I probably should shut my mouth and leave this debate alone, since this is not a subject I know much about and, besides, it's beginning to seem a little pointless. But one last time: to say that we are our history is to bring up the tabula rasa argument again, the idea that people are born blank slates and everything they become is what is put into them. I think this idea must come from people who haven't spent much time around kids. If you spend much time with 2 and 3 year olds and see their personalities emerge, it seems obvious that much of who they are they were simply born as. There is a lot there that's simply there from the beginning.
If you didn't mean anything so extreme, then I don't know why you'd argue that I'm caught up with the idea of the abstract individual. Language implies history. My emphasis on language is also, automatically, an emphasis on what a person has learned since being born. One has to be taught language, and one is somewhat shaped by the language one is taught.
I agree with you that how I see a room is a question for neuroscience alone.
> 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.
I'm not sure why you feel it's important to attack the differences between "socially constructed" and "historically created." Even if they are synonyms, surely they have slightly different connotations, as all synonyms do? If "socially constructed" deemphasizes history then surely that is its usefulness. And surely there are moments when it is useful to consider people as individuals. Most theories, especially social theories, offer insights into problems, but do not offer The One Whole, Absolute Truth. And it is nice, therefore, to jump around among theories, to listen to what they all say, to collect the vast range of insights, however contradictory, that they all together generate. Such variety of insight does not, perhaps, bring anyone closer to the Truth, but it does, perhaps, make one's own judgements deeper and richer. Why subscribe to a maillist like this one if you're not interested in harvesting the variety of insights offered by the variety of theories? It's a hell of a lot of mail to read if all you want is to see how wrong most people are.