Ahhh OK. Cool, I had it backwards in my head then.

I wouldn't speak against eclecticism, per se at least. I'm more just trying to get at that while categories of thought are useful for our understanding there is still variation within said categories. Existentialism is a prime example -- while there are themes and problems which Existential thinkers seem to grapple with with some similarity, the disparity of thought and argument varies widely among them.

So it's not satisfactory to simply posit three lines of thinking, and then disjunctively find the best solution between them. Disproving two or three whole categories of thought doesn't necessarily get at the arguments or lines of reasoning which you're exploring or thinking about.

You mention systems a lot when talking about dogmatism, and state:

Regarding systems:
It seems to me like the paradigm is, "What you need to do is to think and analyze... that is THE most important thing to do in life." What about our actions? What about other people? How should we treat them? What about my first person experiences? Do they mean nothing? — anonymous66

You also mention a goal here:

I do feel like I'm on a journey to find the best way to make sense of the world and the best way to live my life. — anonymous66

I'd second what another poster has said, in part, and say that I don't think "dogmatism" is the exact right word for the questions you're asking when describing systems or the goal you're after. One could find answers to these questions by appeal to dogma, but I wouldn't say that systematic thought implies dogmatism. Or, at least, if we feel that systematic thought is dogmatism, then that might actually shed light on exactly how you feel about systematic thought -- that it can't be rationally defended, or something along those lines.



For me, it seems that tackling these particular questions is more interesting and worthwhile than parsing them into broad categories of thought, though, just because it allows you to be more specific and pay attention to the details of your thinking. Ideally speaking, at least, I'd say that a system of thought is the result of such thinking, rather than the justification by which we answer these questions. You don't begin with a system and derive answers, you begin with the questions and, perhaps if you are lucky, develop a system of thought.

I'm not sure I follow. I wouldn't say I'm eclectic, at least, if that's how I came across.

I wouldn't be so quick to cut out other possibilities. What did "existentialism" mean in medieval philosophy, after all?

These are only categories to coming to grips with thoughts past. But philosophy is a truly inventive enterprise -- it creates categories whole-sale. At its edges it makes thoughts ex nihilo -- even though we do spend a lot of time on exegesis and analysis of philosophical history.

If you find these categories unsatisfactory then that is the genesis of new thought.


Just to lay out my prejudices I am most sympathetic to existential philosophy when it comes to meta-ethics, and epicurean when it comes to normative ethics.

I suppose I'm a bit of a relativist in these matters. I would say 1) The Mind is not the same as The Social, and 2) Mathematical concepts and truths or scientific laws are both products of social activity.

They are true. They are mind-independent. And they are social products -- like toasters, legal precedents, and money.

Without us they would not exist. And yet in spite of that dependency they do, in fact, exist -- the same as rocks and beans.


Not sure where modern metaphysics would lead us. I am not educated enough to adjudicate that boundary. But those are my first thoughts.

All this leads up to a simple question: is he right in claiming that there are only three possible Realist views: Platonic, Aristotelian, and Scholastic? It’s been decades since I have read any Metaphysics, but I cannot help but think that surely in the 900 years since Aquinas, other views defending Realism have been offered. — Mitchell

I don't know. But I'm willing to give the thought a gander.

What would you count in the category "universal" that you would also count as real?

There are eminent persons the world over who cite philosophers as the basis for their action, but I wouldn't say that this then entails that the eminent persons actually followed said philosopher. Stephen J Gould, for one, credited Feyerabend with some of his scientific thinking, but Gould was far from a scientific anarchist.

And I'm not sure how you read Popper, but given that his theory is all about choices between competing theories given such and such basic statements that is so clearly prescriptive that I'm not sure how else to read him. He believes that we should choose theories which are easier to refute, and hold them tentatively.

Honestly, I don't think Popper can be taken seriously after Feyerabend. Not that you have to go "all the way" with Feyerabend, but his work can be read as a thorough critique and revealing of the weaknesses in Popper's thoughts on science. In "Against Method" he basically uses Popper's thoughts on falsifiability to prove that if they were true, then Galileo would not have made the inferences he did.

