. I'm inclined to say that a sewing machine or a pumpkin patch is not a social construct as I mean it, precisely because it is a physical presence. Whereas the notion of property 'that it is my sewing machine or my pumpkin patch' very much is. — unenlightened

Yes that's helpful.

But it seems clear to me that the institution of property could conceivably wither away or be abolished or dramatically changed, not by an individual of course, but collectively.

And what if we stop using the term "gravity" in our theories?

And in this regard, the postmodern is more humble and realistic in not assuming that the separation can ever be complete. — unenlightened

To actually get into and tease out the superficial and unhelpful elements within or of a particular theory seems to be what this postmodern approach lauds, but wielded as a broad prognosis it has varying degrees of applicability.

While in reality any given theory is only as good as it's supporting evidence, to many the authority of "scientific truth" seems like a single monolithic package. It's this presumption that all scientific knowledge is infected or equally infected by the incredulity of bias laden social constructs that gets under the skin of so many scientists and scientific thinkers...

Science does get things wrong, and sometimes those wrongs (moral wrongs included) are caused by bias at the outset, but the examples we have of the worst bias and failures of science are well over-shadowed by it's lasting successes. The reliability of many individual and fundamental theories are not brought into question when an unrelated field of study collapses. What possible social constructs exist in the theory of gravity or in our algebraic mathematical proofs? When we started to realize the stupidity of phrenology, mechanical engineering remained unaffected, but as laymen we're set to conflate the authority of the two.

As a merely descriptive diagnosis of science rather than a prognosis of it, the idea that we can never fully eliminate impurity from our scientific theories is much more palatable, but as such it also has far less meaningful relevance. Science has always been about improvement which begins from a state of existing imperfection, and the more we purify it the closer it should approximate truth. If Newton's law of universal gravitation with the additional corrections offered by GR and SR does contain socially constructed impurity, the amount that it contains must be so small as to be immeasurable and negligible.

↪unenlightened
Gravity is found; human rights are fabricated. Both are quite real. When you make something, it's real, isn't it? The difference between gravity and human rights isn't that one is real; it's that we don't have the ability to change or abolish gravity, which we do with human rights.

Using that logic, unicorns are as real as Gravity and Santa Claus is as real as Hillary Clinton (some may argue moreso). And that just isn't the case. Gravity is both nearly fixed in definition and not rationally disputed in existence. Neither applies to human rights since there is debate on both whether or not human rights exists and on what exactly they are.

↪unenlightened
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.

Except many institutions, such as religious myths and dogmas, and concepts such as human rights are fictions, since none of them can rely on material, scientific fact for proof of their existence. And you can't say everything is equally real then try and make a separation in degrees of reality between fictions and human institutions when discussing conceptions. You've just undermined your previous argument.

And while the contents of a constructed concept may become real, they do not actually become the concept, but take on the less-real concept as part of their more-real selves. A church building doesn't really become a "house of god" but it gets imbued with the concept by the artificial construction of the humans that affirm it is.

And what if we stop using the term "gravity" in our theories?

Gravity would still exist, and if we didn't replace it with a word or words describing the same ubiquitous phenomena, we would have substantially regressed as a people.

What is 'generally accepted' imposes itself on me as real, as a physical constraint. I'd better not take pumpkins from someone else's pumpkin patch, or there will be consequences. — unenlightened

Maybe another way to say this is that the behavior of people is of course quite real, and some of their behavior can be described as participating in the convention of property, or maybe as "practices constitutive of" the convention of property.

There are three human-constructed races: Mongolid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. There are no genetic differences/separators between these races. There are many ethnic groups within each race; they do have genetic differences between them. — Thanatos Sand

It's fascinating how often discussions of late end with "that's not what I said" or "that's not what you said"...

If all you required was that I replace the word "race" with "ethnicity", I don't understand why you bothered to object in the first place. As soon as I clarified that my conception of race goes beyond white black and asian, you should have assented to my position. I guess we're also encountering one of the driving forces behind this post-modern angle: a lack of understanding.

