What does social construction really mean?
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2018
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Recommended reading:
“The Social Construction of What?” by Ian Hacking, particularly chapter 1 for an introduction - larvalsubjects.files.wordpres...
“Social Construction” by A. Sveinsdóttir, in Philosophy Compass Volume 10 Issue 12 (I have a physical copy of this but cannot find it online, if anyone does please let me know)
I quoted The Social Construction of Reality at pages 13 and 15 - perflensburg.se/Berger%20socia...
Note on the categories at 8:33: Ian Hacking also lists one attitude he calls “unmasking” that sits at the same level as “reformist”. I didn’t include this for the sake of brevity. This is when it is shown how something is contingent in order to undermine its authority, when showing that it’s contingent is good enough in itself. Reformist attitudes can also be unmasking, and vice versa, but they do not have to be.
Footage used:
• Building A Brick House
• CHESS MASTERS - NO SOUND
• East Street Market (1971)
• Pacific Stock Exchange...
• Video
• Alcohol and the Human ...
• King John (1899) - Fir...
• Disney's (1935) The Go...
really good entry-level philosophy vid that doesn't treat the viewer like a child
appreciated
Perfect
If the people need to be explained something as simple as what a social construct is, then I'd say they're already being treated like a child.
Ohhh yes you are ultra intelligent not like us the peasents
social construction is a social construction.
Which is true in many aspects
Well yea, the term didn't pop up in the universe outside of society.
wait until this guy finds out about the turtles. it's all the way down, mate.
Meta-social construction
Robert Gould I’ll have you know I cut a melon open the other day and the seeds were naturally in the shape of the words “social construction”.
I like how you put scenes of actual construction in the video. Keep up the good work!
Funny, I didn't even pick up on that angle. I was thinking that it's men doing that type of job, and is that a "social construction", or a natural division of labor that falls out of the biological differences between the sexes -- namely, that men are stronger.
@@chrimony a social construct can have natural origins because society has natural origins.
@Robert: The people that use the term "social construct" usually do so to deny nature.
@@chrimony and they're misunderstanding the term. Newton's laws of motion are social constructs - produced by society - which doesn't mean I can ignore the laws of physics. I think people have got confused because social constructionism papers often study that which has been more invented than natural.
@@chrimony but even something socially invented can be based on nature. The pyramids couldn't break natural laws. Our social institutions could not be built up of people who lived forever. And many things like religion, the construction of modern hospitals, etc, are reactions to the "real world".
The left right distinction is itself a harmful social construct. It associates ideas in such a way that people who identify with one group are reluctant to believe ideas which are perceived to belong to the other. This prevents people from being able to properly evaluate the best course of action in a given situation, or to examine the validity of their own beliefs without bias.
This comment is more insightful and correct than any of the content in the videos I've seen on this channel.
@Bruno Ferreira Look at how upset leftists get when they're told how similar they are to the right wing they hate.
@@philipmason5547 I don't know if you can call diametrically opposed viewpoints "similar" without contextualizing that comment. Beyond the breadth of specific contexts, there is little ideological similarity between Left-wing and Right-wing radicals. I think this is an example of the Hegelian dialectic in full force. Anyway, I agree with the takeaway of the main comment: we cannot expect to successfully teach each other anything with these barriers.
@Bruno Ferreira Going against the left-right divide is not a centrist thing. A centrist would reject extremes and take a middle ground pretending like it's the best. You can definitely reject the left-right distinction by going to extremes and avoiding compromises, a whole range of third position thought is based on this, the idea that putting people in two camps is imposed onto us by the system that we should rebel against and that there is no reason why combining views on the opposing sides of a made up spectrum would be a problem.
I don’t think the powers that be did this by accident. Divide and conquer.
Undergrad sociologist here. Loved this video. Clear, precise from an academic standpoint, and very didactic. I will most certainly strive to subtitle it to my native tongue (spanish) so as to make it serve as an introduction to texts on social constructivism in an epistemology course.
Hola, adoré este video como veo que tú igual. Me gustaría leer tu opinión al respecto sobre el sentido epistemológico de aquello.
Finally someone explains what a social construct is. Thank you! But I would also add more that it is used in the field of anthropology as well, but it is referred to cultural construct. The value of of something is based on the culture( society) and varies between cultures.
Cultural construct sounds better from a linguistic pov.
After decades of conservative think tanks and business interests railing against philosophy or virtually any liberal arts programs in post secondary institutions I think it's worth considering the consequences that have risen from that agenda.
First if you major in philosophy people instantly label you as someone who lives in a fantasy world without having working experience.
Second the number of students taking humanities classes are dropping. As a result people are getting less of a history and less of a critical thinking technique to adequately analyze ideas.
Maybe we are seeing in real time the side effects that has on a society. Fewer people are actually taking the time to think things through and simply looking for cliff notes style understandings. Social construction is such a basic concept to understand and yet it is manipulated so often and easily to meet multiple agendas.
Jesse Cool In fairness, walk into almost any philosophy classroom and you either see kids forced to be there (gen ed) or ones still revolting against mom and dad. We've also seen an exodus from the humanities due to garbage standards of achievement. I know more than a few English majors who've never read Shakespeare or Milton.
PhD means Doctor of Philosophy. Every professor hopefully knows that no matter the specialization, whether that be hard or soft sciences.
That said, I have met/heard a lot of philosophy majors that are rather poor thinkers with common trait of indulging themselves in ideologies and lacking basic mental rigor. So it is more case of get your shit together for the soft sciences than conservative sabotage.
Liberal arts isn't losing students because it is left wing, it's because it's useless and not fruitful.
The problem is that we equate uselessness with lack of physical action. Zizek has already spoken of this. It is crucial for a society of this day and age to acts less and to think more because these actions have consequences, and that consequence is unbriddled disregard for quality of life and a hyperfocus for production and capital, severe lack of knowledge and a matrix like framework that governs us into misery without even knowing it.
Los so Fuck zizek
This is a quite useful video. I was planing on making a video about this, but you did it way better. it always amazes me the big quantity of people that seem to believe "social construct" is something not real that one can just ignore or imagine.
Sociologist here - excellent work! Big fan of your videos:) keep it up.
She constructs reality and attempts to pay off her crippling student loan debt.
Afonso Brito - She contributes material to Real Peer Review - twitter.com/realpeerreview
Scholar of religions myself, specialized in Judaism. Can always read more sociology books. He makes great, profound and articulate analysis!
@@bodbn ....Or doing research. And teaching.
That burger was quite distracting.
Rodrigo Medeiros da Silva I’m quite hungry now.
The burger was a social construction
The release of this video is very good timing! I was just trying to explain to someone today that socially constructed =/= not real. I'll show this to him when I see him again tomorrow.