On the whole this is the problem with Popper's project -- it is prescriptive, and when one looks at the work actual scientists do they simply do not follow the prescriptions. So it leaves one wondering what good are these prescriptions if the actual practices of scientists, which do, in fact, continue, aren't even close to what they prescribe.

Popper is best read with the problem of induction and the positivists in mind. His criterion of demarcation is the kind of thing journalists of science like to grab onto because it seems simple to explain, and gives them some kind of philosophical authority for rejecting this or that. But science is messier than what the venerable Popper wanted it to be in order to solve his philosophical problems.

I always feel two conflicting feelings with the word "Democracy"

There is the use of "Democracy" to indicate features of current institutions which lay claim to being democratic. And then there's the more general idea "Democracy", which seems to me at least to not even require a state. The latter I think is good, the former not.

Which are we assuming is good?

If we are assuming that democratic states as we currently see them are good, then I can't say that I feel a great deal of urgency to preserve them. I am willing to participate within them for the benefits of other causes I care about, and relative to those causes I'd judge whether it were worth said institutions to continue on or not -- whether I'd go this or that far.

I don't think democracy should be spread globally. Such talk just justifies war, and nothing else. And on the whole war is bad for my people. And on the whole this is how I view actually-existing-democracy -- its opposite is not "totalitarianism" (itself a hangover term from the cold war meant to justify expansion and defense of global power), it is a totalitarianism. It constructs our world just as much as any dictatorship does, and we act within it in relation to our collective self-interest. It all boils down to self-interest, but not of the individual sort -- just of the groups we are a part of.


For the latter I don't think there's much I would rule out a priori. That being said, I can't say that I've participated in anything so extreme as your posited scenario. I've broken laws in the defense of causes which include the broader idea of democracy, and put a pause in my career for several years, but that pales in comparison to what others have done and in your hypothetical.

a priori nothing is ruled out, but at the same time it doesn't seem to me that this sort of thinking really answers the question. I think it's the sort of question you answer and find out for yourself in the moment.

https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Legacy-Germany-Cultural-Criticism/dp/0520085558/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503110654&sr=1-12&keywords=nietzsche+and+cultural+history

Not exactly an interpretation, but it's an interesting look at how other's interpreted Nietzsche through time. I thought of it as related at least, and it was a really interesting read.

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.

In a classically scientific picture, I have my beliefs about the world. I support or refute my beliefs with reference to either logical consistency or with respect to the facts. I act on the world of which I am a part, but through said action -- through experiment -- I discover the contours of the world which are "outside" of action, "outside" of belief.

Also, I think it has something to do with our political tradition. Nature vs. Nurture, and the state of nature being concepts which seem to oppose ourselves to our environment -- and environment, as a concept, is often set up in opposition to the individual... though I suppose that it is often done does not actually answer, why is it done?



I will say that I am not a naturalist, so we may also differ somewhere on that point. But, as per what I've been saying previously, I think that one's ultimate metaphysical position can be "passed over" in investigating the social.

I'm going to try something here that might be a divergence, and it might help to bridge our understandings too. It's long-ish. Sorry. Consider it a play of ideas, ideas that influence why I'm saying what I'm saying, but to which I am not married. I'm open to retooling them.

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).


I have in mind movement, constant movement. I have in mind machines, in particular -- large, intricate machines, like a rube goldberg machine, but machines which reproduce and retool themselves. To use Deleuze, there are desiring-machines, organs placed on a body without organs (attempting to eliminate the body without organs), made of partial objects and flows. The flows are coded, chained. The machines produce, and are themselves connected to other machines through the flows.

