The phrase "a constructive attempt" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to an effort or endeavor that is intended to be helpful, positive, or beneficial in some way.
Example: "The team made a constructive attempt to resolve the issues raised during the meeting."
Alternatives: "a positive effort" or "a helpful endeavor."
Is this a constructive attempt to engage by sections of the press who looked ready for a long and probably ugly fight, or a sullen gesture of defiance?
"I think it's important to emphasize that this initiative should be seen less as a criticism than as a constructive attempt to strengthen standards and enforcement," said Pat Doherty, corporate governance director of New York State Comptroller Thomas P DiNapoli, during the conference call.
The Guardian asks: "Is this a constructive attempt to engage by sections of the press who looked ready for a long and probably ugly fight, or a sullen gesture of defiance?" The paper thinks the triple lock is "a workable idea – but not if, as proposed, the newspapers still have the power to veto even the 'independent' members of the new regulator".
In contrast, the astrologer had no such puzzles since in that discipline "particular failures did not give rise to research puzzles, for no man, however skilled, could make use of them in a constructive attempt to revise the astrological tradition" (Kuhn 1974, 804).
He is critical of what he takes to be Dewey's backsliding into metaphysics in Experience and Nature, and has no patience for the constructive attempt of Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
Traditionally, most constructive attempts to deal with fragmentation have been based on analogies what one of us, in an earlier book, called "conflicts of norms" - those rules in domestic law that deal with conflicts of norms within one legal system.
It's important to establish a constructive dialogue in an attempt to gain a better understanding of their concerns and to determine if a resolution can be obtained before a full-blown, costly and distracting proxy contest ensues.
I take Anita Silver's prominent account as a benchmark, attempting a constructive critique.
It is to this that the philosopher Paul Ricoeur points when he speaks of "life as an activity and a passion in search of a narrative". Indeed, for Ricoeur, a life is "the field of a constructive activity, by which we attempt to discover... the narrative identity which constitutes us". Narrative medicine arises from the awareness of this relation between narrativity and identity.
Whereas in manufacturing, employees were encouraged to stop the production line to flag quality problems in real time so that they could be isolated and fixed, in this instance the feedback was ignored and interpreted by the rest of the team as a boycotting attempt rather than a constructive suggestion.
For an attempt at developing a constructive empiricist philosophy of mathematics, see Bueno 1999.
