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This paper seeks to show that, in the Science of Logic Hegel, through the category of "subjective end", distinguishes a purely instrumental dimension of the activity of concept. After delineating a general interpretation of the Doctrine of Concept, key aspects of the chapter dedicated of Teleology are re-constructed with the aim of detecting both the fundamental features and the limitations of this purely instrumental dimension of the concept. It is concluded that, in the chapter, it is possible to verify a 'logic of the instrumentally activity' and from this standpoint, to interpret the systematic position of the chapter. In addition, critical features of the Hegelian analysis are emphasized in regard to the general problem of mechanization and wear of the world and life, which projects the problem to the transit from chapter on Teleology to the Idea section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocabulary, as one of the most difficult problems for students and teachers, is also one of the most important elements in traditional teaching. This thesis is based on the problems existing in traditional vocabulary teaching and under the guidance of the mobile learning theory, the constructivism theory and the humanism theory. This thesis researches the application of intelligent Learning APP in Junior English vocabulary teaching .The research shows that the application of intelligent Learning APP, as one of the products of modern science and technology, is applied in Junior English vocabulary teaching. It effectively combines after-class teaching with in-class teaching, pays attention to students' individuality, improves teachers' teaching quality and reduces teaching pressure. The application of intelligent Learning APP has made up for the shortcomings of traditional teaching, stimulated students' interest in learning and made the teaching process more interesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article reports the findings of a study examining the social/discursive construction of an author (Brenda Dervin) by an international community of researchers (information behavior researchers). A crucial conceptual starting point for the study was Michel Foucault's work on the discursive construction of power/knowledge. The study represents one attempt to develop a discourse analytic approach to the study of information behavior. The researcher carried out semistructured qualitative interviews, based in part on Dervin's ‘Life-Line’ and ‘Time-Line’ techniques, with fifteen information behavior researchers from eight universities in five countries in Europe and North America. The study's findings provide a case study in how discourse operates at the microsociological level. It provides examples of how community members engage with, accept, and contest both new and established ‘truth statements’ and discursive practices. They demonstrate that both participants' formal and informal information behaviors are the product of discursive power/knowledge relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From recent doctoral research into information literacy and workplace learning, an understanding of information literacy as a complex constellation of experiences and relationships with a range of information modalities is emerging. It is constituted through the connections among people, artifacts, texts, and bodily experiences that draw a person into context and enable him or her to know the landscape. A three-year qualitative study of firefighters in regional New South Wales, Australia, is described. It was framed by constructionist thinking about the nature and role of information literacy in learning about practice and profession and about the relationship between power and knowledge. The findings of the study support a new definition of information literacy that recognizes information literacy as a way of knowing, that is, as more than just the acquisition of skills and attributes. Becoming information literate in the workplace requires experience with social and physical modalities as well as with textual information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current interest in the tacit aspects of knowledge has diverted attention from the economic significance of its converse, explicit or articulated knowledge, and, by implication, the importance of articulation—the process through which tacit skills and knowledge are made explicit—and codification—the process of rendering articulated knowledge in fixed, standardized and easily replicable form. In partial alignment with the literature on "distributed cognition" the article outlines a general model of articulation as a process involving the interplay of three elements: "theory," "codes," and "tools" in communities ranging in size from small groups to entire industries. The costs and benefits of articulation are discussed, drawing attention to how these may be affected by institutional and organizational design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A field study of 29 resource-constrained firms that varied dramatically in their responses to similar objective environments is used to examine the process by which entrepreneurs in resource-poor environments were able to render unique services by recombining elements at hand for new purposes that challenged institutional definitions and limits. We found that Lévi-Strauss's concept of bricolage--making do with what is at hand--explained many of the behaviors we observed in small firms that were able to create something from nothing by exploiting physical, social, or institutional inputs that other firms rejected or ignored. We demonstrate the socially constructed nature of resource environments and the role of bricolage in this construction. Using our field data and the existing literature on bricolage, we advance a formal definition of entrepreneurial bricolage and induce the beginnings of a process model of bricolage and firm growth. Central to our contribution is the notion that companies engaging in bricolage refuse to enact the limitations imposed by dominant definitions of resource environments, suggesting that, for understanding entrepreneurial behavior, a constructivist approach to resource environments is more fruitful than objectivist views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We agree with Kwan and Tsang (2001) that critical realism represents an important point of epistemological departure from mainstream realism, and that it has the potential to inform strategy research. To that end, Kwan and Tsang's argument for a critical realist perspective is valid. There however exist substantial nontrivial differences between constructivism and critical realism. While critical realism contests some of the default assumptions of empiricism and realism which treat social systems as closed systems, it is still predicated upon an inherent order of things that is graspable by research. Constructivism instead focuses on the manner in which researchers constitute theories in the act of describing them. This important distinction makes constructivism far more of a departure from empiricism than critical realism, and therefore it has a different set of implications for