Constructivist epistemology is a branch in philosophy of science maintaining that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, who seek to measure and construct models of the natural world. Natural science therefore consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experience and measurements.
- Constructivism is a form of internal skepticism, but it’s not of the chilling kind. On the contrary, if constructivism is right, then there is a sense in which it’s always mistaken to be in the grip of the view that nothing we do can matter. What we do matters so long as we take it to matter, for according to constructivism that (with some complications) is just what it is for something to matter. The real threat here, then, is merely causal (as opposed to rational): it is that we will somehow cease taking things to matter. But I think that’s just the real (and merely causal) threat of death (no less frightening, of course, for being merely causal). So long as we’re alive and taking things to matter, though, things do matter.
- Sharon Street, "Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Rethink It", Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 11 (2016)