Social Construction

What exactly is it to be a social constructivist in Metaphysics? In this brief note I try to introduce a few acclamatory distinctions that I have identified as having generated a lot of confusion in recent literature as well as serving to better frame current debates within metaphysical social constructivism. I also illustrate it with an example from the ontology of disability/.

This paper draws attention to a divergence in approach to the social between Ken Gergen’s radical form of social constructionism and the more moderate constructionist approaches exemplified by the thinking of Shaun Gallagher, Jan Slaby and Karen Barad. Specifically, I argue that the latter stop just short of radical constructionism’s ontological and ethical implications. The ethical question for Gergen is not whether and how we achieve just relations but whether and how we deal with the struggle between competing goods, how (...) we manage to think beyond justice understood as singular traditions of the good, so that we can focus on enriching our traditions with alternative intelligibilities, thereby expanding the inclusiveness of our relational structures. Viewing the wayward person or group through Gergen’s lens of multi-being rather than the morality of blameful justice encourages us to strive for an ethics of responsibility without succumbing to a moralism of culpability. (shrink)

Should we displace the moral responsibility from the individual to the social in accounts of oppression, discrimination, and injustice? Here, I consider anti-individualist challenges to the explanation of social phenomena and of social injustice. First, I argue that those challenges are consistent with social phenomena that are constituted by people’s attitudes and actions, and I provide evidence from research in the social sciences to this effect. Second, I argue that putative paradigm cases of structural injustice are cases where individuals, or (...) collectives of individuals, have moral responsibility, or are cases with no individual or collective culprits, and where it is questionable that they are unjust. (shrink)

This paper argues that Åsa Burman’s concept of telic power in nonideal social ontology can be deepened by integrating Michel Foucault’s account of power in both his mid-period work on governmentality and his later work on ethics. Telic power is the ability of individuals to act in relation to shared ideals. It emerges from two distinct but interrelated sources: (1) the internalization of ethical ideals through subject-formation and (2) governmentality as a structuring of conduct through rational norms and practices. To (...) capture how ideals circulate across both registers, I introduce the notion of ethical discourse – the socially embedded circulation of exemplary ideals and role models. Ethical discourse functions both as a medium of normalization and as a resource for self-formation. Drawing on feminist critiques of gendered ideals, such as postwar femininity, and a critique of neoliberalism, I argue that Foucault’s dual account of subjectivation and governmentality clarifies and expands Burman’s schema of telic and structural power, offering a richer framework for nonideal social ontology. (shrink)

In Unreal Beliefs, Krzysztof Poslajko argues that socially constructed beliefs exist but are not real. In this commentary, I argue that the grounds for taking socially constructed beliefs to exist are also grounds for taking them to be real (per Poslajko’s own definition of reality).

Les étoiles, par leur éloignement spatial et leur ancienneté, semblent incarner l’absolue indépendance à l’égard de l’humain. Selon Nelson Goodman, nous les avons pourtant « construites ». Cette affirmation paradoxale s’inscrit dans le cadre de ce que Goodman appelle le worldmaking : l’idée qu’il n’y a pas de réalité brute, mais seulement des versions du monde que nous façonnons par nos systèmes symboliques. Cet article explore cette thèse radicale et la controverse qu’elle a suscitée, pour interroger les limites de notre (...) pouvoir de construction. (shrink)

Although the properties of being social and of being socially constructed are indispensable to our understanding of social reality, social metaphysicians are unclear about how they’re related. In this paper, I argue that whereas everything that’s socially constructed is also social, not everything that’s social is also socially constructed. In particular, I argue that something is what I call “fundamental relative to social reality,” something that’s social but not also socially constructed. I sketch an account of fundamentality relative to social (...) reality, and argue that it both clarifies how the properties of being social and of being socially constructed are related, and captures their significance for our understanding of social reality per se. (shrink)

Social construction is involved in various forms of injustice that have been in focus in recent years, such as testimonial and discursive injustice. There is also injustice that is distinctly metaphysical and involves acting and being, and recent work has identified various forms of it, including categorical injustice, ontic injustice and ontological oppression. Less attention has been paid to cases that fall betwixt and between, to the unintelligible and interstitial. In this paper, I discuss how conferralism can account for certain (...) types of interstitial injustice. (shrink)

