Elusive reality and social constructions

Abstract

“Reality” is one of the most elaborate concepts. It is easy to define reality as something that is “what actually is taking place”. But when we try to declare what actually is taking place, we encounter quite different statements. Even the simplest object like a rock lying on the ground can evoke many different “versions” of reality: a rock can become in different eyes a weapon, a precious gem, an object of worship. This is what is often called a “social construction” of an object. From this point many different “versions” of reality spring to life. We deal here with the realism vs anti-realism debate in the field of scientific and epistemological realism, taking into consideration social constructionist movement and its anti-realistic stance. “Science wars” of the 1990s are regarded as a “political” conflict between natural scientists, trying to defend the classical concept of science and its claim to truth, and sociologists, psychologists and postmodernist philosophers who are arguing that whatever science says is ideologically biased and supportive of the political authorities, thus science cannot be seen as an objective source of truth. The concepts of “objectivity” and “truth” themselves are put into doubt on the premise that they are a part of European rationality that expresses the socio-culturally and historically restricted point of view of European male thinkers only. Social constructionists suggest that instead of one universal scientific knowledge many “situated knowledges” should be proposed when each social group will be given “voice” to express its opinion about the world. However the author remains critical towards social constructionist arguments. Their main theses suggest that nearly everything we know about the world is “social constructions”. But does “socially constructed” means “not real”? Social constructionists mostly use the linguistic understanding of “social construction” – the ways we talk about an object is what “constructs” it. Different cultures and social groups have different ways of speaking about the same objects which according to social constructionism means there is no reality behind these descriptions, or at least we are ignorant about it. Social constructionism claims that words build our realities and only words transform them. Do social constructions hold no reality of their own? The concept of “President” is clearly socially constructed, but if we try to get rid of it, will the words be enough to do it if all of us just decide against using both the word and the idea of “President”? That is hardly possible – to get rid of “President” concept we should probably need to face a very real revolution. That means there is some reality connected to this word. The problem of reality is very acute in the present day media-saturated world, where each event gets a variety of media coverage with quite different versions of reality. The main question of reality nowadays goes beyond the scientific or epistemological realism and becomes the question of mutual understanding between people.