CULTURAL CONSTRUCT + INSTANTIATION = CONSTRUCTED REALITY

Abstract

Standard scientific modeling uses a conceptual framework inadequate for modeling that is intended to take into account the implications of the capacity of individuals in human societies to reflexively assess goals, interests, statuses and the like. Standard scientific modeling is also insufficient for representing the shared, constructed universe -- which we subsume under the term culture -- within which individuals operate and the way individuals are capable of changing and restructuring their constructed universe. Standard scientific modeling partitions the modeling enterprise into a theoretic component (theory driven models) and an empirical component(data driven models), both assumed to be embedded within a single, fixed empirical universe. But the notion of a "constructed reality" implies that in addition to the external, empirical universe there is an internal, constructed universe within which behavior is both formulated and becomes the instrument of change. A new modeling paradigm is needed that takes into account these different dimensions of what constitutes behavior. In this paper I suggest that such a paradigm is provided through making a distinction between formal models of the logic of cultural constructs and the logic of the instantiation of the symbolic/abstract elements of those cultural constructs. An example illustrating this paradigm, based on the logic of a kinship terminology structure in comparison with the logic of the instantiation of a kinship terminology structure, will be discussed.

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