First rules of blogging. I type as I please.I haven’t read anything by Karl Mannheim but I think he wrote the phrase “social construction of truth”. I think that is a bad phrase and all use of it or similar phrases should be criticized.
My reason is simple. I think anything true which can be said including the phrase “social construction of truth” can also be said using “social construction of belief”. I think that all such valid claims amount to the assertion that our beliefs develope as part of a process of interaction with other people. I don’t think many people have noted that beliefs are socially constructed, because the fact is so obvious that it (almost always) goes without saying.
Rather, the reason I vaguely remember that some German guy wrote “social construction of truth” is the assertion that there is no truth other than belief. It is an assertion of idealism — that all that exists are minds and ideas. Now I don’t have a problem with idealists (I disagree but I do not denounce). I do have a problem with blocking arguments by redefining words.
If “truth” is redifined to be a synonym of “belief” it is impossible to assert that beliefs are true if and only if they correspond to an external reality. It may be that this assertion (called realism) is incorrect, but I think it is very bad to redefine words so that a view with which one disagrees can’t be stated.
One can assert that “truth” vs “belief” is a distinction without a difference, but it is better not to redefine “truth” so it is a distinction without a distinction.
In particular, I think the appeal of “social construction of truth” is that the meaning is ambiguous. When it must be defended from criticism it is interpreted to mean “social construction of belief” which is an assertion too obvious to make clearly. When it is not subject to criticism, it is defined as implying there is no external reality — nothing but opinions, no atoms and no void.
I think it relies on an equivocation and is invalid reasoning.
—————————————————————————————————– OK now a bit of borderline xenophobia and nationalism. Mannheim’s first language was German. I don’t speak any German but I do speak Italian and have become painfully aware that the Italian word “verita” does not translate the English word “truth”. A closer translation is “realta”. The points are that I now have a larger vocabulary, because I learned Italian and discovered that Italian words are not exact translations of English words, and, also, that there a lot of confusion is caused by semi translated words.
Very often I find what I believe to be incorrectly translated French mixed in the English. I recognise it, because it makes sense as incorrectly translated Italian. I am very sure that this is a more irritating problem for people whose native language is anything but English, as the flow of semi-translation is mainly from English to every other language.
I would only add that the English “reality” and “truth” are also distinguished — truth is an accepted perception of reality which may or may not be one in the same.
I am an native English speaker having learned German by pure immersion (no translation dictionaries or translaters). The German “die Wahrheit” I learned by its usage meant “reality” and didn’t find out that the English translation was “truth” until I took my first formal German class. I argued that the translation to “truth” wasn’t quite right and that “reality” is the better translation.
The full professor of German Language & Literature at the University of Wurzburg who was American born and bred and who just happened to also be teaching German at our American High School, agreed with me but that “truth” was a more convenient construction for the English translation.
I note that until the 5th or 6th Century BC the “truth” was that the Earth was flat or some non-spheroidal shape. By the 5th century BC the Greek scholars of any repute perceived the “truth” that the Earth was round. Yet it wasn’t until 20 centuries later that it was proven to also be the reality (Magellan’s circumnavigation in practical observation)…
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
Are we interested in “justified knowledge”?
There is so much blither and propaganda………
Like US’s right of self defense includes arming al Qaeda to replace a blood thirsty dictator which US don’t like with al Qaeda, to do what US have warred in Afghanistan to prevent for the past 17 years!
Or the FBI is allowed to destroy the Bill of Rights to protect the DNC’s undemocratic trade secrets as if it were the essence of a secure civitas.
Per Mark Twain:
“…it is what you know that ain’t so”.
PS
I used epistemology in my classes as something for the student to seek.
Ferdinad Magellan never circumnavigated the earth as he was killed in the Philippines. This seems to be an example of something widely believed which is not true.
Magellan led the expedition which resulted in Juan Sebastián Elcano and a small number of survivors completing the circumnavigation but there is the possibility that Magellan’s slave Enrique of Malacca was the first person to actually circumnavigate the earth having been first brought to Portugal and then returning to Malaysia with Magellan.
So this is a complex and uncertain example to hold up as ‘truth’.
