Upshot: Poerksen’s discursive constructivism reconstructs radical constructivist foundations and applies them to several subjects of research in the field of journalism and media studies. The author combines epistemological arguments with practical advice for journalists, which makes the book not only valuable for interested followers of RC in general but also for communication scientists and media practitioners.

Social constructivists maintain that we invent the properties of the world rather than discover them. Is reality constructed by our own activity? Or, more provocatively, are scientific facts--is everything --constructed? Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science is a clear assessment of this critical and increasingly important debate. Andre Kukla presents a comprehensive discussion of the philosophical issues involved and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a range of constructivist arguments, illustrating the divide between the sociology and the (...) philosophy of science through examples as varied as laboratory science, time, and criminality. He argues that current philosophical objections to constructivism are drastically inconclusive, while offering and developing new objections. Throughout, Kukla distinguishes between the social causes of scientific beliefs and the view that all ascertainable facts are constructed. (shrink)

The idea to produce the current volume was conceived by Jiirgen Mittelstrass and Robert E. Butts in 1978. Idealist philosophers are wrong about one thing: the temporal gap separating idea and reality can be very long indeed - even ten or so years! Problems of timing were joined by personal problems and by the pressure of other professional commitments. Fortunately, James Brown agreed to cooperate in the editing of the volume; the infusion of his usual energy, good judgement and good-natured (...) promptness saved the volume and made its produc tion possible. Despite the delays, the messages of the papers included in the book have not gone stale. An extremely worthwhile exercise in international philosophical cooperation has come to fruition; the German constructivist philosophical position is here represented in papers in English that will make its contemporary importance available to a larger audience. The editors owe thanks to many persons. All involved in the project owe much to the interest and support of Nicholas Rescher, a friend of the undertaking from the time of its inception. My review of the translations was helped immensely by Andrea Purvis' careful copy editing of the typescript. Most of all, however, we owe gratitude and admiration for the tireless efforts on behalf of this enterprise to Jiirgen Mittelstrass. (shrink)

Social constructionists maintain that we invent the properties of the world rather than discover them. Is reality constructed by our own activity? Do we collectively invent the world rather than discover it? André Kukla presents a comprehensive discussion of the philosophical issues that arise out of this debate, analysing the various strengths and weaknesses of a range of constructivist arguments and arguing that current philosophical objections to constructivism are inconclusive. However, Kukla offers and develops new objections to constructivism, (...) distinguishing between the social causes of scientific beliefs and the view that all ascertainable facts are constructed. (shrink)

While Kantian constructivism has become one of the most influential and systematic schools of thought in analytic moral and political philosophy, Hegelian approaches to practical normativity hold out the promise of building upon Kantian insights into individual self-determination while avoiding their dualistic tendencies. James Gledhill and Sebastian Stein unite distinguished scholars of German idealism and contemporary Anglophone practical philosophy with rising stars in the field, to explore whether Hegelian idealist philosophy can offer the categories that analytic (...) practical philosophy requires to overcome the contradictions that have so far plagued Kantian constructivism. The volume organizes the contributions into three parts. The first of these engages debates in metaethics regarding the relationship between realism and constructivism. The second part sees contributors draw on debates about the nature of political normativity, focusing primarily on the problems of historical contextualism, relativism, and critical reflection. The concluding part considers the application of the Hegelian framework to contemporary debates about specific ethical issues, including multiculturalism, democracy, and human rights. Hegel and Contemporary Practical Philosophycontributes to the on-going debate about the importance of systematic philosophy in the context of practical philosophy, engages with contemporary discussions about the shape of a rational social order, and gauges the timeliness of Hegelian philosophy. This book is a must read for scholars interested in Hegel and in the contemporary tradition of Kantian constructivism in moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

This volume presents twelve original papers on the idea that moral objectivity is to be understood in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can accept.

Extends the ideas of social constructivism to the philosophy of mathematics, developing a powerful critique of traditional absolutist conceptions of mathematics, and proposing a reconceptualization of the philosophy of mathematics.

