Excerpt: Are we to dismantle the scientific apparatus, declaring all attempts at ‘objective’, ‘authoritative’ knowledge to be fatuous? Are we to conclude that because we are each locked into our subjectivities we cannot even be certain that there is a ‘world out there’, or that we are truly communicating with other persons? Is there nothing left but to reflect on our own subjectivities, and then to reflect upon the reflection in an infinitude of self-reflexive iterations? These are all dolorous conclusions, indeed, and one would scarcely wish to pursue lines of thought for which these are the inevitable consequences. However, the consequences of obliterating the subject-object dichotomy largely depend on how we understand or interpret the problem. It is our view that if a social constructionist view is taken toward the issues, none of the above conclusions need follow. On the contrary, new vistas of research are opened for exploration.

Like any apparently novel approach to the basic epistemological problems of “knowledge”, the constructivist ideas that have spread in the last twenty years continue to generate a host of negative as well as a few positive reactions. In this chapter I shall focus on some aspects of Radical Constructivism, as distinct from “trivial” constructivisms, and try to show that the major objections that have been raised against it are due to gross misinterpretation and turn out to be vacuous once the position is made a little clearer.

Key words: philosophy, radical constructivism

Excerpt: What should guide reality construction? If we are not forced to reproduce the given social reality, what alternative realities should we try to construct – what economic institutions, what foreign policies, what roles for the sexes, what schooling, what care for the sick? In this chapter I want to propose a model that includes both sides of the coin: the liberation side emphasized by the constructivist writers, and the commitment side under-emphasized by them. These two aspects of the good life will be combined into a simple model that describes some common ethical positions (relativism and absolutism) as distorted or degenerate cases of an ideal case. This model is offered as a framework for a discussion of the values problem in constructivism, particularly in social research from a constructivist approach.