represented in these various perspectives, reflected and elaborated upon in recent constructivist and constructionist discussions.

Distinctions within Constructivism

Chiari and Nuzzo (1996) presented a metatheoretical differentiation among a variety of perspectives within the constructivist camp.  They also emphasized the attempt of the various constructivist approaches to overcome the extreme opposition between realism and idealism, and distinguished between two major categories of constructivism: epistemological and hermeneutic.  Epistemological constructivism holds that a reality exists external to the knower but we can never know that reality except through our invented ideas.  Hermeneutic constructivism states that we have no basis for saying that an independent reality exists at all and that all knowledge evolves from interpretation within a social context, based on language, discourse, and communication.  Raskin (2002) elaborated on these perspectives and helpfully placed a number of constructivist theorists along these and related dimensions. 

I would like to focus on two particular theories that fall within the epistemological constructivist fold.  In Kelly’s (1955) Psychology of Personal Constructs, he stated his belief in the existence of a real universe that he saw as a single integral unit with all “parts” related to each other.  He also viewed the universe as continually changing.  In his philosophy assumption, constructive alternativism, he proposed that we can construe our experience in various ways, and that we use our interpretations for making predictions or anticipating future events.  He viewed constructs as approximations, and emphasized that on one had yet invented an ultimate set of constructs that could predict everything.  Thus, he assumed “that all of our present interpretations of the universe are subject to revision or replacement.” (1955, p. 15).  Kelly did, however, suggest that, at some infinite point in the future, human beliefs and “reality” might correspond, thus indicating his belief in the existence of an independent reality and its potential knowability. 

Glaserfeld’s (1984, 1995) Radical Constructivism avoids making ontological assumptions about the nature of reality, or even its existence, emphasizing instead an epistemological perspective that focuses on how we know, rather than considering what might exist.  He views knowledge as a possession of the knower, constructed on the basis of experience, and he emphasizes how human knowledge actively creates order out of our experience, rather than describing an objectively real structured world or an order that exists independently.  Similar to Kelly, he sees the purpose of constructed knowledge as to help us make reliable predictions and that no language or belief reflects an ultimate reality.  For Glaserfeld, to the extent that our ideas and beliefs “fit” with our experience in terms of leading to validated predictions we can find that knowledge useful, and that this criterion of “fit” proves more meaningful and useful than the question of whether we can prove the “truth” of beliefs. 

Hermeneutic constructivist perspectives, as described by Chiari and Nuzzo (1996), focus on the role of human interpretation and language in creating our sense of reality.  Social constructionists, such as Gergen (1994) and Shotter (1993), emphasize how we live in a world that we humans have constructed and that we continuously reinforce our view of that world through our language usage.  We can see as central to this view the idea that the reality in which we live owes more to the intersubjectivity of our social interactions, definitions, labels, and conventions than to an objective reality that exists independently of human construction and even personal, or individual, subjective experience.  Social constructivism views concepts of self and personality as socially invented ideas rather than stable or essential characteristics with an existence of their own, emphasizing how we create these ideas out of verbal identity and conversation with others.  Raskin (2002) articulated the relativistic emphasis of social constructionism by noting its perspective on how

contextual, linguistic, and relational factors combine to determine the kinds of human beings that people will become and how their views of the world will develop. In social constructionism all knowledge is considered local and fleeting. It is negotiated between people within a given context and time frame (p. 17).  

The epistemological and hermeneutic constructivist perspectives agree that our ideas and beliefs do not reflect an objective reality, but they differ in their view regarding the utility of assuming the existence of an independent reality.  While Kelly seemed to believe in a reality perhaps eventually accessible to us, Glaserfeld remains agnostic and the social constructionists actively deny it.  The debate among these views continues to leave unresolved the desire to find a more ideal balance between realism and nihilism, and many additional questions regarding implications of constructivism for enhancing human satisfaction and liberation remain.  I suggest that adding to this discourse an additional theoretical and philosophical perspective on the topic, from Buddhist psychology, could enhance the debate and discussion on these issues, and might provide a basis for considering greater connection between the approaches of epistemological and hermeneutic constructivism. 

