Constructivism must be careful not to confine itself to the purely cognitive domain of human experience. Educators must strive to include the body, its actions, and its passions more prominently in the curriculum. The pragmatic social constructivism of George Herbert Mead and John Dewey allows us to do so. Mead and Dewey maintained a lifelong friendship and were colleagues for many years during which they visited each other nearly every day. So intermeshed was their influence on each other that it is often impossible to determine who originated what. Such entwinement is typical of socially constructive contexts and illustrates a central thesis of pragmatic social constructivism – it decenters the locus of mind and self.

The philosophy of consciousness

To grasp pragmatic social constructivism it is easiest to begin with what it is not. Pragmatic social constructivism rejects the philosophy of consciousness that dominates modern thinking about the mind and the self. In the philosophy of consciousness, mental phenomena are assumed to always be conscious. It is also usually assumed that consciousness includes immediate introspective apprehension of one's own mental states. Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is the classic statement of the philosophy of consciousness. Subjective thought (the Cartesian cogito) provides personal identity in this philosophy.

The philosophy of consciousness reinforces Western folk psychology, a psychology that is ensconced in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and that has exercised tremendous influence on Western psychology, sociology, and moral thought.