Читать книгу An Introduction to Text Mining - Gabe Ignatow - Страница 57

The constructionist position in philosophy of social science is generally traced to Berger and Luckmann’s 1966 sociological classic The Social Construction of Reality. Constructionism considers that no external objective reality or system exists; therefore, truth is not a matter of concepts’ correspondence to objective reality or coherence between specific cases and a system of propositions. Instead, truth and knowledge are produced when communities and groups reach consensus about what is or is not true. The core assumption of the constructionist paradigm is thus that socially constructed realities are not independent of the observer but are constructed by people under the influence of a variety of social and cultural factors that lead to intersubjective agreement about what is real (Howell, 2013, p. 90).

As in pragmatism, constructionism implies that text mining methods cannot eliminate subjectivity. But constructionism goes further in implying that objectivity is not a realistic goal of social research. Instead, researchers should aim to provide new interpretations of social phenomena that are edifying or enlightening. But they are not justified in claiming that their methods give them privileged access to an objective reality that cannot be otherwise apprehended. Accordingly, constructionism is a foundational philosophical position in postpositivist social science.