On the Actualities and Possibilities of Constructionism: Towards Deep Empiricism

• Authors: Paul Stenner
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Drawing from the example of critical psychology, this paper examines how dissatisfaction with an existing scientific paradigm can stimulate interest in philosophy and social theory. The emergence of a social constructionist understanding of scientific knowledge in prominent dialects of critical psychology is related to a combination of scientific and political concerns, and briefly set in the context of three important strands of twentieth century philosophy: existential hermeneutics, ordinary language philosophy and poststructuralism. These strands agree on at least two issues: the rejection of metaphysics and the ontological foregrounding of the notion of discourse or language-in-use. These philosophies have influenced the development of discursive methods and constructionist epistemologies in special sciences such as psychology and sociology. It is suggested, however, that both the commitment against metaphysics and the prioritising of discourse are problematic, and that a process metaphysics based on the three pillars of possibility, mediation and actuality (or pattern, matrix and activity) might be articulated in order to overcome the bifurcation of nature tacitly accepted by the commitment to a discursive ontology.

Keywords

EN

p/m grammar distinction; social constructionism; constructivist metaphysics; potentiality; actuality

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 194-210

Dates

published

2009-06-01

online

2009-06-19

Contributors

author

Paul Stenner

• School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Falmer Brighton BN1 9PH United Kingdom [e-mail]

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10023-009-0033-9