The dissertation studies the mathematical strength of strict constructivism, a finitistic fragment of Bishop's constructivism, and explores its implications in the philosophy of mathematics. ;It consists of two chapters and four appendixes. Chapter 1 presents strict constructivism, shows that it is within the spirit of finitism, and explains how to represent sets, functions and elementary calculus in strict constructivism. Appendix A proves that the essentials of Bishop and Bridges' book Constructive Analysis can be developed within (...) strict constructivism. Appendix B further develops, within strict constructivism, the essentials of the functional analysis applied in quantum mechanics, including the spectral theorem, Stone's theorem, and the self-adjointness of some common quantum mechanical operators. Some comparisons with other related work, in particular, a comparison with S. Simpson's partial realization of Hilbert's program, and a discussion of the relevance of M. B. Pour-El and J. I. Richards' negative results in recursive analysis are given in Appendix C. ;Chapter 2 explores the possible philosophical implications of these technical results. It first suggests a fictionalistic account for the ontology of pure mathematics. This leaves a puzzle about how truths about fictional mathematical entities are applicable to science. The chapter then explains that for those applications of mathematics that can be reduced to applications of strict constructivism, fictional entities can be eliminated in the applications and the puzzle of applicability can be resolved. Therefore, if strict constructivism were essentially sufficient for all scientific applications, the applicability of mathematics of mathematics in science would be accountable. The chapter then argues that the reduction of mathematics to strict constructivism also reduces the epistemological question about mathematics to that about elementary arithmetic. The dissertation ends with a suggestion that a proper epistemological basis for arithmetic is perhaps a mixture of Mill's empiricism and the Kantian views. (shrink)

What is the nature of human well-being? This paper joins the ancient debate by rejuvenating an ancient claim that is quite unfashionable among moral philosophers today, namely, the Aristotelian claim that moral virtue is (non-instrumentally) necessary for human well-being. Call it the Aristotelian Virtue Condition (AVC). This view can be revived for contemporary debate by a state-of-the-art approach that we might call constructivist experimental philosophy, which takes as its goal the achievement of a reasonable constructivist account of well-being and (...) takes the investigation of actual folk intuitions as the central means to achieving that goal. The paper motivates this approach and challenges the commonplace philosophical rejection of AVC by arguing (1) that folk intuitions should count as evidence in the debate, especially if we aim at a constructivist account of well-being, (2) that folk intuitions can be accurately elicited through a thought experiment (the “Crib Test”), and (3) that there is some reason (subject to experimental confirmation) for thinking that folk intuitions, thus elicited, support AVC. Aristotelian ethics, and indeed the entire virtue ethics tradition, has come under fire recently by empirically informed philosophers who question the empirical adequacy of the postulation of robust character traits, but regardless of how that debate turns out, other parts of this tradition might be empirically supported rather than undermined. This paper sketches a promising, empirically informed way of supporting Aristotelian views of well-being. (shrink)

Onora O’Neill has contributed enormously to moral philosophy (broadly speaking, including both ethics and political philosophy) by identifying Kant’s unique and powerful form of normative constructivism. Frederick Neuhouser has contributed similarly by showing that all of Hegel’s standards of moral rationality aim to insure the complete development of three distinct, complementary forms of personal, moral and social freedom. However, Neuhouser’s study does not examine Hegel’s justificatory methods and principles. The present article aims to reinforce and extend Neuhouser’s (...) findings by explicating Hegel’s basic principles for justifying practical norms. Surprisingly, Hegel’s basic principles of normative justification are rooted in Kant’s constructivism, as explicated by O’Neill. Hegel’s adaptation and development of Kant’s constructivism results in a powerful form of constructivism about moral principles which merits contemporary interest because it is more powerful and more objectivist than familiar contemporary forms of constructivism. (Slightly revised English translation by the author of „Objektive Gültigkeit zwischen Gegebenem und Gemachtem. Hegels kantischer Konstruktivismus in der praktischen Philosophie“). (shrink)

Jacques Rancire's theory of the sensible is an attempt to frame and secure the relationship between politics and aesthetics, art and design on the same surface. Accordingly, the reconstruction of the sensible appearances of the world of the built environment, of the dcor of the sensible, as Rancire describes it is more than the negation of bourgeois appearances in the name of either a radical aesthetics or a radical politics; it is, rather, the common invention of sensible forms and material (...) structures for a life to come. In this respect Rancire's theory has much in common with the historic avant-garde. Following the constructivism of Rodchenko and El Lissitsky, representation here is not just the symbolic life of pictures, but the very materiality of things and their relations. Yet Rancire has little time for the active politicization of art, insofar this destroys, he asserts, the potential democracy of art. This leaves his constructivism in a weakened critical position. This essay explores the hiatuses and limitations of Rancire's cultural theory. (shrink)

Chapter Growing up Constructivist: Languages and Thoughtful People What is radical constructivism? It is an unconventional approach to the problems of ...