The American Anthropological Association had to release a statement focusing on race as socially constructed because they operate in a political world where anything more nuanced would allow ideologues who misunderstand the science to use it as nesting material. But while they (and you) state that "race" was invented to give perpetual low status to certain individuals, they both abandon the original topic of "race" and move purely into a world of political pandering and poor speculation. Slavery has existed for thousands of years, and generally, but not always, groups tended to enslave people who had different physical characteristics than themselves. They never needed the concept of different races to begin doing it, and even without slavery the concept of different races can be invented even by a child who experiences them.

I'm glad that you do now agree with me though, that different ethnic groups do have statistically significant genetic differences which is what leads to the consistency of characteristics between more closely related individuals (same family, same ethnic group), and deviation in characteristics the more distant the relation (different family, different ethnic group).

If all you required was that I replace the word "race" with "ethnicity", I don't understand why you bothered to object in the first place. As soon as I clarified that my conception of race goes beyond white black and asian, you should have assented to my position. I guess we're also encountering one of the driving forces behind this post-modern angle: a lack of understanding.

That's a ridiculous statement since you were using the term "race," and you kept using it. Once I pointed out your incorrect usage, you should have admitted you were wrong and stopped saying "race." So, the only one doing the faux-Postmodern thing of rejecting actual meanings was you.

The American Anthropological Association had to release a statement focusing on race as socially constructed because they operate in a political world where anything more nuanced would allow ideologues who misunderstand the science to use it as nesting material. But while they (and you) state that "race" was invented to give perpetual low status to certain individuals, they both abandon the original topic of "race" and move purely into a world of political pandering and poor speculation.

That's completely your unfounded opinion. If you want it to mean anything, try backing it up with evidence and argument. Until you do; it's just your fantasy. And there you go using the word "race" again. I told you you were the problem there.

Slavery has existed for thousands of years, and generally, but not always, groups tended to enslave people who had different physical characteristics than themselves. They never needed the concept of different races to begin doing it, and even without slavery the concept of different races can be invented even by a child who experiences them.

And there you go and prove me right again by using "race" in the traditional way when you rejected that traditional usage. Again, you show you were the problem in our discussion. And while different races have used slavery, in America the slave owners and runners and writers of the slave-owning policies were almost exclusively White and the slaves were almost exclusively Black. That's a racial fact you can't change.

Maybe another way to say this is that the behavior of people is of course quite real, and some of their behavior can be described as participating in the convention of property, or maybe as "practices constitutive of" the convention of property. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's a useful clarification. So the Declaration of Human rights is a fiction, or a pious hope, until it is practiced, and only to the extent that it is lived out socially does it constitute a social construct.

I'm starting feel like I almost know what I'm talking about at last.

The American Anthropological Association had to release a statement focusing on race as socially constructed because they operate in a political world where anything more nuanced would allow ideologues who misunderstand the science to use it as nesting material... — VagabondSpectre

Yes, the point is that the science of biology provides no evidence of "races" within the human species. There are no biological races within the human species. To find race within the human species you have to look outside of biology.

And when you look outside of biology and find categories of race that people have constructed you find that those categories are based on arbitrary characteristics.

In other words, no inherent characteristic of a man or woman makes him or her "black" or "white". You could place anybody you want to in the category "black". You could place anybody you want to in the category "white".

In biology, on the other hand, you can't place anything you want to in the category "vertebrates", the category "plants", etc.

I'm glad that you do now agree with me though, that different ethnic groups do have statistically significant genetic differences which is what leads to the consistency of characteristics between more closely related individuals (same family, same ethnic group), and deviation in characteristics the more distant the relation (different family, different ethnic group). — VagabondSpectre

Again, if I remember correctly (I haven't read it lately), the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race says that the genetic differences within the racial groups we have constructed are greater than the genetic differences between those groups.

Again, the categories that we call "race" do not reflect any biological reality.

I think that morality is the most true, or most certain thing. I might make a thread about it, but we're dual hemisphere, the left hemisphere does the individuation, negative emotions, model construction. The right hemisphere does whole picture, positive emotions, model destruction. Artists and musicians show a greater connection between the hemispheres, and creativity is correlated with their communication, rather than it being any one of them. Diabetes and such health problems are associated with years without a swap of dominance, as you breath out of different nostrils even while one is dominant, and the two lungs also do different things. The left one lowers blood sugar, and uses less oxygen. Meditation practitioners are also shown to have a greater connection between the two.