I only refer to him as a kind of way of looking at social ontology, not as an answer. I think Deleuze is a bit too abstract for my taste -- it kind of reads in a way that doesn't seem specific enough to particulars. It's attempting to reach for something too universal. But he does propose mechanisms for social movement. He proposes entities which are not us. He proposes something which is both us and isn't us, which seems to be the right way of looking at society to me. It is and is not our movement. We all move within, and there is no stopping the stampede. There is no outside of the stampede, the hurricane, or social movement. (or, again, there may be an outside to the stampede, but not to the social world -- sort of depends on how you meant "stampede" or "hurricane" in your metaphor)

My preference is more rooted in historical method, which itself is already multiple. Also, it seems to me that Deleuze is too rooted in psychology for my taste. This misses out on some of the nuances of social entities which are more alien to us than a psychological theory can capture. But what I like is his focus on flows, break-flows, coding and re-coding and surplus code. It's this bizarro synthesis between Marx and Freud which simultaneously rejects them both. I am somewhat skeptical of him, and at times don't really make a connection in what he is writing, but the flows of production makes sense of a good deal of particular social situations, from my perspective -- and not just at the workplace, but also within the state (and other social entities).

Since there is no escape, and yet we can still influence what rules over us, how can we account for that?

Social entities are birthed by collective action. And then we live within them, like children with more power than their parents, or young gods who have yet to find all their powers.

Hannah Arendt has a useful theory about the social for this purpose in The Human Condition. She divides the human condition up into labor, work, and action. The latter, action, is what I have in mind in terms of genesis.

From the beginning section on Action:

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

Later, in On the Process Character of Action...

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 uncertainty I'd attribute to the reality of social entities. We create them and they take a life of their own. So to stop a stampede, a social movement, since to be who we are is to be social beings and to remove ourselves from said movement is to kill ourselves, rather than removing ourselves -- becoming the body without organs, the subject whose ephemera forever hangs outside of the chains of production -- we build other machines. But rather than desiring-machines, I think it would be safe to say that social movements are social-machines whose production can take place outside of the codes of desire.

What might they be? Well, they're novel, as per Arendt. So it's not something we can answer in the abstract, but only together. And then we sort of have to just see what happens, too. Like a child is a part of ourselves, it also has a mind of its own and develops into something outside of our intents.


Hence why I'm saying that social entities -- social constructions -- are made by us, and then what they are made of is determined by the historical method. It just depends on the particular entity -- white supremacy operates in its own fashion, capitalism operates in its own fashion, patriarchy operates in its own fashion, private property does as well, and we see how these things operate by attending to their history.

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

There are two characteristics about of social entities which are, at first blush, seemingly difficult to resolve. One is that social entities are real, and the other is that they are mutable by us. 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? How can an entity be both unchangeable and changeable? How is it that we are able to manipulate something which, at the same time, manipulates us? How is it possible for the same entity to have this double character which is seemingly a contradiction?

What the standard notion of social construct emphasizes is one aspect of this character -- its mutability. But it leaves out the very real part where social constructs take on a reality of their own, influence us, and aren't immediately reconfigurable (and, potentially, *can't* be reconfigured).

Maybe there's another way of resolving this tension, but this is what I have in mind when proposing looking at social entities in terms of genesis and mechanism. The birth of social entities occurs in a different manner from the life of social entities.


When you say "of society", what are the parts? I have tourism, here, made of society. It seems to me that the normal understanding of society is that we are the parts. So if I were to dismantle tourism then I wouldn't go see the pyramids on vacation, for starters, and I'd do what is in my power to stop others from doing so as well. I might write appeals, pass laws, set up blockades, and enforce them with ground to air missiles if necessary.

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.

But what would you propose instead, then? Or does this just seem like something which isn't a real issue, to you?

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.

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.

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

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))

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

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.

What in tarnation are you getting at, then?

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.

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)

I just came across this story this morning. I leave it here as an illustrative example of what I'm trying to get at when it comes to social construction:

https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/

While schadenfreude is easily found in this article, I'd encourage readers to read with sympathy for the butt of the joke to get a better sense of what I mean. Here we have a group of people who had good intents, and acted on those intents to create a social entity. That social entity then, in spite of intent, had causal effects on the relationships between people. The social entity would not exist without the people taking social action -- this is its genesis -- and then the social entity took on a life of its own outside of the intents of people, and people began to act within said social entity.