This chapter discusses some main traits of classical Pragmatism and their potential as critical tools for contemporary discussions about Pragmatism and constructivism. It first examines some of the claims advanced in Stefan Neubert's essay “Pragmatism and Constructivism in Contemporary Philosophical Discourse”. It then explores the vitality of Pragmatist thought and the usefulness of its basic tenets as resources for philosophic criticism. The chapter looks into the problems of “cognitive relativism” in postmodern and neo-Pragmatist discourses. From this standpoint the (...) chapter raises critical questions for the Cologne program of interactive constructivism. It argues for a strong rearticulation of Dewey's instrumentalism and experimentalism and emphasizes its relevancy for the current situation. (shrink)

Constructivists hold that truths about practical reasons are to be explained in terms of truths about the correct exercise of practical reason (rather than vice versa). But what is the normative status of the correctness-defining standards of practical reason? The problem is that constructivism appears to presuppose the truth of two theses that seem hard to reconcile. First, for constructivism to be remotely plausible, the relevant standards must be genuinely (and not merely formally or minimally) normative. Second, to (...) avoid circularity, the relevant standards must be non-reason-involving, i.e. prior to and independent of practical reasons. From the standpoint of the contemporary philosophy of normatively, this is a surprising combination to say the least. What could these genuinely normative but non-reason-involving standards possibly be? The standard constructivist response is to insist that the relevant standards possess a special kind of necessity inasmuch as we only count as occupying the “deliberative standpoint” or as a “deliberative agent” insofar as we comply with or accept the relevant standards. I offer a different response. My response holds that the special normative status of the relevant standards consists in their exhibiting a distinctive kind of practical necessity that derives from the fact that they determine what I have called elsewhere truths about “the thing to do” – namely, truths about correct answers to the question of what to do. Understanding the norms of practical reason in these terms vindicates the idea that standards of practical reason are genuinely normative since truths about the thing to do plausibly possess the hallmarks of genuine normativity. And it vindicates the idea that the standards are not reason-involving since truths about the thing to do are plausibly prior to and independent of truths about practical reasons. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the development of one of the central debates of late twentieth-century moral philosophy—the debate between realism and what Rawls called “constructivism.” Realism, I argue, is a reactive position that arises in response to almost every attempt to give a substantive explanation of morality. It results from the realist’s belief that such explanations inevitably reduce moral phenomena to natural phenomena. I trace this belief, and the essence of realism, to a view about the nature (...) of concepts—that it is the function of all concepts to describe reality. Constructivism may be understood as the alternative view that a normative concept refers schematically to the solution to a practical problem. A constructivist account of a concept, unlike a traditional analysis, is an attemptto work out the solution to that problem. I explain how the philosophies of Kant and Rawls can be understood on this model. (shrink)

Are there such things as moral truths? How do we know what we should do? And does it matter? Constructivism states that moral truths are neither invented nor discovered, but rather are constructed by rational agents in order to solve practical problems. While constructivism has become the focus of many philosophical debates in normative ethics, meta-ethics and action theory, its importance is still to be fully appreciated. These new essays written by leading scholars define and assess this new (...) approach in ethics, addressing such questions as the nature of constructivism, how constructivism improves our understanding of moral obligations, how it accounts for the development of normative practices, whether moral truths change over time, and many other topics. The volume will be valuable for advanced students and scholars of ethics and all who are interested in questions about the foundation of morality. (shrink)

