>andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> > Mike, there cannot be "more evidence" for one rather
> > than another nonsensical proposition. The whole
> > distinction is bogus. That is my point. Even if there
> > isa "gay gene," a single gene such that all and only
> > gays have it, it still doesn't show that
> > "essentialism" or biological determinism is treue and
> > social constructionism is false. Both views are false
> > insofar as they make sense at all.
>
>:-)
>
>Justin, you are trying to explain this to people whose most fundamental
>belief, so deeply entrenched no intellectual mirror will show it to
>them, is that truth is arrived at by adding up atomic facts. Hence there
>is no way that they can make sense of "Any gay or other genes manifest
>themselves only in environmental contexts."
>
>Carrol
the other problem is that we are talking different disciplines. miles and i overlap a bit here, so maybe he'll understand what i mean when i say that one big problem is the assumption that social constructionists are taking an ontological position. social constructionist thought, at least in the social sciences, comes out of an epistemological position about _how_ we know. it's not a description of what exists. social constructionism is not an ontological claim that we create reality; rather, it's an epistemological claim about how we can know that reality.
luke's response was interesting but it again left me uncertain as to the positions the authors he cites actually take. i'm quite familiar with judith stacey--she tends to come out of the tradition of thought known as symbolic interactionism. i'd be curious what statements she and the other folks made that suggest that they are taking an ontological position in the tradition of social constructionist thought.
for that matter, which theorists and quotes exemplify it in philosophy--the folks justin's railing against--the folks that are taking an indefensible social constructionism that makes no sense?
kelley