1. They are as real as beans. They exist independently of us, in spite of not existing without us.
2. Our actions create, but do not dictate the mechanisms of social entities. We can influence them through action, create them through action, but mechanism is different from this.
3. Here's a way of looking at the social without taking a stance on their ontological status. We can look at how they work and characterize them, in their own terms, without going further and taking a stance on their metaphysical status (aside, of course, from their reality -- but not with respect to whether social entities are the same as physical, for instance, even if they are both real) — Moliere

(L)

I think that in philosophy it's less a matter of 'in a sense...' than it is a more determine and rigorous 'in this sense...' - where said 'sense' must be filled-in and given exact content. — StreetlightX

In my world, we'd call this "stipulative definition." Generally, a speaker can stipulate whatever they like; whether the audience follows the speaker in adopting the stipulated definition is another matter.

Neither literal nor metaphorical, concepts ought to be exemplary: they ought to exemplify their own use, their sense forged immanently along with the use to which they are put. This is true of all language, of course, but is especially important in philosophy where 'established use' carries little to no weight whatsoever. — StreetlightX

I've been puzzling over how to respond here.

You might propose a definition as a notational convenience.

You might propose a definition as an account of how a word is properly applied, the traditional "necessary and sufficient conditions" thing we've done since Socrates.

In both cases, it's expected that you can swap definiens and definiendum, so there's always a route back to ordinary usage. In the latter case, your success is measured against accepted usage.

One thing a change in vocabulary by means of stipulative definition cannot lead to is a gain in expressive power, that is, the ability to say things using the new vocabulary that you could not say before.

For instance, in the blog post you linked, there's the interesting bit at the end about seeing the "framing function" as primary and what were heretofore called "frames" as a particular instance. So there are two options here: either we add on a new literal use of "frame" so that frame now has a disjunctive definition (this is the usual way, I'd submit) or the class "frame" is redefined to be more general.

For comparison, "reboot" now has a disjunctive definition, depending on whether you're talking about electronic devices or media franchises. There's an analogy, which is what led to the new usage in the first place, but if you want a non-disjunctive definition, you'll need terms general enough to cover both cases, and that means giving up information the term used to carry.

I don't think there's any point in making a general argument for or against any way of proceeding. We do differ on the respect we're inclined to accord received usage, but I'm not sure what that amounts to.

Hmm, I want to contend that it's not 'definition' that is at issue though, although it might seem that way on first blush. After all, definitions - stipulative or otherwise - actually tell us surprisingly little about what a concept supposed to do. If one were to define a 'construct' as that which is in some manner created (as a product of artifice? of intention?), as distinct from that which is 'found' - to bring us back again to the OP - this isn't yet to invoke the term as a 'concept' proper. At this point it's just a word like any other, albeit with what may or may not be an idiosyncratic definition.

For it to function as a concept proper it needs to be linked to a problem to which it is meant to respond*. At a very generic level, to claim that say, race is a social construct, is to presumably make the concomitant claim that 'race' is not product of (only) genetics. If so, this in turn opens up a whole train of (possible) entailments: that there are institutional, cultural, economic mechanisms of 'race formation' or whathaveyou. One is then behooved to explain how those mechanisms function in order to make sense of the claim. It's around this point that the concept of the 'construct' begins to take on it's peculiar 'content'. Deleuze will thus call a concept a 'point of condensation' with respect to the various 'components' that make it up, and for which "there are only ordinate relationships [ordinal as opposed to cardinal that is, relations of order and not number -SX], not relationships of comprehension or extension."

Definitions, by contrast, make no reference to the problem to which a concept is meant to respond to; they make of concepts free-floating units of 'meaning' that, in and of themselves, involve no stakes. That is, there is a 'stake' involved in calling race a social construct; we will understand 'race' differently if we accept that it is so constructed. We will understand it differently yet if we do not. Concepts cannot be understood apart from this constallation of relations which alone give them sense, and to change one of these relations is in turn to change this constellation (think of a kaleidoscope).