The mind and brain sciences influence how human beings understand one another. Histories of the concepts of repression, implicit bias, ADHD, IQ, and personhood reveal that scientific psychology has played a role, not just in shaping people's thinking about minds, but also (and thereby) in shaping minds themselves. These case studies may thus be seen as supporting the contentious thesis that science aids in the social construction of minds. Three considerations are relevant to determining how seriously we should take that (...) contention: (1) to what extent was it inevitable that socially sophisticated animals would come to describe minds in the ways that 21st century humans do?; (2) to what extent do human sociocognitive practices accurately describe the inherent structure of the mind?; (3) to what extent can historical stability in descriptions of minds be chalked up to the fact that people are accurately describing the structure of the mind? (shrink)

Social ontology is the study of the nature of the social world. This Element aims to provide an overview of this burgeoning field, and also to map the questions that theories in social ontology address. When we encounter a theory of some social thing – groups, law, gender, and so on –how are we to read it? What classes of theories have been explored and abandoned, and what classes are new and promising? The Element distinguishes theories of social construction from (...) theories that characterize the products of social construction. For each, the Element works through a 'toy' theory and then discusses features that more realistic theories ought to include. Three running examples are discussed throughout the Element: (1) property, or ownership; (2) race, or racialized kinds; (3) collective attitudes (i.e., beliefs, desires, knowledge, intentions, etc., of groups and organizations). This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Trends in popular music hold wide sway, and the chart-topping songs of the day form an audible background to many public spaces. Because of this, we argue, there is a philosophically significant role in the social construction of romantic love that is distinctively played by popular music. In this chapter, we review some reasons for including a discussion of popular music in a volume on art, then discuss popular music’s connections to romantic love, as well the power and significance of (...) such music. Next we outline our take on social construction, together with its connections to contingency and change. Finally, we discuss the social construction of romantic love in particular, and the role of popular music within that process. We conclude that romantic love as currently constructed includes damaging elements, and it is our aim to highlight the role of popular music in sustaining these. (shrink)

How are we to live together in a diverse society? In a time of polarization, fragmentation, and inequality, the liberal answer to this question requires a new defense. Democratic institutions are under threat. Identity groups seeking recognition often encounter resistance. In response, Frank Hindriks defends the significance of institutions that foster freedom, equality, and autonomy. And he argues that this age of identity calls for an inclusive and open mentality. -/- Famously, Karl Popper identified holism as the enemy of the (...) open society. It leads to tribal communities with credulous and closeminded members. But the holist ontology defended here reveals how irreducibly social structures can support the basic rights that lie at the heart of liberal democracy. Crucially, they need not impair, but can in fact enhance critical reflection, toleration and epistemic modesty, which are vital for the resilience of a liberal democracy. To defend these ideals, Hindriks proposes that a society is a cluster of social structures. Their two building blocks are equilibria, which reflect the incentives people have, and rules, which give meaning to and govern their actions. In principle, social structures enable them to interact in mutually beneficial ways. Yet, they also constrain their behavior. To secure basic rights, an appropriate mix of constraints and enablements has to be supported by a culture that recognizes their significance for a sustainable society. (shrink)

The relationship between scepticism and politics is best understood in terms of the effects of scepticism on political convictions. Scepticism weakens such convictions and thereby reduces the likelihood that they will lead to political activity. There are two politically significant forms of scepticism: partial and total. Partial scepticism involves doubts about some things but not others; it has no inherent political effects. Instead, its effects are determined by the political ideologies which weaponize it. Progressives use scepticism offensively to instill doubts (...) in established norms and institutions, but do not doubt their own ideology. Meanwhile, conservatives use scepticism defensively to preserve the status quo, of which they are not sceptical, by casting doubt on the ideals and aspirations of progressive ideologies. Total scepticism is examined in the form of Pyrrhonism. In doubting everything, Pyrrhonism is inherently conservative because doubt concerning reasons for and against change results in a Pyrrhic victory for the status quo. (shrink)

In the social constructionist literature, it is common to distinguish between causal and non-causal social construction. In this paper, I draw on Brian Epstein’s grounding-anchoring framework for social ontology to propose a grounding-anchoring account of non-causal construction, according to which there are two types of non-causal construction: ground-construction and anchor-construction. I then use this account to examine Judith Butler’s claim that there is no distinction between sex and gender because they are both socially constructed. I argue that once we distinguish (...) between ground-construction and anchor-construction, it becomes clear that even if both sex and gender are socially constructed, it does not follow that there is no distinction between them, since they may be constructed in different ways. (shrink)