We can psychologise this. I'd even concede that there's an interesting intersection between the social and the psychological. But I'd insist that the incorporated muncipality is not a psychological entity, but is something which, once created by action, then exists on its own -- like a wall, buildings, streets, and so forth exist on their own.

This is just one example. I think that the more you look at legal entities, like this, the more you'll see how they influence people -- and hence have this quasi-independent status, because, yes, they depend on us to exist, they don't exist without our action, and then we act within them.

The three things I hope to illustrate about social constructs is:

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)

Sure, I can go with that. I don't think the belief that blacks ought to be treated as whites was widespread prior to the civil rights movement. And I don't think that making people believe they should be is how it succeeded either.

We don't have to stay at the civil rights movement, either. Any social movement begins in the minority position. Hence, why they are building a social movement. And it's not missionary work for converts or reasoned treatises or arguments which enacts social change, but social action which redirects social structures which change beliefs.

What is the argument in a march? What is the reasoned discourse in a strike? Where is the persuasion in a war?

Symbols, signs, slogans, and so forth -- which often allude to arguments in our society, but only allude and certainly don't have to (we just happen to live in a society that values these things) -- take a role in social action, but the target is not the hearts and minds and beliefs of others. Disruption of the day-to-day is more important than whether or not people feel like this is a good time to have a demonstration for change (which they never do, they have work to do after all)

My point wasn't that things should happen more quickly, but that belief -- and in the particular case of Searle we-intentions which designate status -- isn't the operating force in such change. Beliefs are strapped to our social world, rather than the social world being strapped to belief. Where it goes, we follow.

There is more permanence to social reality than what we happen to believe, collectively. Social reality is curious in that since it is constructed it can be changed, but that ability for change does not then indicate (nor does construction indicate) that it is not real. Construction's defining opposite is not reality.

Similarly to a house. A house is constructed -- and by my lights, at least, socially so. It is made of wood, metal, cloth, glass, and paper. It can be destroyed or un-built or re-built. It's very real in spite of all these things. Our beliefs about the house do not change the house.

Likewise, our beliefs about social reality do not change social reality. It's a pernicious myth, I think, because reparations, in the case of slavery for instance, can only be achieved through material reparations, rather than good will, contrition, and recognition. (just as a for-instance) (also note that "material" isn't the same thing as "visual" -- much of social reality is not visual)

Similarly, what is often considered "merely symbolic" actually has causal properties. A simple demonstration which disrupts the day-to-day rhythm of life, but is purely symbolic and not used in any other way, effects the paths of social systems.


The civil rights movement is a good example of how belief isn't the main operating force in social systems -- at least, in the change of social systems. Perhaps it has more force in the sustenance of social systems. It began with more people believing it shouldn't succeed, and succeeded, and now more people will say it was a good thing rather than a bad thing. It's a clear case of belief being changed by the social, rather than the other way around.

I honestly believe that informed citizens sharing their views with each other is crucial to change. Changed minds is a necessary if not a sufficient condition for social change, and talking is how you get there. — Srap Tasmaner

But social reality marches on in spite of belief. I'm not sure how Searle's account of social reality can survive that.

In spite of collective belief that blacks are equal to whites in America, blacks are -- by the stats -- treated worse than whites.

One could take this as evidence that people really believe that blacks are inferior. I'd just say that in spite of widespread intentional beliefs of racial equality, we continue to see white supremacy operate in the world. Not unanimous widespread belief, mind, but widespread.

Also, on the back-end of the civil rights movement, in spite of widespread belief that blacks were inferior, a minority political movement was able to enact and enforce (to a limited extent) laws that bettered their position.

Belief is only a small part of the overall social world, and is often times not even relevant to its functioning and operations.


EDIT: I hope not to get too far off on this, because I mentioned it as an aside more than anything to say that if I were to distinguish social reality from anything it would be from psychic, as opposed to physical reality. This is more to say that there is more to the social world than psychology, and so we can't just look at psychology or the mind and expect to understand social entities by that method.

