Is Medical knowledge socially constructed ?

If medical anthropologist are correct, yes it is socially constructed, but only to a degree. All such knowledge must be grounded, at least to a degree in material reality. In other words it must explain what people actually see or experience.

Re: Is Medical knowledge socially constructed ?
I wouldn't agree that medical knowledge is socially constructed, because whether we know it or not it's still a fact and would exist with or without sociaty. Sociaty hasn't constructed or created medical knowladge, our understanding of it has just grown.

Unless I've misunderstood the term 'socially construted' , I don't belive all knowladge is socially constructed

For those who think all knowledge is NOT socially constructed let them take any piece of information that they claim to know like "water is wet" and try to identify the origin of the concepts involved. Since all knowledge starts with "naming" and the names are socially transmitted via language, then it seems to follow that "knowledge" is about socially agreed demarkation of "reality".

Medical knowledge is no exception, and indeed the historical origins of some words like "hysteria" and "cold" coupled wth the more recent western tradition of reductionism (the prevailing physics paradigm) of bodily systems into subcomponents has perhaps inhibited potential progress.

Of course medical knowledge is socially constructed. That is, it cannot be separated from the social context in which it is developed. While it's true that we cannot socially create a mathematical reality (medical knowledge relies on statistical relationship among variables), the importance of variables, definitions of what constitutes 'beneficial,' and what sorts of health-related phenomena are defined as problems and worthy of research are socially defined.

Is your question inspired by the Berger and Luckmann thesis on the social construction of reality?

As has been pointed out, nything "known" is socially constructed.

All knowledge is a function of the knower, it is "socially constructed" and "culturally constituted". This applies even where "knowledge" works. There is no such thing as facts awaiting our discovery; there are formulations/interpretations/perspectives/constructions/construals, and so on which, while grounded to some extent in "material reality," nonetheless amount to no more than our constructions.
In other words, Fresco is right as usual.

JLN...tell my wife!

A very revealing remark.

JLN wrote:


Not of the known? Who can we thank for the knowledge of atoms? The being who studied them, or the atoms that were available for study?
Can it not be said that our knowledge of a tree is the tree's effect on us? All our knowledge of it comes from our communicating with it, and from no other places.

I do not think that knowledge is a function of the knower. I think our ability to know is a crucial piece in the puzzle, but the actual information belongs to whatever the information corresponds to, not our ability to know it.

The way we handle knowledge is socially constituated, but that says nothing about the actual knowledge, it just serves to provide us with some means of measurement of our ignorance.

Cyracuz,

Would you agree that "knowledge" implies both"a knower" and "what is known"?

This is THE key issue...we cannot separate what is "known" from the "knower" any more than we can separate "a river" into "a flow of water" and "the banks". Both determine the nature of the river in the same sense that epistemology (the course of knowledge) is determined by the interaction of the knower with the known. But whereas we can understand the transcendent "river" in terms of the physical dynamics of interaction of "water" and "bank" in the case of "knowledge" we lack the transcendent position....we are "the water" that cannot understand "the bank"(=the known) except in terms of our interactions with it.

As (I think) Heisenberg put it...we do not observe the world as such...we observe the effects of our interactions with it. So whether it be "atom" or "tree" it is no more or less than a pattern of active observations which we link together as "a concept" and which for good psychological reasons takes on the mental attributes of a persistant external "reality". We might inform each other to watch out for "the waterfall" as we progress down our interactional flow, but we do not see "it" and "us" as a transient and inseparable feature of the river.

When I see a river i (should) recall the Hindu (Upanishadic) dictum, "That art thou" (Tat tvam asi)). The river is not just an "object" of my "subjective" experience: it IS me, insofar as I am experience. Decartes' Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) makes the mistake of thinking, as we all do, that thinking requires a thinker, just as all doing requires a doer. The reality is that thinking IS the doer, i.e., thinking/eperiencing IS one's being; it is not evidence FOR our being. The same applies to knowledge. Fresco's emphasis on the interactive nature of our experiential life strikes at the core of epistemology. My knowledge of a tree is not, as I see it, IN the tree. It is, by definition, in my experience. Knowing is a mental action, not a passive picture of a world "out there"--beware Naive Realism. It is the way we normally experience "the world", but it is not a valid philosophical position to take regarding "the world."

I love Heisenberg's statement. Interaction is what it's all about. Cyracuz is correct, nevertheless, to point out to me that knowledge lies (in part) with the nature of the tree, and I (following Fresco) am right to locate knowledge as an experience in my mind ("experience-in-my-mind" is an unfortunately dualistic way to put it, but that's the nature of our tryannous grammar). But to ME the subjective experience of tree knowledge is more important than the objective fact of the nature of the tree. The nature of the tree means nothing if not the experience I have of it. If there were no "knowers" there would be no meaning called "treeness." "Tree" (as a meaningful "object") IS a function of our knowing activities. We do not interact, however, with trees as such. We interact with the mysterious "substance" of trees (atoms, molecules, quarks, strings, Nietzsche's quantums of energy, whatever), and that mysterious nature pertains to us as well. It's all so beautifully mysterious. But mysterious only because of our capacity for experiencing mystery.

I'm not sure I agree still.

The two main argument seem to be that sociaty just constructs terms and language for that knowlagde, and that knowlagde is based around an individuals interation with the world. (but I oftern mis the point when I read through things a quick as I just did...)

