The Institute for Emancipatory Constructionism @ Structurization.com

Quotations Relevant to the Paradigm

  1. "At this point, I want to stress my intention to avoid conflating poststructuralism and postmodernism, which are of different categorical orders. Poststructuralism refers to a specific group of continental (mostly French) philosophical discourses that took shape in the 1960s and, as the name implies, attempted to bring various modern structualist theories to a crisis. Poststructuralist theories engaged in a methodological shift away from (1) a closed system of signification, (2) order and hierarchy through oppositional or binary operations, (3) explanation by origin, and (4) the person as a unified subject. Postmodernism is a broad term that includes sociohistorical, theoretical, and aesthetic phenomena. Postmodern theory draws many of its conclusions from the poststructuralist theories of Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida; but in the forms of cultural studies and theories of gender, ethnicity, and postcoloniality, postmodern theory also exceeds, departs from, and critiques poststructuralism. Though the two most common forms of postmodern reading, the ludic and the resistant, can both be traced back to poststructuralism, resistant reading turns a critical eye on the refusal of poststructuralist theory to allow for (or its inability to account for) agency. Postmodern theories interrogate conventional constructions of subjectivity and reconceptualize alternative notions of the subject. Whereas poststructuralist theories concentrate on deconstruction, postmodern theories engage in deconstruction and reconstrucion (Michael 27)."
    http://www.colby.edu/personal/i/isadoff/pap/Sexing.doc
  2. "Constructionism can be characterised in two ways: internally, in terms of its defining characteristics, and externally, in terms of the views that it generally opposes. Internally, constructionist perspectives generally take at least some of the following stances: anti-essentialism; anti-realism; an emphasis on historical and cultural specificity of knowledge; an emphasis on language as a pre-condition of thought; an emphasis on language as a form of social action; a focus on interaction and social practices; and a focus on processes, not simply products (see Burr, 1995). Constructionism involves an emphasis on context-bound aspects of objects and ideas. It emphasises the historically developed and culture-specific nature of the objects of study, and it places central importance on the role of discourse in constituting these objects as historically and culturally contingent."
    -- Steven Engler
    http://www.as.ua.edu/naasr/englerconstruction.pdf
  3. Bourdieu's critical conflict theory
    Bourdieu shared Weber's view that society, contrary to traditional Marxism, cannot be analyzed simply in terms of economic classes and ideologies. Much of his work concerns the independent role of educational and cultural factors. Instead of analyzing societies in terms of classes, Bourdieu uses the concept of field: a social arena in which people manoeuvre and struggle in pursuit of desirable resources. A field is a system of social positions, structured internally in terms of power relationships. Different fields can be quite autonomous and more complex societies have more fields.
    Bourdieu's theory is one of social reproduction, of how one generation of a group ensures that it reproduces itself and passes on its traits to the next. The main source of modern success is education, but Bourdieu argues it has a much wider role than the narrowly academic one it is formally tasked with. What is necessary for educational success is a whole range of cultural behavior, extending to ostensibly non-academic features like gait or accent. Privileged children have learned this behaviour, as have their teachers. Children of unprivileged backgrounds have not. The children of privilege fit into the world of educational expectations with apparent 'ease'. The unprivileged are found to be 'difficult', to present 'challenges'. Yet both behave as their upbringing dictates. Bourdieu regards this 'ease', or 'natural' ability as in fact the product of a great social labour on the part of the parents. It equips their children with the dispositions of manner as well as thought which ensure they are able to succeed within the educational system and can then reproduce their class position in the wider social system.
    Bourdieu sees the legitimation of cultural capital as crucial to its effectiveness as a source of power. It is seen as symbolic violence, violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity. What this means is that people come to experience systems of meaning (culture) as legitimate; there is a process of misunderstanding or misrecognition of what is really going on. So it comes that working class children see it as legitimate that their middle-class peers have more success in the educational system as based on their objective performance. A key part of this process is the transformation of people's cultural habits or economic positions into symbolic capital that has legitimacy and is seen as real. Symbolic capital is nothing more than economic or cultural capital which is acknowledged and recognized and then tends to reinforce the power relations which constitute the structure of social space.
    Habitus can be defined as a system of dispositions: durably acquired schemes of perception, thought and action, engendered by objective conditions but tending to persist even after an alteration of those conditions. Bourdieu sees habitus as the key to reproduction because it is what actually generates the regular practices that make up social life. It is the product of social conditioning and so links actual behavior to class structure.
    Bourdieu insists on the importance of a reflexive sociology in which sociologists must at all times conduct their research with conscious attention to the effects of their own position, and in particular their own set of internalized structures.
    Bourdieu's sociology in general can be characterized as an investigation of the pre-reflexive conditions that generate certain beliefs and practices that are generated in capitalist systems.
    -- Bourdieu's critical conflict theory
  4. The practice of capitalizing Deaf signifies more than a new respect for those who cannot hear: it has become a sign of activism, with a popular base, with heroes and histories. It includes a commitment to American Sign Language, an active bilingualism, a call for representation (marked in 1988 by the successful demand that the incoming president of Gallaudet University in Washington be a deaf person). It extends as far as the rejection of cochlear implants that are intended to restore a certain degree of hearing. The claim to a Deaf culture is, today, no laughing matter.
    -- Acephalous
  5. The Capitalization Question: Not long ago, a reader asked us why we use the capitalized version of Deaf in our blog and website. This question brought us back to our thoughts last year, when we were in the middle of writing the text for the ASC website and debating the D/d issue. Opting to capitalize Deaf was not something we decided on a whim, nor was it a separatist type of move. We did it consciously, out of inclusion, out of practicality, and out of pride.
    Deaf as an Inclusive Term: Far from viewing “Deaf” as a way of excluding people, we see the term as an inclusive one. To us, “Deaf” refers to any people who happen to be Deaf. It has nothing to do with having Deaf or hearing parents, or using ASL, SEE, spoken English, cued speech, or any other communication modality. Neither does it matter if one was mainstreamed, educated at a Deaf school, or homeschooled. Degree of hearing loss, being Deaf from birth or being late-Deafened, using a hearing aid or a cochlear implant - none of these, in our minds, precludes anyone from being Deaf.