I find this a bit too broad. What would it mean to abolish sewing machines? It's not what I had in mind, though there is clearly some connection. 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

Point well taken. I don't know what it would mean to abolish sewing machines. Though, on second thought I might know what it would mean to abolish nuclear warheads, for instance, though they have a physical presence. Perhaps the word 'abolish' just requires a sense of importance, unlike what abolishing sewing machines would be, which just sounds silly? Though, regardless, I get your drift here at least. This can be passed over.

The connection between the two I'd hope to maintain, which is what I was trying to drive at at least, is that the slavery is a product -- it's something we create together. It's through our collective activity that slavery becomes an institution. This is more of a genesis and genealogy than a mechanism, I'd say, as institutions begin to take a life of their own outside of our collective activity over time. The structure of slavery comes out of what we do -- which includes concepts but also includes who counts as slaves, treating them as such, informing the authorities when slaves escape, believing they deserve such treatment because of [whatever], the police, the jails, the state...

Could go either way. In a loose sense, sure, we all talk. But it's not quite the same as the law, states, or money and property, either. More often than not we use language in the process of constructing the social. It's more like the tool than the product. And one way to understand a hammer is to look at the nails it's designed to hit, but you wouldn't confuse the nail for the hammer either.

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.

My thinking on the topic goes somewhat in reverse. Rather than defining social construction by finding its negative, I think it's more interesting to look at what counts as the social and its constructs primarily. If there is something concrete, then that's all well and good -- but we can still try and understand the social on its own regardless of the differences between the social and, say, the physical.

When I think of and speak of social construction I'm actually less interested in distinguishing it from physical reality as I am in distinguishing the social from psychic reality -- Searle is a good example here of someone who clearly explains that he believes social reality is constructed out of psychic reality, and I think it's a commonly believed conception -- that changing beliefs, attitudes, feelings, perceptions, knowledge, and whatever else we may designate as belonging to the set of psychic existents is how we change our social reality. (writing anymore on that, I think I'd get way off topic).


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. That is, many, many, many things are the product of social activity. And then there's another class of social constructs, the sorts more associated with justice, like. . .


gender, race, class, sex, orientation, nationality, ethnicity, age,

. . . which are just as real as houses and money, but are also the result of social activity.



I think the primary motivation for understanding something as socially constructed is that it is, by the same methods of being built, capable of being re/un-built. In order to do so, though, one must actually understand the mechanism of social construction itself.

But, then, it seems to me that the question is more -- can we have a scientific understanding of social reality? Or, perhaps better formulated, is such an understanding worthwhile?

That while we may be made of atoms, what we do together doesn't change how the atoms behave. But, seemingly (and it may be an illusion), what we do does change social reality. It seems to me that in order to have a scientific view, in the sense of the concrete, or in the same sense as chemistry, of the social it would require our sense of social agency to be illusory (or, we may have to loosen what we understand scientific understanding to mean, too -- in the manner of the "soft" sciences, still empirical but not in as much control or taken into a lab, but more embedded with a historical way of understanding)

While there are merits to remaining dry for a time, I'd say that your experience of feeling better is all one needs to point to in order to justify remaining dry for a time.

In particular, I highlight these two posts because I don't believe that altering body chemistry or artificiality are exactly correct descriptions of drinking, either.

When you run, for instance, you also alter your body chemistry. As you note, it feels very good. But the altering of body chemistry isn't a problem -- it's the manner in which you're altering your body chemistry (at this particular moment in your life) that's important. I'd suggest that drinking (in other particular moments) can feel just as good and right.

This is similar to claiming that alcohol delivers something artificial. But it's only artificial if you go into drinking believing it to be artificial. This kind of circles back to my point about how you relate to alcohol that matters most. Like any substance, depending on your relationship to said substance, that's the sort of psychological effects you should expect from it. The physiological effects will remain the same, but the experience depends on how you relate to it.

After all, there's no good reason to believe that pie is more artificial than alcohol, or gorging yourself on chocolate is more artificial than alcohol. These are far from needs, but indulging in them in the proper way can make your life fuller, as opposed to manufactured.