More than almost any other topic in philosophy, the problem of universals has been debated for centuries among the schools of nominalism, conceptualism, and realism. But why do scholars continue to address this issue without reaching consensus? This article argues that the persistence of the problem lies in the existence-centered structure of argumentation, which tends to promote binary responses, and in the fact that the explanatory approaches employed are primarily rooted in classical philosophical traditions. Accordingly, the central element of the (...) debate ‐ existence ‐ is analytically decomposed into emergence and persistence. This shift reveals previously overlooked features of the constitution of universals ‐ namely intersubjectivization, institutionalization, and materialization ‐ thus paving the way for the development of a socio-ontologically informed theory, allowing universals to appear in a new light. (shrink)

There has been widespread opposition to so-called essentialism in contemporary social theory. At the same time, within contemporary analytic metaphysics, the notion of essence has been revived and put to work by neo-Aristotelians. The ‘new essentialism’ of the neo-Aristotelians opens the prospect for a new social essentialism—one that avoids the problematic commitments of the ‘old essentialism’ while also providing a helpful framework for social theorizing. In this paper, I develop a neo-Aristotelian brand of essentialism about social kinds and show how (...) it avoids the legitimate worries of social theorists. I then argue that neo-Aristotelian social kind essentialism provides a helpful framework for a wide range of projects in social ontology and feminist metaphysics, including debunking projects, descriptive inquiries, and the project of achieving social change. I further argue that an essentialist framework is more useful than a grounding framework when it comes to certain legitimate theoretical and practical purposes in social theory. (shrink)

The notion of social construction plays an important role in many areas of social philosophy, including the philosophy of gender and sex, the philosophy of race, and the philosophy of disability. Yet it is far from clear how this notion is to be understood. One promising proposal in the recent literature is that social construction may be analyzed in terms of the notion of metaphysical grounding. In this paper, I introduce a new problem for this ground-theoretic approach to social construction, (...) and I argue that extant ground theoretic accounts are unable to avoid this and other problems. I then propose a novel ground-theoretic account of social construction which avoids these problems. The core idea is that cases of social construction involve a distinctively social means of construction. I develop this idea using the notion of meta-ground, so that on the resulting view the distinctive feature of socially constructed facts is that their associated meta grounds include a suitable connective social fact. (shrink)

When Black agents engage spaces and phenomena that suggest a racialized, potential danger, Black agents shift in their existential understanding of themselves and their phenomenological engagement with the world. This article describes that existential and phenomenological change, and examines the issue of hypothetical anti-Black racism. Utilizing Sartrean and Fanonian conceptions of existential phenomenology, this article explicates three terms: Black nausea, Black vertigo, and a phenomenology of caution. These terms are used to describe the tension that Black agents experience when they (...) are confronted with phenomena related to the history of anti-Black racism, and that confrontation brings their Blackness to the surface of their consciousness. This article argues that “Black paranoia” is an inappropriate label for a justified phenomenology of caution, and that Black freedom includes addressing these nauseating phenomena. (shrink)

In this article we focus on Sally Haslanger’s theoretical project of distinguishing between different ways to understand social constructionist theses in general. The goal of this article is to better understand Haslanger’s distinction between different forms of social constructionism. In trying to get a better grasp of Haslanger’s distinctions we will encounter some difficulties that will hinder us getting a coherent picture of these distinctions. For some of these difficulties we will present some possible solutions but, in the end, we (...) will ask for further commentary from Haslanger herself to improve on our understanding of her distinction between different forms of social constructionism. (shrink)

Andrei Marmor’s rich and penetrating new book, Foundations of Institutional Reality (hereinafter FIR), outlines a detailed and comprehensive account of institutional reality, of its nature and grou...

While the importance of social emotions is widely recognized, the question whether all emotions are social and what this would mean for the category ‘social emotions’ is yet to be addressed systematically. Emotion theorists and researchers so far have proposed different candidates for social emotions. These include non-basic emotions, self-conscious emotions, higher-cognitive emotions, and defining social emotions via their social functions. This paper looks at these different candidates for social emotions and briefly discusses their issues. Discussing the candidates and their (...) issues motivates embracing a pluralistic approach to social emotions. In a further step, the paper will look at approaches exploring how social factors impact emotions in general. This serves as a basis for explaining what it would mean to propose that all emotions are social. After reviewing different candidates for social emotions and looking at the impact of social factors on emotions in general, the paper will propose that a pluralistic understanding of social emotions is needed to embrace the different ways in which social emotions may function. Embracing a pluralistic understanding of social emotions does not mean, however, that all emotions are social emotions. (shrink)