Middle Way Buddhist Psychology

Middle Way, or Madhyamika, a highly skeptical and analytical school of philosophy arose in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy the context of the same debate issues as described above, between realism, on the one hand, and nihilism, on the other.  This debate does not represent a completely abstract philosophical concern; it has distinct practical implications for living.  From the Buddhist perspective, treating phenomena as having ultimate reality leads to suffering and dissatisfaction because we attempt to cling to those things we desire and feel aversion to things we do not like, all the while reifying our beliefs and thus living in delusion.   Nihilism on the other hand, leaves us unable to relate effectively to our phenomenal experience or to other people.   

Madhyamika attempts to present a “middle way” between these two extremes, one that neither denies the existence of phenomenal reality nor acknowledges that we can have ultimate knowledge of reality.  Madhyamika says that phenomena (reality) exist but that the “things” we experience phenomenologically occur in interdependence with other phenomena, constantly change, and lack their own permanent personal essence.  Thus, we cannot identify any “thing” for us to know.  The only knowledge that we have is of conventional reality, the socially constructed view based on language and thought.  This perspective acknowledges the socially constructed nature of the reality in which we operate, and its utility for coordinating our activities with others and giving structure and predictability to our experience, and also acknowledges that the phenomenal world in which we live exists, enabling us to avoid the problem of solipsism and providing a basis for ethical relationships among people. 

The founding of the Middle Way school is attributed to Nagarjuna, a South Indian Buddhist scholar who lived in the first or second century of the Common Era.  The most important treatise that explicates the philosophy takes the form of a dialectical debate with a variety of other philosophical and scholarly viewpoints on the topic.  The treatise considers these various viewpoints and logically and systematically demonstrates the incoherence of any belief in the existence of independent and permanent entities possessing their own identity and essence.  Space limitations, as well as the complexities of the position and the argument, do not allow a full explication of the debate.  In the following I describe what I have come to view as the essence of the Madhyamika argument, relying primarily on Garfield’s (1995) translation and commentary of Nagarjuna’s primary text.  Garfield recognizes the long history of complex and detailed debates and disagreements among Buddhist scholars and presents the material in a manner accessible to contemporary Westerners, for which I feel a great debt of gratitude.

In the following explication I will describe two major components of the Madhyamika view.  First, I will describe the philosophical position regarding the nature of reality, which rests on three characteristics of phenomena: dependent origination or interconditioning, impermanence, and emptiness or lack of essence.  Reflexively, Nagarjuna regarded each of these three characteristics as conventional verbal concepts, themselves, dependent, impermanent, and lacking essence.  Then I will consider the Madhyamika perspective on “reality,” including the conventional view of the reality that we can know, based on language, thought, concepts, etc., as contrasted with a view of ultimate reality, which we cannot know.  I will then review some of the implications of this perspective, including the notion of self. 

Interdependence and Impermanence

Dependent origination or interconditioning refers to the observation that phenomena do not possess an independent nature.  These concepts accord well with Kelly’s (1955) assumptions of the interrelatedness of all events and their constant change.  All phenomena that we can identify or perceive exist in a relative sense, in relation to other phenomena, their parts and pieces, and depend on human interpretation for their identity.  The French psychiatrist Benoit (2004) introduced a perhaps more useful Western term, interconditioning, to refer to this concept: ‘Phenomena intercondition one another sequentially in a series of chains” (p.251).  When see events or phenomena as arising dependently on other phenomena, we observe that events we perceive as “things” depend on other things for their identity.  Composite “things” are made up of parts and gain their identity as a whole, losing that identity if they are “taken apart.”  The identification and acknowledgement of “things” requires the process of human perception and labeling for their existence. 

