El construccionismo y la cognición social: metáforas de la mente

Abstract

Theories in the social and human sciences are always based on a model or metaphor of the human being. The main metaphors that have configurated the conception of the mind are the representational (the homunculus metaphor) and the computational (the computer metaphor). Contructionism can be understood as a set of ideas articulated around the conception of the mind as a relationship and the conception of knowledge as a social construction. The metaphor of social construction implies that reality, as we know and live it, is not inevitable nor alien to responsibility. The questioning of the inevitability is basically made, from a constructionist point of view, in epistemological terms. Knowledge as an individual possesion is questioned. Inevitability, as it is approached by constructionists, is a palitical-type problem, related with the production of descriptions of the reality that oppear to us as obvious facts and then unquestionable. Social constructionism tries to function as a generative theory able to undermine the engagement with the predominant systems of theoretical production and to generate new options of action.