I force myself dry periodically because I know what you're talking about when you say it makes you feel better. And, on the whole, it sort of goes along with my notion of freedom to be able to let go of pleasurable things that are unnecessary, so I like to periodically give up drinking because of that. To break habituation. But, all the same, I don't think I'd call drinking artificial or somehow bad just because it alters my body chemistry. It just depends on where I am at in my life at the time, and how I'm relating to drinking that day.

Do we act in bad faith when we get drunk? Is it inauthentic to escape our anxiety and live for a time as if nothing else matters and that we will never die? If so, is there anything wrong with that? — jamalrob

I think it mostly depends on our relationship with alcohol.

To the son rebelling against his family, getting drunk is freedom.

To the father morning the loss of his son, getting drunk is a pain killer.

In the social sense that you're describing, getting drunk is connection and familiarity, a method for building trust. I don't think that this is inauthentic -- you know what you are doing, you're all doing it together, and you're choosing to do it because you all like it. And, what's more, if you don't even regret it the next day, if the only reason you regret the hangover is because it hurts now, then I'd say it's hard to argue that you are also somehow inauthentic for drinking.



I don't think a person is confined to one relationship or another with alcohol (or other drugs, for that matter) It seems to me that the world, depending on how we are that day and what we're drinking for (why are we communing with the bottle today), can be brought closer and more familiar, or more distant and cut off -- it can fill it with secrets and excitement, or sap it of all variety until all you see is the dark truth you have always known. You can be filled with regret while drunk, and absolution with the hangover, too -- it can go in reverse (don't you deserve to feel this way, after all?)

In any relationship with alcohol, it does seem to have a quality of self-discovery, but only when you take the time to soberly reflect upon it after the fact. And perhaps after the painful hangover is clouding your judgment too.

Yep, it is. The Doctor gave me a sensible prescription, hence I conclude that she can be trusted. Can I explain why I trust the doctor? She gave me the right medicine. — Banno

Just because I believe the medicine will cure me, and that in turn leads me to trust the doctor, that does not then mean that the prescription she gave me was sensible or the medicine was right. This is what I mean when I say that your standard is permissive. If knowledge were somehow included then I could see notions of sensibility or rightness possibly entering into view, but as it is one can believe Y out of desire, and believe said desire will be satisfied by believing X, therefore they will believe X in order to get Y.

Is it? What counts as evidence here? Or can we make up any old shit? — Banno

Well, we certainly can make up any old shit, though that's no reason to do so. ;) And it's certainly less of a reason to listen to it.

I'd hazard that your evidence supports my view more than it does yours, though.

"A statement that makes something comprehensible by describing the relevant structure or operation or circumstances" sounds a lot closer to knowledge than the operation of one belief leading to another.

"thought" sounds like belief. But "thought that makes something comprehensible" is closer to knowledge than mere belief.

"the act of explaining; making something plain or intelligible" isn't quite knowledge, but it does relate to depth. The deeper we know some topic or question the more plain and intelligible it becomes.


And the synonyms seem to indicate, to me at least, that what's at hand, at least, is not merely one belief leading to another, but rather we have accounts, stories, answers, causes, commentary, definition, descriptions, evidence... a variety of possible ways of looking at explanation. These aren't things I would deny. I'd just say that in order to capture them you'd need to expand your notion of explanation a bit.

Though I can understand not wanting to step into having an account of knowledge, since it seems a bit astray, if related. So maybe there's some way of capturing all that without reference to knowledge. But I think there needs to be more, at least. Hopefully this goes some way as to show why I think that.

For now I'm staying focused on the topic of explanation. I think that'll suss out differences better than on the topic of certainty, mostly because I couldn't think of a reply (i.e. it didn't seem to me we were disagreeing much):


If a belief that leads to one holding another belief is all an explanation is, then that's a pretty permissive standard for an explanation.