We set forth what one may call a “constitutional reading” in opposition to the traditional widespread “constructivist reading” of the object of cognition. In the light of the so-called one-object view reading of Transcendental idealism, the object of cognition is nothing but the object that exists in itself insofar as it appears to our cognitive apparatus. The object exists mind-independently, while our cognition of the same object must be mind-independent. The constructivist reading mistakes the epistemological problem of how we come (...) to cognize mind-dependently that what we represent (“the constitutional view”) are mind-independent objects with the Berkelian ontological problem of how we construct objects out of an undifferentiated, unstructured manifold (the constructivist view) My diagnosis is as follows. The first reason is the traditional “two-worlds view” reading of Kant’s idealism. If we take what exists in itself and the object of cognition as distinct things, then we must conclude that the object of cognition is a mind-dependent construction. Constructivist readers mistake the mind-dependent nature of our human cognition of objects for the putative mind-dependent nature of the known object. The second reason is overintellectualization. Constructivist readers mistake the objectifying syntheses of the imagination, below the threshold of self-consciousness, for cognitive conceptual operations by means of which we cognize (erkennen) the objects of cognition, or so I shall argue. (shrink)

Review of Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, edited by James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer.

Constructivism is one of the most influential theories in contemporary education and learning theory. It has had great influence in science education. The papers in this collection represent, arguably, the most sustained examination of the theoretical and philosophical foundations of constructivism yet published. Topics covered include: orthodox epistemology and the philosophical traditions of constructivism; the relationship of epistemology to learning theory; the connection between philosophy and pedagogy in constructivist practice; the difference between radical and social (...) class='Hi'>constructivism, and an appraisal of their epistemology; the strengths and weaknesses of the Strong Programme in the sociology of science and implications for science education. The book contains an extensive bibliography. Contributors include philosophers of science, philosophers of education, science educators, and cognitive scientists. The book is noteworthy for bringing this diverse range of disciplines together in the examination of a central educational topic. (shrink)

본 연구는 수학철학의 핵심적인 두 유파는 구성주의와 구조주의라는 것을 논증하면서, 양자는 다시 구조-구성주의라는 하나의 유파로 종합될 수 있으며 종합되어야 한다는 것을 논증하고자 한다. 이를 위해 역사-비판적 검토를 수행한다. 역사-비판적 관점에서 볼 때, 수학철학은 광의의 관점에서 10여개의 유파로 구분되지만, 세부적으로는 20여개 이상으로 세분화된다. 그러나 가장 큰 흐름은 수학적 대상들은 인간의 정신으로부터 독립적이고 물질적 대상들로부터도 독립적으로 존재하는 “추상적 실체”라고 주장하는 플라톤주의이고, 이것에 대립적인 것은 심리학적 구성주의이다. 후자에 따르면, 수학적 대상들은 인간정신의 구성의 산물이다. 그러나 여기서 말하는 구성의 근거가 논리적 장치인가 아니면 기호적 상징체계인가 (...) 아니면 경험적 감각-지각인가에 따라, 논리적 구성주의(논리주의), 형식적 구성주의(형식주의), 경험적 구성주의(직관주의) 등으로 세분화된다. 그런데 이러한 3가지 유파들 자체 다시 다양한 변이들로 세분화되는데, 그 중에서 20세기 중반부터 부각되기 시작한 구조주의가 가장 많은 지지를 받고 있다. 구조주의는 수학적 연구의 대상은 더 이상 개별적 대상이 아니라, 구조라는 것을 강조한다. 그러나 구조 그 자체 선험적 실체인가 아니면 인식주체의 창의적 구성의 산물인가에 따라 다시 비제거적 구조주의와 제거적 구조주의로 양분된다. 이런 맥락에서 필자는 구조 그 자체 선험적 실체가 아니라, 인식주관의 구성의 결과라는 것을 주장하고자 한다. 이것이 바로 필자가 정당화하고자 하는 “구조-구성주의”이다. (shrink)

Social constructivists claim that many phenomena that we normally assume to exist independently are really just created by collective human action, thought and language. Constructivists deploy a number of sophisticated philosophical arguments to support this thesis and, in so far as their reasoning typically serves an ulterior ideological purpose, it may fairly be called applied philosophy. The goal is to change various aspects of the existing order of things; constructivist arguments are used to show that this order is a (...) human creation and is hence modifiable by human effort. A number of such “deconstructive” agendas are presented. The first deals with natural science and its privileged societal status; the next critiques orthodox Marxism; the third is the feminist campaign against patriarchal society. While these critical efforts have had considerable impact, their protagonists have been less successful in constructing alternatives to the items deconstructed. (shrink)

Fully accessible to students and scholars alike, this engaging book introduces the constructivist approach to understanding world affairs.

