P.S. I see the same sort of loose writing on the post you pointed to – “The individual learns from the environment, and the environment learns from the individual. In the interplay, they shape and reshape each other, learn and relearn from each other, teach and reteach each other.”

This is easy to show to not be true in many of the cases where you have argued we should still consider an activity (reading texts by dead white males) to be “social.” Plato doesn’t give a damn about what I have to say about what he wrote, and I can read Plato and form opinions “on my own.” I’m not saying I do this outside of language or society, but duh.

The funny thing is I agree with a lot of what both you and Keith are saying; I am pro-empiricism but anti-reductionist; I do think things are all connected, I want to see people emancipated. But we regularly (for good reason) use phrases like “She learned x,” and my issue is that in defence of an incredibly over-subtle point you both end up making exaggerated statements that are clearly and commonsensically not tenable.

I suggest people think really hard about the difference between Agency and Autonomy. Autonomy is not an impossibility, but very few of us will ever reach it, and if we do, you likely won’t hear from us. (man someone must have peed in my cornflakes this morning)