>>> Sam Pawlett <epawlett at uniserve.com> 03/26/99 12:07PM >>>
> this reads to me as merely an epistemological claim.
Yes it is an epistemological claim. The problem with claiming that the ontological and epistemological are interdependant (social construcitonism) is conceptual confusion and slipping in to a form of idealism or relativism.Constructionists believe that reality exists in least in part on the way the perceiver perceives it. It is your *knowledge* of reality that is theory dependant, infused with values etc. not reality itself. You do not need to claim that ontology and epistemology are interdependant to keep your claims about the sociology of knowledge.
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CB: Isn't "reality exists in part on the way the perceiver perceives it" the old Kantian issue of the existing but unknowable thing-in-itself ? Solved by Marxism's epistemology of practice, as summarized in the Theses on Feuerbach ?
Charles Brown