| > It's extremely powerful when used against topics where people make claims that are "obvious", "reality", "truth", or even "science". It is an extremely powerful rhetorical device, yes. You can equivocate IQ with “the social construct of IQ” and make seemingly profound statements. > 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. Scientists that study IQ can study how useful it is as a metric, whether it has predictive power, whether it is biased, how it relates to common notions of intelligence, how it correlates to other traits, whether it should be used for welfare means testing, etc. The framework of social constructivism cannot help much with that: the flow of knowledge mostly runs in the opposite direction. > You're describing science. No, I am describing why sociologists like to use that concept. > Science "allows" people to say "it's something I am an authority on." Lots of things allow people to claim authority on something. That’s not what makes science science. > This is because it's an epistomological framework independent of the validity of the subject. That's what epistomological frameworks do. > 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. I totally agree. That’s why “IQ is a social construct” is a vapid meaningless statement. You can put anything instead of IQ and it will make as much sense. |