The present volume is the result of the 23rd Münster Lecture in Philosophy held with Sally Haslanger. In November 2019, Sally Haslanger was invited to be a guest at the Department of Philosophy, University of Münster, where she gave an evening talk and joined a two-day colloquium dedicated to her work. The papers presented in this volume are the written versions of the authors’ colloquium talks. They are prepared by graduate students from the Department of Philosophy as the result of (...) several months’ engagement with Haslanger’s philosophy in seminars and discussion groups. This volume comprises the evening talk that Haslanger gave, the papers presented in the colloquium as well as Haslanger’s detailed reply to the critical remarks made by the students. Sally Haslanger stands as a prominent figure in contemporary philosophy, particularly in the realms of social philosophy, gender and race theory, metaphysics, and epistemology. Widely recognized for her contributions in these areas, she has become a leading voice in discussions surrounding social ontology, feminist philosophy, and critical race theory. As a philosopher, Haslanger has dedicated her career to unraveling the complexities of social categories and structures. Her work tries to challenge traditional notions and prompting a reevaluation of deeply ingrained assumptions. Haslanger has significantly shaped the discourse on social issues, inspiring scholars and activists alike. Sally Haslanger’s contributions, both in her scholarly endeavors and her intellectual involvement during her time in Münster, demonstrated the capacity and necessity for philosophy to actively participate in public discourse and political deliberation. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the view that realism about a social kind K entails that the grounding conditions of K are difficult (or impossible) to manipulate. In other words, we define social kind realism in terms of relative frame manipulability (RFM). In articulating our view, we utilize theoretical resources from Epstein’s (Epstein, The ant trap: Rebuilding the foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press, 2015) grounding/anchoring model and causal interventionism. After comparing our view with causal and principle-based (Tahko, (...) Synthese 200(2):1–23, 2022) proposals, we motivate RFM by showing that it accommodates important desiderata about the social landscape (such as recognizing the context-relativity of social properties and the emancipatory dimension of social practice). Finally, we consider three objections. First, we tackle frame-necessitarianism (FN), the view that social kind frames are metaphysically necessary (and thus unmanipulable). Secondly, we engage with what Epstein (Epstein, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 99(3):768–781 2019a) calls UNIVERSALITY (the view that social kinds can hold in the absence of anchors) and we argue that it should also be resisted. Finally, we tackle a recent objection from Mason’s (Mason, Philosophical Studies, 178(12):3975–3994) essentialism about social kinds. (shrink)

A social fact S is grounded by some plurality of grounds. And the fact that S has the grounding-conditions it does is anchored by some set of anchors. Epstein has recently suggested (2019) that the anchoring relation is a cross-world determination relation. In this paper we put forward three arguments against this view. First, we argue from the analogy between social and non-social kinds: there is no cross-world determination involved in non-social natural kinds. Secondly, we take issue with the very (...) idea of cross-world determination: no determination relation in our current metaphysical toolkit can have relata that occupy different possible worlds (in the relevant sense). Thirdly, we argue that cross-world anchoring generates an indeterminacy problem: if S holds in an anchorless world w, and there are distinct anchors (for S) holding at w1 and w2 respectively, then it is indeterminate whether S’s grounding-conditions hold in virtue of the w1-anchors or the w2-anchors. (shrink)

Etic theorizing uses the theorist’s social notions to theorize about their subject. This theorist may claim that Genghis Khan was a war criminal even though his actions predate the enactment of the Geneva Conventions. Brian Epstein considers a modal etic theorist who claims that Genghis Khan would have been a war criminal even if the Geneva Conventions were never enacted. Epstein argues that this has metaphysical import: it requires postulating a novel metaphysical notion of “anchoring.” Drawing from some familiar issues (...) in modal actualism, I argue that modal etic theorizing does not support this postulate. But it does suggest a distinctive kind of modality at work in social reality. (shrink)

An increasing number of philosophers argue that indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) in the sense that indeterminacy has its source in the world itself (rather than how the world is represented or known). The standard arguments for metaphysical indeterminacy are centered around the sorites paradox. In this essay, I present a novel argument for metaphysical indeterminacy. I argue that metaphysical indeterminacy follows from the existence of constitutive social construction; there is indeterminacy in the social world because there is indeterminacy in (...) how the social world is constructed. (shrink)

In this paper, I interview Francesca De Vecchi (Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Vita-Salute San Raffaele University) about her qualitative ontology and its social and normative implications. If at the foundation of our lifeworld there are significantly qualitative experiences, phenomenology can investigate the most important contemporary issues, such as gender disparity, socio-virtuality depersonalizations and political urgencies.

