"Reality is a social construct" -- fair characterization or not?

Question

This is something else I've wondered about. There seem to be these fierce online debates and movements that center around various questions of the validity of so called "social justice" issues which are full of lots of emotive stuff from both sides pro and con (e.g. terms like "man/white/cis/whatever 'splaining'" and "SJWs" are thrown against the opposing 'sides' respectively from pro and con sides against con and pro sides). One of the central pieces of this argumentation seems to hinge around this notion of this alleged philosophical idea that "reality is a social construct" against "reality is objective". But the thing is, reading it, I wonder if the various partisans involved really do or do not understand exactly what they are bandying about in these heated arguments.

In particular, the "reality is a social construct" is attributed variously to the "left", "academic left", "Cultural Marxism" but also "postmodernism". The first two terms seem like political charges, the third seems like a weird slur, but the fourth is a legitimate philosophical reference. Also perhaps "social theory" or "critical theory" is indicted with as being "guilty" of this "bad" philosophical "notion".

But the question is, is that a truly fair characterization, and if so, what exactly does it mean? Because to me, if you take it absolutely literally, it cannot be true, for a very simple reason: I cannot sign an agreement with someone that will magically make gold appear by miracle in my room by both of us agreeing that that gold now exists in the room. If reality behaved this way, it would seem a lot of politicking and wars would be easily resolved: we could just "legislate" or "social construct" literally every resource we wanted into existence. Yet I would find it hard to imagine this argument would have escaped notice of everyone who has argued what is construed as "reality is a social construct". So thus I'd like to know, what does that phrase actually mean in regard to what it's actually referring to by any serious thinker and not merely some random joe-blow with an opinion on the internet and an ax to grind (of either partisan persuasion), is it even a fair characterization at all, and if so, how is the above argument answered and dismissed?

Answer 1

I would guess that most people using the term in the contexts you are encountering are (knowingly or not) referring to the work of Berger and Luckmann, who wrote a book in the 60s called The Social Construction of Reality. In it, they suggest that through inherited social contracts, certain roles are created in a society which become an accepted part of the fabric and that seeing the world through the narrow objectives of these roles creates a certain view of reality which is not necessarily objective. They do write about how scientific knowledge is socially disseminated and so even scientific reality can be affected by social constructs, but they certainly do not go as far as to say that all of reality is just what we agree it is.

Ian Hacking in "The Social Construction of What?" makes the distinction between our view of a thing and the thing itself, so to use your example, you're right in that you cannot just make the substance we call gold appear in your room simply because you all agree it's there, but it's not the substance itself that matters, but what it means and that is socially constructed. You chose gold in your example for a reason, you might consider magically making gold a good idea, but that's only true because gold means wealth and wealth is something desirable, both of those are social constructs.

There are obviously limits to this approach, however. Whether from a philosophical point of view (with something like Quine's approach) or from social scientists like Sokal, or from neuroscientist, like Eagleman, the argument comes back to the fact that there is a biological entity doing the construction and that biological entity is built from pretty much the same DNA, it is a reasonable theory, therefore, that it's going to construct some very similar looking realities given the same starting point. Thus many of the so-called social constructed realities (by which those using the term tend to mean realities we can change) are effectively very useful Duhem-Quine theories with a very high consistency and explanatory power, and as such they are as good as any other theory we use (such as if I throw a ball in the air it will come back down).

The interest in the field is not (in my opinion) in whether some of reality is socially constructed, but in which parts of this social construct are constrained by our biology and which are not, but this investigation is really best in the hands of neuroscientists and anthropologists. For this I would look to the works of David Eagleman, Bruce Hood, V.S Ramachandran, Jared Diamond and Clive Finlayson for more in depth analysis, but in summary the arguments centre around either identifying consistent patterns in the brain in response to certain stimuli which may indicate a biologically fixed response, or identifying common patterns of behaviour across ancient and existing cultures which may indicate the same.

Answer 2

The notion of social construct is the central concept of a sociological school called Social constructivism. The constructivist thinkers used the concept to refer to how cultural perceptions of what is right and wrong are shaped by society and its institutions. These perceptions, then, it is believed, shape our real life in retrospect. The adherents of the movement aimed to discredit the norms of classical liberalism and conservatism that were deemed objective and universally valid by their proponents.

For a critical insight, following the deep intellectual insights of the School of Perennial Philosophy especially as represented by Rene Guenon, and more importantly the philosophical legacy of my own heritage as a Muslim, I view both of these apparently rival camps as being underpinned by an arguably identical failure in their underlying epistemological foundations.

The fact that Classical liberalism and Conservatism may wrongly or poorly argue for some universal norms doesn't imply the radical conclusion that there are NO universal values at all. But indeed, if under the influence of such philosophical perversions as suggested by Kantian subjectivism, you believe that there is now way man can realize immutable metaphysical truths and consequently come to live life according to your own subjective preferences conditioned by your particular cultural circumstances, then constructivists can rightly argue that there are no universal truths and values, and all realities are then just creation of our arbitrary individual and culturally-conditioned whims. On the other hand, if following Classical liberals and conservatives you spouse belief in some pseudo-universal values or universal values without the ability to demonstrate the immutable truths that underlie those values and then be unable to distinguish true universal values from the pseudo-universals, you will be only then be prone to charges of dogma and backwardness by the modern liberals. Worse, then, taken off your poor ideological defense, you and the human society in large will have to bear the quite destructive consequences of social constructivism especially when pushed to its extreme ends from the most radical feminists who argued that not just the female social roles but even the female physical gender attributes is a "natural" construct imposed on them by a supposedly sexist Mother Nature to free Porn advocates who think that sinking in the lowest depths of hedonist lustfulness is great just because of its resulting erotic euphoria and a supposed lack of intelligence by traditionalists to try and realize that!

[Post-script] By these latter rather "juicy" examples I really didn't mean to take a hard stance against the said social groups in particular. Neither did I aim to discredit and conflate endless number of particular liberal causes these day many of which of relative merit. But only meant to show how an unqualified attack on the notion of universal norms can result in horrible consequences. And in the long run I also believe the ills resulting from the mentioned fundamental defect in the Modern philosophical heritage will outweigh many particular reasonable positions that societies can after all realize if only through trial and error.