    Capitalizing Deaf parallels capitalizing African American, Jewish, Hispanic, and so on, with each of these capitalized designations referring to a group of people with their own culture and physical characteristics (i.e., skin color, bloodline, hearing status). All of these terms are inclusive. Some Jewish people may be observant Orthodox Jews, centering their lives around their religion, while others may simply identify as Jewish through their family lineage and never set foot in a temple. Some Jewish people speak Hebrew, while others don’t. Similarly, some Hispanic Americans may be fluent Spanish speakers, while others, perhaps third- or fourth-generation Hispanic Americans, may not be conversant in Spanish at all. Some may have dark brown skin, while others may have light brown skin, and still others might “pass” as Caucasian.
    None of these differences function as exclusionary criteria. Jewish people are Jewish, African Americans are African American, and Deaf people are Deaf, no matter what individual differences might exist within these groups.
    Deaf as a Practical Term: By using Deaf as an inclusive term, we are able to avoid the cumbersome use of a string of words describing different kinds of Deaf people. Which is easier reading?:
    A) It’s important to know that being Deaf, deaf, hard of hearing, hearing impaired, Deaf-blind, or late-deafened itself is not a cause of depression.
    Or
    B) It’s important to know that being Deaf itself is not a cause of depression.
    The practice of switching back and forth between Deaf and deaf, depending on the situation, is awkward and unnecessarily complicated. We don’t see jewish, african american, or latina being used to differentiate less-observant Jews, lighter-skinned African Americans, or non-Spanish speaking Latina people. It is simpler to reserve the use of “deaf” for when it is not referring specifically to people. For example: “She was deaf to his pleas”.
    Of course, when distinctions need to be made between Deaf people (i.e., for research or assessment purposes), we understand the usefulness of terms like those mentioned above (i.e., hard of hearing, late-deafened, etc.). We also respect people’s choices in how they decide to describe themselves.
    Deaf Pride: Why not just get rid of the big D and use “deaf” to refer to all people who are Deaf? We did consider doing this, but in the end, we felt it important to acknowledge that Deaf people are a unique group of people. In the same way that the J in Jewish is capitalized, the B in Black, and the L in Latina, we choose to capitalize the D in Deaf to reflect our pride in our community and culture.
    -- Alternative Solutions Center (ASC)
  6. I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other .... it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluxtuating forms. The term variety, again in comparison with mere individual difference, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake.
    -- Charles Darwin
  7. The serious question that the Deaf movement asks of identitarian thinkers concerns the essentialist stakes of identity politics. To obscenely oversimplify: on the one hand, some schools of identity politics presuppose a strong social constructivist position in which normative identity is nothing but historical contingency and people are who they are by accident of birth; on the other, other schools of identity politics presuppose that some people possess essential qualities that normative identities have denied expression. Either female identity has been constructed in the Western world such that women are more cooperative or women are more cooperative in the Western world because women are naturally more cooperative.
    -- Acephalous
  8. [Some] argue the final collapse of capitalism has begun and that efforts to prop up the system are doomed to fail.
    The reasons given for this inevitable collapse vary quite a bit, however. Some argue, as many Marxists did back in the 1930s, that it is the result of capitalism’s internal contradictions, such as the tendency towards a declining rate of profit. But many more, including the adherents of peak oil theory, view the collapse as the result of capitalism colliding with some outside force that prevents the further accumulation and expansion that is the lifeblood of the system.
    Not only are there a myriad of reasons offered to explain the inevitable collapse, but there are starkly different conclusions reached about what will replace capitalism. There are those who see the collapse as radicalising the population and bringing workers around to a revolutionary standpoint; while others depict a prolonged period of social anarchy or even a return to a pre-industrial life, and advise people to head to the hills after stocking up on gold, guns and vegetable seeds.
    Regardless of those particular differences, however, the idea of an inevitable collapse of capitalism clearly implies that a great historical change could take place regardless of our actions. Instead of socialism replacing capitalism, based on the conscious decisions and actions of workers, we would have capitalism ending at some point, and that collapse then stimulating a great social change – for better or worse.
    One might wonder, though, what sort of society would exist in the interim, however brief it might be, between the collapse of the old and the emergence of the new. It would be “non-capitalist,” one would assume, but what would be the dividing line between the two? Is it possible for a society to not be capitalist, but still not be anything else either?
    The reason for much of the confusion among the “catastrophists,” as they are sometimes called, is that – just like the reformists who confuse nationalization with socialism – they do not have a clear understanding of what capitalism is, exactly. That is to say, instead of understanding capitalism on the most essential level, as a system of commodity production in the pursuit of profit, they get caught up in the various forms of capitalism, and imagine that some are more capitalistic than others.
    It is certainly true that forms of capitalism or particular governments can collapse, but this should not be viewed as the collapse of capitalism itself. There are many examples of collapses to choose from, most notably the fall of the Weimer government in Germany that was followed by a fascist regime. For over a decade, Germany went through economic crisis, political upheaval, and a catastrophic war. With no exaggeration, one can speak of that period as a collapse of civilization. Yet throughout it all the capitalist system remained intact.
    It is easier to speak of the “collapse of capitalism” if a person has no clear idea of what capitalism means. And if its meaning is unclear, then the understanding of socialism will also be a muddle (just like those reformists who mistake state capitalism for socialism). It is important, therefore, to distinguish between an economic or political collapse, and the end of capitalism itself, which only workers can bring about by replacing it with socialism.
    -- Is Capitalism Crumbling? Socialist Standard. March 2009.
  9. Mills thought it was possible to create a good society on the basis of knowledge and that people of knowledge must take responsibility for its absence.
    Mills argues that micro and macro levels of analysis can be linked together by the sociological imagination, which enables its possessor to understand the large historical sense in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. Individuals can only understand their own experiences fully if they locate themselves within their period of history. The key factor is the combination of private problems with public issues: the combination of troubles that occur within the individual’s immediate milieu and relations with other people with matters that have to do with institutions of an historical society as a whole.
    In modern society those centralization of power and that the men who head government, corporations, the armed forces and the unions are closely linked. The means of power at the disposal of centralized decision makers have greatly increased. The Power Elite is made up of political, economic and military leaders. Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” gives a clear image of the entwinement of these bases of power.