I just recently subscribed and I just want to say that regardless of certain disagreements with you, this is objectively a good channel that offers well thought out explanations of various terms, concepts and schools of thought. Thank you for creating quality content and keep it up :-)
As an economics student I gotta say, money is a perfect example of a social construct. It is completely defined by whether an object is used as money. Cigarettes can be money if they are used in the set of functions which define currency. Cigarettes stop being money when they are not used as currency. Money is absolutely useful and a great social construct of immense utility.
Any good economist understands the utility of social constructs, and the entirely subjective nature of utlity means that you can't just ignore other people's preferences just because they are different.
Money is the perfect example when someone says they don't believe in social constructs or that social constructs don't have real world effects. The problem is that people tend to equate social constructs with social make-believe. The knowledge of science is a social construct but that doesn't make it invalid. And money is not a pure invention of the mind as it has needed real-world properties in order to be money - a long enough life (money made from bubbles would be useless), difficulty in forging (which is why monopoly money wouldn't be suitable currency).
It's not exactly a social construct, nor is money "literally valueless." It's just a replacement for time and effort. And nobody wants to waste time and effort on products or services that nobody would give up their own time and effort for (unless it's a personal hobby where you have no interest in exchanging the fruits of their efforts). So money is as much of a social construct as time and effort is. Which means it's really not. Money is the most popular avenue for this form of transaction, but it's far from the only means of doing so. Without fiat money, these forms of transactions would still take place. It's a method by which you can specialize in a few tasks, but still receive products and services that aren't the result of your specialized tasks.
Money is as much of a social construct as chopping down a tree, keeping half of the logs, and trading the other half for a couple pounds of meat. Money is just a more efficient solution to this form of problem.
@@ade8890 you're ignoring the multiple institutions, ideologies, discourses, social interactions, manufacturing, sciences (e.g. economics degrees), international agreements, and countless social interactions involved in what we call money. Yes, you can imagine a sterile thought experiment of money in a world populated with just 2 people, show its use in basic trading, and then make the argument it's not a social construct, but in reality it is. This goes for both definitions of social construct. 1. Something produced by social interactions - as well as institutions, etc, our money is made from resources that are acquired by corporations, markets, etc, and then configured using technical knowledge and technology that are also social. 2. A psychological perception shared and produced by society/social interactions - this is entirely true of money. You need the two people trading to share the belief that the money they're using holds value. The value of that money does not exist in the universe beyond human subjectivity.
@@robertgould1345 1. money isn't produced by social interaction. It's produced by a machine. It's transferred via social interaction, but then so is giving another person a soda for free. But that's hardly a social construct now is it? It's as much of a social construction as giving half your logs for a couple pounds of meat.
2. Money isn't a perception. Unless you're saying money having value is a shared perception. But then literally anything that is believed to have value is a social construction. Makes it a rather meaningless concept. Society believing air has value (because we need it to live) would also then be a social construction. Any system of belief is a social construction. Including the belief that Science should be used to advance technology.
Doesn't seem like social construction has any practical meaning. It would seem to mean: any agreed upon statement that doesn't have to do with the way the Universe operates by is a social construction. But even then, you could still form an argument that the way we go about determining how the Universe works is a social construction. Because we're forced to appeal to the common domain of perceptions associated with a variety of observations (such as dropping a ball in your apartment it will drop to the ground. if 50% of the people didn't share such a perception, we would likely still be disputing gravity). We collectively share this perception, therefor it's a social construction?
How is the concept of social construction any different than merely sharing beliefs, whether it be about preference or science?
@@ade8890 I studied economics and was always told money was social on nature, as is wealth from trade through more basic means. From Adam Smith to Marx to modern economics, money and wealth are socially constituted. I have a feeling you, like many, have a particular idea of what a social construct is. It's a very broad concept - whether the purely psychological conception or the more physical constructionism of discourse theory and actor network theory. It can be so broad as to seem banal and meaningless. So What? The thing that many misunderstand is that the idea of something being a social construct is not ground breaking nor useful. What is interesting are the next steps, the theoretical and epistemological ideas that help us study social constructs, and indeed criticise them.
It seems like a misunderstanding of social construction has driven a lot of people towards biological determinism. I'm glad you pointed out that it doesn't equate to relativism.
Also, that alcohol clip was cool, it reminded me of the "Duff goodness" bit from the Simpsons 😂
Great video!
Afonso Brito I am. Do I know you?
Afonso Brito Ah OK. Thanks. Yeah I've been at uni forever studying all kinds of stuff. Good thing we have a generous student loan system here in Australia 😂
Likewise it has also driven a lot of people towards relativism
D00MKOLA I'm sure you're right but it's a common rhetorical strategy to accuse someone of being some nihilistic relativist just because they say something is socially conducted. The sorts of people who do that kind of thing probably only know these terms as ideological buzzwords and not the philosophical concepts themselves but I just thought I'd comment on it anyway.
Jhonny J. S You're right. Any model/framework etc. is fine when used in a balanced way. It all depends on what you're looking at and what kind of analysis you're trying to do. It's when people make these concepts the 'core' of their world view that it becomes a problem. It all involves ignoring conflicting evidence which is, by definition, the most unscientific thing one can do.
This is probs one of your most concise and well done vids
This video is absolutely perfect. Just 10 minutes of explaining a complicated topic jn exactly the right depth, without insulting the viewers intelligence.
Great book on the topic is Ian Hacking's 'The Social Construction of What?'
Great video, I didnt expect to understand much since its 2am, but I did :D
Nice work
This is why I love you channel. Very well explained.
Competently explained and super informative ! Your videos are articulate and nuanced !
Really thorough explanation, keep up the great work!
He is profound! Was just picturing myself, blending mad . Laughed very hard! ;0)
Also I like your content and hope you continue to produce it!
Good video. Much needed. I think part of the problem with the current discourse is that themes previously consigned to sociology textbooks have broken through to a mainstream audience that is ill-prepared to understand them.
10/10 to the writer for managing to touch on other types of constructs without going off topic. I know how hard it can be to keep a listener engaged on this “constructs” for 5 minutes let alone 10. I just came to check the work. Great flow of information. Now, the rest of you plebs, start unpacking those keyword definitions and start modifying your environment....
How can I understand this if not through the perspective of Shrek??
In the beginning was the Shrek, and Shrek was with Donkey, and Shrek was Donkey. He was with Donkey in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In Shrek was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Wow this is very good content. Keep it up
PAPA BLESS
very well thought out video, love your work
Amazing content!! Love it, keep it up, good pace, good topics, relevant and curiously cool videos on screen, *claps*
"Social Construct" is often misunderstood both by those who claim that nothing is and but those that claim that everything is a social construct. Much of the criticism of "social construct" is a reaction against those who stretched the term too far.
