  When seen in light of the requirements of practical social science and the entrenchment of facts and conditions by institutions, constructivists are right to emphasise how agents produce and maintain social realities, even if not under conditions of their own making. In this context an important contribution of pragmatism is precisely its interpretation of the practical status of social facts. Thus, Dewey sees social facts as always related to “problematic situations,” even if these are more felt or suffered than fully recognised as such.  The way to avoid turning problematic situations into empirical-normative dilemmas is, as Dewey suggests, to see even facts practically: “facts are such in a logical sense only as they serve to delimit a problem in a way that affords indication and test of proposed solutions” (Dewey 1938, 499). They may serve this practical role only if they are seen in interaction with our understanding of the ideals that guide the practices in which such problems emerge, thus where neither fact nor ideal is fixed and neither is given justificatory or theoretical priority.