    Mills shares with Marxist sociology and elite theorists the view that society is divided rather sharply and horizontally between the powerful and powerless. He also shares their concerns for alienation, the effects of social structure on the personality and the manipulation of people by the mass media. At the same time however Mills does not regard property (economic power) as the main source of conflict in society.
    -- C. Wright Mills' critical conflict theory
  10. [Democritus of Abdera (460 B.C.-370)] introduced the idea that we identify qualities by convention -- i.e. we call sweet things “sweet,” and that is what leads us to group them together, not some quality of the things themselves. This is called the nominalism, from the Latin word for name. This way of thinking doesn't show up again till the late Middle Ages.
    -- The Ancient Greeks, Part One: The Pre-Socratics, by Dr. C. George Boeree
  11. ... the nominalist theory of language at the end of the Middle Ages ... stressed the simple fact that words, whether spoken or written, are arbitrary signs that present no guarantee of truth but often lead the mind into error. They do so specifically in suggesting the real or ideal existence of universals. Yet nominalism played a significant role in the rise of modern theories of language by stressing its creative power. At the beginning of the modern epoch, then, three different conceptions of language competed with one another: the Neoplatonic tradition stressed the image quality of the spoken or written word; the nominalist tradition where words serve as signs; and the Aristotelian tradition, continued by the Thomists, adopted an intermediate position.
    -- Louis Depre, The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture
  12. Democritus and Lucretius reduced the essential principles of all things to a concourse of atoms. The study of medicine was bound up for long ages in nominalism, the study of words and ideas of the mind taking the place of symptoms and causes of disease. The result of this occult nominalism is the polypharmacology of modern times, occult ideas requiring the occult qualities of medicine.
    -- Osteopathy in Line of Apostolic Succession with Medicine, by J. Martin Littlejohn, Ph.D.
  13. Heraclitus is often interpreted as suggesting a skeptical conclusion from this observation. Since nothing ever stays the same from moment to moment, any knowledge we may think we have is obsolete before we acquire it. He might also have been suggesting that names are an artificial way to impose stability on the flux of reality -- by calling this a "river" I pretend that it is one entity. This would make of him the first nominalist.
    Much in the philosophy of Plato may be understood as an answer to Heraclitus, especially to the skeptical implications of his writings.
    -- Problem of universals (Wikipedia)
  14. "I argue that poststructural methodologies that assist the deconstruction of power relations as they are embedded in rhetoric can be useful, and even necessary, for feminist ethnography and theory. Feminist theorists from a variety of disciplines have made this point in a variety of contexts. Linda Nicholson condudes that if we can avoid essentialism, the use of poststructural methodologies need not require the elimination of all theory and politics."
    http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3687/is_199801/ai_n8772661
  15. "Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."
    -- Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I
  16. "... discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and expose it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it."
    -- Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I
  17. Deconstruction - a term coined by French philosophy Jacques Derrida in the 1960s, and used in its stricter sense to designate a critical system holding that speech and writing are too imprecise to represent reality, because words only refer to other words. Used in its looser sense, the term means to take apart a narrative, a hypothesis, a theme, to show that it is not disinterested or objective, but motivated by the ideology characteristic of the author. In this second sense, the impossibility of concrete meaning key to Derrida's use is ignored.
    http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/marling/hardboiled/Glossary.HTM
  18. Dynamic nominalism remains an intriguing doctrine, arguing that numerous kinds of human beings and human acts come into being hand in hand with our invention of the categories labeling them. It is for me the only intelligible species of nominalism, the only one that can even gesture at an account of how common names and the named could so tidily fit together.
    -- Ian Hacking
  19. Poststructuralism is a type of literary criticism that argues any given literary text has plural meanings. Under the rubric of postructuralism, you will find several different methods of analyzing tests. These methods or frames of references include deconstruction, Marxist, feminist, gender studies, queer theory, reader-response, new historicism, psychological, cultural, sign theory and postcolonialism. Poststructuralist literary critics do believe in considering the author's intent in creating a text, but they do not privilege it, and they are adamant about insisting the author's argument about her work is just one interpretation, in most cases, no more significant that other interpretations.
    http://www.libarts.ucok.edu/english/faculty/hochenauer/profaq.html
  20. For conflict theory, the basic insight is that human beings are sociable but conflict-prone animals. Why is there conflict? Above all else, there is conflict because violent coercion is always a potential resource, and it is zero-sum sort. This does not imply anything about the inherence of drives to dominate; what we do know firmly is that being coerced is an intrinsically unpleasant experience, and hence that any use of coercion, even by a small minority, calls forth conflict in the form of antagonism to being dominated. Add to this the fact that coercive power, especially as represented in the state, can be used to bring one economic goods and emotional gratification and to deny them to others and we can see that the availability of coercion as a resource ramifies conflicts throughout the entire society. The simultaneous existence of emotional bases for solidarity--which may well be the basis of cooperation, as Durkheim emphasized--only adds group divisions and tactical resources to be used in these conflicts.
    Conflict Sociology, by Randall Collins (New York: Academic Press, 1974, pp.56-61)
  21. God has the authority to speak to all Paradigms, but it does not eliminate the Paradigms:
    "The differences among the religions of the world are due to the varying types of minds. So long as the powers of the mind are various, it is certain that men's judgements and opinions will differ one from another. If, however, one single, universal perceptive power be introduced - a power encompassing all the rest - those differing opinions will merge, and a spiritual harmony and oneness will become apparent."
    -- 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, p.63
  22. Nominal essences:
    "That then which general words signify is a sort of things; and each of them does that, by being a sign of an abstract idea in the mind; to which idea, as things existing are found to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name, or, which is all one, be of that sort. Whereby it is evident that the essences of the sorts ... are nothing else but these abstract ideas ... From whence it is easy to observe, that the essences of the sorts of things, and, consequently, the sorting of things, is the workmanship of the understanding that abstracts and makes those general ideas."
    -- John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter III, Section 12.
  23. Ockhamism: A term in common use since the early 15th century, indicating doctrines and methods associated with those of the English Franciscan theologian William of Ockham (died 1349). It is currently applied by neoscholastic writers as a blanket designation for a great variety of late mediaeval and early modern attitudes such as are destructive of the metaphysical principles of Thomism, even though they may not be directly traceible to Ockham's own writings.
    Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished:
    1. Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms.
    2. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse.
    3. Theological, indicating the thesis that no theological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist.
    24. -- Dagobert D. Runesm Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942,
  24. Real essences:
    "[T]he real internal, but generally (in substances) unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be called their [real] essence ... and in this sense we speak of the essence of particular things."
    -- John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter III, Section 15.
  25. Real essences
    "[The rational person looks] on all natural things to have a real, but unknown, constitution of their insensible parts; from which flow those sensible qualities which serve us to distinguish them one from another, according as we have occasion to rank them into sorts, under common denominations."
    -- John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter III, Section 17.
  26. John Locke (1632-1704) was a nominalist in this vein: "it is plain that our distinct species are nothing but distinct complex ideas . . . . [T]he ranking of things into species is done by us according to the ideas we have of them." Simply put, Locke defends the view that the world is largely man-cut, not pre-cut. Now Locke was a rather mild nominalist, holding that there might be universals deep inside things, but we can't know them, so they are no help to knowledge. Later nominalists abandoned such mysticism, and ran with the claim that the human mind constructs reality. They are not naturally there. The world is man-made. Culture is a construct. This later nominalism spread over several centuries and thinkers, and, with some controversy, we now call it postmodernism.
    -- Douglas Jones, Poetic Worlds
  27. ... metaphysical fundamentalism can take one of four forms, depending on which category of entities one takes to be the fundamental category. Trope Fundamentalism is the thesis that the category of abstract particulars is the fundamental one, and all other three can be analyzed in terms of tropes. Thus trope fundamentalism may be defined as the conjunction of two other theses, Trope Nominalism and Trope Bundle Theory. Trope nominalism is the thesis that properties – of all kinds, including properties of being a certain specific individual – are analyzable in terms of tropes. If trope nominalism is true, both abstract universals and concrete universals can be analyzed in terms of abstract particulars. Trope Bundle Theory is the thesis that individuals are analyzable in terms of tropes. If trope Bundle Theory is true, concrete particulars can also be analyzed in terms of abstract particulars. If both trope nominalism and trope Bundle Theory are true, then abstract particulars form the fundamental category of entities.
    -- Uriah Kriegel, Trope Theory and the Metaphysics of Appearances
  28. Renaissance thinkers strongly felt the necessity to revise their discourse on man. But no one accentuated this necessity more than Montaigne: what he was looking for, when reading historians or travellers such as Lopez de Gomara's History of Indies, was the utmost variety of beliefs and customs that would enrich his image of man. Neither the Hellenistic Sage, nor the Christian Saint, nor the Renaissance Scholar, are unquestioned models in the Essays. Instead, Montaigne is considering real men, who are the product of customs. “Here they live on human flesh; there it is an act of piety to kill one's father at a certain age….” The importance of custom plays a polemical part: alongside with scepticism, the strength of imagination (chapter I,21) or Fortune (chapters I,1, I,24, etc.), it contributes to the devaluation of reason and will. It is bound to destroy the spontaneous trust that we do know the truth, and that we live according to justice. During the XVIth century, the jurists of the “French school of law” showed that the law is tied up with historical determinations. In chapter I,23, ‘On custom’, Montaigne seems to extrapolate on this idea : our opinions and conducts being everywhere the product of custom, reference to universal “reason”, “truth”, or “justice” is to be dismissed as an illusion. Pierre Villey was the first to use the terms ‘relativity’ and “relativism”, which proved to be useful tools when commenting on the fact that Montaigne acknowledges that no universal reason presides over the birth of our beliefs. The notion of absolute truth, applied to human matters, vitiates the undestanding and wreaks havoc in society. Upon further reflexion, contingent customs impact everything: ‘in short, to my way of thinking, there is nothing that custom will not or cannot do’. Montaigne calls it “Circe's drink”. Custom is a sort of witch, whose spell, among other effects, casts moral illusion. “The laws of conscience, which we say are born from nature, are born of custom. Each man, holding in inward veneration the opinions and the behavior approved and accepted around him…,’ obeys custom in all his actions and thoughts. The power of custom, indeed, not only guides man in his behavior, but also persuades him of its legitimacy. What is crime for one person will appear normal to another. In the XVIIth century, Pascal will use this argument when challenging the pretention of philosophers of knowing truth. One century later, David Hume will lay stress on the fact that the power of custom is all the stronger, specifically because we are not aware of it. What are we supposed to do, then, if our reason is so flexible that it “changes with two degrees of elevation towards the pole”, as Pascal says? For Pascal, only one alternative exists, faith in Jesus Christ. However, it is more complicated in the case of Montaigne. Getting to know all sorts of customs, through his readings or travels, he makes an exemplary effort to open his mind. “We are all huddled and concentrated in ourselves, and our vision is reduced to the length of our nose”. Custom's grip is so strong that it is dubious as to whether we are in a position to become aware of it and therefore shake off its power.
    Montaigne was hailed by Claude Lévi-Strauss as the progenitor of the human sciences, and the pioneer of culural relativism. However, Montaigne has not been willing to indulge entirely in relativism. Judgment is at first sight unable to stop the relativistic discourse, but it is not left without remedy when facing the power of custom. Inner freedom of thought is the first counterweight we can make use of, for example when criticizing an existing law. Customs are not almighty, since their authority can be reflected upon, evaluated or challenged by individual judgment. The comparative method can also be applied to the freeing of judgment: although lacking a universal standard, we can nevertheless stand back from particular customs, by the mere fact of comparing them.
    Michel de Montaigne, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  29. At times [Michel Eyquem de] Montaigne was postmodern, and at other times he was ultra-conservative. He opined that every conceivable human behavior was socially acceptable in some parts of the world and in some cultures. This is the argument of moral relativism constantly used by postmodern multiculturalists.
    -- Fred Hutchison, Historical Roots of the Culture War: An Overview
  30. Methodological nominalism stands in opposition to this view. Believing that essences are obscure, that their emphasis hinders the growth of knowledge and encourages enshrining tradition and authority, methodological nominalists take an instrumental view of definitions. What we call a thing is a matter of convenience and of the role such things play in our theories. Given a thing we do not ask for its essence; we call it Y and then we try to explain Y by its relationship to other things. Moreover, because essences have no function in science according to these nominalists, scientific truth is contingent and scientific progress depends not on cataloguing but on theoretical speculation and testing. This position is currently fashionable and stands at the core of the Anglo-Saxon empirical tradition [emphasis mine].
