Carrol, I wish you would avoid using "ensemble of social relations" as a
homily. Define each of the words: ensemble, social, relations, with
particular attention to the word social. You may consult the bearded
and barnacled one for assistance.
>
> 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.
I'm sorely tempted to admonish you to go to your room. And your claims about neuroscience and which answers are coherent and incoherent is no less tempting. But in the spirit of didactics, which most of these discussions revel in, the concept of room does indeed emerge from human activity, not the least of which is shared meanings.
>
> 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.
Some adherents of Weber and some sociologists do indeed reject history and positively genuflect to the abstract individual. Some reject history and the individual searching for patterns and determinations in human collective action. Since history in another sort of black hole word you're using, I suspect that you'd fall in the this latter category of sociological thought. To them, consciousness and agency take on the forms you allege: incoherent and weasel-like. It is the form of sociology most amenable to biology (to wit: individuals exist solely to transmit the stuff of dna and of culture from one generation to the next). Its also the one least likely to budge from the 19th century.
Let a thousand terms bloom so long as they accord agency to people, sometimes with an emphasis on individuals, sometimes emergent patterns from the collectivity. On the other hand, its odd that _history_ creates anything.
Dennis Breslin