strategy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mir and Watson (2000) advocate that constructivism has the potential to inform strategy research. In their discussions, they compare constructivism with realism, and highlight certain alleged strengths of the former over the latter. Although their paper provides some insights, their version of constructivism is problematic and their understanding of realism is inaccurate. In this note we clarify some key issues concerning constructivism and realism. Moreover, we argue that Mir and Watson's insights can be accommodated within a critical realist framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we suggest that constructivism has the potential to inform research in strategic management. The realist paradigm currently dominates strategy research, and constructivism, a well-established tradition in the philosophy of science, is often ignored. However, a study of strategy literature and research reveals that it is drawn upon more frequently than is explicitly acknowledged. Constructivism occupies a methodological space characterized by ontological realism and epistemological relativism. Ontological realism is an important cornerstone of a field as applied as strategy, while epistemological relativism helps us explore the constructed nature of the field, where the researcher is an active participant rather than a reactor or information processor. In this paper, we demonstrate the precedents and possibilities for constructivist research in strategic management. We examine some of the existent constructivist works in the strategy literature, and point to specific techniques, including historical analysis, to demonstrate how this perspective may advance the boundaries of strategy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of euphemism and dysphemism are based on the very common distinction between “good” and “evil,” of which Druzhinin does not attempt any analysis. A rough analysis is easy for some parts, but it also faces the immense problem of phenomenal consciousness or qualia, in front of which even constructivism (like any other approach) is powerless. However, constructivism allows us to frame the problem of qualia better than other approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In building a constructivist view of language, the inherently experiential nature of language should not be absolutized but seen rather as depending on the overlap between the first-order and the second-order consensual domains as the sources of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Druzhinin adopts the perspective of radical constructivism to approach the use and comprehension of euphemisms and dysphemisms in communicative interactions, and makes a convincing case in favor of the deeply experiential nature of language. My point is not to dispute the relevance of this perspective, but rather to ponder about (a) the difference between written and spoken communication, and (b) how a radical constructivist perspective may underestimate the diversity of the cognitive processes possibly at work in linguistic interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oblak et al. portray perceptual presence (PP) as an individually driven reflective operation. I question their account and suggest that PP involves a socially induced pre-reflective awareness of the lived environment. Within this primary framework, the wholeness of things is available to the subject, and deeper examination of perceived objects (if needed) comes to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of constructivism as a metaethical or metanormative theory is unclear partly due to the lack of a clear semantics for central normative terms such as 'reason' and 'ought'. In a series of recent papers, Sharon Street has attempted to clarify the central commitments of constructivism by focusing on the idea of a practical point of view and what follows from it. We improve upon the informal understanding provided by Street and attempt to provide a semantics for 'ought'. Our semantics respects the core intuition of the constructivist that normative claims are made true because of our practical commitments as agents and also reflects the constructivist's commitment to the centrality of practical deliberation to normative truth. On our view, a normative claim of the form ⌜S ought to ϕ⌝ is true if ϕ is entailed from S's set of evaluative attitudes. We argue that a virtue of our definition is that it allows us to see precisely what is distinctive about constructivism as opposed to realism and expressivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

G. A. Cohen argues that Rawls's difference principle is incompatible with his endorsement of incentives inequality—higher pay for certain professions is just when that pay benefits everyone. Cohen concludes that Rawls must reject both incentives inequality and 'institutionalism'—the view that egalitarian principles, including the difference principle, apply exclusively to social institutions. I argue that the premises of Cohen's 'internal criticism' of Rawls require rejecting two important parts of his theory: a 'subjective circumstance of justice' and a 'shared conception of justice'. These are important parts of Rawls's 'constructivism'. Constructivism is the view that a conception of justice is the solution to a practical interaction problem and is solved in part by examining the facts of the problem. Thus, an upshot of my arguments is that this Cohen/Rawls dispute reduces to another dispute over 'constructivism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, comparative scholars and constructivists have recognized the universally liberal character of democracy promotion and yet continued the analysis of difference in this area. Mainly in studies of German and US democracy promotion, constructivists have demonstrated the recurring and difference-generating impact of ideational factors. In this article, I hence assume the likeliness of difference and address the question of how we can analyse and explain those differences through a comparison of German and US democracy assistance in transitional Tunisia. I conceive of Germany and the US as a dissimilar pair and adopt a broad perspective to uncover differences at the diplomatic level and between and within the respective approaches to democracy assistance in Tunisia. Theoretically, I argue that national role conceptions hardly impact democracy assistance in a clear manner, and that roles are renegotiated in the process. I rather focus on liberal and reform liberal conceptions of democracy, which shape perceptions of the local context, and democracy assistance agencies different organizational cultures, which impact civil society support. Finally, I account for transnational dialogue and coordination as a factor mitigating differences in democracy promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the discourse about the production of facts or reality. Topics discussed include the decline of colonialism and the rise of theory, controversies surrounding constructivism, changes in the political conditions that frame the coordinates of contemporary theory, and Konstanz University's doctoral program Das Reale in der Kultur der Moderne or The Real in the Culture of Modernity.