Metaethical constructivism is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, they are not fixed by normative facts that are independent of what rational agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. The appeal of this view lies in the promise to explain how normative truths are objective and independent of our actual judgments, while also binding and authoritative for us. -/- Constructivism comes in several varieties, some of which claim a place within metaethics while (...) others claim no place within it at all. In fact, constructivism is sometimes defended as a normative theory about the justification of moral principles. Normative constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical or idealized process of rational deliberation. -/- Metaethical constructivist theories aim to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. They bear a problematic relation to traditional classifications of metaethical theories. In particular, there are disagreements about how to situate constructivism in the realism/antirealism debate. These disagreements are rooted in further differences about the definition of metaethics, the relation between normative and metaethical claims, and the purported methods pertinent and specific to metaethical inquiry. The question of how to classify metaethical constructivism will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories have been designed to answer. Section 1 explains the origin and motivation of constructivism. Sections 2–4 examine the main varieties of metaethical constructivism. Section 5 illustrates related constructivist views, some of which are not proposed as metaethical accounts of all normative truths, but only of moral truths. Sections 6 and 7 review several debates about the problems, promise and prospects of metaethical constructivism. (shrink)

The principal findings of experimental economics are that impersonal exchange in markets converges in repeated interaction to the equilibrium states implied by economic theory, under information conditions far weaker than specified in the theory. In personal, social, and economic exchange, as studied in two-person games, cooperation exceeds the prediction of traditional game theory. This book relates these two findings to field studies and applications and integrates them with the main themes of the Scottish Enlightenment and with the thoughts of F. (...) A. Hayek. (shrink)

A challenger of traditions and boundaries A pivotal figure in 20th-century philosophy, Nelson Goodman has made seminal contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language, with surprising connections that cut across traditional boundaries. In the early 1950s, Goodman, Quine, and White published a series of papers that threatened to torpedo fundamental assumptions of traditional philosophy. They advocated repudiating analyticity, necessity, and prior assumptions. Some philosophers, realizing the seismic effects repudiation would cause, argued that philosophy (...) should retain the familiar framework. Others considered the arguments compelling, but despaired of doing philosophy without the framework. Goodman disagreed with both factions. Rather than regretting the loss of structure, he capitalized on the opportunities that arise when the strictures of tradition are loosened. Available individually by volume 1. Nominalism, Constructivism, and Relativism in the Work of Nelson Goodman (0-8153-2609-2) 296 pages 2. Nelson Goodman's New Riddle of Induction (0-8153-2610-6) 312 pages 3. Nelson Goodman's Philosophy of Art (0-8153-2611-4) 284 pages 4. Nelson Goodman's Theory of Symbols and its Applications (0-8153-2612-2) 344 pages. (shrink)

John Rawls's form of constructivism can easily be ramped up into a fullblown metaethics. In this chapter, the author explores an alternative interpretive framework, which basically inverts the roles that the construction of the original position and the reliance on reflective equilibrium play in Rawls's argument. The author sketches out the basic contours of Rawls's thinking if we treat constructivism as his method for theory construction and reflective equilibrium as his metaethics. Metaethics is clearly a part of moral (...) philosophy outside of moral theory. At every major turn in the articulation of Rawls's theory there is a new or more developed account of reflective equilibrium and in particular its justificatory role in the theory. Giving one's argument a form that allows it to more easily appeal to a particular audience, is the job of rhetoric. So it turns out that constructivism is not a metaethical position, but a rhetorical strategy. (shrink)

In this work, I discuss the role of Husserl’s phenomenology in Paolo Parrini’s positive philosophy. In the first section, I highlight the presence of both empiricist and constructivist elements in Parrini’s anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist conception of knowledge. In the second section, I stress Parrini’s acknowledgement of the crucial role of phenomenology in investigating the empirical basis of knowledge, thanks to its analysis of the relationship between form and matter of cognition. In the third section, I point out some lines (...) of development of the phenomenological form of empirical realism as revealed in Parrini’s reflection, through a comparison of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, Mary Hesse’s network model and the tradition of neutral monism. (shrink)