    -- R.J. Rummel, Understanding Conflict and War, chapter 34
  31. His [William James'] philosophy has three principal aspects—voluntarism, pragmatism, and “radical empiricism.” He construes consciousness as essentially active, selective, interested, teleological. We “carve out” our world from “the jointless continuity of space.” Will and interest are thus primary; knowledge is instrumental. The true is “only the expedient in our way of thinking.” Ideas do not reproduce objects, but prepare for, or lead the way to, them. The function of an idea is to indicate “what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it and what reactions we must prepare.” This theory of knowledge James called pragmatism, a term already used by Charles S. Peirce. James's “radical empiricism” is a philosophy of “pure experience,” which rejects all transcendent principles and finds experience organized by means of “conjunctive relations” that are as much a matter of direct experience as things themselves. Moreover, James regards consciousness as only one type of conjunctive relation within experience, not as an entity above, or distinct from, its experience. James's other philosophical writings include The Will to Believe (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907), A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Meaning of Truth (1909), Some Problems in Philosophy (1911), and Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912).
    -- "James, William," The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
  32. Sociologism consists in attempting to exhaust the signification of a social phenomenon in the "sociological". Here we have a new version of closed science, closed knowledge, without exteriority or "otherness".
    -- Clodovis Boff
  33. Postmodernists speak about the "social construction of reality." Everyone views the world through circumstances of society and culture, they say, so reality is a "social construct."...
    ... on any large scale, despite all postmodernist claims, "social construction of reality" is idolatry. People do not construct reality. The Lord God Who made the heavens and earth is the One Who constructs reality....
    Easter is a great celebration of the Divine construction of reality....
    Our good and gracious God constructs a reality of forgiveness and life for us in the crucified and risen Christ.
    -- Too Good To Be True…But It's True!, by Dr. A.L. Barry
  34. ... perhaps Derrida is the philosopher of post-Marxism.... Derrida's salutes Marx and reveals his desire to reclaim at least "one spirit" of Marx by de-totalising Marx-ISM.
    -- Saint Jacques: Derrida and the Ghost of Marxism, by David Bedggood
  35. For Mouffe and Laclau deconstruction has made large holes in Marxism. They prefer the label post-Marxists, indicating where they have come from, but acknowledging that their current position is not Marxist. They see the crux of the deconstructionist implications for Marxism as the loss of any pivotal point for social change, neither the working class, nor the lumpenproletariat, nor the party. Neither is an alliance of progressive forces acceptable, as this implies a collection of distinct groups; rather than a separation of socialists, feminists, animal liberationists, nuclear disarmers etc who may form an alliance towards some common goal, the arguments of each need to be taken on board by the other groups, each group will change the others. Similarly there is the loss of any essential determinant in society - no base/ superstructure, or determination in the last instance, nor structural determinantion. Hence we cannot clearly distinguish (except as points on a silding scale) between a captialist and socialist society, in the sense that we could say, the economic base has changed, this must be socialism. Mouffe and Laclau argue that as institutions and structures change, their new formations either become more open and democratic or centralised and totalitatian. They summarise their political position thus:
    "By locating socialism in the wider field of the democratic revolution, we have indicated that the political transformations which will eventually enable us to transcend capitalist society are founded on the plurality of social agents and of their struggles. Thus the field of social conflict is extended, rather than being concentrated in a 'privilaged agent' of socialist change. This also means that the extension and radicalization of democratic struggles does not have a final point of arrival in the achievement of a fully liberated society. There will always be antagonisms, struggles, and partial opaqueness of the social; there will always be history. The myth of the transparent and homogeneous society - which implies the end of politics - must be resolutely abandoned." -- Marxism and Deconstruction, by John Mann
  36. The ... principle of Neglected Difference (bhedagraha = apoha) is ... resorted to in order to solve the problem of the relation between the Universal and the Particular. For the Universal is always an image, a logical construction, a dialectical distinction, the Particular, on the other hand, i. e., the extreme concrete and particular, the point-instant of efficient reality, is not constructed, hence it is the thing as it is in itself. There is between them no similarity at all, but by neglecting all their difference and by a common contrast we ran identify them. Just so there is no similarity at all between two cows, they are «other» entities, but by neglecting this there difference and by fixing our attention upon their contrast with, e. g., horses, we may say that they are cows, i.e., in this case, non-horses. If there were no objects with which they could be contrasted they would be quite dissimilar.
    The importance of this theory lies in the fact that it radically eliminates every attempt to maintain the reality of Universals, whether as real entities (satta), eternal and ubiquitous, residing in all attaining particulars (svavisaya-sarva-gata), or as « meanings» (padartha), having whatsoever objective reality. Universals are purely notional, their indirect reality is, so to speak, dynamic, as a guide of our purposive actions directed towards some point of efficient, external reality.
    The theory of apoha has been first started by Dignaga in the 5th chapter of his Pramana-samuccaya.
    -- Apoha-vada, The Buddhist Nominalism
  37. Also noteworthy is the Kashmiri Shaiva theory of what may be called "semantic exclusion" (apoha). This concept had originally been formulated by the Buddhist logicians to explain a nonepistemic "coordination" (sārūpya) between language and momentary perceptual data as the basis for successful reference in communication and behaviors. ... According to the Buddhists, words have no isomorphism with the sense data, but only exclude other words that would not lead to successful behavior. The only reference of the word "cow" to a perceived particular is that it excludes non-cows, for example, a horse, a car, and so on. The Buddhist theory has an interesting point of agreement with contemporary structuralist and poststructuralist conceptions of the determination of linguistic value by difference, although it is not formulated like the latter (i.e., on the basis of considerations about the systematicity of entire languages).