Social Construction is more often misunderstood; relative to "reality",in the wrong hands can agitate. When we partner sweeping criticisms of social construction with shallow notions of collectivism over individual agency, we create pathological people.
Even a door has a stop. While it is important to deeply understand and critique social constructions, I prefer the analytic approach to critique. If understanding were a race and I wanted to win, I would employ a dialectical approach. I would then be blind to my mistakes.
Great video, again!!
This is an excellent youtube channel.
Well done.
Whoa, what a helpful video! Thanks, CP!
Great video. I think the problem a lot people have with "social construction" is that they believe that it is completely arbitrary and not based on the material world like for example when someone says "gender is a social construct and detached from sex"
Onlyhas99 yeah but is also a problem when said materialistic facts are used to construct a social norm that some find "opresive"
only Gender is a social construct, and it is in a certain sense detached from biological sex. However, it is loosely, at least partially, based on observed phenomena about the biological sexes. So I would say that it is not totally detached from sex. But people with one biological sex may take on the signifiers of the other, for example. And, if a man does not want to get into a fight and another guy says "Be a man" he is not saying that this person does not yet have a penis and testicles but should acquire them. He is saying that he should behave in the manner that his society thinks a man should behave. So that is where it becomes socially constructed.
if you read again, you will see that I don't deny that gender is (to some degree) a social construct but that it has its foundations in biology. You are referring to "gender roles" whereas I more refer to "gender identity" but you are correct about the "be a man" phrase tho. But you can even make a good case for that your example is also partially based on biology.
What I find weird about the nurture vs nature debate is that people often understand it as a binary with no room in-between.
*What I find weird about the nurture vs nature debate is that people often understand it as a binary with no room in-between.*
This is missing the actual debate. The side that was previously "nature" now argues for a position "in-between", based on a notion of heridity first proposed by Galton in the late 19th centurs. Using that particular notion, one can end up stating something like "IQ is 80% genetic and 20% environment". However even Galton understood his notion as a starting point (it doesn't give sensible results if the genes involved are dominant and recessive for instance, both known at the time) and more general measures of gene-environment interactions are now available. But none of these models gives you a percentage to which a trait is genetic. That doesn't even make sense under those models, in the same way asking which percentage of the properties of the covalent bond between a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom are due to the oxygen and which percentage are due to the hydrogen makes no sense - you take away either and there is no covalent bond to look at, so you could answer 100% for either, but that obviously is not what the question is getting at. No biologist would take an "in-between" position that would partition a trait in this way. But the "in-betweeners" generally frame all criticism as some type of hard pure nurture position.
I am referring to what I often see in the daily debates when people either detach gender from sex and claim it has no foundation in biology or that people claim that women can't be business or political leaders due to their biology.
Why would you call them "in-betweeners" if their stance is a hard pure nurture position?
It means language has an effect on how we perceive reality. I'm on a long plunge into Derrida right now. This isn't socialism, this is questioning assumptions - not rewriting the wheel. But if it did - maybe it'll roll faster. Thumbs up.
Anaxagoras if you're smart enough to reinvent civilization, don't just copy the other marxists that sit in your class. Try to think of something original.
NathansHVAC ThErEs nO sUcH tHiNg aS oRiGinAliTy
Wittgenstein is better and 10× more gay so like id just read Wittyboii tbh
NathansHVAC
If someone tries something that has been tried 50 or 100 years ago, the material conditions might be right enough to make it work. That said, with material conditions changing people will be able to come up with different ideas.
Muykle don't let your ideology blind you. Just because Marxism is supposed to work doesn't mean that it will work. When it gets to the point that people have to be put in jail for how they think, it has gone too far.
get ready dude, you're channel is about to blow up...
I see potential in this channel.
Some people need to read social construction of reality, good book
Daymean Spensser some people need to read books. Just that. :P
Srijan Butola I see a lot of discourse on the internet that doesn't source books of inspiration, not anything on the lines of society of the spectacle or Hume and so on, which is very unfortunate because there's much that can't be contextualized in a short video
Yes! I love the “burger” for Berger lol. Really leaves an impression.
daymean: I read "society of the spectacle." hard to read. Harder to understand. still not sure what they advocate that people do.
"The revolution of Everyday life" was the same.
Those wachy French Situationists.
I mean, I get that they advocate some kind of Libertarian Marxism, but to get there you have to go through a lot.
Opinunate ted society of the spectacle is a good introduction to the situationist but they do have a tendacy to surround themselves in this avant garde style
When our paper that equals 1 of something ends up equaling 0 of something, he who has the pants controls the universe.
This is good stuff. Should really be explained this way to more people.
Keep up the good work! I just subscribed and can't wait to see what you have to say in the future.
Again, don't sort the comments by "new", worst mistake in my life. I keep doing it too.
Sadly, although I typically agree with the end result of the flawed logic, many people don't understand social construction. It's really not that hard of a concept yo grasp. The main problem which caused this tide of unintelligent anti-social-concructivism was caused by it's overuse past scientific denial of the ubiquity of social construction. Now people are beginning to get ideologically attatched to biological essentialism, and that's going to lead culture down a path towards eugenics... I hate how society can't just take new ideas in moderation.
As always, amazing video!
your channel is gold.
Regardless of the real effects of a society's employment of a social construct, the construct itself is in an important sense not strictly real, inasmuch as it is a reification of facts about people, projected as though they were facts about the thing. To say that a dollar is worth something isn't actually to say anything about dollars, it's to say something about how people think and behave with regard to dollars. A dollar isn't "really" worth anything, objectively; but real people really do value dollars, and you can objectively say who values dollars how much, or how much people value them on average, and so on.
How does one objectively quantify the amount of value one has towards money?
@@Liliquan The same way one quantifies anything else: in comparison to some arbitrary unit of reference. We measure distances in terms of how many of an arbitrary distance like "inch" or "meter" fit into that distance. Likewise, you measure how much someone values something in comparison to how much of something else they'd be willing to exchange it for. Usually, money *is* that standard unit of value-measurement: we say an apple is worth so-and-so-many dollars, etc. But you can also say a dollar is worth so-and-so-many of whatever else.
@@Pfhorrest It doesn’t matter if there is or isn’t a standard unit of measurement. It matters (according to your first comment) whether it’s objective or not. And according to your second comment, it’s clearly subjective.
@@Liliquan It can be objectively measured *that* someone (or a market of people on average) values a certain amount of money as much as some amount of something else, by seeing how much money they're willing to exchange in return for how much of that something else.
@@Pfhorrest That’s not measuring values, that’s measuring behavior. There is no necessary equivalency between the values someone holds and the behavior they exhibit.
