R eaders of my blog might be aware that I appreciate the nuances of cybernetic constructivism. Cybernetic constructivism rejects the idea that we have access to an objective reality. It doesn’t deny that there’s an external reality independent of an observer. However, we don’t have direct access to it. Additionally, the external world is more complex than us. As part of staying viable, we construct a version of reality that’s unique to our interpretative framework. This takes place in a social realm, and error corrections happen because the construction occurs in that realm.

Heinz von Foerster, the Socrates of cybernetics, formulated two imperatives that provide insight into this framework. The first is the ethical imperative that states, “Act so as to increase the number of choices.” The second is the aesthetical imperative that states, “If you desire to see, learn how to act.”

I welcome the reader to check out previous posts on these concepts. This worldview supports pluralism, the idea that there can be multiple valid versions of reality. This emerges primarily because the external world, being more complex than our cognitive apparatus, prompts us to maintain viability by constructing particular versions of reality rather than accessing reality directly.

Common mischaracterizations

A primary criticism I encounter involves misrepresenting this worldview as relativism or solipsism. Critics suggest that acknowledging multiple perspectives means that anything goes, or that nothing is shared between observers. This represents a caricature rather than a substantive critique.

Precision is necessary here. Some forms of relativism claim that all views are equally valid, including contradictory ones. In that model, if claim A asserts “only A is valid,” then relativism must also treat that assertion as valid. It has no mechanism for comparison or critique. The result is a flattening of all claims into mere equivalence, where strength, coherence, or context carry no weight.

Solipsism advances an even more extreme position. It claims that only one’s own mind is knowable, denying shared reality altogether. It discards the very possibility of meaningful intersubjectivity. No systems thinker, and certainly no pluralist, takes this position seriously.

Pluralism as a distinct position

Pluralism is neither relativism nor solipsism. It doesn’t claim that all views are valid. Rather, it asserts that no view is valid by default. Pluralism insists that perspectives must be made visible, situated in context, and evaluated through dialogue. It resists automatic authority, including authority derived from its own assertions.

Consider what objectivism accomplishes by contrast. It selects a single claim and declares that only this claim is valid, while all others are not. But on what basis does it make this selection? Often, no external justification is offered. The grounding remains internal, context-bound, or inherited, yet it’s presented as if it were neutral, universal, and self-evident.

This selection process reveals a potential arbitrariness of objectivist claims. The view appears arbitrary because its assumptions may remain hidden from examination. Without transparent justification for why one view should be privileged, objectivism risks the appearance of arbitrariness. What presents itself as necessity might simply be preference in disguise. From a pluralist standpoint, this represents concealment rather than clarity.

The paradox of objectivist authority

Paradoxically, this form of objectivism begins to mirror the very relativism it claims to oppose. Relativism declares that all claims are valid, including any particular claim A. Objectivism declares that only claim A is valid while offering no method to interrogate why this should be so. Each approach shuts down evaluation through different mechanisms. Relativism dissolves differences into sameness. Objectivism excludes all but one view from consideration at the outset.

This dynamic reveals what objectivism risks becoming—not solipsism in the strict philosophical sense, but functional solipsism. When a worldview refuses to acknowledge its own perspective and denies legitimacy to all others, it ceases to see the world. It sees only itself, reflected and reinforced. This represents the erasure of other ways of seeing under the illusion that one’s own interpretative lens is the world itself.

The hidden nature of objectivist claims

The danger of objectivism lies in its method: selecting a single view, designating it as truth, and treating alternatives as error, noise, or confusion. It dresses up a personal, historical, and situated position as universal and eternal. This approach isn’t more objective than pluralism. It’s simply better concealed.

Frameworks that prioritize ontology over epistemology tend to overlook the epistemic humility that characterizes pluralism. When we claim to know what reality is before examining how we come to know it, we bypass the very process of inquiry that might reveal the limitations and situatedness of our perspective. This ontological presumption becomes particularly problematic when it denies its own epistemological foundations.

Pluralism does not collapse into solipsism. Objectivism risks this collapse precisely when it denies that it operates from a particular perspective. The refusal to acknowledge one’s interpretative framework doesn’t eliminate that framework. It merely renders it invisible to examination.

Pluralism isn’t weakness, indecision, or relativistic drift. It represents a disciplined humility and a refusal to collapse complexity into certainty prematurely. It doesn’t reject standards but demands that they be made visible, questioned, and held accountable to the context in which they arise.

Pluralism increases the space for dialogue, choice, and possibility. It reminds us that what we don’t question becomes invisible, not because it’s true but because it hides within the taken-for-granted assumptions of our frameworks.

In a world increasingly polarized between loud certainties and quiet disillusionment, pluralism offers something increasingly rare: the courage to remain open, to ask how we know what we claim to know, and to stay in conversation with perspectives we might otherwise reject.

Final words

Not everything is permissible under pluralism. But no single view should escape questioning. The cybernetic constructivist position maintains that our constructions of reality emerge from our particular biological, cognitive, and social constraints. These constructions prove viable not because they correspond to an objective reality we can’t access, but because they enable us to navigate the complexity we encounter.

I’ll finish with a quote from von Foerster:

“Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.”

The task before us isn’t to eliminate the observer but to acknowledge the observer’s role in every observation. This acknowledgment doesn’t lead to relativism or solipsism. It leads to a more rigorous understanding of how knowledge emerges from the interaction between observer and observed within particular contexts and constraints.

Published June 21, 2025, in Harish Jose’s blog.