Let me provide an example of the interdependence of phenomena from a recent Nature (2005) program on PBS television.  Brazil nut trees produce a large, very hard, seed pod.  Spreading the seeds depends on a small mammal, the agouti, which has small, chisel-like teeth that give it the ability to gnaw open the pods to extract the nuts.  The agouti eats some nuts, but hides others.  If it forgets the hidden nuts they lie dormant waiting for conditions that allow them to germinate.  Brazil nut trees also rely on orchid bees to visit their flowers and carry nectar to pollinate them, to produce the seed pods.  The bees’ survival depends on male bees attracting mates, which requires fragrance from the pollen of a particular orchid.  Thus, the “object” we identify as the Brazil nut tree clearly depends on the agouti, the orchid bee, the orchid, and other environmental conditions for its existence.  On what ultimate basis, therefore, can we carve out the “tree” as a separate entity from these other phenomena and assign its independent identity?

The interdependence of all phenomena demonstrates that we cannot identify intrinsic “entities that persist independently with those identities over time” (Garfield, 1992, p. 102).  This important Madhyamika principle of impermanence proposes that no phenomenon has always existed in its current state and always will exist in that state or with those qualities.  By virtue of interconditioned dependence, all phenomena come into existence when the conditions that support their existence obtain and when those conditions no longer obtain the phenomena will no longer exist.  We cannot distinguish phenomena from the ever-changing conditions that lead to their temporary existence and we cannot find an essence that determines their independent identity. 

Emptiness or Essencelessness

The perspectives of interdependence and emptiness set the groundwork for the most central and challenging Madhyamika concept: emptiness.  Emptiness means that because phenomena arise dependent on other phenomena and constantly change, we cannot identify any essence or identity to a phenomenon or entity that exists independently and permanently, or that constitute the entity itself.  We cannot identify an essence that gives a phenomenon independent or inherent existence, nor can we identify an essence (in spite of the perennial search for essence in the history of philosophy).  Likewise, we cannot identify a substance that gives a phenomenon a permanent identity independently of its attributes.  Ultimately, if we attempt to analyze the identity of phenomena, Madhyamika philosophy points out that we cannot find something to point to as the thing itself. 

To state the perspective in another way, all phenomena, appearances that we experience with our senses, exist within a vast and boundless interconnected universe in which we cannot identify any “thing” independently of its context or relations with other “things” and/or which exist in a specific form on a permanent basis.  We might get the impression that this view states that “nothing” exists, but instead it proposes that “no thing” exists on its own.  As Garfield (1995) eloquently stated, “Carving out particular phenomena for explanation . . . depends more on our explanatory interests and language than on joints nature presents to us” (p. 113).  As we will see below, Madhyamika philosophy proposes that the universe, including the phenomena we experience, does indeed exist, but we cannot point to any particular entity or thing and identify it as possessing its own permanent, independent identity.  As a result, any idea that we can “know ultimate truth” about phenomena ultimately proves incoherent. 

As Western and Eastern philosophers agree, this state of affairs exists partially because of the limitations of our senses.  At a deeper level, however, even if our senses did not suffer their limitations, how can we believe that we can “know” a “truth” about phenomena if they only exist in a relative or interconditioned way, always change, and have no permanent fixed essence of their own?  Any idea that we could know “Ultimate Truth” ultimately proves totally incoherent.  What “it” could we ever possibly know when we cannot find any separate “thing” that exists on its own?

Two Views of Reality: Ultimate and Conventional

Madhyamika philosophy arrives at a position in which it cannot make any “positive assertions about the fundamental nature of things” and denies “the coherence and utility of the concept of an essence” (Garfield, 1995, p. 100).  As stated above, however, it acknowledges ordinary human assertions, as being dependent on social conventions, and sees all truth as conventional and relative.  The notion of conventional reality appears to accord well with the perspectives and concepts of social constructionism.  Fundamental to the position is a notion of “dual,” coexisting perspectives on reality: ultimate and conventional.  Garfield describes how Nagarjuna took great pain to establish that this difference is not about two separate realities but instead “a difference in the way phenomena are conceived/perceived” (1995, p. 320).  Again, we can make no positive assertions about ultimate reality; for all practical purposes nothing actually exists.  However, we can know reality conventionally, based on our experience of phenomena and our conventions about how we understand and speak about phenomena.   The identity of these two truths of ultimate and conventional reality, somewhat paradoxically, derives directly from the dependent arising and emptiness of phenomena.   