Sharon Street defines her constructivism about practical reasons as the view that whether something is a reason to do a certain thing for a given agent depends on that agent's normative point of view. However, Street has also maintained that there is a judgment about practical reasons which is true relative to every possible normative point of view, namely constructivism itself. I show that the latter thesis is inconsistent with Street's own constructivism about epistemic reasons and discuss some consequences of this incompatibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most Kantian constructivists try to ground universal duties of interpersonal morality in certain interactions between individuals, such as communication, argumentation, shared action or the second-person standpoint. The goal of this paper is to present these, which I refer to as arguments from the second-person perspective, with a dilemma: either the specific kind of interaction that is taken as a starting point of these arguments is inescapable, but in that case the argument does not justify a universal principle of interpersonal morality. Or interaction does have a principle of interpersonal morality among its necessary conditions of possibility, but such forms of interactions are merely optional. I argue that proponents of arguments from the second-person perspective have failed to provide a convincing response to this dilemma and that this failure is systematic. This suggests that the success of Kantian constructivism depends on the success of arguments from the first person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the iterative conception, each set is formed out of sets that are, in some sense, prior to it. Because priority plays an essential role in explanations of why contradiction-inducing sets, such as the universal set, do not exist, the success of these explanations depends on our ability to make sense of the relevant priority relation. I argue that attempts to do this have fallen short: understanding priority in a straightforwardly constructivist sense threatens the coherence of the empty set and raises serious epistemological concerns; but the leading realist interpretations–ontological and modal interpretations of priority—are deeply problematic as well. I conclude that the purported explanatory virtues of the iterative conception are, at present, unfounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that fracking is a topic of debate in the news, which is largely "compartmentalized" into stories on fracking as economically beneficial or risky to environment and health. Building on previous scholarship, we take a constructivist position and focus on fracking as potentially technical and social, or sociotechnical. Our qualitative textual analysis of news printed in two high-circulation newspapers in Canada (2013-2015) reveals that normative positions on fracking are furthered alongside normative descriptions of Indigenous Peoples and regional cultures. We argue that science communication practitioners perform specific normative work via their communicative acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just four years before his death, in 1999, Edward Said published his memoir. Titled "Out of Place," he had been working on the book since 1993, soon after he had been diagnosed with a terminal disease. Throughout his career, Said had always referenced his life experiences, particularly in his prefaces and introductions to his books. This essay discusses his relationship to autobiography, a relationship that began with his first book, "Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography" (1965). Emphasizing a phenomenological approach to Said's personal reflections, the essay argues against a purely textual or (de)constructivist reading of his self-reflections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main reasons for philosophers to have embraced Humean constructivism rather than Kantian constructivism is a negative one: they believe that in the end Kantian constructivism is an unstable position. Their idea is that the Kantian constructivist can either choose to hold on to the idea of categorical reasons for action but in that case she has to be prepared to commit to (robust) moral realism (which both Humean and Kantian constructivists reject) or alternatively, she might reject (robust) moral realism but in that case she has to give up on the idea of categoricity. The aim of this paper is to defend Kantian constructivism against Humean constructivism and more specifically against recent objections raised by Sharon Street. I will do so by arguing that Kantian constructivism follows from formal, normative commitments that pertain to instrumental reasoning that Humean constructivists like Sharon Street themselves accept. More specifically I will argue that categorical reasons for action follow from applying the principle of instrumental rationality to the first-person perspective of an agent, provided that there are certain necessary means for action in general. From this follows, I will argue, that Humean constructivists should either become Kantian constructivists or that they have to become sceptics about normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on American philosopher Donald Davidson diverges from this way of thinking and views of communication and meaning, intersubjective contact between speakers is both necessary and sufficient for linguistic meaning and mental content to arise. It mentions philosophers and linguists of diverse orientations and backgrounds maintain that concepts such as social convention and shared culture are required for a constructivist perspective on meaning and communication.

The article offers information on British philosopher Michael Dummett's constructivist alternative. Topics include, relation of truth to the recognition of truth is the fundamental problem of the theory of meaning or of metaphysics; exploration of the constructivist alternative to realist theories of meaning and truth; and Dummett's philosophical motivation seems to lie in the fallowing.

This work is part of the contemporary debate on corporality, from the perspective of queer constructivism, and on the other, to the studies of sexual difference. These two theoretical optics bet on a clearly antagonistic corporality, since from queer constructivism the body is thought of as the moles where subjectivity occurs metaphorizing it as a battlefield where multiple forces intervene that end up being equivalent to subjectivity. On the other hand, from the studies of sexual difference, especially the Ljubljana School, the body is always a sexed body, the limit of all omnipotent pretense and fissure that causes the impossibility of a total language. The main theoretical edges of both conceptions will be addressed, as well as the consequences of the corporality dispute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]