Hmm, I want to contend that it's not 'definition' that is at issue though, although it might seem that way on first blush. — StreetlightX
What can happen though is this: — Srap Tasmaner
But when your bridge/river collapses, who you going to call - a social engineer, or a structural engineer? — unenlightened
the coolness of post-structuralism — Mongrel
Have you read anything about how music and language are linked? — Mongrel
I'm grateful to un for starting this thread, — mcdoodle
How does your version of post-structuralism deal with quarky worlds and inherent structures in natural science? — mcdoodle
Once the word, or the new usage, is out there, if it's taken up, its usage will become its own justification. — Srap Tasmaner
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'. — unenlightened
But I'd say this picture misses on the real parts of social entities -- that they aren't something where we just do stuff and have happen. Those in charge, those purportedly in power, are often caught up within social entities just as those without power are. They don't have the power to change the entities they live within -- they act within the institutions that already exist. — Moliere
When you say "of society", what are the parts? — Moliere
If you want to stop a stampede that you are part of, the first thing to do is to stop trying to get to the front. — unenlightened
With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative
In this aspect of action...processes are started whose outcome is unpredictable, so that uncertainty rather than frailty becomes the decisive character of human affairs. This property of action had escaped the attention of antiquity, by and large, and had, to say the least, hardly found adequate articulation in ancient philosophy, to which the very concept of history as we know it is altogether alien. The central concept of the two entirely new sciences of the modern age, natural science no less than historical, is the concept of process, and the actual human experience underlying it is action.
this is, in part, what it would amount to in practice, — Srap Tasmaner
In the first instance social entities are part of our environment, in the second we are the artists of products and tools. So how is it that any entity has both of these characteristics? — Moliere
I think perhaps the more pertinent question - and I think - I hope! - you agree - is what on earth would make anyone think these two characteristics are in any way incompatible. As if we and our creations do not in the first instance belong to the environment! — StreetlightX
I think it's something to do with how we tend to think about things. — Moliere
When the buffalo are stampeding northwards, the one at the front cannot turn west without being trampled. — unenlightened
Where I would say there is no outside to the stampede, when it comes to social movement. Or, perhaps, the stampede is just one movement within a grander dance of movement, so there is an escape from the *stampede*, but not from the social world (hence why it really and truly is a world). — Moliere
Here I think the primary point of difference is:
If you want to stop a stampede that you are part of, the first thing to do is to stop trying to get to the front.
— unenlightened
Where I would say there is no outside to the stampede, when it comes to social movement. Or, perhaps, the stampede is just one movement within a grander dance of movement, so there is an escape from the *stampede*, but not from the social world (hence why it really and truly is a world). — Moliere
I think perhaps the more pertinent question - and I think - I hope! - you agree - is what on earth would make anyone think these two characteristics are in any way incompatible. As if we and our creations do not in the first instance belong to the environment!
— StreetlightX
That is a good question....
I think it's something to do with how we tend to think about things. I certainly think about the world as something "outside", at times, even while believing that it isn't! :D The play between outside/inside, outside of my power and within my power, world and self starts to look fuzzy when it comes to our social world. — Moliere
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. — J. Krishnamurti
It's not all about you. — unenlightened
When the buffalo are stampeding northwards, the one at the front cannot turn west without being trampled.
— unenlightened
But it can turn west. What does being trampled stand for in your analogy? — BlueBanana
Well there is no outside to society for humans — unenlightened
May I disagree? If you have no contacts to other human beings (or whatever we want to define society to consist of) you aren't a part of any society. — BlueBanana
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