If terms are defined/constructed by sociaty I don't think that knowladge is constructed by sociaty. It's just language that is. 2 + 2 = 4, that can't be change, even though sociaty defines that the amout of things will be discribed by the noise 'two'. If numbers had developed differently eg.

| = one

| | = blah

| | | = seven

| | | | =five

| | | | | = bacon

Blah + Blah = Five, just because the laguage and context that allows us to quantify and pass on our knowlage changes it doesn't change the fact that

| | + | | = | | | |

I think the argument that we don't know any facts, we only know our experiances of the world doesn't mean that all knowlage is socially constructed. To me that suggest there is no such thing as knowladge or facts in sociaty (...hmmmm, where was I going with this I can see this turning in to ang argument for knowladge for sociaty, but I'll leave it here and start again with more of an idea of where I was going...)

If knowladge is all about individual experiance and interation will the thing that will be know then there can be no true knowladge. If I had be raised by monkies in a jungle, then to me a 'tree' maybe something to climb on and get food from. However if all the trees in the world disappeared I would still die from a lack of oxygen, even though the tree only gave me food and fun, never oxgen, I didn't even know what oxgen was. That knowladge was constructed, was it was not full, it was not correct.

I think I agree that in a society knowladge becomes a product of that society, but to say all knowladge is socially constructed is talking more about what we think we know, rather than facts that we can know.

If knowladge is a river, made up of the flow of water and the banks of the river, it seems like to accept all knowledge as socially constructed is to picnic by water pipes.

terrygallagher

...."it seems like to accept all knowledge as socially constructed is to picnic by water pipes"...?

In my analogy we are the water. We cannot escape from the river (to have a picnic.)

Actually "water pipes" implies ID or "purpose" directing "the flow" and that would open up a major can of worms. Note also that "truth" and "correctness" no longer apply to the concept of constructed knowledge....what matters is what works in particular contexts.

fresco-

I can't say I'm sold on the river/bank idea.Am I not just me.I know I'm in a flow from the beginning of it all to the end of it all,as Spengler has taught me,but I'm still just me aren't I?

What better aim could philosophy have than to enable a long and happy life;to elucidate matters in such a way as to provide that outcome.And I don't mean whistling in the dark.

I can agree that knowledge is a function of the knower in the same sense that a reflexion is the function of a mirror rather than the image. What is reflected depends on what is around the mirror, and what is around it is also inside it. It is the same way with us. We reflect our surroundings, and what we know is a direct reflection of what we are able to learn from our surroundings.

Our ability to know is the accumulated experience of millions of years of evolution, evolution that we have little knowledge of, but enjoy the fruits of nonetheless. We don't know it, we are it... So we may very well state that the ability to know is a function of the knower. The availability to is not, but in reality there is no difference between the knower and the knowledge.

Was that what you were getting at?

I can agree that knowledge is a function of the knower in the same sense that a reflexion is the function of a mirror rather than the image. What is reflected depends on what is around the mirror, and what is around it is also inside it. It is the same way with us. We reflect our surroundings, and what we know is a direct reflection of what we are able to learn from our surroundings.

Our ability to know is the accumulated experience of millions of years of evolution, evolution that we have little knowledge of, but enjoy the fruits of nonetheless. We don't know it, we are it... So we may very well state that the ability to know is a function of the knower. The availability to is not, but in reality there is no difference between the knower and the knowledge.

Was that what you were getting at?

Well I said I may of missed the point and it looks like I did...My bad. I thought you ment the water was knowledge, and the banks were society shaping and constructing that knowlegde. Anyway...

I could be missing the point once again with this but...

I would ask how truth or correctness can have not apply to knowladge, of any kind. If this socially constructed knowladge is not true or correct then is it really knowladge? Is it not a view or a belief?

If medical knowladge is socialy constructed and if truth and corretness don't apply to constructed knowledge then is it wrong for me to think I have lungs? If all knowledge is socially constructed (as somebody said, don't remember who) but truth and correctness don't play a part then how can you know all knowledge is socially constructed?

terrygallagher

The concept of "lungs" works fine for most situations but several medical conditions as I understand require a full "heart-lung" transplant.
For those it might called "wrong" or "inappropriate" to consider heart and lungs as separate organs.

Or to take the case of wholistic or Chinese medicine and evidece of acupuncture in place of drugs who is to say that our or their view of bodily functions is "wrong" ?

Thus if we concede that "wrong" can be replaced by "inappropriate" this surely implies that "knowledge" is never absolute but is relative to observer requirements which are ebedded within those of the surrounding culture . We like to know (=predict) what works.....and for some that might be prayer !

If I was buying a stereo system I may purchase the CD player and speakers at the same time, but that doesn't mean that the CD player and speakers are the same. During a heart lung transplant it may well be wrong or inaproprate to think of the heart and lungs as seperate organs, but that doesn't alter the fact that they are different organs. You don't even need socially constructed languaga to tell them apart, you could see they are different without any knowlage of what they are. This is an ability to tell the difference between things and can't be socially constructed because animals that have no socially structure or language can tell what they eat apart from what they don't.

For the Chinese, wholistic, western medical thing, the person to say which is right or wrong is the person who has enough statistcal evidence. If 20 million people have a medical problem x, half of the suffers take drug y and half take drug z, if in a years time everybody who took drug y is cured of the medical problem and everyone who took drug z have die from it then anyone could say that drug z is the wrong treatment for condition x.

Saying who's to say which is right seems all well and good in purly philosophical term but I don't think it works in the real world.

If a loved one had cancer and a doctor told them to have kemotherapy (sp?) and somebody else told them to have peanut butter (or ciggerrettes, glass, pelicans) so this loved one asked your advise on which to take, would you say "all knowlage is socially constructed so who's to say which is right or wrong"? Even if a sociaty thinks peanut butter is a cure for cancer, it doesn't alter the fact that it is wrong to think that.

I'm not saying that no knowledge is socially constructed I'm just don't belive that it all is.