How does one formalize the structure of structures necessary for the foundations of physics? This work is an attempt at conceptualizing the metaphysics of pregeometric structures, upon which new and existing notions of quantum geometry may find a foundation. We discuss the philosophy of pregeometric structures due to Wheeler, Leibniz as well as modern manifestations in topos theory. We draw attention to evidence suggesting that the framework of formal language, in particular, homotopy type theory, provides the conceptual building blocks (...) for a theory of pregeometry. This work is largely a synthesis of ideas that serve as a precursor for conceptualizing the notion of space in physical theories. In particular, the approach we espouse is based on a constructivist philosophy, wherein ``structureless structures'' are syntactic types realizing formal proofs and programs. Spaces and algebras relevant to physical theories are modeled as type-theoretic routines constructed from compositional rules of a formal language. This offers the remarkable possibility of taxonomizing distinct notions of geometry using a common theoretical framework. In particular, this perspective addresses the crucial issue of how spatiality may be realized in models that link formal computation to physics, such as the Wolfram model. (shrink)

Constructivism in ethics is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, for example, truths about what we ought to do, they are in some sense determined by an idealized process of rational deliberation, choice, or agreement. As a “first-order moral account”--an account of which moral principles are correct-- constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept or follow are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in (...) a hypothetical or idealized process of rational deliberation. As a “metaethical account” – an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like – constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. In working to provide a more precise definition of constructivism in metaethics, the focus of this entry, one faces two main difficulties. The first difficulty is that constructivism comes in several varieties, each of which claims a different niche within metaethics, and some claim no space at all. The second difficulty concerns where to place constructivism on the metaethical map in relation to realism and anti-realism. These are terms of art, and it is highly contested which views count as realist and which as antirealist. These two difficulties will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories are designed to answer. Section §1 defines the scope of constructivism in ethics, in contrast to constructivism in political theory. Sections §§2-5 illustrate the main varieties of metaethical constructivism, which are designed to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. Section §6 presents the main varieties of constructivist accounts of the justification of moral judgments of right and wrong. Section §7 discusses the metaethical status of constructivism, and its distinctive import. (shrink)

Consecutive constructivism is a moral and political theory which mitigates structural injustice by securing individuals' perception of private morality--that is, inventing procedural devices to make people enhance their moral consciousness--and, at the same time, encourages people to voluntarily concern themselves with procedural justice and public morality. The crucial reason for this position is that a detouring method of not directly dealing with the problem of justice but rather discussing the problem of morals is required to avoid the lucid criticisms (...) of statists that the sovereign ruling states with authority or the world government does not exist. This book suggests a new approach to the problem of global justice, termed here consecutive constructivism. It provides a way of coping with procedural justice at the global level, while also alleviating the problem of structural injustice insofar as it exacerbates procedural injustice. Acknowledging the fact that the discussion of global justice is difficult in a world constituted of lots of sovereign states, it sketches out a political theory which begins with the problem of morals and then consecutively moves on to the matter of justice. The result is a novel normative theory narrowing the gap between Neo-Westphalian and Post-Westphalian traditions. (shrink)

Introduction: mathematization and the language of nature -- Realists and nominalists : language and mathematics before the scientific revolution -- Ontology recapitulates epistemology : Gassendi, epicurean atomism, and nominalism -- British empiricism, nominalism, and constructivism -- Three mathematicians : constructivist epistemology and the new mathematical methods -- Conclusion: mathematization and the nature of language.

Relativist and constructivist conceptions of knowledge have become orthodoxy in vast stretches of the academic world in recent times. This book critically examines such views and argues that they are fundamentally flawed. The book focuses on three different ways of reading the claim that knowledge is socially constructed, one about facts and two about justification. All three are rejected. The intuitive, common sense view is that there is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we (...) are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, and is binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence, regardless of their social or cultural perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that recent philosophy has uncovered powerful reasons for rejecting them. (shrink)

Philosophers commonly wonder what a constructivist theory as applied to practical reasons might look like. For the methods or procedures of reasoning familiar from moral constructivism do not clearly apply generally, to all practical reasons. The paper argues that procedural specification is not necessary, so long as our aims are not first‐order but explanatory. We can seek to explain how there could be facts of the matter about reasons for action without saying what reasons we have. Explanatory constructivism (...) must assume constructive “norms of practical reasoning” which yield particular truths without assuming them. But philosophers often mistakenly assume that only “formal” norms of reasoning could fulfill this role. The paper describes a further possibility: norms of reasoning can be “situation‐specific” and yet retain truth‐independent authority. Though we might doubt whether such norms can be independently defended, we should not doubt the possibility or coherence of constructivism about practical reasons. (shrink)

I apply some of Gash’s interpretation of radical constructivism to an analogous critique of naïve realism in contemporary philosophy of education. It explores the significant potential in ….