    -- Kashmiri Shaiva Philosophy, from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  38. Ockham’s overriding philosophical goal is the complete omnipotence of God. Ockham and the Via Moderna posited a radical distinction between the ordained order—that is, the world we know—and the absolute order—that is, all of the other options open to God. This distinction between the possibilities open to God, and the order that God did in fact choose, is derived from his belief that God is completely extrinsic from his creation and is therefore completely unknowable by deduction based on the world around us. St. Thomas’s philosophy, by contrast, is based on the assumption that the natural order points to the essence of the Creator; Ockham’s philosophy will not allow God to be discovered so easily. Ockham denied that the existence of God could be philosophically proven; it is to be accepted only by faith. He regarded discussions about the attributes of God, such as mercy and justice, to be mere discussions about the correct meaning of words. Nature has no discernable intelligibility or order of its own, because this would impose restrictions on God’s omnipotence. Discussions about the essence of things have no real cognitive meaning. Since there is no real nature to things, and thus no real relation between them, it follows that causality is to be rejected: It cannot be philosophically proven that any effect follows from a cause. Fire accompanies heat, not because it is in the nature of fire to produce heat, but because God directly wills each and every occurrence of the one following the other. The natural order depends solely on the arbitrary will of God.
    -- Chesterton and Luther, by Tom Jensen
  39. Postmodernism is also characterized by a linguistic movement in philosophy. Ludwig Wittgenstein came to reject his own earlier positivist theory of language, which provides an important transition in charting the move from modernism to postmodernism. Wittgenstein came to recognize that all languages, from the mathematical to our mother tongues, are internally self-referential. Language is understood as a kind of game theory, in which the rules are arbitrary to each particular user-group. What we can talk about is language games within the boundaries of rational, irrational, and other rational. Human reason is a polyglot. Crossdisciplinary and crosscultural translation projects result. Within the rules of their respective language games, an Orthodox Jew can be every bit as rational as a particle physicist; indeed, they can be one and the same person. There is, however, no master language of Truth, as the scientific positivists and religious fundamentalists had hoped.
    -- Postmodernism: What One Needs to Know, by William Grassie (from Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, March 1997
  40. Due to queer theory’s dedication to poststructuralist philosophy, the methods of deconstruction and discourse analysis have become the chief methods for the study of ‘heteronormativity’. In this paper I argue that there is no ‘proper’ methods for researching ‘heteronormativity’. Even from within a postructuralist understanding, the application of diverse qualitative research methods remains an option. Moreover, in the light of the strong emphasis on historicisation and contextualisation in critical poststructuralism, the choice of multiple methods appears both reasonable and advisable.
    -- Heteronormativity, Methodology , and the Question of Power (abstract) by Christian Klesse
  41. Realist approaches consider how policy relates to the real world. One type of realist approach is the positivist or scientific approach and another type is the critical approach - either Marxist or neo-Marxist - which pays particular attention to relations of power. Realist approaches contrast with approaches labelled 'postmodern', 'poststructural' or 'discursive' approaches. Discourse helps create reality, discourses interact and discourses involve exercises of power. [Ben] Agger (1992) distinguishes between critical poststructuralism and literary poststructuralism - the former relates discourse to relations of power while the latter 'is more akin to literary criticism'.
    -- The Principles of Discourse: Humanities, Policy and Education
  42. "From an early age Calvin was groomed for an ecclesiastical career. His father, who handled the civil legal affairs of the Cathedral Chapter of Noyon, obtained the revenues of two benefices for his gifted son. These revenues helped to finance the young Calvin’s study at the University of Paris (1523-1528). While there he received his theological education and formation in the nominalist school of via moderna, first in the Collége de la Marcheand later at the Collége Montaigu. This nominalist training exerted a lifelong influence on Calvin’s thought, especially in his vigorous criticism of scholasticism and in his doctrine of God.
    "Calvin’s theology emerged from a confluence of Christian humanism and Lutheranism."
    -- HIST1 Unit 5 PM
  43. On the one hand, the creation of the kingdom of God is not a human construction at all. It is totally the work of God, and its even partial presence in our midst is not the result of doing good works, but is purely a gift of God, undeserved and unattainable through the exertion of human power. On the other hand, the proposal of a human utopia rests on a human rather than a divine construction. To whatever degree it is realizable, it depends on the expenditure of prodigious amounts of human efforts. All too frequently, these two visions have been seen as being in conflict with each other. The proposal to "build the kingdom of God" is seen as an act of hubris that is doomed to failure since it rejects the divine creativity and tries to substitute a human agenda in its place. Similarly, the proposal to create a human utopia is seen as a denial of the divine creativity, and becomes an instance of human beings tryng to play the role of God. There is, however, a third way of looking at the quest for justice, such as liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez help us see, that combines human striving and divine action and relates them integrally to each other. Gutierrez talks about the human task in establishing justice as one of "preparing the way"--preparing the way, ultimately, for God to establish the divine kingdom in all of its fullness. Gutierrez is quite explicit that we do not "create" that kingdom, nor do we "bring it in." What we are to do is to create little foretastes, here and now, of what God will to be the ultimate expression of human life and community under God, places where signs of the nature of the kingdom are present.
    -- Repent, or You're Going to H-E-double- toothpicks, by Rev. Sharon L. Moe
  44. Gabriel Biel was representative of one of the two dominant forms of late medieval scholasticism--the via moderna (the modern way). It was the fundamental theme of the via moderna, the pactum or covenant, that formed the central soteriological concept of Biel's theology.
    -- Gabriel Biel's Doctrine of Justification
  45. To be sure, from the point of view of nominalist, via moderna logic, complexe significabilia and inherent universals signified by common terms in all categories are semantically superfluous, and ontologically weird items. But given the analysis of predication and the corresponding semantic theory of the copula in the "realist" via antiqua logic, they are necessary components of the semantic theory, which have to be accounted for separately in a relatively independent ontology (in which, nevertheless, they may still be eliminated in various ways).
    -- Semantics and Ontology: Comments on Jack Zupko’s talk (Gyula Klima)
  46. Calvin belonged to the nominalist or voluntarist theological tradition. Instead of focusing with Thomas on the being of God, he focused on God’s will. This could be a more biblical, event-oriented, approach. But Calvin emphasized the immutability of God as much as the earlier substance-oriented theologians had done. The logical implication is that everything is determined from the outset by God’s one, unchanging act of will. The narrative history told in the Bible is, then, simply the outworking in time of that eternal act.
