Skip to main content

Math Attacked: Socially Constructed

 


Even though most of my discussion on the 'math attacked' series has been something more than just math related, this particular form of attack honestly has nothing to do with math and is broadly applied to anything and all things.

Merrian-Webster defines 'social construct' as the following:

an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society

I suppose this is a fair definition, but on its face it looks rather benign. I want to further unpackage social construct because it comes with big epistemological premises.

What is an idea? In this particular case, idea is a concept. The world out there and trying to understand it is the process of creating concepts. The world has things like rocks, ducks, and trees. The world has natural laws like gravity, friction, and conduction. The world contains spatial properties, causality and time. These are all concepts.

I think on the face of it, one doesn't develop concepts socially. If I were to shipwreck myself on some tropical island alone, the notion that I would never be able to understand this place and develop concepts beyond the ones I already know is laughable. I can learn about this place, discover new things and learn new concepts.

What is really meant by 'social construct' is something more Kantian; do we discover the truth out there or do we create it? Concepts are created by individuals. Duck, tree, and gravity are all concepts that have been created, but are they about things discovered out there in the world or did we create this world and the things in it? The Kantian view is that we know nothing about the real world and it is not possible for us to discover anything - it's created. 

Kant had his particular view of how one creates reality - automatically and preconsciously, but those that use 'social construct' are speaking of something a little different. In this way you automatically create reality based on your social class and power that comes with it. It's a very Marxist view. There are no individuals. We are just automatons advancing our class/group/race/collective struggle against others and the concepts we create are nothing more than for our class/group/race/collective.

This is all that is meant by this. If you take the concept of integrity, this is constructed and constructed to benefit only a specific class of people. Integrity, to those outside this class, is a prison - an inescapable concept prison. Other people may roll with the idea of integrity as contradicting your own moral beliefs. Who's to say that one is better than the other? The only reason we accept integrity as moral uprightness is the power structure in society.

And these thoughts reach into a variety of topics we see manifesting in society such as gender pronouns.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Island of Bryan Solar Panel Numbers are Horribly Misleading

Who doesn't want to be all sustainable and oh so environmentally friendly? I was watching the show and they brought down their 'friend' to help them get some solar panels on their resort. By friend, they mean some strategic business partnership to advertise the business, but that's not what I'm here to talk about - even though if this was an oil company 'friend' then all the numbers would be instantly scrutinized by default. Not in this case. And it just annoys me at how sloppy, misleading and downright fraudulent the way the solar crew present numbers. Here's how things were presented on the show: This is an island in the Bahamas which uses a diesel generator for electricity.  Diesel is dirty. The cost of this electricity is 35 cents/kWh. Solar is only 5 cents/kWh. Solar is obviously clean. Pays itself back in three years. When things are presented like this it only make sense to do solar right? It's drastically cheaper. It's cleaner. It's j...
Post a Comment
Read more

The West is Weak: Russia Invades Ukraine

 I haven't been writing a lot lately on this blog, but I felt the need to sign in and write about this. I've found myself feeling a bit depressed about the invasion of Ukraine - not because it happened, but due to how the west will predictably react to it. There will be a lot of talk, strong words, and even stronger rhetoric, but when the actual words become policy - it will be pathetically weak. There are people out there that seem to think or at least try to force the narrative of a simple dichotomy: either we accept Putin is doing it or it's WW3. Any normal person would find the choices here to be nauseating either way. If history is to serve a lesson, the first option often leads to the second option. But this dichotomy really illustrates the parameter that most people don't pick up on. The West is Morally Weak The facts are on the ground. The United States has the largest armed forces in human existence. A coalition of western powers is devastatingly more powerful ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Power of the Dog is Awful

I'm trying to post more personal things to this blog and I thought after what I finished watching last night - this was a good post to start. I often think that there is something wrong with me; like a horrible cynic. I like to watch entertaining movies and television, but everything I find lately is just awful. And it's almost like this never-ending cycle of bad to worse. It's not like I'm just watching straight to video movies or anything, I'm watching highly awarded and often praised as the hot thing on Netflix. Last night I watched The Power of the Dog (2021) . A highly regarded movie with a lot of nominations for various awards and I've heard a lot of talk about it - so I watch it. I don't want to spoil the movie for you, but absolutely nothing happens in this movie. There is a point in a movie where you just keep watching to see if anything happens and determine what exactly your time accomplished. Well, I can let you know that watching to the end will...
Post a Comment
Read more