In this book, Westphal offers an original interpretation of Hegel's moral philosophy. Building on his previous study of the role of natural law in Hume's and Kant's accounts of justice, Westphal argues that Hegel developed and justified a robust form of civic republicanism. Westphal identifies, for the first time, the proper genre to which Hegel's Philosophical Outlines of Justice belongs and to which it so prodigiously contributes, which he calls Natural Law Constructivism, an approach developed by Hume, Rousseau, (...) Kant, and Hegel. He brings to bear Hegel's adoption and augmentation of Kant's Critique of rational judgment and justification in all non-formal domains to his moral philosophy in his Outlines. Westphal argues that Hegel's justification for the standards of political legitimacy successfully integrates Rousseau's Independence Requirement into the role of public reason within a constitutional republic. In these regards, Hegel's moral and political principles are progressive not only in principle, but also in practice. Hegel's Civic Republicanism will be of interest to scholars of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, Hegel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Maya Zehfuss critiques constructivist theories of international relations (currently considered to be at the cutting edge of the discipline) and finds them wanting and even politically dangerous. Zehfuss uses Germany's first shift toward using its military abroad after the end of the Cold War to illustrate why constructivism does not work and how it leads to particular analytical outcomes and forecloses others. She argues that scholars are limiting their abilities to act responsibly in international relations by looking towards (...) class='Hi'>constructivism as the future. (shrink)

Context: Josef Mitterer has become known for criticizing the main exponents of analytic and constructivist philosophy for their blind adoption of a dualistic epistemology based on an alleged ontological difference between world and words. Judith Butler, who has developed an influential model of (de)constructivist feminism and has been labeled a linguistic constructivist, has been criticized for sustaining exactly what, according to Mitterer, most modern philosophy fails to acknowledge: namely that there is no ontological difference between objective facts beyond (...) language and the discourse about these facts. Problem: In the scholarly discussion on non-dualism, two main questions have been raised: Where does Mitterer’s basic consensus, i.e., the starting-point description, come from? and: What does it mean, to say that further descriptions change their object? Method: Comparative analysis of the core concepts of Mitterer’s and Butler’s work in the context of the history of ideas. Results: Butler’s conception of a performative production of objectivity through discursive and non-discursive iterated practices can be interpreted as an illustration of Mitterer’s claim that descriptions change their object. The problem of where Mitterer’s starting-point descriptions come from can be solved by adopting Butler’s concept of culturally inherited practices. (shrink)

Two varieties of constructivism are distinguished. In part 1, the psychological or “radical” constructivism of von Glasersfeld is discussed. Despite its dominant influence in science education, radical constructivism has been controversial, with challenges to its principles and practices. In part 2, social constructivism is discussed in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Social constructivism has not been primarily concerned with education but has the most direct consequences in view of its challenge to the most fundamental, traditional (...) assumptions in the philosophy of science and to the practice of science itself. (shrink)

This commentary to Nescolarde-Selva and Usó-Doménech’s (Reality, systems and impure systems. Foundations of Science 2013) links ideas in their paper to radical constructivism and raises two questions. (1) Would it be helpful to substitute the constructivist notion of viability for the traditional notion of truth with its connotations of relating language and reality? (2) Is the link made to issues in ontological philosophy important since the implicit constructivist epistemology of the paper considers mathematical ideas are just as real (...) as ideas about objects. (shrink)

The Kantian strain of practical constructivism (through Rawls, Korsgaard, and others) has been so influential that it is tempting to identify the constructivist approach in practical domains with the Kantian development of the outlook. In this essay, I explore a different variety of practical constructivism, what I call “Aristotelian constructivism”. My aim is to establish conceptual space for this form of constructivism by indicating in what ways Aristotelian constructivism agrees with its Kantian counterparts and in (...) what ways it differs. I claim that it is, in one sense, more faithful to the constructivist enterprise than the Kantian varieties, in that its understanding of both the establishment of practical truth and the vindication of the theory itself is constructivist. (shrink)