*Deleuze: "All concepts are connected to problems without which they would have no meaning... concepts are only created as a function of problems".

Is a river a social construct? Note that we could flood the Nile with alcohol, it's still a river. So it's not the water. We can divert the Nile, it's still the Nile. (Hobbes)

Is it a matter of language? If so, then you would say the Nile or any other river is a social construct if you believe language is purely socially derived. Chomsky argues pretty well that this can't possibly be true. Language capability is innate. Infants at two days old can distinguish the language of their mother from a foreign language.

Is a river a social construct? Note that we could flood the Nile with alcohol, it's still a river. So it's not the water. We can divert the Nile, it's still the Nile. — Mongrel

Some rivers could be social constructions...



But I don't think it makes sense to say all rivers are social constructions.

Is it a matter of language? If so, then you would say the Nile or any other river is a social construct if you believe language is purely socially derived. Chomsky argues pretty well that this can't possibly be true. Language capability is innate. Infants at two days old can distinguish the language of their mother from a foreign language. — Mongrel

I think it is and isn't a matter of language... it seems difficult to imagine the law to exist without language. But I don't think it makes sense to say that just because the Nile is called "the Nile", and language is a social practice, to then infer that the Nile is a social construct. Then everything speakable would be a social construct -- which is something that's interesting to think about, but not really the same thing as, say, gender roles or money or laws or institutions, even if we might argue that all reality is constructed in the same way as gender roles, money, laws, or institutions.

It would be a controversial stance on what counts as a social constrct, whereas roles, money, laws, and institutions are not exactly controversial examples of social entities (even if one might not agree they are social *constructs*, but, rather, ways of talking about biological drives, human nature, or some such other entity to which they reduce the social)

But I don't think it makes sense to say all rivers are social constructions. — Moliere

The beginning of the story makes sense. The ending gets nihilistic. A river is a 'fiction on the occasion of sense' (Hume). Having noticed that (and it's a pretty common recognition among philosophical types), the next question is: what is the nature and origin of language?

A meaning as use advocate might say that a river is a social construct in the sense that it's part of social interaction where the universe is carved up according to human needs and purposes.

It would be a controversial stance on what counts as a social constrct, — Moliere

Those who are devoted to truth are never afraid of controversy.

The beginning of the story makes sense. The ending gets nihilistic. A river is a 'fiction on the occasion of sense' (Hume). — Mongrel

Which story? I'm not following what you mean by that.

I'd also say I'd much rather avoid importing Hume's definition of anything. Like, I think it makes what's already difficult to understand something more difficult rather than easier to understand. Reducing things to impressions and the vivacity of those impressions doesn't tell me much about the river. It might tell me something about human nature, which was the point of the treatise after all. And if we read the treatise as both a treatise of human nature and a treatise on knowledge and metaphysics, it might tell me something about the world too.

But this strikes me as a very round-about way to just getting to the topic at hand -- social construction, and the possibility of distinguishing it from the concrete (metaphysics) or scientific (epistemology). ((where I'm basically advocating that there's no need to do so at all, we can investigate the social without worrying about its metaphysical nature, and we can investigate the concrete or scientific without worrying about its social girding))

Having noticed that (and it's a pretty common recognition among philosophical types), the next question is: what is the nature and origin of language? A meaning as use advocate might say that a river is a social construct in the sense that it's part of social interaction where the universe is carved up according to human needs and purposes.

How do you get from Hume's phenomenology to the nature and the origin of language? I don't think I understand that at all. This feels a bit cryptic to me. Maybe your approach is naturally cryptic, so that's the intent, but I'm not quite following.

I sort of feel like debating what meaning is is going to lead us astray, too. But I'm also starting to feel like I'm repeating myself, so I'll just leave it at that.

Those who are devoted to truth are never afraid of controversy. — Mongrel

I'd say that it doesn't help to elucidate social construction if we use controversial examples. Really, in general, any sort of elucidation wouldn't use controversial examples to make a concept clear, but would go the other way around -- here is where we agree, this is what the concept means, and this is why, even though such and such seems controversial, it actually belongs.

