Social constructivism vs Positivism

[Ghost]

Hey, fst.

Quote:Science is done in all languages, including mathematics, which means it is not constrained what so ever on language alone.

Can you even conceive of science without language? How would that work?

Here's what happens when one doesn't have language.





The thing is, language itself is a construction. Thus, everything that results from it, science included, is constructed.

On of my favourite parts is where she shatters the ideology of self. Self is a construction. The business card and the number pad are informative too. (Also, who's in the audience clapping? My boy Wade Davis that's who! BOOM! What what!)

Quote:Simple it's the most robust body of knowledge we have. Through the
scientific method, and peer review we will always whittle away the false
hoods, incorrectness, errors, and other forms of mistakes to come to a
more accurate and correct understanding of the world.



Simply by externalizing your results for review, or lets say putting
your work on trial, we can form a more objective form of knowledge.

That explains why science is A valid source of knowledge. You'll get no argument about that from me. The question is, why is it the ONLY valid source of knowledge.

By that I mean, you could say that vanilla ice cream is A great flavour because of X, Y and Z. But why is it the ONLY good flavour?

Quote:This is a simple question. What are the minimum requirements for an
organism to survive? One is to convert energy from on form to another,
and the second is to reproduce. All that human beings had to do was to
manage to eat food and survive long enough to reproduce.



It seems self evident that no matter what you think about the world, the
world will continue to operate according to laws. If a human tribe is
able to hunt and gather, what they worship in error in their free time
makes no difference to their survival. If their religions did interfere
with their ability to hunt and gather in a negative way their way of
life would surely fail.

That doesn't address the question at all. "Positivism assumes that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge." If it is the ONLY valid knowledge, then how did we exist successfully without it? According to positivism's assertion, that should have been impossible.

Quote:Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes
only or primarily from sensory experience. Where as positivism includes
non intuitive exploration of the world through mathematics, logic, and
the scientific method.

Very well.

Quote:To expand on that is to say some natural phenomena act in a way that is
counter intuitive. Like for instance the double slit experiment. Here is
the cannon ball experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcotHEhNSIk

I don't understand how this explains why intuition is rejected.

Quote:That is a loaded question. It already supposes constructivism is valid, but I have yet to be shown that it is.

It's only loaded if you have some adverse reaction to the facts. Biology, from the central nervous system, to sensory input, to signal induction, the the brain, to cognition, to language, all point to the fact that humans do not process the universe on a 1:1 basis, but rather on a mediated basis that requires us to abstract all of the information into manageable chunks and then assign meaning, in rather arbitrary ways, to those discrete chunks of information, forming a massive constructed model in our mind that, as is clearly demonstrable, we can manipulate and alter at will with near impunity. All of that is irrefutable. Then we look at politics, ideology, psychology, anthropology, dramaturgy, all of them clearly illustrate that the most important thing in society is agreement and that everything we understand and take for granted is rooted in agreement and that those culutres outside of our own necessarilly come to different agreements, meaning their construction of reality itself is fundamentally different, their narrative of how things came to be this way is different and that none of them are objectively true. None of that is controversial. The leap from that information to socially constructed reality is short. But if positivism tells us that all valid knowledge comes from the sciences, and the sciences tell us all of that, how can any of that be ignored?

Quote:That is a good question, and I am ignorant to how the two views contrast
but I did find a book on it and will take some time to read it. After
all I can not honestly reply with out doing some research.

Fair enough. And I salute you for your very honest answer.

Quote:"In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they
have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement
and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole
communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its
pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with
one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some
new folly more captivating than the first." - Charles Mackay

This is the constructivist view in action.

I need to be clear. The constructivist view makes absolutely zero value judgements. It's not saying that people are good or bad, or that some things are moral and others are not. All of that is irrelevant. The only question is, what is reality and how is it arrived upon? The evidence points to the fact that it is the sum of the relationship between what is and how we interpret it. It is not what is, because we do not have direct access to that.

Quote:Because constructivism lends it's self to the crowd. What ever a society
"constructs" as truth is true. Including the idea that if society deems
deems some anti-constructivist positions as true it is, thus leading to
self refutation.

What do you mean by, it lends itself to the crowd?

In relativism, we make a distinction between Truth and truths. Truth, capital T, is objective. The Truth. Truths, small t, are the things that make up our individual constructions. Life's a bitch is a truth. Life's a gas is a truth. Life's a struggle is a truth. The difference is that truths begin and end within a very restricted cultural framework. There can be overlap between different cultures (for example, Americans, Canadians, Germans, Brazilians, Russians, Chinese and Norwegians all believe that the pursuit of unlimited growth is a good), but truths are not objective. The Truth is. But what relativism and the constructivist view point to is the notion that even if Truth exists, we cannot know it. We can only know truths.

This also doesn't mean that truths cannot be shared near universally. Almost every culture in existence has some variation of the truth, it is bad to kill people. But we all know that that is not an absolute Truth.

Furthremore, if a society says that a non-constructivist position is true, that does no constitute a self-refutation. The constructivist view holds that people can believe whatever the hell they want. But what they believe is a truth. The constructivist view itself is a truth. It is a model. It is wrong. But it is useful. The constructivist view is an observation, not a prescription.

It's trippy to think that all thoughts are constructions, including the notion that all thoughts are constructions. But that's what's what.

Quote:Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather.
-Bill Hicks

This has been enjoyable so far. Again, I encourage you to ask me questions so that this isn't just about me questioning you and you defending yourself. I am more than happy to have this discussion on home ice.

Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt