Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!gilbert
From: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: The Social Construction of Reality
Message-ID: <1157@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 16 May 88 09:42:45 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <30502@linus.UUCP> <1069@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1588@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <86@edai.ed.ac.uk> <1666@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 25

In article <1666@pt.cs.cmu.edu> acha@centro.soar.cs.cmu.edu (Anurag Acharya) writes:
>Come on, does anyone really believe that if he and his pals reach a consensus 
>on some aspect of the world - the world would change to suit them ? That is the
>conclusion I keep getting out of all these nebulous and hazy stuff about 
>'reality' being a function of 'social processes'.
The idea that there is ONE world, ONE physical reality is flawed, and
pace Kant, this 'noumenal' world in unknowable anyway, if it does exist.
Thus, to ask if the world would change, this depends on whether you
see it as a single immutable physical entity, or an ideology, a set of
ideas held by a social group (e.g. Physicists whose ideas are often
different to engineers).

When a new consensus about the world is reached (scientific discovery
to give it ONE ritual title), the world does change, as more often
than not it changes the way that groups party to the knowledge
interact with the world. We are in this world, not apart from it.

Yes it is all nebulous and hazy, but it's an intellectual handicap to
only be able to handle things which are clear cut and 'scientific'.
There's something desparately insecure about scientists who need
everything tied down before the think interaction with the socio-physical
world is possible.

Virtuall everything we do, outside of technical production, is nebulous
and hazy.