If anyone misunderstands the term its the people who throw it out as if stating something is a social construction isn't trivially mundane. By Kant's view even a rock is a certain kind of social construct, but it'll still hurt like hell to be hit by one.
MrZeyami is Kant talking about the physical rock itself, or the perceived rock?
pain is also a construct
you misunderstood the video, get off your high horse. social construction doesn't necessarily relate to whether or not something is true or real, it is about the social relations embedded in claims about the world.
Not really… Kant would've said that the perception we have of a rock is not authentic in the sense that we can only interact with its philosophy, however that's not what the video means by "social construct"
Rarity Sparkle
I'm not an expert of Kant, but I don't understand the difference. If all I have is my conceptualization of a tree, how is that different in kind from my conceptualization of the alcoholic?
I love your take on this
I have a paper due in about an hour and this video might have just saved me.
What is the source of knowledge?
Creativity is the source of all new knowledge. Books and the internet are the source of all old knowledge.
Nathan - Creativity is a talent, not a source. Books and the internet are filled with "derived knowledge", which means they also are not the source
Experience
Eduardo - We gain knowledge through experience. If experience were the source of knowledge, there wouldn't be anything to gain.
bob polo no, if you stayed all your life in a room you wouldn't learn anything more than that room. In fact, if a baby is not exposed to language before the age of three he will never be able to speak, because his brain missed the chance to absorb and configurate itself to allow speech. The fact that you were exposed once to something does not mean your learned nor have knowledge of it, have you ever realized a girl had a crush on you many years later, when, after many more experiences, it dawned on you? Our ability to learn and acquire knowledge is determined by experience, in order to expand it is necessary to be able to see or figure out what has gone past to many. Science is a good example, you know 2+2=4, in order to go further you need to experiment far and smart enough to do it, many times with a real, experienced based objective, such: as why things fall?
Good analysis but like ,most people, you misuse the term "relativism". Relativism only asserts that the validity/truth of something that is relative to a certain frame. However that frame is not defined. The frame could be as small as let's say a really specific situation, or as big as the frame of human consciousness (something indissolubly connected with the notion of social construction).
I didn't specify what I mean by "relativism", merely showed that it's not a necessary outcome of social construction claims. I agree though, relativism is not really a useful term at all outside of specific kinds of relativism, and is usually used as a pejorative
Yes for some reason relativism correlates with superficial knowledge when in actuality it is just a form of pragmatism. I know my comment was kinda nitpicking but I seriously can't stand all the unjustified (imo) argumentative attitude towards relativism. Really enjoyed your video by the way.
Thank you! Simple explanation that's easy to understand
Very informative. Stressing that social construction doesn't mean it's not real is important.
Nice spooks nerd! Do you think this view of social construction is compatible with Max Stirner?
Absolutely. "Social construct" as a category did not exist in Stirner's time, of course, and sociology as a distinct field wasn't very developed, but every spook is pretty much a social construct
I don't think that you address the primary concern of those who are opposed to the way social construction is used in political discourse. Basically it is often the case that when people identify something as a social construct they are claiming that its existence comes about entirely through arbitrarily adopted social norms and attitudes that would be different if everybody simply acted in some alternative fashion. The critics of constuctivism will point out instances in which something is claimed to be a social construct but the critic regards it as being something that emerges inevitably our of human nature. An obvious example of something that is not a social construct would be something like vision. The ability to see is inevitable if you are a human born with functioning eyeballs and the appropriate organs to process the information received by those eyeballs. So vision is innate to the kinds of beings with the biological faculties to accommodate vision. Social constructivists often make claims about the social construction of things like gender and sex differences with absolutely no regard for the empirical literature on the subject. Things like this are why sociologists get hammered by people from other disciplines. The dogmatic assumption of social construction without any survey of the available evidence supplied by other disciplines. You address some basic misunderstandings of social constuctivism well in this video, but I do not believe that is where the real issue lies. The real issue is on exactly those hot button topics such as gender, race, hierarchy, social attitudes and the extent that those are part of our nature as homo sapiens or are socially malleable if people simply choose to disregard them. Essentially you have taken down the least relevant critics of social construction and have not addressed the truly weighty critiques levied by other disciplines.
I think you're missing the point of the video. The point isn't to discuss the merits and demerits of social constructivism and of competing sociological viewpoints. It's simply to address misunderstandings of the idea of something being a social construct (e.g. that it means that it isn't real).
I understand the aim of the video and the it seems like it succeeds in its aim, but it skirts the discussion people are actually invested in. I see your point though.
Raining, just make your own video about it. 🤷♂️
The video clearly states that a social construct is not valid or invalid because it's a construct. All knowledge is a social construct. Science, for example, is conducted through social relations and institutions and enters larger society. That doesn't science is false. The conceptual differentiation of sex and gender is to mark valid natural sex "facts" from that which is not natural/social invention. For example, under these categories, the fact that men can't naturally give birth would go under biological sex, while the Victorian ideas that reading novels should be restricted to girls or that women aren't rational enough for university would fall squarely in the gender category. Simples. If you're talking about transexualism and transgenderism then it's more complex and beyond a discussion of just social constructionism because both transsexuals and genderfluid individuals are saying their identities are natural, that theyre born that way, and its not just a social invention.
That’s why I think philosophical discussions are somewhat useless. Real damage isn’t done by philosophers but by activists. Communism didn’t kill thousands of people because of Marx but because of the implementation of his philosophy into the actions of angry proletarians.
Looking at your backlist, and it has to be said that, similar to Zoe Baker, you have a real knack for breaking down complicated topics in an extremely coherent and easily comprehensible manner. You are unique, though, in your effective use of examples. Zoe Baker uses examples as well, but somehow I find the ones you use more visceral.
i love the aesthetics of these videos
The problem with social constructionism is that it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. It adds nothing of value to the situation. It's been long understood that most things people engage in are socially constructed. Even our perception of reality and history. Pointing it out is pointless most of the time.
One of the worst things online is when people say "X is a social construct" as if that proves or disproves anything. Newton's theory of gravity is a social construct but that don't mean it's not true or that people can fly off at will.
Physical theories aren’t constructed socially. They aren’t even part of our cultur like money is or like language is. Bad example
@@johannesschutz780 You do know that Newton's theories of motion, as an example, are written down in a book. You think Newton and the university education he was attached to wasn't social? I think you're misunderstanding me. The physical world that science represents is not a social construct though it does enter the social. Scientific knowledge is definitely a social construct. All knowledge is a social construct. Think of a painting of a mountain. That painting is a construct even though it represents something outside of it. It's made of the canvas, the paint, the artist, the brushes, etc. To say science is not a social representation is to mistake a map for the land itself.
