Happy to have your thorough response -- nothing like putting your
position "out there," exposing one's construct system. It does a great deal to
create the kind of arousal which inevitably accompanies construct system
change!!!
When I speak of assumptive structures, I am not limiting myself to
Kelly's formal structure. I am prompting what I believe to be a more inclusive
analysis of epistemological and ontological assumptions -- at the theory takes
to be the place of "the world" in the underpinning of the theoretical
propositions,; and what the theorist assumes to be the ways in which we can
"interact with that world."
I am a deep admirer of Stephen Pepper. I regard his work, WORLD
HYPOSTHESES to be one of the most important works of the great philosophers.
[More crossover!!!!]. I had the most fortunate opportunity to give my office
over to Professor Pepper, one day a week, when he came in to teach a course at
Santa Cruz, where I enjoyed the semester of collaboration with Theodore Sarbin
[More crossover????]. My first book publishing effort [an effort to link PCP
to the burdgeioning cognitive science literature of that era] came out while I
was at SC, and Pepper took the volume home with him. When he returned to SC
the next week, I found myself quite pleased when he remarked, "Quite
contextualist, definitely."
When I refer to *basic assumptive structures* I refer to the kinds of
foundations which underlie the propositions which Kelly offers, such that a
fine mind such as Pepper's can recognize and categorize them.
I see those assumptions in Kelly as a set of assumptions which one can
find to differ very much from the assumptive structure which underlies Jung.
I continue to hold the view that there is little gain from attempting
to forge links between theories which are based on incompatible basic
foundational assumptions.
Jim Mancuso
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