This perspective was well expressed from a Western perspective by Zen student and practitioner Alan Watts (1961):

“When Buddhist texts state that all things are falsely imagined and without reality of their own this can mean a) that the concrete physical universe does not exist, or b) that things are relative: they have no self-existence because no one thing can be designated without relation to others, and furthermore because ‘thing’ is a unit of description—not a natural entity (p. 48-49).”

 “The Buddhist principle that ‘form is void’ does not therefore mean that there are no forms.  It means that forms are inseparable from their context—that the form of a figure is also the form of its back-ground, that the form of a boundary is determined as much by what is outside as by what it inside.  The doctrine of sunyata, or voidness, asserts only that there are no self-existent forms. (Watts, 65-66).”

If the notion of “Ultimate” or “Inherent” truth proves untenable or incoherent, what can we know?  From the Madhyamika Buddhist perspective, we can know “Conventional” or “Relative” truth.  Conventional truth, similar to the constructivist and constructionist perspectives, consists of the ideas and beliefs that humans have developed, collectively and individually, to identify recurrent patterns and themes in phenomenal experience and to anticipate future events.  We can rely on conventional reality, use it to make predictions, and coordinate our activity with others.  The historical Buddha emphasized the value of following convention, choosing to go along with beliefs and perspectives that have proven useful and denying views that people in general would agree as incoherent. 

The process of developing conventional reality evolves, from the Buddhist perspective, similarly to how the constructivist perspective, particularly Kelly’s (1955) views it.  We see in our experience of phenomena, similarity and contrast, repetition of themes or patterns, and we invent word labels for the poles of the construct dimensions.  Buddhist psychology describes how the contrasting poles of constructs arise together and depend totally on each other.  Concepts such as good vs. bad, light vs. dark, up vs. down, for example, all relate to “empty” phenomena which not only do not possess these qualities inherently, but also rely on the human assessment along the contrasting dimensions for their very existence.  

The ability to gain awareness of the emptiness of phenomena and the incoherence of claims of inherent or ultimate reality requires the use of conventional language and understanding.  Thus, the very concepts of dependent origination evolve from their own dependent origination, echoing, as Chiari and Nuzzo (1996) stated, that “(t)o explain cognition and language, we must use cognition and language” (p. 175).  Reflexively applying these concepts to his own beliefs, Nagarjuna explicitly pointed out that he did not view dependence and emptiness as qualities or characteristics of phenomena but as themselves dependent and empty, conventional language and ideas.  This perspective accords well with Glaserfeld’s statements that radical constructivism itself represents a constructed point of view with no ultimate truth and Kelly’s reflexive position that constructive alternativism itself remains subject to revision and replacement. 

The Madhyamika concept of conventional reality also relates very well to constructivist perspectives on the socially and personally constructed world, including the extent to which our conventional reality serves human functions and remains subject to certain environmental, biological, and social constraints.  Glaserfeld (1995) described a variety or reasons why we cannot create just any reality we wish if we desire viable constructs.  Garfield echoes this view of the constraints on conventional knowledge and how we do not adopt totally arbitrary conventions:

They reflect our needs, our biological, psychological, perceptual, and social characteristics, as well as our languages and customs.  Given these constraints and conventions, there are indeed facts of the matter regarding empirical claims and regarding the meaning of words.  But there is no transcendent standpoint, Nagarjuna would insist, from which these conventions and constraints can be seen as justified (Garfield, 1995, p. 200).  

