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)

I outline and defend a limited realism in socio-political conceptual amelioration (RSCA). RSCA claims that, in some cases, socio-political concepts are ameliorated to represent parts of a concept-independent reality more accurately. My main aim is to dissolve a seeming dilemma for RSCA: Whereas social kinds are mind-dependent (i.e. depending on human thought and action), realism implies that the kinds represented are ontologically independent of the concepts representing them. To dissolve this dilemma, I suggest considering two different roles concepts play concerning (...) social kinds. Concepts can both generate social kinds and represent social kinds. Once a concept has generated a social kind, this social kind is part of a concept-independent reality that can be represented by different concepts. Thereby, RSCA allows amelio-rated concepts to represent social kinds (e.g., rape, marriage) more accurately while acknowledging that human actions or concepts have generated these social kinds. (shrink)

Social metaphysics is a source of important philosophical and moral insight. Furthermore, much social metaphysics appears to be substantive. However, some have recently argued that standard views of metaphysics cannot accommodate substantive social metaphysics. In this paper I offer a new diagnosis of this problem and defend a new solution, showing that this problem is an illuminating lens through which to examine the nature and boundaries of metaphysics. This case instantiates a broad, common pattern generated by attempts to align distinctions (...) between realism and anti-realism, mind-independence and mind-dependence, and legitimate and non-legitimate inquiry. I show that the best response is to abandon the association between substantive metaphysics and mind-independence, and I sketch a new definition of substantivity, given in terms of explanatory power, that makes room for substantive social metaphysics while also offering an attractive basis for general metaphysics. (shrink)

My dissertation explores the nature of artifacts – things like chairs, tables, and pinball machines – and addresses the question of whether there is anything essential to being an artifact and a member of a particular artifact kind. My dissertation offers new arguments against both the anti-essentialist and current essentialist proposals. Roughly put, the view is that artifacts are successful products of an intention to make something with certain features constitutive of an artifact kind. The constitutive features are often functional (...) features, but may include structural, material, aesthetic, and other features. I further explore the ways in which artifacts are mind-dependent and I argue that this dependence is disjunctive. Not only do they depend on the intentions of their makers, but they also can depend on social groups or public norms and thus artifacts have an importantly social dimension and I argue that this disjunctive account applies not to artifact kinds but to individual artifacts depending on their context of creation. (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)

I defend a novel view of how social kinds (e.g., money, women, permanent residents) depend on our mental states. In particular, I argue that social kinds depend on our mental states in the following sense: it is essential to them that they exist (partially) because certain mental states exist. This analysis is meant to capture the very general way in which all social kinds depend on our mental states. However, my view is that particular social kinds also depend on our (...) mental states in more specific ways—some of them causal, others metaphysical. I defend a minimal but metaphysically important notion of essence—one that takes as primary that the essential properties of a kind constitute its identity—and argue that this minimal notion of essence is all that is needed to vindicate my claim that social kinds are essentially mind-dependent. (shrink)

Some language encourages essentialist thinking. While philosophers have largely focused on generics and essentialism, I argue that nouns as a category are poised to refer to kinds and to promote representational essentializing. Our psychological propensity to essentialize when nouns are used reveals a limitation for anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Even ameliorated nouns can continue to underpin essentialist thinking. I conclude by arguing that representational essentialism does not doom anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Rather it reveals that would-be ameliorators ought to attend to the (...) propensities for our representational devices to essentialize and to the complex relationship between essentialism and prejudice. (shrink)