OK.

What in tarnation are you getting at, then?

I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. Do you believe that meaning is use? Or do you have a theory of meaning?

Ah, sorry. I'm expressing where I feel confusion. And trying to show, at least, that we could avoid a lot of these sort of big questions.

I don't -- really, on either account. I don't think I could defend the notion that meaning is use, any longer. And, I don't think I could propose a better theory of linguistic meaning. What does it mean for meaning to be use, too? Perhaps there's a way of saying it that is agreeable. We can put language to use, and the use-age language is put to can show us its meaning. But I'd hazard be hesitant to say that meaning is only use. Can't language be useless, after all? And does it then lose its meaning?

And, in the end, do we even need a theory of meaning? Couldn't words just mean whatever it is they mean? Does it matter what our theory of meaning is, if we can put language to use? It seems to me that insofar that we agree words can be used then we can use them for all sorts of purposes, regardless of why they mean what they mean - to include science and social analysis.

If you aren't lactose intolerant, I think you should go get a cone of your favorite ice cream. That's the best way to avoid these big questions. :)

Haha. Well, I mean avoid it *while* still being philosophically productive. Like, all of philosophy is not reducible to talk of language.

That's true, but in some ways it's the Big Kahuna.

Is a river a social construct? — Mongrel

I'm surprised an Australian hasn't butted in. I understand that in Australia 'a river' is a slightly different thing from a Eurocentric 'river' (see this article) since Aussie rivers may be ephemeral things.

Otherwise, I have a feeling that slithy toves are gimbling in the wabes of this thread at the moment. I wonder how the borogroves are?

Some rivers could be social constructions... — Moliere

That seems an odd thing to say. A beaver constructs a dam and thereby constructs a lake and diverts the river. The Olympic Committee constructs an artificial river for the canoeing event. Such things are constructions as distinct from 'natural' lakes and rivers, and that seems like a handy distinction to make. But these are nothing like anything generally called a 'social construct'.

There is this thing called money, consisting of coins and notes which are constructed in factories called 'mints'. We have a new plastic £5 note here, and the old paper note is no longer 'legal tender'. It is still a note constructed in the mint, but its social status has been changed. Shops won't accept it and you have to take it to a bank. Compare this with the social status of skin colour.

In prisons, cigarettes and drugs become currency. You don't have to have a habit to trade.

For sure, language is a social construct. This river is called the Nile, because that's what we call it, and if we called it the Umbongo, it would be the Umbongo, but we don't. But that doesn't make the Nile/Umbongo a social construct, only "the Nile/Umbongo".

For sure, language is a social construct. This river is called the Nile, because that's what we call it, and if we called it the Umbongo, it would be the Umbongo, but we don't. But that doesn't make the Nile/Umbongo a social construct, only "the Nile/Umbongo". — unenlightened

I am not so certain on language. The river is called the Nile. If we called it the Umbongo, then it would be called the Umbongo. However I'd say the fact that we name things isn't evidence that language, which is much more than naming, is socially constructed. To understand naming one must already understand language and the sign. Naming takes place within language -- it is a linguistic move. So, certainly, if we called the nile umbongo, then the river would be called umbongo. But language would pre-exist this act of naming. Language is what gives us the ability to call the river the Nile (as well as the river the river, for that matter).

Language is an odd duck, a black swan, a chimerical beast. Language speaks man -- and we also turn it into our tool (and retool it). It's hard to categorize.

That seems an odd thing to say. A beaver constructs a dam and thereby constructs a lake and diverts the river. The Olympic Committee constructs an artificial river for the canoeing event. Such things are constructions as distinct from 'natural' lakes and rivers, and that seems like a handy distinction to make. But these are nothing like anything generally called a 'social construct'.

There is this thing called money, consisting of coins and notes which are constructed in factories called 'mints'. We have a new plastic £5 note here, and the old paper note is no longer 'legal tender'. It is still a note constructed in the mint, but its social status has been changed. Shops won't accept it and you have to take it to a bank. Compare this with the social status of skin colour.