The Problem of Reification 

As stated earlier, Buddhist philosophy and psychology arose with a very practical aim: addressing human suffering and dissatisfaction.  Although we might find an intrinsic interest in these philosophical perspectives, we may wish to ask how this understanding is relevant to psychological issues.  What are the practical implications of the perspective that views phenomena as dependent and empty, and that we can only speak positively about a conventional, constructed reality?  The potential problem, from the Buddhist perspective, arises when we confuse the relative, dependent, impermanent, and empty conventional reality with inherent truth and ultimate reality, and come to treat our conventional beliefs and concepts as true.  As Benoit (2004) stated, “Abstract ideas which rely on a discriminating process to give them a separate identity should not be taken literally and thought of as referring to distinct entities (237).”  Once again, I turn to Garfield (1995) to explicate this issue clearly:

We are driven to reify ourselves, the objects in the world around us, and—in more abstract philosophical moods—theoretical constructs, values, and so on because of an instinctual feeling that without an intrinsically real self, an intrinsically real world, and intrinsically real values, life has no real meaning and is utterly hopeless.  (p. 317)

When we reify our constructed interpretation of our perceptions we live in a delusional world.  Further, we create suffering and dissatisfaction for ourselves and others by behaving in ways that attempt to make permanent, unchanging, independent essences out of the flow of experience, primarily because we have words for our experience and conspire to agree with each other that the “things” to which our words refer actually exist. 

Self

Amongst the various perspectives we have considered, the concept of emptiness of phenomena applies equally to the sense of self or ego (McWilliams, 2004a), which Madhyamika sees as a dependent, impermanent, empty concept.  We also, of course, have the strong tendency to reify this concept.  The person, from the perspective of Buddhist psychology, consists of parts or elements, referred to as the five skhandas (body, sensation, perception, cognition and predispositions, and consciousness), a classification very similar to that of conventional Western psychology (and the early chapters of most introductory psychology texts).  Each of these elements depends on the other, and we cannot identify any fixed, permanent essence that defines an individual or self.  The notion of a self, then, emerges as a social convention.  This perspective, of course, corresponds closely to the social constructionist view (Raskin, 2002).  Alan Watts (1961) described the socially constructed sense of self from the Zen perspective, suggesting that society creates the sense that we are independent agents and then makes us responsible for our actions.  Zen Meditation practices aim to facilitate awareness of this socially constructed process and assist the practitioner in gaining liberation from identification with the social role by seeing it as a game that has certain rules, but based on social convention and language rather than as rules of the universe. 

With the reification of phenomenal experience we also have a tendency to see the self as a “location” in which experiences occur.  Garfield (1995) describes this process in terms of the concept of “appropriation,” in which our belief in the existence of a permanent self requires that we determine a location for “my” body or “my” thoughts or “my” feelings.  Watts described how this problem arises due to the “rules” of conventional or socially constructed reality.  More specifically, the rules of language and communication require that the person must exist as the location of experience, that consciousness requires an “I” or ego who possesses the experience, that the action requires an agent.  We can see the consequences of this problem in Descartes’ overly realist and rationalist philosophy, as he reified the sense of the existence of self as necessarily deriving from having thoughts.   As Watts exclaims, “How a mere convention of syntax, that the verb must have a subject, can force itself upon perception and seem to be the logic of reality!” (p. 101)

Madhyamika philosophy, while addressing ontology and epistemology, has as its purpose and emphasis the much more practical issue of addressing human suffering and dissatisfaction.  Understanding emptiness and the relationship between ultimate and conventional reality intellectually provides a necessary foundation for the application of the theory to human life.   The full application, however, requires developing moment-to-moment awareness of how we continually reify our constructs and treat impermanent, empty phenomena as ultimately, rather than conventionally, real.  Within Buddhist philosophy and psychology, a variety of meditation techniques can be seen from a constructivist perspective as providing a vehicle for gaining awareness of thoughts and experiencing the emptiness of phenomena, with the goal of liberating the individual from dogmatic clinging to reified concepts (McWilliams, 2000, 2003, 2004b). 

