I don't think you have read Rousseau. You didn't even know he was the author of the text The Social Contract... fairly basic stuff there, dude. Yes, Locke and Hobbes presented their British empirically centered texts about the state, but to call Rousseau a "moron" is daft, and to strawman him as "the SJW of his day" is comical.
Blank slate (tabula rasa) is in no way aligned with "constructionism" - that is absolute disinformation, and laughable. Tabula rasa was largely propagated by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theological as he repackaged Aristotle's hylomorphic epistemology (vis a vis Metaphysics, book *Lambda" specifically) with that of Christianity.
I'd be cautious with reductionism (MIT) here - that is the bailiwick of "SJWs" - by negating any metaphysical essences for want of pure mathematical certitude, the thing itself (human nature, in that "forum") is relegated to pure myth. Descartes was the gateway to science, but in so doing, scientism and the notion that we are essentially a compilation of matter, nothing more. i.e. there are no "women" or "men" by extension. We can only know something in "clear and distinct [ideation]" (math). It opened up a can of worms that are really starting to crawl out in the postmodern SJW era.
BTW - that editorial you linked is by a psych prof from Harvard.
the thing itself (human nature, in that "forum") is relegated to pure myth.
Not the way I see it. I see the claim at having no nature as a product of idealism, not reductionism.
I just disagree with the relationship between "pile of matter type reductionism" and the denial of essences. Believing one doesn't imply I must believe the other.
I can be "reduced" to my elements but still display maleness. Those don't contradict each other.
Of course, you can get there by saying "well if we're all just a bunch of X then all differences between things disappear" but that's a confusion of levels of description.
The level of description at which men and women really exist is not the level of description of subatomic particles. One doesn't negate the other. I am a male made of particles, both. No problem there.
The pernicious idea that people are blank slates consequently potentially equal in ability but for society's interference or tharting of the individual is responsible for everything from the French Revolution to Marxism to BLM to antifa and SJWism and Woke.
It's been throroughly rebutted by Pinker and others most recently. Piaget showed children's minds reach capabilities on a predefined schedule irrespective of their enclosing social context. That's a bioligical process unfolding, not a blank slate absorbing things from its society.
Studies of people with brain damage and genetic defects all show that the human character is dependent on the human brian and damage or failures in brain development lead directly to defects of "character" or ability.
There is zero reason to suppose all brains are alike in kind or ability within a competency. This last point I think was becoming clearer and clearer in the academy and set off a panic amongst academicians in the social sciences and humanties. They saw it coming in the 80s and set about to attack the basis of that forbidden knowledge- science itself.
They needed to drive the conversation as far in the other direction as they could to make it politically impossible for people to talk about innate differences in ability because it offended their R sense of equality and shattered their R-inspired notions of causality of human beings who act badly. So they moved the Overton window to another state.
They're loading up their own backlash and when it comes it's going to be all over forever and ever for Marxism and all its miscreant offshoots.
I don't think you have read Rousseau. You didn't even know he was the author of the text The Social Contract... fairly basic stuff there, dude. Yes, Locke and Hobbes presented their British empirically centered texts about the state, but to call Rousseau a "moron" is daft, and to strawman him as "the SJW of his day" is comical.
Blank slate (tabula rasa) is in no way aligned with "constructionism" - that is absolute disinformation, and laughable. Tabula rasa was largely propagated by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theological as he repackaged Aristotle's hylomorphic epistemology (vis a vis Metaphysics, book *Lambda" specifically) with that of Christianity.
More people than myself run blank slate and noble savage together:
http://forum.mit.edu/articles/the-blank-slate-the-modern-denial-of-human-nature/
I'd be cautious with reductionism (MIT) here - that is the bailiwick of "SJWs" - by negating any metaphysical essences for want of pure mathematical certitude, the thing itself (human nature, in that "forum") is relegated to pure myth. Descartes was the gateway to science, but in so doing, scientism and the notion that we are essentially a compilation of matter, nothing more. i.e. there are no "women" or "men" by extension. We can only know something in "clear and distinct [ideation]" (math). It opened up a can of worms that are really starting to crawl out in the postmodern SJW era. BTW - that editorial you linked is by a psych prof from Harvard.
Not the way I see it. I see the claim at having no nature as a product of idealism, not reductionism.
I just disagree with the relationship between "pile of matter type reductionism" and the denial of essences. Believing one doesn't imply I must believe the other.
I can be "reduced" to my elements but still display maleness. Those don't contradict each other.
Of course, you can get there by saying "well if we're all just a bunch of X then all differences between things disappear" but that's a confusion of levels of description.
The level of description at which men and women really exist is not the level of description of subatomic particles. One doesn't negate the other. I am a male made of particles, both. No problem there.
The pernicious idea that people are blank slates consequently potentially equal in ability but for society's interference or tharting of the individual is responsible for everything from the French Revolution to Marxism to BLM to antifa and SJWism and Woke.
It's been throroughly rebutted by Pinker and others most recently. Piaget showed children's minds reach capabilities on a predefined schedule irrespective of their enclosing social context. That's a bioligical process unfolding, not a blank slate absorbing things from its society.
Studies of people with brain damage and genetic defects all show that the human character is dependent on the human brian and damage or failures in brain development lead directly to defects of "character" or ability.
There is zero reason to suppose all brains are alike in kind or ability within a competency. This last point I think was becoming clearer and clearer in the academy and set off a panic amongst academicians in the social sciences and humanties. They saw it coming in the 80s and set about to attack the basis of that forbidden knowledge- science itself.
They needed to drive the conversation as far in the other direction as they could to make it politically impossible for people to talk about innate differences in ability because it offended their R sense of equality and shattered their R-inspired notions of causality of human beings who act badly. So they moved the Overton window to another state.
They're loading up their own backlash and when it comes it's going to be all over forever and ever for Marxism and all its miscreant offshoots.