A thought, taken as a propositional attitude or the content of psychological predicates such as believe, wish, desire, hope, is ascribed to an entity with mental states. A thought is not only allegedly ascribed to particular non-mental things like computer, book, it is also ascribed to non-material things, linguistically in plural terms, e.g. plural pronouns (e.g. we, they), collective names or singular proper names (e.g. the United States), proper names in plural form or general terms (e.g. the Microsoft, feminists). Plural (...) terms are terms referring to groups of entities. The question is - what is it for a group to have a thought? Two main views are currently on centered stage – the literal view and the metaphorical view. This paper argues that the main argument supporting the literal view, in particular Pettit’s view, faces three main problems, namely, the problem of rule-following in propositional coawareness, the problem of an independent verifiability for group beliefs and the problem of the indexical ‘we’- thought. -/- Keywords: thoughts, collective intentionality, social ontology, group agency, group consciousness . (shrink)

Truthmaking is the metaphysical exploration of the idea that what is true depends upon what exists. Truthmaker theorists argue about what the truthmaking relation involves, which truths require truthmakers, and what those truthmakers are. This Element covers the dominant views on these core issues in truthmaking. It also explores some key metaphysical topics and debates that are usefully approached by employing the tools of truthmaker theory: the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of entities from the past, and (...) the debate between actualists and possibilists over merely possible states of affairs. In the final section, the Element explores how to think about truthmakers for truths involving social constructions. (shrink)

Niniejsza praca ma na celu przedstawienie, w jaki sposób Hartowska koncepcja otwartej struktury prawa może posłużyć dla teoretycznej refleksji nad zjawiskiem ewolucji instytucji prawnych. W pierwszej części artykułu zostanie zaprezentowany sposób, w jaki rozumiane jest pojęcie „otwartej struktury”. Jest to presktyprywna interpetacja propozycji Herberta L.A. Harta, zaproponowana pierwotnie przez Briana Bixa, która „zakłada”, a nie „dowodzi” istnienie otwartej struktury. W drugiej części przedstawię, jak otwarta struktura prawa wyjaśnia aktywizm sędziowski bądź zmiany legislacyjne w stosunku do instytucji prawnych na przykładzie instytucji (...) małżeństwa. Jednym z głównych problemów jest tzw. argument semantyczny, który wskazuje na językowe granice dla dokonywania pewnych zmian prawnych (np. uchwalenia małżeństw jednopłciowych, nadania osobowości prawnej rzekom). Problem semantycznych granic zostanie umieszczony w kontekście podziału na pojęcia odnoszące się do rodzajów społecznych oraz prawnych. Powyższe rozważania zostaną na końcu umieszczone w kontekście polskich przepisów, szczególnie art. 18 Konstytucji RP. (shrink)

Moral equality—the idea that ‘we’ all have equal moral worth, our interests ought to count for the same, and we possess the same bundle of basic rights—is one of the most central principles of liberal thought, being regularly drawn on as a presupposition of moral and political inquiry. Perhaps because it is so often relied on as a presupposition, however, moral equality is more often assumed than argued for. When moral equality is argued for, the most common tactic is to (...) appeal to some inherent property. As is well established, however, such property-based defenses of moral equality face two significant challenges: the problem of exclusion and the problem of inequality. In light of these challenges, in this article I put forward a new, revisionist account of moral equality. Taking inspiration from recent work in the social metaphysics of human kinds, I argue that moral equality ought to be seen as a component of a status that we confer on one another, rather than (grounded in) a property inherent in certain individuals. Conceiving of moral equality this way, I argue, side-steps both the problem of exclusion and the problem of natural equality. (shrink)

