Falsehoods Do Not Become True Merely Via Repetition
Or: Reality Is Not "Socially Constructed"

O.k., I know this is an obvious and trivial point, but I've got a hair trigger for this kind of thing, so here goes: contrary to what the Post indicates, falsehoods do not become true merely because people believe them. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. But somebody, somewhere (sociology department, lit department, speech comm department, I'm looking at you...) is telling my students otherwise. And, weirdly, they seem to believe it in some sense. I do realize that the Post is just trying to make a familiar point in an evocative way. Unfortunately, the very ambiguity they're playing on here wreaks havoc in academia. All they mean is that false beliefs can become entrenched before they can be refuted. But, seriously, it's better just to say it that way.

At the beginning of the semester I give my critical thinking students a chapter from a sociology textbook on the so-called "social construction of reality." The chapter is characteristic of much thinking in that sector of the humanities and social sciences in that it proceeds largely by running a bait-and-switch on the claim that reality is "socially constructed." During the "bait" phase, which aims to convince the student that the thesis is exciting and radical, and that sociology is some kind of foundational discipline, the phrase is spun in a way that encourages the reader to believe that reality--actual reality...trees and flowers and chirping birds, rocks and neutrons and quasars--is somehow created by society. During the "switch" phase, when objections become too obvious to ignore, the central claim ("reality is socially constructed") is interpreted to mean merely that our beliefs about reality are "socially constructed," i.e. caused by social forces.

Almost everything that is said about the central claim is systematically ambiguous in a way that makes it possible to spin things either in the exciting-and-radical-yet-utterly-absurd direction (i.e. toward the metaphysical interpretation), or in the much-less-exciting-but-more-plausible direction (i.e. toward the epistemic or doxastic interpretation), depending on how the discussion is going.

This simple piece of deception is almost unbelievably effective. Students--and, apparently, many professors--have a very difficult time fixing on one of the two interpretations, and tend to switch, disastrously, to the other interpretation at crucial points in the argument.

I'm sure you think I'm blowing all of this out of proportion, but this view is a powerful force in certain sectors of the current intellectual landscape, and it has real power over young (and some not-so-young) minds. It really shouldn't be taken lightly. I've had former students who scoffed at my alarmism about this view go off to grad school and contact me later to say, in effect, "you were right--it's everywhere!" So ridicule me at your own risk, Mr. smart guy...

Even when you can, by relentlessly forcing students' attention to the absurdities of the metaphysical interpretation, finally get them to see that only the epistemic/doxastic interpretation is at all plausible, the view still has a trick up its sleeve.

On the doxastic interpretation, it is only our beliefs that are "socially constructed," i.e. caused by social forces. But there are, again, two interpretations of this claim, one exciting but false, and one true but (comparatively) unimportant. It all depends on how you fill in the implicit quantifier. Fill it in with the universal quantifier, and you get "all our beliefs are caused by social forces"--and that is the central thesis of the so-called "Strong Program(me)" in the sociology of belief, a.k.a. the sociology of "knowledge" [sic]. Pick a lesser quantifier, e.g. 'many' or 'some,' and you get something far less radical and far less important.

But the thesis that all our beliefs are caused by social forces is--as with the metaphysical interpretation of "reality is socially constructed--radical and exciting, but false. Most of our beliefs are actually caused by physical objects, not social forces. For example, I now believe that there is a pen on my desk. What is causing that belief is the pen. There's nobody around insisting that I believe in the existence of the pen. So: not all of our beliefs are caused by social forces. This same argument can be repeated for most of our beliefs.

At this point it is common for advocates of the thesis to try to defend it by pointing out the obvious: that the word 'pen' is a social thing, and that I only use that word (instead of, say, 'stylo') because of social facts. But that, of course, is a very, very, very different claim. But--true and, in fact, entirely uncontroversial though it is--falling back on this claim constitutes the final abandonment of the original doxastic thesis. "I speak English as a result of social forces" is a completely different claim than "social forces cause all my beliefs," not to mention "reality is socially constructed." Social forces, of course, determine what word I use to refer to pens, but this does not dermine whether I believe (i) there is a pen on the desk or (ii) there is not a pen on the desk or (iii) something else entirely. (It's also worth noting that, though all thought may be in signs, not all signs are linguistic, so even if the point at issue were sound, it would not take us to the conclusion that all thought is in some sense social.)

So what we're left with is something like "some of my beliefs are caused by social forces." Now, it's really too bad that sociologists et. al. don't stick with this comparatively humble, yet still vitally important claim. I think it's actually safe to say that many of our beliefs are caused by social forces, many of them irrational (both the forces and the beliefs). This is the kind of point we should all remind ourselves of every morning...and it's too bad that so many of those in the best position to remind us of this fact feel compelled to blow it out of proportion in such a perniciously misleading way--and a way that conceals the importance of the more modest point in a haze of confusions and falsehoods.