@@johannesschutz780 if you think the scientific method, experimental methods, institutions, inventions, language, and all the other things we use to study and describe the natural world are not social, what are they? Language is definitely social, so perhaps tell me how Einstein was supposed to represent E=MC2 without constructing it out of letters and mathematics? If you still think scientific knowledge is not a social construct then you are completely misunderstanding social constructionism as an academic discipline.
The idea of scientific knowledge might be a social construct, language itself certainly is, but a specific theory has virtualy no social value. It doesn’t even exist in the social space.
@@johannesschutz780 a scientific theory is written by humans and used by humans in society. Can you explain how Newton's laws of motion were not used in society? NASA still uses Newton's laws of motion and I'm pretty sure NASA is part of society.
Excellent clip! Finally someone that bothers to understand the term before s/he uses it. Thank you. :-)
keep the videos up man!
Great content; I appreciate this perspective -- especially during our current political climate. With that said, I feel as if you have swept something under the rug and I think it should be addressed.
Although I'm not familiar with the work of Sally Haslanger, I would guess that she conflates the idea of gender stereotypes with gender. Gender stereotypes are socially constructed, but gender (traditional usage) is not. Our chromosomes exist, and our gonad types are currently unchangeable regardless of cultural beliefs. We can change our appearances to more closely align with a gender stereotype that is associated with the gender that is not ours, we can alter our hormones to more closely align with hormone levels typically found in people who are the gender that is not ours, but we can't alter our genders
There are people born intersex who do not fit into either of the typical binary genders, but they represent less than two percent of the population (according to one online source), and -- as far as I know -- people who are intersex cannot change their chromosomes or gonad types. This group of less than two percent of the population represents a gender spectrum, but the remaining ninety-eight percent of the population can be categorized into two genders -- usually referred to as male and female
If all of that is true -- and it might not be true -- then the implication would be that the idea of transgender is a social construction
you mean sex when you say gender
No, I am using the traditional definition. Gender is used this way in scientific literature, government documents, and other texts. I am using the word as it is defined. Perhaps you mean "gender stereotypes," or "gender roles" when you say "gender"
no gender is a social construct even if you try to base it around some biology it's still a social construct much like race. I still have kinky hair and dark skin,but me being "black" is a thing society made up and defined as they saw fit long before I was born. This same thing applies to gender, especially in a social context.
How are you not conflating the ideas of gender stereotypes and gender roles with the historic and scientific concept of gender (or, if you'd prefer, sex)? I agree that race is a social concept, and I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be respected and protected if they don't conform to a culture's normalized gender stereotypes or gender roles. In fact, I believe the opposite; I believe that gender stereotypes and gender roles are socially constructed, and we should respect those who do not conform to them as having an enlightened perspective. My argument is that binary gender distinctions are objectively measurable in over ninety-eight percent of the population, and the only way we can argue that gender is socially constructed is by changing the definition of the word "gender" to mean "gender stereotypes" or "gender roles"
Hello Jerk: your definition of "gender" seems very specifically crafted to be unchangable by current technology. why?
also is do you really want tu lump all that isn't gonad type and sex chromosomes as "gender stereotype"? are boobies a stereotype?
you do some very awkward contortions just to distance the term "gender" form any social influence.
i think it would be more helpful to embrace that things can be biological, psychological and cultural at the same time. in modern language, "sex" refers to thr more biological aspects while "gender" is more about the social ones. but they are are neither strictly independent nor are they synonyms. shit is complicated.
I get your point and I understand your position but I think this video kind of misses the core problem. I think most people that are strongly opposed to the social constructionist argument don’t actually have a problem with the claim of sth. being a social construct but with the (expected) intent of the person making that claim.
In my experience the social construction claim is almost never made for the sake of the argument but as a political argument. The logic seems to work sth like this: xyz is a social construct … social constructs can (be) change(d) …. we should change xyz in this very particular way (that is only supported by like 5% of the population). It is often used as an argument for social engeneering and that is what people truly dislike.
Another aspect of this argument that often strikes me as somewhat naive is that the status quo is often looked at very critically but when it comes to the favored alternative not even the slightest due diligence has been done.
You are correct.
As this video explains, saying that X is a social construct doesn't mean it's false or wrong. That people misuse social constructionism in politics is their fault.
I feel like even though it hasn’t been stated explicitly, the diagramm at 9:40 makes me somewhat feel like it is supposed to say that every social construct is somewhere on that diagramm and that everything there moves downwards (with different speeds). So to say social constructs are arbitrary and that’s why we will get rid of them (not in a sense a political activist says that but more the way Marx talked about the inevitability of revolution). I think it really is the core problem of theories about social construction, it is to easy to see it that way. I would have felt better if he somehow said that gender is not the same thing as slavery and we’re just about to realize that it is just another way we construct social power.
@@johannesschutz780 I think you're reading too much into that diagram. And I'm not sure where you get the idea that social constructs must necessarily be demolished. Yes, activists can miscontrue it, but that doesn't impact the theory. Many misunderstood and misrepresented Darwinism in politics but that doesn't mean Darwinism is bunk.
I might be, but why did he left us with the implication that when slavery moves down, why shouldn’t everything move down too?
Exactly, from political activists who want to deconstruct gender and replace it by some weird identity. There are literally people who say “gender doesn’t exist, it’s just a social construct” and use that as a legitimization to their bad taste.
I’m certainly not going to discredit the idea of social constructions itself.
Great video. Thanks for sharing this knowledge
thanks to the one person who made persan's subtitles
i doesn't undestand it , but i think it will help some people
The unexpressed implication of this video is that critics of social constructivism are by and large ignorant and wrong. The video makes no mention of Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler etc. whose theory are, for the most part, the target of much of the criticisms of social constructionism that we find on social media today. So what does this mean? It means that when critics (cough JP cough cough) attack social constructivism they are not talking about "collective intentionality" or "ontologically subjective entities" that have "objective functionalities". Rather they are talking about postmodern subjectivity and 'relativism'. This video is an equivocation of the term "social construction" to defend a facet of social constructionism that are for the most part regarded as ridiculous even by philosophers of 'social construction' like John Searle.
Could you explain what you mean by "postmodern subjectivity and 'relativism'" What aspects of it do you consider ridiculous?
Kevin Allen, gladly. I'll try to put it in the crudest way possible - Postmodernism believes in 'your truth', 'his truth', 'her truth', 'their truth' etc. (sorry for excluding other genders. Honestly, they proliferate so fast I just can't keep up with them) at the expense of 'the truth'. Now, there is nothing that's necessarily wrong about believing in the multiplicity of truth. However, if such beliefs lead to the rejection of objectivity then it becomes a problem.