Na década de 1980, um programa de pesquisa se popularizou no campo da filosofia e psicologia das emoções. Esse programa, denominado construcionismo social, afirmava que emoções eram produtos de fatores sociais e não poderiam ser compreendidas em um vocabulário adaptacionista. No entanto, ao longo do tempo essas teorias perderam grande parte de sua força e popularidade, e praticamente desapareceram da filosofia das emoções contemporânea. O objetivo do presente artigo será diagnosticar esse predicamento, e perguntar se o construcionismo social ainda poderia (...) ser uma via teórica interessante para o estudo das emoções. Para isso, iremos clarificar o significado da metáfora da “construção” e examinar algumas das principais teorias construcionistas de emoções. Embora nossas conclusões sejam negativas em relação ao rótulo da construção social, elas podem ainda assim trazer algum alívio para aqueles que se simpatizam com suas pretensões teóricas, prescrições metodológicas e foco de análise. (shrink)

In this research, we evaluate whether John Searle's biological naturalism offers consistent bases for an objective morality. For this, first, we define the concepts of morality, objectivity and naturalism that we use, in order to avoid misunderstandings and ambiguities, as well as we deal with the basic concepts of Searlean's philosophy of mind – the self-titled biological naturalism. Next, we assess why external realism is a condition of possibility for moral realism. In this sense, we examine how John Searle defends (...) that anti-realism is irrational. Subsequently, we approach Searlean's theory of action, especially the explanation of how rational action takes place, according to him. Then, we assess whether Searle was successful when faced with the objections about whether one can derive an 'ought' from an 'is', as he considers his philosophical system to be naturalistic. Next, we examine whether the objectivity of morality can be obtained from John Searle's philosophical framework, as the linguistic act of predicating takes precedence over universal terms. We defend that evaluative predicates tend to become more perfected when we use the formula of constitutive rules in the field of morality, in order to increasingly include other human beings, in an equitable way, decreasing, rationally – and through collective intentionality –, the moral disagreements between groups and individuals, which implies the rational recognition of Universal Human Rights. Given this, we argue that actions and values of particular groups can be respected as long as they respect the general contract, constituted by collective intentionality, through rational recognition. We argue that, as a characteristic of intentionality, rationality does not exist without life, and, therefore, it has intrinsic value. We deduce that the objectivity of morality can be obtained from John Searle's philosophical framework, as, in the repeated application of the constitutive rules, the evaluative predicates tend to become more perfected, with the equitable inclusion of the totality of human beings, as subjects of rights and obligations, in assigning the status of human beings. This lessens moral disagreements between groups and individuals through collective intentionality. The condition of possibility of morality, in this sense, is language itself as a basic social institution. Language, as a logical delimiter, and altruism, as a logical requirement for what is right and wrong, would be the generalizers of the application of moral terms. Thus, not only the dimension of rationality, but all the other dimensions that potentially make up the self and the other must be considered altruistically in a properly good action. Therefore, pragmatically, the agent's actions, as they do not exist out of context, must also consider that the others – as individuals and as a collective – also develop in such a way that they can give themselves their own ends. Finally, based on Searle's thesis of how a social reality and social and institutional facts are possible, we conclude that there is a way to derive an objective morality. (shrink)

Rejecting or reforming anthropocentrism for the sake of human survival is a central moral challenge in our time. The rejection of anthropocentrism relies on the view that anthropocentrism has pervasively constituted the historical character of humankind and must be replaced in the future as understood by historical theory. This critique arises from new realist ontologies, including neo-materialisms and object-oriented ontology. Their rigid rejection of anthropocentrism requires the view of history and sociality proposed by proponents of object-oriented ontology. It is based (...) on a specialized form of the totalized logic of identity, the concept of antitypy; and by careful examination this is found to be inadequate. The consequence is that rigid rejection of anthropocentrism from any ontologically realist point of view must therefore fail because it is necessarily based on a logic that must be rejected. A better approach relies on the necessity of relatedness in moral and social thought. (shrink)

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed fifteen people at their high school in Columbine, Colorado. National media dubbed the event a “school shooting.” The term grimly expanded over the next several years to include similar events at army bases, movie theaters, churches, and nightclubs. Today, we commonly use the categories “mass shooter” and “mass shooting” to organize and classify information about gun violence. I will argue that neither category is an effective tool for reducing (...) gun violence and use empirical data to show how these categories perpetuate a moral panic that harms already vulnerable demographics. I conclude that we should instead favor a narrower description of individuals and events, (e.g., “X shot Y people at Z”) because we can talk about all of the relevant cases without contributing the undue harms. (shrink)

