[HyperSane]

IQ isn't a social construct because intelligence is not a social construct. A social construct is something that is created by everyone agreeing that it is real, like money. Human intelligence is a function of how the human brain works and is NOT a social construct.

[kelseyfrog]

It's funny arguing with someone who has reified the concept so thoroughly that dereification is unthinkable.

First off I'm setting aside the argument that intelligence is constructed or not. Ssecondly, social ontologists would say that you're arguing from grounding.

You're arguing that because one thing is grounded in the other and the latter is real that the former is real as well. It also sounds like this is taken as axiomatic, to which I simply say, prove that's how grounding works.

[HyperSane]

Are you willing to argue that height and weight are "social constructs" because IQ is as much a social construct as they are.

[LudwigNagasena]

Everything is a social construct. It is just a vapid meaningless statement sociologists use to legitimize their expertise and colonize other fields of inquiry that were traditionally the domains of philosophers and scientists. The whole thing is just repackaged Marxist analysis of everything as a social relation.

[HyperSane]

Things that only work if everyone thinks they are real ARE social constructs. Money is the best example of these. But some pretentious people just LOVE to feel smart by saying everything is a social construct like it is some profound insight that we would all be in awe of.

[FrontierPsych]

You didn't comment on the rest of the statement:

"sociologists use to legitimize their expertise and colonize other fields of inquiry that were traditionally the domains of philosophers and scientists. The whole thing is just repackaged Marxist analysis of everything as a social relation."

[kelseyfrog]

Let me guess, sociology isn't a real science?

[LudwigNagasena]

It’s a very heterogenous academic field. Some parts of it are scientific; some parts are pseudo-scientific; some parts are simply non-scientific, which, of course, doesn’t mean that those parts are less worthy or worse than scientific parts.

[kelseyfrog]

Right, and even withing social ontology/constructivism there are multitudes. Dismissing the entire subfield as vapid comes across as intellectually immature. If you have specific critiques feel free to share them but, "constructivism bad because Marxism bad," is about as thought-limiting cliché as one can get.

[LudwigNagasena]

> Right, and even withing social ontology/constructivism there are multitudes.

There are multitudes; and that’s exactly why such statements are vapid and contain no information. You failed to clarify what you meant and only managed to make a vague reference to Berger.

There are thousand contradictory ways to interpret what “a social construct” means (see The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking), but the most important thing about that statement is that it allows a sociologist to say “it’s something I am an authority on”.

> Dismissing the entire subfield as vapid comes across as intellectually immature.

Would dismissing astrology be intellectually immature? I don’t think so.

> "constructivism bad because Marxism bad," is about as thought-limiting cliché as one can get

Indeed. Good that it is not what I’ve said.

[kelseyfrog]

It sounds like you've read a critique of social construction without actually reading much about social construction itself.

Social construction is an lens of interpretation in the toolkit of critical thinking. I like to frame it as an epistemological question that simply asks, "How do you know that?" It's extremely powerful when used against topics where people make claims that are "obvious", "reality", "truth", or even "science".

Science itself is an epistomological framework and subject to interpretation from other (meta-)epistomological frameworks eg: scientific examination of social construction is just as valid a pursuit as the social construction of science. In fact that latter, the social construction of science, is the umbrella from which we can examine the concept of IQ. We can talk about it in terms of constitutiveness, grounding, expert-novice problems, &c.

>There are thousand contradictory ways to interpret what “a social construct” means (see The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking), but the most important thing about that statement is that it allows a sociologist to say “it’s something I am an authority on”.

You're describing science. Science "allows" people to say "it's something I am an authority on." This is because it's an epistomological framework independent of the validity of the subject. That's what epistomological frameworks do.

> Would dismissing astrology be intellectually immature? I don’t think so.

We can absolutely talk about the social construction of astrology independent of the truth claims of astrology. I'm sure you can agree with me that there is a profound difference between the two.