Point being, that the descriptions of spiritual experience, and drug use are correlated with right hemispheric functions. I think that without the unindividuated self, without the breaking down of the walls between self and other, we can't really even learn from others, can't really understand them. It's where all of the unknown which gets incorporated into the known comes from.

I think that the equality of self and other, the warnings against hubris, hypocrisy, and the notion that we're all equal is true in the most practical, biological, and health sustaining senses imaginable. Culture is founded on these notions, and our ability to mimic, and learn is based in these ideas.

The idea that the qualitative is not as real as the quantitative is deeply misguided, and literally a half-brained scheme...

Sometimes you'll hear economists talk about credit, and the economy at large, this way: that it is sustained by faith or trust, and if something undermines that trust, the world could come tumbling down.

I don't see how we can continue the discussion if every time I use a certain word even if just to reference it, even after clarifying my usage, you regress back to "that word is problematic".

If you want to move past this you can roughly do so by assuming I mean "ethnicity" whenever I say "race" and then see if you still protest...

It all depends on what we mean by "race". "black/white/asian" are incredibly loose and informal. if we begin to define formal sub-groups then we can start to delineate between actual genetic variation.

The problem the geneticists have is that people so often talk about race with no comprehension of the underlying genetic mechanisms and world of diversity. I guess the easy solution is to replace the word "race" with "ethnicity" (so it cannot be mistaken in usage) and then the discussion can continued unhindered by post-modern rebuke.

↪Thanatos Sand I don't see how we can continue the discussion if every time I use a certain word even if just to reference it, even after clarifying my usage, you regress back to "that word is problematic".

That's a lie. I never did that. You were using the word "race" incorrectly and I pointed that out. I don't see how we can continue the discussion when you're dishonest and are using the word "race" incorrectly.

If you want to move past this you can roughly do so by assuming I mean "ethnicity" whenever I say "race" and then see if you still protest...

No, if you want to move past this you can stop misusing the word "race," and use the word "ethnicity" if you mean ethnicity. You're a grown-up now; you can start using words correctly.

That's a lie. I never did that. You were using the word "race" incorrectly and I pointed that out. I don't see how we can continue the discussion when you're dishonest. — Thanatos Sand

How do you know the meaning I intended when I used the word race? (how do you ignore my intended use after I've clarified twice?)

How do you know the meaning I intended when I used the word race? (how do you ignore my intended use after I've clarified twice?)

Because of the way you incorrectly used it. I already made that clear.

How do you keep misusing a word when you know you're misusing it? It's bewildering.

↪Thanatos Sand

I think that racial categories are much more complex than just "black/white/asian/etc...". For instance, the Pygmy people are ethnically different from the Bantu people and the results of those genetic differences are stark and undeniable. Do you deny that there is an observable difference between the average characteristics of the Pygmy and Bantu people which stems from differences in their average genetic makeup?

And in the above quote is where you misused it when you said "racial categories" when you were discussing two different ethnic, not racial, groups.

So, use the word correctly or I'm moving on. I have no time for people who refuse to use words correctly.

Because of the way you incorrectly used it. I already made that clear. — Thanatos Sand

How do you know I used it incorrectly though? It seems like anytime i've typed "race" you've just said "Aha! incorrect!"

And in the above quote is where you misused it when you said "racial categories" when you were discussing two different ethnic, not racial, groups.

So, use the word correctly or I'm moving on. I have no time for people who refuse to use words correctly. — Thanatos Sand

If the way I use "race" is in line with your conception of what "ethnicity means" then I haven't used it incorrectly at all. You can at least try to acknowledge the intended meaning of my statements rather than to doggedly tell me I'm a problematic child...

Sometimes you'll here economists talk about credit, and the economy at large, this way: that it is sustained by faith or trust, and if something undermines that trust, the world could come tumbling down. — Srap Tasmaner

Absolutely! They like to call it 'confidence'. Paper money at least is nothing more or less than a promissory note.

Do have we made any progress on your question?

Because of the way you incorrectly used it. I already made that clear.
— Thanatos Sand

How do you know I used it incorrectly though? It seems like anytime i've typed "race" you've just said "Aha! incorrect!"