In prisons, cigarettes and drugs become currency. You don't have to have a habit to trade. — unenlightened

Perhaps odd, but I wouldn't say nothing in common -- and what they have in common is relevant. Or at least it seems so to me. In particular, in the origins of each. Both are the product of our activities. Cigarettes and drugs become currency because we use them as such, not because of their status. They gain status in recognition of how they are used.

Simillarly, Jews were black because of how we acted towards them, collectively. Then, they become white through the mechanism of white supremacy. Similarly so for the Irish. There is the origin, how we act, and the mechanism -- in this case white supremacy. Skin color is a part of race, but race is the product of social activity and racial identity is the result of social mechanisms.

The plastic £5 note has a different status because of how its treated -- shops won't take anything but the plastic one.

What is the mechanism of money? What perpetuates money? Certainly money begins to live and breathe on its own with its inception. Especially in a world where even housing and land have a price, and we need to pay to have a place to sleep in, and we aren't given money -- however we want to describe that mechanism, its origin lies in our actions, and then it takes on a life of its own. We begin to live within it. ((I don't name capitalism here because money is older than capital, and certainly exists in economies which are not capitalistic -- I only mention the more capitalistic elements of our society to demonstrate there is a mechanism of money which is distinct from its origins))


Where I think I would agree with you is that the plastic of the £5 note, the water and concrete of the Olympian river, the wood of the beaver dam -- these are not social constructs in the least. That would be a category error. Those are physical entities, not social entities. But I'd still say that while the wood and paper and glass and so forth of the house, which make up the house, are physical entities, that the house is a social one. ((I hope that's not too confusing, because it feels confusing to me... but I'm, woefully, doing my best here))

It is absolutely true that most of our ideas are socially constructed, but it still does not follow that they are not constructed with reference to something else. Those other things are true facts insofar as we know them. The problem is that saying our ideas are ONLY socially constructed tries to abstract away entities that, in fact, bear high degrees of logical relevance to our practice of reasoning. The other problem comes from people who insist that our ideas are not socially constructed at all. For example, if Newtonian mechanics was taken to be a true fact instead of a social construction, then we might have tried to burn Einstein as a heresiarch for proposing relativity. So the element of social construction cannot be abstracted away either. We cannot do without either true facts or socially constructed theories.

We cannot do without either true facts or socially constructed theories. — absoluteaspiration

Yep. When I point out the way the river is a social construct, what I mean to say is that a physicist wouldn't be able to account for the distinctions (or lack thereof) that I make. So I must be assuming that the physicist is finding some real distinctions. If I try to say (as Quine did) that even the physicist's statements have no determinable reference, my philosophy is revealed to be a kind of nihilism.

The two (social construct/discovered truth) go hand in hand, although in this we haven't endorsed realism, but just noticed how we are bound to think. Do you agree with that?

I'm surprised an Australian hasn't butted in. I understand that in Australia 'a river' is a slightly different thing from a Eurocentric 'river' (see this article) since Aussie rivers may be ephemeral things.

Otherwise, I have a feeling that slithy toves are gimbling in the wabes of this thread at the moment. I wonder how the borogroves are? — mcdoodle

Ephemeral Southern Rivers. Woe... Have you read anything about how music and language are linked?

Definitely.

Hovering over this thread, especially as it relates to language, is the standard indirect realist view that everything is a construction, if not social, that "river", for instance, as a concept or as a word we use, is a procrustean bed we force some inchoate bits of reality into.

That's exactly the sort of thing I'm hoping to avoid -- mostly because I don't see the issue as settle-able. We'd then just end up discussing realism, indirect realism, or anti-realism.

I'm not sure our understanding of social construction is settle-able, either. But at least we'd be discussing social construction. :D

Perhaps odd, but I wouldn't say nothing in common -- and what they have in common is relevant. Or at least it seems so to me. In particular, in the origins of each. Both are the product of our activities. — Moliere

I don't understand. In what way is a river the product of our activities?

