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Facilitated communication, a technique that is said to enhance the communicative abilities of individuals with severe language impairments, has engendered much controversy. Biklen and Duchan (1994) and Green and Shane (1994) present two sides of this controversy. Biklen and Duchan argue that from a constructivist's perspective, the primary issue is the underlying cultural presuppositions regarding mental retardation and science rather than the efficacy of facilitated communication. Green and Shane present research evidence challenging the efficacy of facilitated communication within a positivist's framework. We present a brief review of science as viewed through positivists' and constructivists' lenses. Using the framework of social constructivism adopted by Biklen and Duchan, we disagree with them on three points: (a) even though the process of constructing scientific knowledge is strongly affected by human social, emotional, and cognitive processes, it also involves matters of fact that cannot be ignored; (b) social constructivists' accounts of science can be accepted as descriptive without being prescriptive; (c) although we cannot prove that belief systems, including positivism and social constructivism, are true or false in the larger sense, belief systems have differential consequences for technological changes of the type that are valued by persons with severe impairments of communication.

The author shows modern conservative concepts of politics as a variant of normative political theory. Conservatism shows up as a reaction to enlightened rationalism. In contrast to rationalistic revolutionary constructivism, conservatism pleads for a return to a religious basis for man's spiritual & political life. Conservatism creates policies based on tradition & the family, which sustains feelings of obligation toward the community. The state is not just an instrument for special interests, but an expression of substantial cooperation in the nation & its society. Thus, conservatism leads to a demand for reforms of existing liberal institutions. Adapted from the source document.

Examines the philosophical foundations of democratic legitimacy, arguing that legitimacy in complex modern democratic societies results from public deliberation over matters of common concern, & that a public sphere of deliberation about such matters is crucial to the legitimacy of democratic institutions. The relationship between the normative presuppositions of democratic deliberation & the idealized content of practical rationality is discussed from a perspective of "Kantian constructivism," & an effort is made to acknowledge the historical & sociological specificity of democracy while insisting against the ethnocentric liberalism that the practical rationality embodied in democratic institutions has a culture-transcending validity claim. W. Howard

This book contains seminal discussions of central issues in the philosophy of language, mathematics, mind, religion and time. Is common language conceptually prior to idiolectics? What is a theory of meaning? Does constructivism provide a satisfactory account of mathematics? What are indefinitely extensible concepts? Can we change the past? These are only some of the very important questions addressed here. Both the papers written by the contributors and Dummett's replies provide a great wealth of stimulating ideas for those who currently do research in the respective areas touched upon without making the reading exceedingly tedious. This feature, common to most of the papers in this book, makes it possible to use the material presented in undergraduate courses at university level

Perelman's idea of value is applied as a notion that, though obscure, makes agreement possible within the universal audience (the set of present day adult reasonable individuals), in order to, on the one hand, propose an ethics that overcomes the limitations of Rawls' liberalism, founded on Kantian constructivism, and, on the other hand, criticize Habermas' purely dialogical model as being scarcely applicable. Nevertheless, this is achieved while conserving the contributions made by both philosophers in solving the ethical and political conflicts of the present world. Argumentative ethics, as here presented, asserts an agreement between rival claims of justice as being the result both of strategic and communicative action, based on a conception of moral progress, understood as a point of no retum which embodies the conception of human rights and their development in contemporary society. ; Se aplica la idea perelmaniana de valor como una noción que, aunque confusa, permite el acuerdo del auditorio universal (el conjunto de individuos adultos y razonables), con el propósito de presentar una ética que, de una parte, supere las limitaciones del liberalismo rawlsiano fundamentado en el constructivismo kantiano, y de la otra, critique por limitadamente practicable el modelo puramente dialógico de Habermas. Todo esto, no obstante, salvando las contribuciones que estos dos pensadores aportan para resolver conflictos éticos y políticos en el mundo actual. La ética argumentativa aquí presentada defiende el acuerdo entre pretensiones rivales de justicia como resultado de la acción estratégica tanto como de la acción comunicativa, sobre la base de un concepto de progreso moral entendido como un punto de no retomo encamado en la concepción de los derechos humanos y su desarrollo en la sociedad contemporánea.

Vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Gender Studies sowie der konstruktivistischen Geschlechterforschung wird an die subversive und aufklärerische Radikalität des psychoanalytischen Subjektbegriffs erinnert und dessen strukturelle Verwandtschaft mit den (ehemals?) zentralen Anliegen der feministischen Theorie herausgearbeitet.
Des weiteren finden die Spezifik der im eigentlichen Sinne konstruktivistischen Denkpraxis der Freudschen Psychoanalyse und deren erkenntnislogische Implikationen eine würdigende Erörterung. Abschließend erfolgt ein grober Abriß eines die psychoanalytische Erkenntnismethode integrierenden Forschungsprogramms zur Analyse der weiblichen Subjektkonstitution.