It's not what we think and believe as much as what we do and produce through collective activity that's important to making social products. — Moliere
The point being that anything 'socially constructed' has no less reality than anything not. . — StreetlightX
Is it worth trying to disentangle the construct from the concrete?
— unenlightened
It must be, or we're back where this all started: staring at amorphous shadows projected on cave walls.
When it comes to the "post-modern" rejection of scientific truth, I believe it is mostly born from a layman's understanding of what science actually is, how and why it works, and hence the nature and value of scientific truth. — VagabondSpectre
I'm not sure what it means for anything to have 'more' - or 'less' - reality than anything else. Nor do I have any idea what kind of distinction that between reality and the real is. I simply mean to complicate the distinction in the OP between that which is 'found' and that which is 'constructed'. To put it in it's terms, that which is 'constructed' may well also be 'found'; even if found as constructed. Finally, by 'felt reality', I simply mean that if you're about to be lynched by mob because you're black, it will do little good to plead that 'race is a social construct'. — StreetlightX
But the real effects of total bullshit are not at all in dispute. Still it would be nice if we could stop lynching people for bullshit reasons, and so it would be handy if we could separate to some extent the stuff we make up from the stuff we don't. — unenlightened
Someone needs to do a Foucault on medicine — unenlightened
↪Cavacava I take it as the clearest example I know of of the kind of thinking I disagree with.
Social reality isn't built out of intentional thought, even subliminally. We can change beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and so on, and yet the social carries on in spite of these things. This is true even collectively.
It's not what we think and believe as much as what we do and produce through collective activity that's important to making social products.
Human rights, for example, are a total fabrication, — StreetlightX
Human rights, for example, are a total fabrication,
— StreetlightX
Are they? Human nature is claimed as a construct, but it is one founded on something real that is elaborated. Human rights might have the same foundation. I'm not sure that fabrications are ever 'total'.
Are they? Human nature is claimed as a construct, but it is one founded on something real that is elaborated. Human rights might have the same foundation. I'm not sure that fabrications are ever 'total'. — unenlightened
Human rights, for example, are a total fabrication — StreetlightX
I don't see any distinction between what is real and what is constructed or elaborated. — StreetlightX
Are they? Human nature is claimed as a construct, but it is one founded on something real that is elaborated. Human rights might have the same foundation. I'm not sure that fabrications are ever 'total'.
— unenlightened
Perhaps, but I don't see any distinction between what is real and what is constructed or elaborated.
Why?
Why? — StreetlightX
I don't know, maybe I'm too stupid. But the only way I can reconcile them is to conclude that everything is a fabrication and we are forever lost in the funhouse with no possibility of escape. At which point further discussion is reduced to a pleasant or unpleasant pastime with no other value. — unenlightened
So I'd begin with a list -- what are the social constructs? I'd include things like...
Money, laws, institutions, marriage, war, the state, businesses, unions, guilds, non-profit organizations
. . . as obvious, non-controversial sorts of things. But I'd also include things like...
houses, knives, sewing machines, boats, electrical power. . .
and other sorts of goods and services which, under capitalism, are commodities. — Moliere
I would add: there's a difference between, say, fiction and human institutions. Telling a story doesn't make the story true. What is made, and what has effect in the world, is not the content of the story, but the story itself and the telling of it. With institutions, the content becomes real. If you christen a ship, it now has the name you gave it. — Srap Tasmaner
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