Hovering over this thread, especially as it relates to language, is the standard indirect realist view that everything is a construction, if not social, that "river", for instance, as a concept or as a word we use, is a procrustean bed we force some inchoate bits of reality into. — Srap Tasmaner

It's all talk on this thread. Nevertheless, what my talk of 'rivers' is intended to point to is just those inchoate bits of reality that on the contrary force the traveller to look for a bridge or a ferry, or a ford. Which is to say, let's try and keep indirect realism hovering, by understanding that the construct of language can - for the sake of argument and by arbitrary construction if you will - be bracketed off.

In what way is a river the product of our activities? — unenlightened

The picture I provided was a river driven by motors within a concrete bed made for the purpose of luxury. No less a river -- at least in the Eurocentric understanding, as @mcdoodle pointed out -- but only existent because money was spent on crews of men to come out, dig the hole, pour the concrete, fill it with chlorinated water, and install motors of some kind to make the water move.

If it weren't for the acts of people there wouldn't be a river there. So, some rivers are socially constructed, but not all. I don't think the Nile, for instance, is the product of human activity.

If it weren't for the acts of people there wouldn't be a river there. So, some rivers are socially constructed, but not all. I don't think the Nile, for instance, is the product of human activity. — Moliere

Right. In my view this is a misunderstanding of the normal meaning of 'social construct', which does not mean 'stuff we made together'. I'm happy to call it a constructed river to distinguish it from a Nile type river, though that too is constructed in places. What makes something a social construct is that it is made of society, not by society. The artificial river enables a certain structure of human relations, and that structure of relations is a social construct, not the river itself.

So the pyramids are constructions that were provoked by a social construct of religion and government that has passed away, and they now partake of a completely different social construct called 'tourism'.

Cool. I think that lays out the disagreement/confusion very cleanly. I'm about to head off to work now, just fyi. That gives me something to think about.

Group A talks among themselves: "Yes, yes...it's just so."

Group B talks among themselves: "Yes, yes...it's just so."

The two groups never communicate with one another, but their so's are basically equivalent. We know this because we're in a transcendent position.

If the so's are the same, structure is implied either innately among the people or in the world they inhabit. It's not indirect realism that hovers, it's structuralism.

Quine denies that it can ever be determined that their so's are the same. So the appeal to ordinary language fails. There is reason to doubt.

I'm not sure if the OP was meaning to question post-structuralism, or if I just turned it into that (for myself). But that very question reveals the coolness of post-structuralism. I realize it's a mistake to get too caught up in trying to determine the target of the OP. The inherent "slippage" in language vs reference and the on-going deferment of reference means it's perfectly ok to allow the OP to grow organically in my own thoughts. I become a spectator to the interplay between language and me.

So if it's true that you haven't seen a thing until you've seen its beauty: I've seen post-structuralism. It's not about society, really. It's most certainly not challenging naturalism. It's capturing awareness and bringing it back to something very personal. Look at naturalism endlessly unfolding. Wow.

As was pointed out, it kind of misses the point. It isn't that some structures are natural, and some artificial, it's that we box things off for reasons. The Nile isn't about some objective feature of the world, and universities some social entity that is fundamentally different, it's that they do work. They have stakes. You don't know anything, or really care about anything to do with some objective feature of the Nile. The work it is doing in this context is meant as a contrast for a purpose to make a point (and the concept exists at different resolutions, with different associations for us all, none of which matter as long as we understand how it is functioning in the discourse). When I mention the river, I mean fish, perhaps a threat of drawning, the other side of town, that place I met you, the border between two locations, the picnic we're having later.

The whole thing about structuralism is that whenever we talk about something, there is a whole lot of motivation, intention, history, associations, and things all behind its mention, and the very way it is structured. Smaller brooks run into the river, and the river runs into a lake or something, and this matters, and is cut up the way it is for reasons.

Power tends to be a big one, but this is why post-structuralism tends to be so tightly tied into the humanities, and pyschoanalysis and whatnot.