    -- Wesley the Process Theologian
  47. "The Realists, such as Thomas Aquinas, believed that human beings have some knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. God, they argued, is purely good. The Nominalists taught that good and evil have no existence in themselves. Such distinctions depend entirely on the point of view. We cannot place our preferences as absolute, and then judge God by them. On the contrary it is God's judgment that establishes what is good and evil.
    "Calvin was a Nominalist. He depicted God as condemning most people to Hell from all eternity. To a Realist this does not seem good. But to a Nominalist, if this is God's will, then it is good by definition. The good is what God wills.
    "Actually, of course, a Nominalist like Calvin tries to help us understand why this punishment of most people is just. Practically, thus there is some concession to normal human understanding of goodness and justice. But when this explanation reaches its limits, the appeal is to the Nominalist principle. People should accept God's will rather than protest against it."
    -- God is Love?
  48. More recently, [Max] Stirner has been identified as a nascent poststructuralist, employing a genealogical critique of humanist discourses of power and identity. It would be wrong to suggest that these various parallels are wholly implausible. Nevertheless, they may not offer the most accurate account of Stirner's impact on philosophical and political thought.
    -- Max Stirner, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  49. There are two main subdivisions of scholasticism, which can be associated with two time periods. The first part of the scholastic period was dominated by realism, while the later part by nominalism. Realism said that universals were entities of themselves, while nominalism said that universal concepts are not real. Proponents of Realism included Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
    There were two forms of Nominalism: the via moderna and the schola Augustiniana moderna. The common feature was only that they were both anti-realism. The two schools reflect the debate between Pelagianism and Augustianism, over the ability of humans to merit salvation. The via moderna tended toward the positions of Pelagius and the schola Augustiniana towards that of Augustine.
    The theology of the via moderna was dominated by a covenant between God and humans in which humans, when people followed their conscience and "did their best" they could somehow obligate God to accepting them based on the terms of the covenant. Human works were of little inherent value. But God had promised, through the covenant, to treat them as if they were of much greater value.
    The theology of the schola Augustiniana reflected the views of Augustine that humans are totally depraved. Salvation is totally the work of God, from the beginning to its end. This view may have influenced Calvin.
    -- A Review of Reformation Thought: An Introduction, by Alister E. McGrath
  50. Sartre is, after all, an ontologist, while Foucault is a nominalist. Sartre's commitment to dialectical reason -- a commitment grounded in his privileging of the temporal -- is difficult to square with Foucault's account of multiple rationalities -- a commitment grounded in his privileging of spatiality.
    -- Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason, Volume 2: A Poststructuralist Mapping of History (Thomas Flynn)
  51. In the late 1960s Juergen Habermas of the Frankfurt School, redefined critical theory in a way that freed it from a direct tie to Marxism or the prior work of the Frankfurt School. In Habermas's epistemology, critical knowledge was conceptualized as knowledge that enabled human beings to emancipate themselves from forms of domination through self-reflection and took psychoanalysis as the paradigm of critical knowledge. This expanded considerably the scope of what counted as critical theory within the social sciences, which would include such approaches as world systems theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, social ecology, the theory of communicative action (Habermas), structuration theory, and neo-Marxian theory.
    -- Wikipedia
  52. All western religious thought is based on a sort of sacred nominalism which goes unquestioned till "heresy" call its momentarily into debate. "Orthodoxy" crushes rebellion against the Word in its own ranks - and the war against the Word is an underground guerilla campaign carried out primarily within literature, in criticism, and in linguistics - against "religion".
    -- Chuang Tzu's Chaos Linguistics (also found here), by Hakim Bey


  53. "The major development in medieval covenant theology was the proposition by great Franciscan theologian, William of Ockham (1285-1347) and later by Gabriel Biel (1420-95) that God does not say what he says (e.g., "you are just") because we really are just, but rather, because we have met the terms of the covenant to cooperate with God. This is known as the Franciscan Pactum theology. Their slogan was, 'To the one who does what he can, God will not deny grace.' You know this teaching as, "God helps those who help themselves."
    "Ockham and Biel were teaching that God rewards sinners with a kind of merit when they do their best. He overlooks their sins and treats them as if they had fulfilled the terms of the covenant, i.e., as if they had kept the Law. It was against this very teaching that Martin [Luther] rebelled in the Protestant Reformation."
    -- A Brief History of Covenant Theology
  54. "Throughout the past century, a debate has raged over the thesis of realism and its alternatives. Realism-the seemingly commonsensical view that all or most of what we encounter in the world exists and is what it is independently of human thought-has been vigorously denied by such prominent intellectuals as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn, Hilary Putnam, and Nelson Goodman. The opponents of realism, among them historians and social scientists who support social constructionism, hold that all or most of reality depends on human conceptual schemes and beliefs. In this volume of original essays, a group of philosophers explores the ongoing controversy."
    -- Description of the book, Realism and Antirealism (William Alston)
  55. ... a spoken word, which is numerically one quality, is a universal; it is a sign conventionally appointed for the signification of many things. Thus, since the word is said to be common, it can be called a universal. But notice it is not by nature, but only by convention, that this label applies.
    -- William of Ockham, Summa Logicae, part I, section XIV
  56. "Martin Luther was a student of Gabriel Biel (1425-1495), a noted teacher of Nominalism in the 15th Century. In the preface to the second volume of Luther's Works, Melancthon states that, 'Luther was able to quote from memory Biel and d'Ailly almost word for word. He was deeply versed in Ockham's writings. The latter he considered superior to Thomas and Scotus.'
    "Taking one point of Ockhamism, that of the separation of Grace and nature, we can show how Luther uses this to begin his new religion. The Ockhamists said that, 'it is not Sanctifying Grace which by its nature renders us agreeable to God, but rather God's free acceptance of us as pleasing. Strictly speaking, it is not because he is in the state of Grace that a man is pleasing to God; it is exclusively because he is accepted as such by God. It follows that Sanctifying Grace is an unimportant mark designed by God to distinguish from others those whom He accepts as being agreeable to Himself. Grace itself does not secure for us either His favor or His friendship. Consequently, it is not Divine Grace which makes us worthy of eternal life. We are worthy of eternal life, exclusively because God accepts us.'