No, I showed you multiple times how your usage was wrong. You are reading as poorly as you are using words.

If the way I use "race" is in line with your conception of what "ethnicity means" then I haven't used it incorrectly at all. You can at least try to acknowledge the intended meaning of my statements rather than to doggedly tell me I'm a problematic child...

No, your misuse of "race" is in line with what the standard English definition of "ethnicity" means. So, you have used it very incorrectly.

So, you and I are done; I won't be reading any more of your posts. I have no time to give you the English assistance you need.

"Race" has no formal definition, so I went ahead and defined it for myself to facilitate the discussion at hand. If you think that standard english definitions are the best source of appeal in a discussion that pretends to go beyond the superficial, that actually explains a lot about why so many humanities courses are very focused on altering dictionary definitions.

I care only about the ideas I've expressed though, and I've clarified what I mean and meant when i say "race". If you're incapable of allowing me to use words as I define them, so be it.

Do have we made any progress on your question? — Srap Tasmaner

Well yes and no.

Of course it is the analytic science based view - that we can get at the world unmediated by our constructions- that has a use for the notion of a 'social' construct as distinguished from a 'real' or 'physical' one. Whereas the postmodern has no use for this distinction. Not that this is an easy distinction to make or obvious in every case, but it is the scientist, particularly the social scientist who even thinks it worth trying to disentangle the two.

So to come back to BC's quote at the top, one must surely want to say that there are facts of human nature if only that they are social constructers that are not, or not entirely social constructs. And at the same time, one has to accept that whether a Jew or a Negro is fully human is a matter of constructive dogma. Have the postmoderns won, or is there still a use for the scientific view? Is it worth trying to disentangle the construct from the concrete? — unenlightened

I think I have reached a bit more clarity for my own part on the nature of the distinction between social constructs and - well I still don't have a neat label for the negative space. Which is fine for us analytic scientific types. But I haven't made much progress with the postmodern wing, which I think is also important.

So we are, as it were, embedded in imbued with, and, God help us, constructed by (educated by and into) this constructed social world, and from that position we attempt or purport to make this distinction. This is the deconstruction as I understand it, that we are conditioned by our social constructs to the extent that we cannot distinguish the real from the conditioned. And to pretend that we can - which is all of our discussion - is hubristic overreach.

This is the deconstruction as I understand it, that we are conditioned by our social constructs to the extent that we cannot distinguish the real from the conditioned. And to pretend that we can - which is all of our discussion - is hubristic overreach.

No, neither Derrida nor any other prominent Postmodern/Poststructuralist philosopher says this. What he does say, building strongly from Heidegger's (the proto-Deconstructionist's) "always already" model, is that we can never fully distinguish the real from the conditioned, since our perceptions of both are already shaped by the language and culture we were "thrown" into. That doesn't mean we can't effectively recognize some things as "more real" (and more tied to material reality) and some as more "constructed," but we can never finalize those notions nor keep them from changing/deconstructing.

Another key part of this is Saussure's structural linguistics that reminds us that our processes of doing these things always inevitably occurs within language, with continual referrals to other words in the language, so the structures and dynamics of our language will always have their share of sovereignty too over any notion we have of fully recognizing the noumena, the-thing-itself.

Ideas impose order on the realm of sensation. What you claim about the nature of ideas reflects your ontological commitments.

we cannot distinguish the real from the conditioned. — unenlightened

No, neither Derrida nor any other prominent Postmodern/Poststructuralist philosopher says this. — Thanatos Sand

we can never fully distinguish the real from the conditioned — Thanatos Sand

I stand corrected. :D

Ideas impose order on the realm of sensation

Ideas are as much a product of the realm of the sensation as they have a influence over it. They are not sovereign over it. What you claim about the nature of ideas reflects a gestalt of your biology/genes, socio/cultural/political upbringing, and your life experiences...and your ontological commitments are greatly a product of those, as well.

I stand corrected. :D

It's a common misconception. I've been making that explanation for over a decade now to my less theoretically-inclined colleagues...:)

I think we can do better, but let me think a bit. It goes everywhere.

So what are you..indirect realist?