Joseph Conrad, who knew French before he knew English, managed to introduce a bit of “incorrectly translated” French into one of his English stories, I forget which one. It had a construction something like “the police is here,” a carryover of the French use of that word as singular.
Lindsey,
The point is not who was first to circumnavigate (although I’ve never seen any credible refutation that the remnants of Magellan’s fleet didn’t complete a circumnavigation) proving in practical and direct observational terms the Earth was a spheroid.
Pick another even later date if you wish.. it was still 2000 years after the Greeks were sure of it by deduction using indirect measures, and thus a truth rather than a reality.
A reality “is”… whether humans know of it yet in absolute terms or not. A truth is the learned humans’ consensus of their perception of reality. Some truths are proven to be false by inconsistencies of observation along the way, leaving the remainder to be viable truths until one survives to match reality In the meantime it’s is the consensus of learned scholars and scientist that define truth.
I don’t have much patience with people who think there is no “truth” or even no “reality.”
But, while I have patience, I don’t have much hope for people who think words have “definitions.” the expression “words don’t mean, they point” can be taken to mean more than it does; it merely points.
There would be a lot to say for commons sense, if it didn’t turn out that even us common people get hung up on “words” which don’t mean the same to each person in the conversation, sometimes innocently, sometimes with intent to deceive. But each party insisting that his meaning is the true meaning.
Life is so hard.
First off, I’ve read two books by Mannheim, although both were long ago and are now overlaid with many deposits of memory, mostly blurred. I don’t remember him saying that reality itself is socially constructed, but I do remember the claim that all *claims* are reflective of varying degrees of social factors. I think his solution of a posited fulcrum of academic neutrality (or process tending toward neutrality) is not credible, but it seemed to me his statement of the problem was pretty good.
I don’t agree with his construal of the role of utopia, but that’s a topic for another day. I have long wanted to revisit his book on social reconstruction, but there always seemed to be something else to do first.
Regarding the underlying issue, I’ve blogged on this in the pre-Econospeak-to-Angry-Bear era: http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2016/11/taking-stand-on-standpoint.html
Longtooth. I personally prefer to use truth to mean Warheit. I know that the meaning is ambiguous in English. However, I think it better to use “belief” for belief and “consensus” for consensus.
With the (fairly common) usage you describe (and advocate). It seems to me that there are two words for one thing “consensus” and “truth” & no word corresponding to the word “true” as used in formal logic.
I illustrate the way I use words.
I say that the statement “The earth is flat” was never true. When all agreed that it was true, all made a mistake. There was a consensus that the earth was flat. The truth of the matter was as it is.
In any case, I think it is definitely not ideal to use “truth” sometimes to mean “corresponding to reality” and sometimes to mean “universally (or almost universally) agreed”. Those are two quite different meanings for one important word & the practice (which is very common) causes confusion.
Finally, one way i often use words is to tell myself “Robert you have got to stop arguing about definitions. No one will put up with that.”
Robert
au contraire. i enjoy putting up with it. i agree with you about the meaning of “truth,” and i think it is important that we try to keep a word that means truth. as long as we retain sufficient modesty about what we believe is truth.
on the other hand, i think the person who used “social construction of truth” probably does not believe in truth, or was trying to make a point about the social construction of what people call “the truth.”
and i haven’t the slightest idea what au contraire means to a Frenchman (which Frenchman?).
Robert,
We don’t disagree (I don’t think) in principle. The English language is probably the most precise and unambiguous in terms of words and their meanings IF those words are used to convey what one intends to convey… AND the receivers have the same level of vocabulary.
However I will point out that when everyone believed the world was flat (roughly prior to 6th century, though precise time isn’t clear) it was at that time “true”, but not the “reality”. The mistake, if it can be called that, was due to not yet having discovered or even yet conceived of the reality of the Earth’s shape. It is only after reality is discovered and proven that a determination of that which was (past tense) “true” or “not true” can be determined. The “truth” as I said may or may not match “reality”.
I think it’s critical for accurate communication to make the distinction in language usage where the language offers words that make the distinction.
BTW, I define a “belief” to be an imagined condition with no evidence to support it. However it is “belief” which is the genesis which ultimately leads to identifying the reality.