Talk:Social constructionism

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In postmodern philosophy...

"In postmodern philosophy, social constructionism is the position that knowledge, including knowledge of reality, is socially constructed; in its extreme form, that there is no such thing as objective reality to know about (or that objective reality is philosophically unknowable)." This statement can't be quite right. The claim that all knowledge is socially constructed does not lead to the conclusion that nothing can be known of objective reality. The statement would have to be something like, "social constructions are never accurate representations of reality." But, this could never be proven without actually testing them for accuracy as is done in the sciences. Since all philosophy must, by assumption, be composed of social constructions, the reality of social constructions must be similarly addressed. Thus we conclude that the very idea of social construction is a social construct and not based on reality that is philosophically knowable.Ariel31459 (talk) 17:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

That's a good point, unfortunate that it'll be lost due to the server thing. Christopher (talk) 17:53, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I see. When I google "the server thing," I get: Things Restaurant Servers Do Wrong - Service Industry Tips - Thrillist. So, no jellyfish omelette?Ariel31459 (talk) 19:01, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

"The server thing" refers to a temporary mediawiki upgrade Tim Starling is installing, it means all contributions and logs from a certain period will be lost. Christopher (talk) 19:06, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Very inobservent of me.Ariel31459 (talk) 22:56, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

The problem as I see it is that it's either trivially true or obvious nonsense based on how far it is taken. Obviously, humans use mostly language to communicate; even mathematics is a special form of symbolic language. While all of this is constructed socially -- unsurprising, since the main thing human brains were built for is networking in human societies, and everything else we do with them is related by metaphor to the original function -- it works well enough that we're able to communicate working models of reality to the neighbors. They can test the models without paying much attention to the metaphors. The woo comes in when various extremist ideologues appear and announce that because all our communication revolves around images and metaphors, this makes it somehow suspect. You end up with claims like 'science is bad because it privileges the patriarchal phallus' or similar gibberish. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 22:04, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

"Constructionists view knowledge and truth as created not discovered by the mind (Schwandt 2003) and supports the view that being a realist is not inconsistent with being a constructionist," (http://groundedtheoryreview.com/2012/06/01/what-is-social-constructionism/). This is a very fine hair being split. The distinction between created and discovered melts away when you consider the model of the world ones mind creates, through its development and maturity, produces the ground for discovery. It is, perhaps, the principal artifact of human individuality. The fact that some people possess damaged, relatively incomplete, or ideologically altered models, does not justify discarding classical schema for epistemology.Ariel31459 (talk) 22:56, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

And the much more interesting question involves the frameworks first noted by Kant, the unlearned content human brains come pre-equipped with. Binocular vision is not a social construction, for instance. No one had to teach you how to use the parallax of your two eyes for depth perception. Language itself is a brain module. It emerged at a specific point in evolution, and when it does things like decorative art appear in the archeological record. Parents of more than one child know that human personalities come preset, and are unalterable (often, despite their wishes) and consistent from infancy to adulthood. Human sexualities emerge later, but again, they're innate and biochemically determined. These facts are more interesting to me than the social constructions. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 03:16, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Alternate introduction.

I suggest replacing the intro with

In postmodern philosophy, social constructionism is the position that knowledge, including knowledge of reality, is socially constructed and in its extreme form it proposes there is no objective reality, or objective reality is philosophically unknowable. Instead, there are only social constructs which are classified as knowledge of reality. The hypothesis, in general, asserts that even scientific knowledge affords some degree of social construction because all human activity must be understood through social constructs. The strict social constructionist view tends to be incoherent. youtube link, wikipedia link Ariel31459 (talk) 23:00, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Thinking a YouTube video constitutes a reference suitable for an article intro suggests you should leave this article alone - David Gerard (talk) 14:28, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Thinking Noam Chomsky's opinions are unsuitable as a reference because they are found on YouTube suggests a stunning lack of self awareness on your part. If you don't like my intro alternative, perhaps rewrite another one yourself. Listen: I'm not going to cry or complain about you throwing your weight around, because I really would just like to improve the article. Also, for what it's worth, I didn't notice that you are the originator. Ariel31459 (talk) 19:09, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

These things used to start with witty quotes

Where did it go? 71.105.217.212 (talk) 18:32, 6 July 2019 (UTC)-Krashlia

Social Constructionism vs Social Constructivism

Which of these two ideas does this page discuss, and why don't we have two pages like Wikipedia does here and here? ^{— Unsigned, by: Th3j4ck4l / talk / contribs}

Quantum mechanics

Many objections to science come from excesses of social constructionism. For example, scientific racism has generated lots of studies that just happen to have concurred with whatever popular prejudice was at the time of writing. While the extreme social-constructionist position is ridiculous (though it exists, for example, in much of New Age thought), scientists are human and therefore full of shit, and the science they come up with can, if unchecked, carry ridiculous amounts of entirely local cultural baggage. In the course of time, sciences tend to get less constructed and more objective;[9] the really successful scientific models, like evolution or quantum mechanics, are truly alien to common human thinking and may transcend cultural boundaries (but also find strong resistance from cultural constructs such as creationism or relativity denial).

I've found an example of a physicist providing an argument that the knowledge garnered from quantum mechanics is itself socially constructed: here. She cites Niels Bohr's interpretation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that it's meaningless to talk about whether a particle has momentum or location before it's been measured. In reality, all we have is the measurement. It doesn't tell us anything about the nature of the particle itself. Only that an interaction has taken place, the object being measured and the observer measuring the observation are "co-creating" the observation. Science describes measurements, not reality itself. I honestly get the feeling that whoever wrote this section has never read any argument by any social constructivist whatsoever. The above section, that "one can accept the basic premises of the strong version but to argue that the consequences are either trivial or incoherent" seems like a stronger criticism than the one below it, which just reeks of misunderstanding the strong social constructivist position. I'm gonna remove it. Carthage (talk) 14:35, 7 October 2024 (UTC)