Though the social world is real and objective, the way that social facts arise out of other facts is in an important way shaped by human thought, talk and behaviour. Building on recent work in social ontology, I describe a mechanism whereby this distinctive malleability of social facts, combined with the possibility of basic human error, makes it possible for a consistent physical reality to ground an inconsistent social reality. I explore various ways of resisting the prima facie case for (...) social inconsistency. I conclude, however, that the prima facie case survives scrutiny, and draw out some of the ramifications. (shrink)

In recent years, many scholars have offered innovative accounts of social categories such as gender, race, and disability. By contrast, comparatively little work has been done on the category of children. The goal of our paper is to offer a new account of what children are. We start by discussing the two main accounts that have been put forward so far in the literature: naturalistic accounts and normative accounts. According to the former, to be a child is a matter of (...) possessing, or lacking, some ‘natural’ and ‘objective’ properties. According to the latter, to be a child is to possess a particular normative status. We argue that both naturalistic and normative accounts are subject to a variety of objections. We then propose our own social constructivist account. According to it, to be a child in any given society is to be regarded by the dominant ideology of that society as the target of a set of broadly paternalistic norms, in virtue of the possession of a cluster of natural properties such that, according to the dominant ideology of that society, it is justified to subject that individual to such norms. We conclude our paper by showing that our account meets the criteria of success for an account of what it is to be a child and by addressing some objections. (shrink)

In this dissertation I develop a philosophical theory of scapegoating that explains the role of blame-shifting and guilt avoidance in the endurance of oppression. I argue that scapegoating masks and justifies oppression by shifting unwarranted blame onto marginalized groups and away from systems of oppression and those who benefit from them, such that people in dominant positions are less inclined to notice or challenge its workings. I first identify a gap in our understanding of oppression, namely how oppression endures despite (...) widespread formal commitments to principles of equality and justice. I argue that prominent theories of oppression do not place enough weight on the question of how oppression is justified and concealed from us through blame-shifting, in ways that enable its persistence without our explicit approval of its systems. Scapegoating, a concept as old as the Bible, offers potential insight into the means through which we shift blame and avoid responsibility. However, my survey of the genealogy of scapegoating shows that existing conceptualizations of scapegoating are limited in their scope and cannot be applied to explain the endurance of oppression. I propose an ameliorative theory of scapegoating that accounts for deficiencies in prevailing theories of both oppression and scapegoating. Distinct from interpersonal theories and psychologistic analyses of scapegoating, my theory characterizes scapegoating according to its social function in oppression, thereby explaining structural dimensions that are not already captured by other accounts.With the motivation and ingredients in place, I develop my theory of scapegoating as made up of three sub-mechanisms: essentialization of marginalized groups as blameworthy, collective interest in protection against a threat, and social exclusion of the blamed. These sub-mechanisms work together to construct certain groups as scapegoats and encourage us to treat them accordingly through various structural and interpersonal means. I argue that scapegoating has important implications for the formation of social identities; namely, scapegoating constructs social identities in an oppressive arrangement that is largely hidden from us but informs our social and affective relations. By constructing some identities as essentially blameworthy and threatening, dominantly situated identity groups are encouraged to internalize a protected status, act together in defense of their status, and maintain systems of oppressive exclusion. Finally, I elaborate the epistemic dimensions of my theory of scapegoating to argue that scapegoating functions within our social imaginaries and structural epistemic practices. In particular, I focus on the ways that ignorance functions to maintain the scapegoat mechanism, and how scapegoating helps insulate structural forms of ignorance. I end by considering the potential for resistance to scapegoating. (shrink)

There is no specific trans perspective on romantic love. Trans people love and do not love, fall in love and fall out of love, just like everyone else. Trans people inhabit different sexual identities, different relationship types, and different kinds of loving. When it comes to falling in love as or with a trans person, however, things can get more complicated, as questions of gender and sexual identity emerge. In a study by Blair & Hoskin from 2018, 87.5% of the (...) interviewed participants said they would not consider dating a trans person (Blair & Hoskin, 2018). Among those who were open to dating trans people, a pattern emerged: the subjects were disproportionately willing to date trans men but not trans women, even if this preference did not match their own sexual identity; for example, a woman who identifies as a lesbian may be open to dating a trans man but not a trans woman. This seems like a clash of sexual and gender identities: why are women who identify as lesbians willing to date men? This chapter aims to analyze this phenomenon: love between clashing sexual and gender identities – e.g., the love between a man, who identifies as being romantically interested in men, and a trans woman, – and thereby evaluates the limits of romantic love for trans people. Limits of love, in this chapter, are conceived of as normative restrictions on whom and how we love. By exploring cases of clashing sexual and gender identities in romantic love, this chapter analyzes how trans people’s opportunities for love are often limited. (shrink)

The theme of this year’s Spindel Conference was Social Ontologies of Race. This editorial introduction serves as both a general introduction to the topic of racial ontology and an introduction to this volume’s contributions. I will first explain some central ideas for discussions of ontology in general. I will then make some basic taxonomic distinctions common to discussions of racial ontology and suggest some clarifications. I will then go on to discuss the five contributions to this volume.