I believe the medicine will cure me. This, in turn, makes me believe the doctor can be trusted. Is the former belief really an explanation of the latter belief? Psychologically, perhaps, it makes sense of the latter belief. But it's not like any sort of thing I'd call an explanation extemporaneously. And surely you can see how there's a difference between what an explanation consists in, and how people, psychologically, can be drawn to a belief from another belief they hold without it being an explanation of the content of the belief, even if it happens to (given such and such an understanding of human psychology) count as an explanation for the belief itself.

This description also doesn't really tell us what explanations consist of, either. It leaves out the process, which is an important element in understanding what explanation consists of. An explanation brings one to a deeper place of knowing about some topic. Explanation is about knowledge, and in particular how it changes a person's ability (understanding) and relationship to the topic at hand, not just about changing beliefs.

An explanation explains something.

So, if you hear an explanation which you have not heard before, then you will come to understand some topic better.

Clearly understanding does not rely upon facts alone, though. We are not encyclopedias, but knowers. And knowing is much more than the facts. (though, clearly, knowing is not absent facts either)

A brute fact is something that exists without explanation. That is, there is nothing more to understand. Once you know the fact, there is nothing left to know. To ask, "But why?" is a fruitless endeavor.



***

Something in the exchange that helps me to say why I prefer talking in terms of brute beliefs to brute facts: it seems to me that it's less speculative, at least. There's a lot more positing about how the world must be in order for this or that conclusion to be acceptable when talking in terms of brute facts. But brute beliefs are plausible in that clearly we actually do other things and believe certain ways. That is, there is a terminus in our chain of reasoning (if a chain it could be called), regardless of how the world might be (infinite regress, or no)

It's just a metric I use. And you are right -- I ask because I couldn't explicate it at that level. I don't know if it needs one, but it's something I usually try to pursue. "If I had to explain this in a classroom setting, then..."

There is something of a danger of dissolving into wordplay. And there is also something to be said for it kind of depending on who is speaking. But there seems to me, at least, to be some kind of resonance (to use a term of art) to be had as well. The term, or idea, is not unique to one speaker, but it's not exactly clear what this resonance consists in.

Therefore agnostic about God must mean that God's existence is improvable and that proposition has to be proved. — Coldlight

I'd prefer to say "argued for" rather than "proven", just because of how people tend to conceptualize "proof", but I'd agree with you there if you don't see an important difference between proofs and arguments.

I think poetry would be one of your best sources. — Bitter Crank

I very much agree. To not include poetry or prose would, I think, miss a lot of good thoughts and perspectives on love. (And, actually, the philosophy books I've been reading do the same. i.e. use literature to reflect on the topic)

OK, cool. I found him on Academia. He's very prolific. (and does work on a lot of things I'm interested in)

I understand your explanation, but if I wanted more, is there a good starting point?



I could see that. The two phrases do seem to be getting at something similar.

I think you're on the wrong track there, Meta. Being/Having isn't about knowledge or objects as much as it is about how we are oriented towards the world. We can relate to the world in a have-mode or a be-mode, but each of these are a mode of being. A bit confusing, as you note, but nothing that isn't easily clarified.

That's what I mean when I say I don't think that what we do gets at what a mode of being is. It seems to me that there's more to it than that. Which seems to be something you'd agree with, with what you said above. The only difference I'd point out here is that rather than thinking about a knowledge of objects, I'd say it's more about self-knowledge. (or other-knowledge, perhaps, as Fromm is something of a Freudian -- though I don't mean to restrict the conversation to Fromm alone, I'm just using him as a starting point).

We are the modal initiative; to say 'consciousness' is to enable the necessary preconditions that initiate an awareness or lived experience of the external world by making it 'conscious' rather than asserting a constructed reality. Indeed, if self-consciousness is a feature of consciousness (thus circular or reflexive) where being conscious is to consciousness itself, any authentic modes of experience requires the subject to be aware of the subject. Empathy, for instance, removes itself from egotism and one becomes morally consciousness. — TimeLine

Alright, so just to make sure I have this straight...

Being is conscious, lived experience. A mode of being is initiated by us. (strong emphasis on "us"? Or do you believe it's more of an "I"?). An authentic mode is one where the subject is self-aware, empathy being a particular case of authentic consciousness.

