Public Sources of the Personal Mind

Social constructionism emphasizes the social and interactive aspects of the development of higher-order cognitive functions, in the manner of Vygotsky. Nevertheless, the general character of the human organism sets limits to the kind and level of functions which can be appropriated. On the question of the nature of psychological and especially cognitive phenomena, social constructionism points to the many cases in which a type of psychological phenomenon, such as remembering, is at least as much an attribute of a discursive interaction as it is an attribute of an individual mind. If this reflects etiological priority, then we must also exchange explanations in terms of laws for explanations in terms of social and especially semantic conventions. Positioning theory, as a development of the general social constructionist viewpoint, puts considerable stress on the way assumed and ascribed rights and duties to think and act in certain ways work as constraints on human thought and action. Postmodernism and critical realism, with its emphasis on the intractable reality and causal efficacy of social structures (whatever they may be), are at opposite poles, the former requiring that all be malleable and the latter that nothing be. Social constructionism, while denying the efficacy of social structures, affirms the reality of the discursive domain without falling into the fallacy of supposing that because many aspects of our lives are our own constructions, all must be.