An introduction to the posthumously published "The Wretched of Middle-Earth: an Orkish Manifesto" by Charles Mills.

What does it take for a property to be a social property? This question is different from questions about what it takes for a property to be socially constructed. That is: it is one thing to be social, it is another to be socially constructed. Compared to questions about social construction, this question about sociality has received relatively little attention in social metaphysics. Here, I work from a very specific set of observations which arise from the social metaphysics literature to (...) uncover a sufficient condition on sociality for properties, a condition which I argue all non-social properties fail to satisfy. (shrink)

This thesis explores Officer Cadets' social construction of leadership at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS). It addresses calls for more research into leadership behaviours. Taking a social constructionist perspective, the thesis focuses on unmasking the social construction of Leadership amongst Officer Cadets. This study adopts a reflexive approach, acknowledging the centrality of the researcher in the co-construction of the data. The thesis develops interdisciplinary links between the theoretical areas of Dark Leadership to problematize and inform contemporary understandings of Officer (...) Cadets' social construction of leadership through the emergent findings of the study. This qualitative study employed a mono-method research design consisting of semistructured interviews. Through these, participants shared their lived experiences and gave descriptions and understandings of their past leadership experiences before and current experiences within Sandhurst with a reflexive interview approach. The thesis utilises Reflexive Thematic analysis to interpret the data, with the results presented thematically. The thesis uses reflexive thematic analysis to explore dark leadership through a social constructionist lens; the research has evidenced functional changes to practices within Sandhurst and developed a model of what dark leadership at Sandhurst is from an Officer Cadets view. This approach highlights the importance of contextuality, the person and the situation through a holistic Leadership approach. The thesis proposes a holistic framework for leadership, which would advance toward de-coupling the dichotomies of leadership. (shrink)

What exactly do we mean when we refer to disability as a social construction? How viable are the justifications for this? These questions are explored in this paper. To this end, various theories that are influential in German-language disability studies are examined and criticised. These include Oliver's social model, furthermore the "Thomas theorem", Berger and Luckmann's sociology of knowledge, Foucault's discourse theory and Waldschmidt's theory. Subsequently, social constructivist approaches of Watzlawick and Gergen and Gergen are discussed. It is shown that (...) a relativistic understanding of social construction can be used to deny facticity and thus undermines the foundations of scientific knowledge. This danger must be taken seriously when defending the scientificity of disability studies. (shrink)

My purpose in this text is to offer a general roadmap for navigating most current debates in the metaphysics of social categories regarding what sort of fact it is for a person to inhabit one social category or another—for example, what makes a person Mexican, or gay, or rich. With this goal in mind, I propose classifying the debating positions into three broad camps: common sense theories, socio-historical accounts, and performative theories. I characterise their main differences, identifying the main challenges (...) and achievements of each. I show that for persons well integrated into their categories, the differences between these three broad camps are minuscule, yet become crucial when we try to account for people not so well integrated. Then, I sketch a pluralist proposal that reconciles the three camps I have identified, while doing justice to the challenges presented by interstitial phenomena such as mestizaje, transition, passing, migration, etc. (shrink)

Saying so can make it so, J. L. Austin taught us long ago. Famously, John Searle has developed this Austinian insight in an account of the construction of institutional reality. Searle maintains that so-called Status Function Declarations, allegedly having a “double direction of fit”, synchronically create worldly institutional facts, corresponding to the propositional content of the declarations. I argue that Searle’s account of the making of institutional reality is in tension with the special theory of relativity—irrespective of whether the account (...) is interpreted as involving causal generation or non-causal grounding of worldly institutional facts—and should be replaced by a more modest theory which interprets the results of Status Function Declarations in terms of mere Cambridge change and institutional truth. I end the paper by indicating the import of this more modest theory for theorizing about the causal potency of institutional phenomena generated by declarations. (shrink)