I must admit I'm not following the part in the middle, from where you start "...to say 'consciousness' is to..." all the way to "...where being conscious is to consciousness itself..." -- My best guess is that saying and meaning "consciousness" is sort of a bootstrap operation whereby we both become aware of ourselves and reality, and given that then in-authentic modes of being would make us not aware of one or the other, since consciousness requires both. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "constructed reality", though.

But as I said, this is a guess, and I only say these things by way of asking to express more and clarify, if you're willing to write.

I agree with Terrapin. You have kind of ignored the first reply to your OP:

You can, but then you're arguing for global skepticism, not agnosticism. — Michael

Which only relies upon your supplied definition of agnosticism, and so doesn't need to supply its own. It simply doesn't follow that an agnostic about God must be a skeptic about all metaphysical propositions. The reverse holds -- a skeptic about all metaphysical propositions would also be a skeptic about God, but you can surely be an agnostic about God and not a skeptic about everything.

Sorry for a delay in responses. The rat wheel scoops me up, but I have the time and energy now. Thank you for the replies. They were nice to think over.



That's a good approach, though I'd express hesitation in using "form of life" to get at "modes of being". It seems to me that forms of life deal with daily activity, and I don't think that a mode of being relies as much upon our actions. While our actions may influence our mode of being, I'd say that there is also an experiential element to it -- something like an encounter, but not necessarily something we or I or you or they are doing.

Of course you say "like", so maybe I'm just being too literal in this reply.

've been reading up about perception, familiarity and anticipation. One hidden assumption in a lot of cogsci - but this goes back centuries, millennia - is that there is a sort of equilibrium we as human beings revert to, want to get back to. Our mode of being is not so much to make the world as to perceive it then act upon it.

An interactive and anticipatory way of understanding would on the contrary be that our mode of being is world-making, future- and other-oriented. As an example in language (the example I'm most interested in) the 'meaning' of anything one says or hears would then never be restricted by a compositional account, because part of the meaning would reside in what I am about to say, and what you think I am about to say, and what you are about to say, and what I think you are about to say... — mcdoodle

I wonder -- might these actually be two different modes of being?

It seems to me that our hidden assumptions, once explicated, about cognition or inner life are often things which we draw from our own experiences. Something which might be shared with others, but is not universal.

The relation of emotion to anticipation and memory is a related area (and I have some memory you're interested in emotion). — mcdoodle

Very much so :). To the extent that I have the time (and discipline).

A guy called Tronick studied infant moods and proposed that moods embodied a 'Janus principle' facing both past and present - that they are a non-cognitive way in which the past enters the present, or the present inhabits the future. That would help explain why athletes for instance focus on mood: mood changes anticipation and both in turn influence how the world is to us, and how we are in the world. Deep mood might then be how we are in the world, which would be why we call bipolarity or depression 'mood disorders'.

This seems kind of trippy, but at the same time plausible too. At the least I can see how mood would relate to perceptions of time, and I don't think our perception of time is a linear line with a point-like structure. (I just wouldn't be certain to what extent mood would be that perception of time, or would instead be related to that perception of time)

What would you say is this distinction between mood and deep mood?

A man and a woman have a child, but that does not make them parents. It is what they do, how they demonstrate their care for the child, that makes them be parents.

Having is necessary but it is not sufficient, doing is both necessary and sufficient for something to be. — Cavacava

Is it how they demonstrate their care for their child, or the care they feel for their child, or the relationship which they establish with their child?

It seems to me that what you're saying here is something along the lines of the existential principle that being and doing (and in particular not merely doing, but *acting*)) are, if not identical, at least deeply related.

Being is conscious, lived-experience rather than just being a passive observer where pleasure or the instinctual determines action. — TimeLine

If that is being, then what would you say a modality of being is? Would you say that the egotism you describe is such a mode? (And, if so, then what is an authentic mode?)




Interesting. Seems to me that at least you are saying what a mode of being is not -- i.e., habits.