The postmodernists' project, however, is not to valorize the individual subject. Rather it tries to put an end to the notion of the individual subject as the arbiter of truth and values ('de-centring the subject' would be the appropriate postmodern term). Here, we are talking about truth and values that pertain to the personal level of everyday human experience. It basically means you don't judge others by your personal values and truth, because that would be oppressive.
With regards to personal everyday experience, the postmodernists believe that desire is revolutionary and radically subversive, as such society has decided to repress these desires (by making seemingly natural connections between the flows of desire to the flows of interest and capital) with acceptable normative structure. One example of such structure is the family system!!! Family institution is one place where individual desires are controlled, where certain social structures are produced and reproduced through parental roles, sibling rivalries and the imposition of gendered identities. They believe that society organizes social harmony not through enabling collective action to result from a rational debate, but by preventing individual and collective desires from being allowed their full potential. In other words, society is a repressive regime, and in order to break free from it, one has to adopt a 'de-centred self' that does not subscribe to any of the centres that have been established by society, and by removing oneself from that very centre that dictates truth and value!!!
With regards to relativism, the postmodernists believe that every culture has a 'regime of truth': a set of discourse and semiotic structures that determine truths and values. As such truth and values should not be judged on/from a universalist or objective epistemology (like the ones advocated by modernity: reliance on reason, objective science and human rights). This is why people are defending the subjugation of women in certain cultures because the criticism is based on a universalising value system that really has nothing to do with with the epistemology and value system of the culture that is subjected to such criticism. Unless you are embedded in such culturally specific 'regimes,' you can never understand other cultures, and you have no rights to talk, or let alone criticise them!
Anyway, I have gone on way longer than I had intended to, so I'll stop here by leaving you a link to a debate on Postmodernism in which a postmodernist claims that an apple can fall up towards the sky depending on your perspective!!!
m.czcams.com/video/loGG5nrVIsM/video.html
EmpiricalMiracle, Ahahaha, I va mawl teh lul em!! Thank you so much for clearing that up!!! 😂
Jeu Chhakchhuak None of that sounds particularly ridiculous to me. People have differing values, and everyone thinks that their own values are the correct ones. Finding common ground morally cannot be done using science, and a lot of systemic stuff is hard to study objectively. Objectivity is a good heuristic, but it doesn't tell us anything about morality. "Human rights" is only one conception of morality, and not one on which there's complete consensus.
We cannot judge people brought up in oppressive societies for actions that result from that oppression but we can still accept that those actions are harmful, and work towards ending that oppression, based on our own values.
Society will always infringe on personal liberty. Judging when it is and isn't good to do so is also contentious. If postmodernists are really saying that we shouldn't have any identities based on societal norms, then they aren't really identitarians at all. No one who identifies as any race, gender, or sexuality can be a postmodernist the way you present it, and that's most of the non-TERF left, and most of the people the right complains about as well.
I'm sure plenty of postmodernists use relativity to come to conclusions you find ridiculous, or to outright deny things they themselves can verify, but I'm pretty sure this idea that postmodernism is about calling a circle a square because that's "your truth" isn't accurate.
Jeu Chhakchhuak I got a notification that you posted a reply, but it doesn't seem to exist outside of my notifications window.
Hi. I'm very right-wing but I like this channel, just thought I'd add my (polite) dissent here.
I dislike the term "social construction" not because I think it means "not real", but because I think it's irrelevant and trivial to even mention. It frustrates me because it seems like the term is invoked as if it is a value judgement in and of itself. When someone says "gender is a social construct", they just seem to be implying gender norms and roles are arbitrary and valueless without actually critiquing that social construct at all. It's a tired thought-terminating cliche. I don't care if it's socially constructed, state your actual grievance with said construct.
I think the goal of stating things as "social constructs" is not to judge it's value, but to bring to light that things like gender are based on the society we are in. For many people, gender is a factual matter, tied to biology. Explaining that gender is a social construct (even as just a statement) exposes that gender norms and gender roles are actually formed from social relations and cultural histories, not just entirely from biology.
As a simple statement, it has a lot of value, there's just a lack of understating of it's implications.
" For many people, gender is a factual matter, tied to biology. "
And it being a social construct doesn't mean it is not (entirely) tied to biology. Categorizing livings beings into socially constructed species is... also a social construct. "It's a social construct" contains little information, it doesn't necessarily mean that something can be changed/is malleable (you can't change a species into an other one). If you want to prove something is malleable you have to bring specific arguments, not saying this is just a social construct.
+Pazuzu
biology, along with all the sciences, definitely inform social constructs, as social constructs are ideas and concepts accepted within a certain society. the whole point of the concept is that social constructs are not hard, testable facts, but rather ideas (which are inherently malleable.) it's funny you bring up species, because that category has been constantly subject to change and development. it's absolutely malleable. i'm unsure of what you mean by "you can't change a species into an other one", but our definitions and classifications of animals has changed and shifted over time and culture noticeably, which i think lines up perfectly with what i am saying.
gender being a social construct, for example, signifies that the inherent traits, passions and motivations we associate with women and men are actually not things we are born with (liking football, wearing dresses, careers in nursing or car repair or whatever), but are traits that are dependent on the society we reside in. men aren't inherently against being physically affectionate towards their male friends, for instance, because we can see that men used to sit in their friends laps and hold hands for portraits.
the concept of "social construct" is itself loaded with information, it expresses that an idea that a society regards as factual and permanent is in fact a fiction, a narrative, perpetuated by the society itself. it suggests malleability because any idea is subject to discussion, debate, and potential modification. a fact isn't socially constructed just because people discovered it, but the policies, stereotypes and lessons we draw from it definitely are. i hope this clarified the significance of the term!
If you define "social construct" as being inherently malleable then your definition doesn't match the definition used by this video. Actually, your whole comment is about you jumping from one definition to the other: if you define the concept as inherently malleable then it is arguable whether gender is a social construct. Gender is a social construct if we use the other definition (the one on the video).
" gender being being a social construct signifies that the inherent traits, passions and motivations we associate with women and men are actually not things we are born with [...], but are traits that are dependent on the society we reside in. "
Assertions with no proofs. On the other hand, it proves you are changing the definition midway since you accepted earlier species to be socially constructed yet none of the assertions you just made about traits would imply to species traits. And that's what I meant by species not being malleable. The only things that was changed by societies was the semantics behind species but not the reality of their traits.
