In high-school I read pop cogSci books like “You Are Not So Smart” and “Subliminal: How the Subconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior”. I learned that “contrary to popular belief”, your memory doesn’t perfectly capture events like a camera would, but it’s changed and reconstructed every time you remember it! So even if you think you remember something, you could be wrong! Memory is constructed, not a faithful representation of what happened! AAAAAANARCHY!!!
Wait a second, a camera doesn’t perfectly capture events. Or at least, they definitely didn’t when this analogy was first made. Do you remember red eye? Instead of philosophizing on the metaphysics of representation, I’m just gonna note that “X is a construct!” sorts of claims cache out in terms of “you can be wrong in ways that matter to me!”.
There’s something funny about loudly declaring “it’s not impossible to be wrong!”
In high-school, “gender is a social construct!” was enough of a meme that it wasn’t uncommon for something to be called a social construct to express that you thought it was dumb.
Me: “God, the cafeteria food sucks!”
Friend: “Cafeteria food is a social construct!”
Calling something a social construct either meant “I don’t like it” or “you can’t tell me what to do”. That was my limited experience with the idea of social constructs. Something I didn’t have experience with was the rich feminist literature describing exactly how gender is constructed, what it’s effects are, and how it’s been used to shape and control people for ages.
That is way more interesting to me than just the claim “if your explanation involves gender, you’re wrong”. Similarly, these days the cogSci I’m reading is stuff like Predictive Processing theory, which posits that all of human perception is made through a creative construction process, and more importantly it gives a detailed description of the process that does this constructing.
For me, a claim that “X is a construct” of “X isn’t a 100% faithful representation” can only be interesting if there’s either an account of the forces that are trying to assert otherwise, or there’s an account of how the construction works.
Put another way; “you can be wrong!” is what you shout at a someone who is insisting they can’t be and is trying to make things happen that you don’t like. Some people need to have that shouted at them. I don’t think I’m that person. If there’s a convo about something being a construct, I want to jump right to the juicy parts and start exploring that!
(note: I want to extra emphasize that it can be as useful to explore “who’s insisting to me that X is infallible?” as it is to explore “how is this fallible?” I’ve been thinking about how your sense of what’s happening in your head is constructed, noticed I want to go “GUYS! Consciousness IS A CONSTRUCT!” and when I sat down to ask “Wait, who was trying to insist that it 100% isn’t and that it’s an infallible access into your own mind?” I got some very interesting results.)
I think you’re falling for the curse of knowledge. Most people are so naive that they do think their, e.g., vision is a “direct experience” of reality. The more simplistic books are needed to bridge the inferential gap.
I’m ignoring that gap unless I find out that a bulk of the people reading my stuff think that way. I’m more writing to what feels like the edge of interesting and relevant to me.
tldr;
In high-school I read pop cogSci books like “You Are Not So Smart” and “Subliminal: How the Subconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior”. I learned that “contrary to popular belief”, your memory doesn’t perfectly capture events like a camera would, but it’s changed and reconstructed every time you remember it! So even if you think you remember something, you could be wrong! Memory is constructed, not a faithful representation of what happened! AAAAAANARCHY!!!
Wait a second, a camera doesn’t perfectly capture events. Or at least, they definitely didn’t when this analogy was first made. Do you remember red eye? Instead of philosophizing on the metaphysics of representation, I’m just gonna note that “X is a construct!” sorts of claims cache out in terms of “you can be wrong in ways that matter to me!”.
There’s something funny about loudly declaring “it’s not impossible to be wrong!”
In high-school, “gender is a social construct!” was enough of a meme that it wasn’t uncommon for something to be called a social construct to express that you thought it was dumb.
Me: “God, the cafeteria food sucks!”
Friend: “Cafeteria food is a social construct!”
Calling something a social construct either meant “I don’t like it” or “you can’t tell me what to do”. That was my limited experience with the idea of social constructs. Something I didn’t have experience with was the rich feminist literature describing exactly how gender is constructed, what it’s effects are, and how it’s been used to shape and control people for ages.
That is way more interesting to me than just the claim “if your explanation involves gender, you’re wrong”. Similarly, these days the cogSci I’m reading is stuff like Predictive Processing theory, which posits that all of human perception is made through a creative construction process, and more importantly it gives a detailed description of the process that does this constructing.
For me, a claim that “X is a construct” of “X isn’t a 100% faithful representation” can only be interesting if there’s either an account of the forces that are trying to assert otherwise, or there’s an account of how the construction works.
Put another way; “you can be wrong!” is what you shout at a someone who is insisting they can’t be and is trying to make things happen that you don’t like. Some people need to have that shouted at them. I don’t think I’m that person. If there’s a convo about something being a construct, I want to jump right to the juicy parts and start exploring that!
(note: I want to extra emphasize that it can be as useful to explore “who’s insisting to me that X is infallible?” as it is to explore “how is this fallible?” I’ve been thinking about how your sense of what’s happening in your head is constructed, noticed I want to go “GUYS! Consciousness IS A CONSTRUCT!” and when I sat down to ask “Wait, who was trying to insist that it 100% isn’t and that it’s an infallible access into your own mind?” I got some very interesting results.)
I think you’re falling for the curse of knowledge. Most people are so naive that they do think their, e.g., vision is a “direct experience” of reality. The more simplistic books are needed to bridge the inferential gap.
I’m ignoring that gap unless I find out that a bulk of the people reading my stuff think that way. I’m more writing to what feels like the edge of interesting and relevant to me.