Lawrence wrote:
>
> > And no one has thought it necessary to justify coining this term. I had
> > forgotten it, but being reminded of it, I am a bit more suspicious of
> > the term 'praxis,' since 'commuicative action' seems yet another in the
> > unending series (going back to the late 19th century) of attempts to
> > dematerialize materialism, of subverting the fundamental assumption of
> > all real knowledge, the priority (in principle and in chronology) of
> > motion to thought
>
> Surely things have to be imagined first, before they can be built? As I sit
> here in my house and look around the room I don't see anything that hasn't
> been built,
You are caught up in the modern metaphysic of the abstract individual, existing prior to and independently of all social relations. But wherever and whenever we find ourselves we are always already caught up in, implicated in, defined by a complex or ensemble of social relations. We do not have a history, we _are_ our history. Social relations in principle and chronologically are prior to any imagining.
How do you see those things? How do you know they are in the room? And how do you remember them long enough to make inferences concerning them?
I claim those questions are legitimate only as questions for neuroscience, and that any and all epistemological answers are incoherent. Room or the concept of room emerges from human activity, history, but even so a long (measured in miliseconds but still long) physical process is involved in the perception of that room.
Carrol
P.S. If "socially constructed" means the same as "historically created," why do we need both terms? Answer, "social construction" is a weasel term designed to dissolve history. Twist and turn as they may, Weber and his followers can never succeed in their attempt to hide a rejection of history inside an affirmation of history. The pseudo-science of sociology cannot ultimately hide its dependence on the premise of the abstract individual.