Madhyamika philosophy would not espouse a clear boundary between the purely philosophical and the practical, applied emphasis on human liberation.  Nagarjuna pointed out that our desire to cling to dogmatic, reified concepts of ourselves and the world as a means of creating hope and meaning represents exactly the opposite perspective to actually reach that goal.  A reified world in which events, phenomena, and things exist just as we see and talk about them, permanently, independently, and with a fixed essence would not provide any hope for change, progress, or human action. 

But if instead we treat ourselves, others, and our values as empty, there is hope and a purpose to life.  For then, in the context of impermanence and dependence, human action and knowledge make sense, and oral and spiritual progress become possible.  It is only in the context of ultimate nonexistence that actual existence makes any sense at all (Garfield, 1995, p. 318).

Closing Remarks

I would like to propose that the Madhyamika concepts of dependence, impermanence, and emptiness, along with the corollary concept of conventional, as contrasted with inherent, reality provides a middle way between the epistemological and hermeneutic constructivism.  It agrees with the hermeneutic constructivist perspective by acknowledging that ultimate reality does not exist in any real fashion and by agreeing that the conventional reality in which we live consists of human constructions, collective and individual.   It satisfies the epistemological constructivist perspective by agreeing that we have no way of knowing ultimate reality while agreeing on the reality of phenomena and emphasizing the constructed nature of knowledge, all of which remains conventional rather than inherent or ultimate.  I hope that this brief introduction to the Madhyamika perspective might inform and support the evolution of constructivist and constructionist theory and practice, and provide stimulus for future explication and research. 

References

Benoit, H. (2004). The light of Zen in the west. Portland: Sussex Academic Press. 

Chiari, G. & Nuzzo, L.  (1996). Psychological constructivism: A metatheoretical differentiation. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 9: 163-184. 

Garfield, J. (1995).  The fundamental wisdom of the Middle Way.  New York: Oxford.

Gergen, K. J.  (1994).  Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction.  Cambridge: Harvard.

Glaserfeld, E. v. (1984). An introduction to radical constructivism.  In P. Watzlawick (Ed.). The invented reality (pp. 17-40). New York: Norton.

Glaserfeld, E. v. (1995).  Radical constructivism: A way of knowing and learning. Washington, DC: Falmer. 

Hergenhahn, B. R. (2005).  An introduction to the history of psychology (5^th ed.).  Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

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McWilliams, S. A. (2000).  Core constructs and ordinary mind Zen.  In J. W. Scheer (Ed.) The person in society: Challenges to a constructivist theory (pp. 261-271). Giessen (Germany): Psychosozial-Verlag.

McWilliams, S. A. (2003).  Belief, attachment, and awareness.  In F. Fransella (Ed.) International handbook of personal construct psychology (pp. 75-82).  London: Wiley. 

 McWilliams, S. A.  (2004a).  Constructive alternativism and self.  In J.D. Raskin & S.K. Bridges (Eds). Studies in meaning 2: Bridging the personal and social in constructivist psychology (pp. 291-309).  New York: Pace University Press.

McWilliams, S. A.  (2004b). On further reflection.  Personal Construct Theory and Practice, , 1-7. 

Nature. (2005). Deep Jungle: Monsters of the Forest.  The Amazing Brazil Nut Tree.  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/deepjungle/episode2_brazilnut.html, 9/16/05. 

Polanyi, M.  (1962).  Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy.  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 

Popper, K.  (1982).  Unended quest: An intellectual autobiography.  La Salle, IL: Open Court

Raskin, J. (2002).  Constructivism in psychology: Personal construct psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructionism.  In J. D. Raskin & S. K. Bridges (Eds.). Studies in meaning: Exploring constructivist psychology (pp. 1-25). New York: Pace

Shotter, J.  (1993). Conversational realities: Constructing life through language.  Thousand Oaks: Sage.  

Watts, A. (1961). Psychotherapy east and west.  New York: Vintage.

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