Naturalistic Philosophy
A Field Guide to Social Construction
By , University of Utah (November 2006)
Section: Naturalistic Philosophy
Subject: Philosophy.
Key Topics: realism, truth, empiricism.
Abstract
A wide range of discussions throughout the humanities and social sciences include claims that various phenomena are “socially constructed.” Many academics associate “social constructionism” with the so-called “science wars” in which social constructionism is identified with some sort of radical anti-realism about reality in general, or the findings of science in particular. But the move to radical anti-realism is only one way to develop the central idea of constructionism – that human decision and human culture exert profound and often unnoticed influence – and much of this work remains interesting and provocative within a broadly naturalist and realist framework. Here the author reviews and explores a variety of constructionist claims, including the plausible suggestion that social constructionist hypotheses have special purchase in discussions of human kinds.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00051.x
This article abstract has been viewed 8278 times.
Top 5 related articles
-
Experimental Philosophy
By , University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
(Vol. 1, November 2006)
Philosophy Compass -
Analytic Epistemology and Experimental Philosophy
By and , Indiana University, Bloomington
(Vol. 1, November 2006)
Philosophy Compass -
Fast and Frugal Heuristics
By , Northern Illinois University
(Vol. 1, March 2006)
Philosophy Compass -
Well-Being: Psychological Research for Philosophers
By , University of Minnesota
(Vol. 1, September 2006)
Philosophy Compass -
Two Dogmas of Neo-Empiricism
By , University of Pittsburgh
(Vol. 1, June 2006)
Philosophy Compass
Top 5 Related Blackwell Reference Chapters
Pragmatic Idealism and Metaphysical Realism
Realism has two indispensable and inseparable components: the one existential and ontological, the other ...
By NICHOLAS RESCHER
Realism and Truth
But why all this creative reconstruction, all this make-believe?(“Epistemology Naturalized,” in Quine ...
By DAVID R. CERBONE
Empiricism
Many of our beliefs, practices, and theories reflect the assumption that the world impinges on us via ...
By LYNN HANKINSON NELSON
empiricism
Empiricism is a broad tendency in the theory of knowledge. Each of its many forms lays stress on experience ...
By kenneth p. winkler
The way and the truth
Searching for the meaning of “truth” in the Chinese tradition would not immediately strike one as a controversial ...
By DAVID L. HALL