    "While not denying the existence of Sanctifying Grace and the infused virtues, the Ockhamists belittled their necessity and stressed repeatedly that everything depended on God's acceptance of us. Luther took this one step further. Luther stated that God accepts us even without Sanctifying Grace! "We are declared friends of God by an 'extrinsic arrangement'. This arrangement comes from the justice of Christ, that is, a justice which is not ours. According to Luther, God considers the sinner as just on account of the justice of Christ, but the sinner remains a sinner. The sin is not effaced, but God regards the sinner as just, because Christ's justice is imputed to him.'
    "Added to this error, Luther took another Ockhamist principle, that of the exaltation of individual reason (remember that the Ockhamist arranged the universe into a collection of individual things), and he developed a system of a purely individualistic relationship with Christ. No more would man work out his salvation "in common", now that he had Christ as his 'personal savior'!" -- The Devastation of Catholic Europe
  57. "... draws postmoderns together today is the postmodern philosophers they read. Wittgenstein is probably the most prominent philosopher read by postmodern therapists. Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richard Rorty, are also inspiring to postmodern thinkers.
    Postmoderns also read about social constructionism. Social constructionism is a visionary approach to postmodernism. These are utopian postmoderns, not nostalgic ones. Social constructionists remind us that we humans create the institutions that define our lives and that we often do so unwittingly, just by accepting the scripts we're handed. Noticing this makes it possible to consider alternative ways of defining our lives."
    -- What is postmodernism and what does it have to do with therapy, anyway?: An interview with Lois Shawver
  58. ESSENTIALISM: A school of thought that believes that humans are born with some natural, unchanging characteristics. A reduction of people to their essential parts. For example, males are more aggressive than females. (Note: essentialism does not always take the form of a binary.) Opposite of social constructionism....
    SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM: A school of thought that believes that the way people think, act, and believe is constructed, often through processes of socialization. These constructions are fluid, some more than others. For example, males have been socialized to be more aggressive than females because of existing ideas of how a “real man” should behave. (Note: social constructionism is not always constructed in a binary.) Opposite of essentialism.
    -- Not the Master’s Tools: A glossary of terms used in anti-racist feminism
  59. Critics of postmodernism come mainly from the Marxist camp. They feel that postmodernism is a diversionary tactic, the last ditch of a late capitalism in the process of dying. They dislike fervently the way that postmodern aesthetics rejects socialist realism - and, for that matter, epistemological realism. They often point out how semiotics and the postmodern idea that everything is image and nothing is substance are used cynically by advertising agencies - which, unable to sell us real goods of real production, can now only sell us images of satisfaction and packaged happiness. Marxists also dislike postmodernism's relativist treatment of science, since as they see 'criticism' (the critical method) and science as being identical. And they are not all too pleased by postmodernism's rejection of the proletariat and industrialism as liberators, nor its insistence (dating from the Situationists) that liberation of leisure may be more important than liberation of work... the way postmodernism intertwines with Nietzschean thought, deep ecology, mysticism, and libertarian individualism makes many Marxists view it as right-wing, reactionary, perhaps even fascist!
    -- Talking pomo: An analysis of the postmodern movement, by Steve Mizrach
  60. In terms of sexual orientation, the essentialist view holds that there are universal (perhaps biological) characteristics common to all people of a given sexual orientation. Essentialists see sexual identity as constant across eras and cultures, for example equating Native American Berdaches and ancient Greek pederasts with modern day gay men and lesbians. The opposing view, known as social constructionism, holds that our concepts of sexual identity are shaped by the society we live in, and that people cannot accurately be classified using the concepts of another society, even if their behaviors appear similar. The difference between essentialism and constructionism is not one of ``nature versus nurture''. While it has probably always been the case that different people have had different attractions, constructionists believe that the meaning attached to those attractions is culturally specific. In a society in which the sexes were seen as equal, or in which a binary conception of sex and gender did not exist, people might not feel the need to classify themselves according to the sex/gender to which they are attracted ....
    -- Identities and Ideas: Strategies for Bisexuals, by Liz Highleyman
  61. "Yet not to be a realist is to be some form of constructionist and in survey research, at least, is to concede that what we measure in the social world is a free construction of either the researcher, the researched or both. Such research can of course be very rigorous, but rigour, as Hubert Blalock's work alone demonstrated, becomes just a matter of logical relations between variables as defined."
    -- Malcolm Williams, University of Plymouth
  62. Thomas Kuhn, an American historian of science, has proven very influential in the philosophy of science, and is often connected with what has been called postpositivism or postempiricism.
    -- Wikipedia entry on "demarcation problem"
  63.     "Empiricism corresponds to a rather precise mode of discourse in which experience is opposed to the a priori logic of language in general. For empiricism there is no truth. The unity of language confers on things not a real unity, but fictive or imaginary unity. Empiricism in this sense is essentially nominalist, in that the unity of things is only nominal."
        Empiricism takes, therefore, the world of fictive or imaginary unities as its starting point, its data is not the 'real' but the 'imaginary' (to use Lacan's terms). But as the world of the imaginary operates, at least according to Lacan, in a systemic manner (like a discourse), empiricism has a lot to say about the constitution of the subject in the imaginary. So whereas naïve a empiricism (e.g. positivism) imagines it deals with the real understood as an absolute and exclusive ontology, empiricism as conceived by Hume and Deleuze deals with the imaginary as an integral and constitutive part of the real. Deleuze sums up his position, in agreement with Hume, In fact, empiricism is a philosophy of the imagination and not a philosophy of the senses? (p.110). Indeed, he goes further, flatly contradicting the conventional reading of empiricism, by declaring: We will call nonempiricist every theory according to which, in one way or another, relations are derived from the nature of things.
    -- Empiricism and Objectivity: Post-Structural Empiricism and The Imagined Economies of Globalization by Ronen Palan and Angus Cameron
  64. "The nominalist position is the assumption that the social world external to individual cognition is made up of nothing more than names, concepts and labels which are used to structure reality. Realism postulates that the social world external to individual cognition is a real world made up of hard, tangible and relatively immutable structures."
    -- Burrell, Gibson and Morgan, Gareth 1989, Sociological Frameworks and Organisational Analysis, Gower, Aldershot.