Pazuzu Pazuzu if you genuinely need proof that what classifies someone as a “man” or a “woman” (ignoring the plethora of third sex/queer genders that exist in non-western cultures) isn’t directly associated with what a specific culture perceives of said genders, i don’t really know what to tell you.
your species point is redundant and actually proves my point, because it was common for quite some time for different animals to be lumped in together based on appearance (and not evolutionary biology, as it is more now). the factors that constitute a species vary and are subject to change depending on the culture within, only in the last 40 years or so did these concepts become more international.
what i mean by “malleable”, if it’s not clear, is that traits of a species, race, gender, etc, are subject to variance and differentiate across cultures, this demonstrating that there are no “rock solid” traits or qualities for a specific category.
gender is malleable in that the traits associated with manhood and womanhood have changed drastically over the last 100 years, just in america. and it is malleable in that we can challenge aspects of the status quo and attempt to grow and alter our perceptions of what is “required” to be a man, woman, nonbinary or what have you.
Thank you for making this
Social constructions are constrained from outside (you can call it "reality" if you wish).
Traffic rules are socially constructed, but they can't expect you to teleport through an intersection.
Recently I watched a documentary about language or something. There was an example of a small society / tribe, I think in Africa, which does not have words for left and right. Instead, they always refer to North, South, etc. This is, I think, a great example of something so deep into our culture which really changes the way we think about the world. These people don't view themselves as the center of everything, they realise they are just ants on a huge ball.
QI?
I think this has to do with allocenterism. The idiocentric would say left or right because they're self-centered.
That's a bit of a stretch. Just because a society didn't come up with concepts to refer to left or right doesn't mean they are less self-centered... It just means they're missing out on potential utility. Instead of saying grab to your left or right, they would have to say one of the four compass directions, or of the 8 combined compass directions... Has to do with functionalism, not self-centeredness... Talk about whack conclusions... This is why you gotta take documentaries with a grain of salt.
That's you assuming and making moral judgements on these people. They could be as selfish as anybody else, they just have a different direction system.
Or the culture is so collectivist it doesn't even assume each person has their own relative directions.
You did a great job of ignoring the elephant in the room. The question isn't whether or not social constructions exist, but whether or not their significance is artificial and as such they should be altered according to what people "feel" is right as apposed to what works as what works is also socially constructed.
For example we know that the way things are run in the west has led the general populace to experience the best living conditions it has ever experienced, yet postmodernist types argue that that's a socially constructed belief that's meant to justify the status quo as if it isn't objectively true that everyone wants a long lifespan and good living standards which are objectively most common in the west. They'd argue that what people constitute as 'better' is also socially constructed when in reality we're all interested in the prospects I've mentioned and there's definitely a method of organizing ourselves socially that will further these prospects the most.
He didnt ignore it, its just not the topic of the video dude. Go make one about your thoughts on this.
DarthCool99 he willfully ignored it
@@johannesschutz780 Every aspect of the problem that was not included in this video, was willfully ignored.
which is what I meant
Totally loved the Video. I'm just commenting something to make this Video appear more active in the YT-Algorithm.
Good shit, really wouldn't mind if you made a follow-up or something to dive a little deeper.
GG conservatives
Lol as if
I mean... The Blank Slate by Pinker pretty much refuted the radical social constructivist claim of the ubiquity & totality of social impact on the development of the mind... Like, new borns understand Newtonian physics in an innate, unconscious way.
Like that's not to say that it's not a powerful idea that explains many things, but like, Libs need to check themselves on the over application of the idea before cons check themselves on the under appreciation of it's power.
Francesco Vassallo Who me? When did I ever say that?
destroy for change or for destruction saek or maintain - there are only two options thus politics comes from personality tendencies - the paradim remain
Mathematical truth is a social construct.
sugarfrosted if you thought talking about 'truth' in relation to social constructs was weird, wait until you get into the philosophy of Mathematics and actually try to understand the relation of truth to maths. Its fucking weird damn
Yes it is.
Because society decided to use a decimal system and no the ancient, Arabian tertiary one. Imagine how different math would look like if we went 0 1 2 3 10 11 12 13 20 21 22 23 30...
Davesknd Nope. All the current theories we have work no matter the number system
No. Mathematical truth is not a social construct. It transcends cultures.
This would be clear to anyone that has ever studies math beyond basics.
great video as usual
I love your channel.
You seem to be arguing against a straw man. Never have I heard anyone say that when people say something is socially constructed they mean it's not real. The criticism of social constructionism I've seen is that it's used to say something is immoral or not justifiable as it's only a social construct. But clearly many of these things are justified and largely based on natural phenomena. For example, the idea that gender is a social construct. Many say we should dismantle the idea of masculinity and to a lesser extent femininity because they are socially constructed. But when we analyse masculinity and femininity we find that they're associated with a lot of sexual biology that can't change by merely demanding it too.
I've seen you do this in some of your earlier videos too on other topics. You seem to be somewhat unable to examine how ideas produced in universities operate in the wider context of the world. For example you claim that post modernism is not neo marxist because it challenges the historical materialist conception of the world. But with terms such as neo liberal we're fine applying them to laws/political environments that clearly don't fit with the liberalism in it's definition in the early works of John Adams.
It's clear to me that post modernism is neo marxist because it focuses on group power and identity as the primary factor at play in politics and even art. In the same way that the marxist conception of the world focuses on class as the primary factor at play in politics and art.
I have heard it said a lot of times, the 2 Quora questions I showed in the video are examples. This is not so much a problem among academics specializing in these topics, but some of its uses online, which is what this video is responding to. On the other hand, I have never heard someone say that something is immoral simply because it is a social construct (if my video is a strawman, so is your comment). If you have seen someone claiming this, I disagree with them, and you can show them this video, as it shows the way in which they misuse the category.
I've also never heard anyone say that social construction is completely detached from physical realities like biology. Even something as arbitrary, as say, fashion, depends on human anatomy (the shape of our bodies, the need to maintain a certain body temperature, etc.)
I don't understand this desire to drag all discourse down to the level of its worst expounders. You wouldn't judge a scientific theory based on pop science vulgarizations of it. If you think that the problem with an idea like social construction is its misapplication in wider society, then you're precisely arguing against its misapplication, rather than the idea itself. For instance, you wouldn't argue against Darwin's ideas simply because they (on a very large scale) have been interpreted and applied as social darwinism.
Group power and identity are part of nationalism too, you wouldn't call Hitler a Marxist, or a neo-nazi like Spencer a Marxist. A great chunk of neo-Marxists philosophers consider post-modernism reactionary.
S A Just because something is the best so far does not mean it is the best possible. Being black in America in 1960 was much better than being black in 1860, but that doesn't mean civil rights advocates were arguing against "what works" in 1960 and should have just shut up and stopped complaining about their privileged lives.
" long lifespan and good living standards which are objectively most common in the west." Since "the west" isn't a well defined term, and it fact includes a large amount of variation, that statement doesn't make sense. Sweden and the U.S. cannot both have the objectively best lifespan and living standards, for example. One of them must be better, and so advocating that the other is flawed is justified.
Though I don't know where you find these people who arbitrarily discard random aspects of our society because they "feel" bad. Our society does have actual issues, you know.
Kevin Allen
There's no such thing as issues, just social organizations that are less and more effective at producing good living standards. People want to eliminate aspects of our culture such as prescription of different social tasks according to sex even though evidently we need the best qualified people to perform certain tasks that our living standards and longevity rely on and traits that influence people's ability to specialize at these tasks are more and less common among the female and male populations to the extent that most of the people who should be encouraged to perform these tasks would be either virtually or entirely female or male.
Different environments warrant different methods of producing good living standards, the west's most trivial ideals form a framework which economic prosperity as we know it relies on.
In order for our social organization to be a social construct and changeable (which I believe it is) it has to be dependant on our behavior, meaning we have to change our own behavior and not demand anything from anyone in order to change it.
Here's a comment I left on another of his videos, maybe it'll be insightful:
Most of your videos as does this one pivot around attributing bleak, horrid and dreadful meaning to the reality of our existence. This meaning is completely abstract and unrelated to the objective reality of our existence itself as meaning is ultimately subjective, As you paint a bad picture of our social organization I can paint a good one.
Now, when we actually look at the objective reality of our existence itself (Not its subjective meaning) all we see is improvement - decreasing poverty rates, decreasing illiteracy rates, decreasing co2 emissions in proportion to economic growth, etc.
You may argue that the reality of our existence doesn't matter, only the meaning you give it as the only true measure of quality is subjective. But if the meaning we give reality is unrelated to it why do you think that changing reality will change the motives behind the meaning you gave it? you'll ultimately continue suffering as your suffering was rooted in yourself and not reality. That is excluding the fact that our suffering isn't solely based on the meaning we attribute to reality but our physical condition, a person can suffer because he subjectively Interprets negativity and because he is physically and objectively starving, if you demand change on the basis of your interpretation of negativity or in other words meaning you attribute to reality you'll never stop demanding change as the meaning you give reality isn't tied to it, but with a changing reality comes a change in the physical condition and there's only one reality in which our physical conditions would be the best, in short we should attribute the best meaning to the reality (be it of social organization) which offers the best physical conditions and change it on the basis of finding a reality that offers better physical conditions rather than demanding change on the basis of interpreting our reality as negative.
+S A "There's no such thing as [..] reality as negative."
Jesus Christ! Have you been drinking antifreeze?
really nice! Cheers from Brazil!
Great work!
very provocative thinking - the po-mo goes straight to revolution in the end - not that it is inheritnly evil on its own, but like any tool it depends on the user
Excellent video.
Fantastic video
I wish I could keep up with what you're saying
I know it's simple
And logical
But I just lose track. Is there any way I could improve my comprehension skills ?
I find it helpful to watch the video several times with breaks in between.
Yes, I was thinking, “ am I dumb?” Because I didn’t understand what he was on about 😭.
Perhaps it would have been nice of Berger and Luckman to put some inverted commas on the word „reality” in the title of their book. The social ontology you describe could use John Searle and his „Making the Social World” as an important reference as well.
sweet vid son keep up the good work.!
Fantastic video.
as a student, I want to thank you for adding some humour! so thank you.
great video!!
Im trying to understand the difference between philosophical and sociological.
Is philosophical inquiry of social constructs more along the lines of developing them? While sociological studies to see the effects of social constructions.
I know there is many layers to it, but is this understanding correct, too vague?
What's important to realise is that sociology is a science, it is the empirical study of societies. That is to say a sociologist examines society, collects data and forms theories to explain their findings. Philosophy is harder to define, but in simple terms it is the study of questions that are, at present, unable to be answered solely through scientific study.
In this sense, social constructs are not directly in the realm of philosophy as to determine if something is a social construct, you must examine society in the first place. However, philosophy may take findings from the sciences (be that physics, sociology, etc) and apply them to the questions that they are interested in. So a sociologist may determine through observation that money and gender are socially constructed, a philosopher may go on to ask why these things are socially constructed, what distinguishes social constructs from other objects, how we ought to think of social constructs and so on.
It's worth noting that the lines between philosophy and science can be blurry. Philosophers will take scientific findings as a basis for their arguments, and the scientific method itself and the ways scientists argue for certain theories is dependent upon philosophy. So truly, the answer is a bit of both, but generally science is when taking data from the world can answer your question, philosophy is when that is not enough.
Omg this made so much sense thank u 🙏 👍
Very well put
Informative! Thx
people understand social construction as having no value or being invalid, I would say in part, due to the term often being used in that way. So it is not just people misunderstanding other using the term, but also by those who use it as a term to blankety devalue the "thing" being called a social construct. ...
Often the answer to something being called a social construct could be "and?" or "ok, so what?" . It seems like something that should be more a start or opening of a discussion, rather than a single point or something you can just say to dismiss things.
People misunderstand and misuse this term, the misuse leads many to understand the term from how it is misused.
If I used the term "cat" in place of "dog" around someone learning English , as their sole source or among other who also used the term "cat" instead of "dog"... they would learn to see the term "cat" as referring to dogs. So if someone repeatedly hears the term "social construct" in argument or debate used in a way that implies something is completely invalid or not real, they are likely to take up that meaning.. sadly this ends up with people debating, arguing etc as if speaking different languages .
How terms are used can lead to a perception of what they mean which is not correct. We can all pick up loose ideas of what terms mean and end up misusing them and so compounding misunderstanding in those who hear us use them.
Great video Jonas. Thanks
big up this channel
GREAT video
social construction is based on trust and the consistent benefits over time, when it becomes untrustworthy by changes of unsustainability or upgrading, we devolope a new social construct.
Slowly, slowly we are learning the difference and unity of symbol and reality
A big thank you to the guy who added Farsi subtitles.
Great video. Exactly the explanation we needed. I was wondering what "social construction" is in opposition to? We say gender is a social construct, not a ____? Maybe biologically natural? What about money? Default inevitability? What is the opposite to social construct?
Saying something is „socially constructed“ in arguments usually serves to create an additional layer of separation between a phenomenon and its causal explanation. Almost always, that doesn‘t elucidate the subject in question, but rather leads to an infinite regress in which one has to give an overly painstaking explanation of the natural causes of the emergence of the social phenomenon which is then criticized as socially constructed, which starts another cycle. Hence, rather than being an intellectual approach, it is 1) a rhetorical maneuver aiming at tiring out the opponent and 2) a mean to mask one‘s own ignorance of empirical data and causal mechanisms.
So social interactions are, for you, uncaused and not part of the empirical world. Interesting idea!