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What Social Construction Isn’t

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Abstract

Just as contemporary metaphysics, in general, is marked by an interest in ground, contemporary social metaphysics, in particular, is marked by an interest in social construction. It’s no surprise, then, that some contemporary metaphysicians have come to understand social construction in terms of ground. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake. In particular, I argue that any otherwise plausible account of construction as ground is objectionably revisionary. First, I discuss an argument for the view that construction is ground that is endorsed by its proponents, and identify its weaknesses. I then consider, and dispense with, different versions of the view that construction is ground, and argue that these either overgeneralize, undergeneralize, or both. After responding to the objection that my arguments presuppose monism with respect to construction, I conclude that though ground is relevant to construction, extant ground-theoretic accounts of its relevance fail to capture it.

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Notes

  1. Though, of course, this doesn’t entail that sex isn’t socially constructed. Rather, it’s evidence that it isn’t.

  2. Many theorists draw a distinction between causal and constitutive social construction. (See, for instance, Haslanger (2012).) On that way of carving things up, ground-theoretic accounts are accounts of constitutive social construction.

  3. Epstein (2013), 54.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Griffith (2018a), 394.

  6. Griffith (2018a), 2–3.

  7. It would be difficult to survey all of the different theorists and all of the different ways. Here, then, is a sample: Asta (2018), Boghossian (2001), Butler (1999), Diaz-Leon (2015), Epstein (2015), Hacking (1999), Haslanger (2012), Mallon (2008), and Searle (1995, 2010).

  8. Schaffer (2017b), 2456.

  9. Ibid.

  10. This issue is, in part, stipulative, in the sense that it depends on which conception of ground we antecedently accept. (See Fine (2012).)

  11. Supposing, in other words, that construction isn’t ground, there will be true grounding claims about social construction/s. That is, the view under consideration is that construction is ground. And the falsity of this view is compatible with there being true grounding claims about social construction/s.

  12. It’s important to note that, here, I’m interested in the claim that construction is ground. However, this isn’t the only option. It may be that construction is a kind of ground; that is, that construction is to metaphysical ground as normative or natural ground is to metaphysical ground. (See, for instance, Fine (2012).) Additionally, it may be that though construction isn’t identical to ground, it’s analyzable is terms of, or perfectly co-varies, with ground. Nonetheless, the subsumption argument – as it’s presented by its proponents – recommends the view that construction is ground, as do the proposals I go on to consider. As a result, I’ll won’t consider the other options here.

  13. Both Mari Mikkola (2015) and Elizabeth Barnes (2014) have suggested that we resist the subsumption strategy, for instance. However, their reasons for resisting it are different than – though complementary to – my own. See Schaffer (2017b) for a response to both Mikkola and Barnes that first introduces Ground.

  14. Here I have in mind Haslangerean accounts of gender, according to which one’s being a woman is at least partly grounded in being treated as if one is a biological female.

  15. This isn’t quite right because the .05 in my bank account isn’t a nickel. I chose to simplify the case, however, for readability.

  16. I use brackets (i.e., “[]”) to refer to facts. Thus, “[Americans vote in November]” refers to “The fact that America vote in November.”

  17. Whether this is so depends on what, in general, we take the relata of ground to be. See Fine (2012) for elaboration.

  18. There’s a good question about why this is implausible, of course, and I take it that there isn’t an uncontroversial answer. But it’s my view that {[Americans vote in November]} is radically unlike paradigmatic social constructions like money, mortgages, and marriages. For instance, each of the latter serves a social function; singleton sets, however, do not.

  19. Schaffer (2017a), 2454–5.

  20. Ibid.

  21. It’s unclear how, exactly, to understand grounding overdetermination. However, I take it that this is a relatively uncontroversial conception thereof.

  22. I take inspiration for Kind from Griffith’s work (2018a, b). According to Griffith, however, Kind is to be restricted to only certain social constructions; namely, to social constructions like race, gender, and class. As a result, I don’t mean to attribute Kind to him. Importantly, Griffith is a pluralist about construction, the plausibility of which I discuss in Section V.

  23. People are flesh and blood after all! And, I take it, if anything isn’t socially constructed, it’s flesh and blood. I should not that I don’t find this thought plausible, however. My view is that people are to women as lumps of clay are to statues. If that’s right, to say that women are constructed isn’t to say that people are.

  24. I take it that this is a widely shared intuition about social constructions, but it’s not incontestable. Though both Epstein and Schaffer deny it in accepting that social kinds “travel,” I deny that social kinds travel. Unfortunately, I can’t consider arguments for traveling here. See Epstein (2015, 2019) and Schaffer (2019).

  25. Originally, I’d used the example of a washing machine here instead. However, one might insist that washing machines don’t exist in this scenario; that is, that though there are hunks of metal where washing machines used to be, there are no washing machines. And though I don’t think that’s correct – in particular, because it’s incompatible with the otherwise plausible view that artifacts are functional – the restriction to what have come to be called “abstract artifacts” (such as Zoom) plausibly avoids this concern.

  26. I don’t mean to understate the importance of this observation. We should take note that it implies social construction isn’t coextensive with social kindhood, though this is very commonly assumed.

  27. Though one might insist that certain people – namely, those that sign the relevant contract – supply the relevant value for “x,” this, again, gets the corporation’s identity conditions wrong. For on the view that the relevant signers become – or are “counted as” – the corporation, we’re compelled to say, for instance, that the corporation dies when they do. But, presumably, that’s incorrect. (Can corporation die of natural causes, for instance? Or in automobile accidents?)

  28. There’s a good question about whether we should understand Epstein’s view as a view of social construction, since he doesn’t cast his discussion explicitly in terms thereof. As a result, I don’t mean to suggest that Epstein himself endorses Anchor, though he might.

  29. And, according to Epstein (2015), this is the “Standard Model” of social reality, which we find in theorists as diverse as John Searle and David Hume.

  30. There’s a way of understanding “framing” that makes Anchor a form of Ground. For we might think that for a social rule to frame a grounding explanation is for it to be baked into the grounding relation itself. Such a view is what, in a different context, Berker (2019) calls a “governing” view of social rules. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to consider it here.

  31. This is what Epstein himself calls “conjunctivism” and he offers several of his own arguments against it.

  32. Schaffer (2019) himself explicitly accepts this view.

  33. Whether this stands up to scrutiny is a different question. There’s some intuitive support for it, however. For instance, because artifacts like washing machines plausibly have functional essences, there’s no need for social rules with respect to them. That is, we can tell whether something is a washing machine by telling whether it’s a machine that’s used for washing clothing.

  34. And that’s plausible. For if {[Americans vote in November]}‘s existence is grounded in a rule, intuitively it’s grounded in the rule of set formation.

  35. This assumes that social rules are facts, of course. But that’s presupposed by Rule already.

  36. However, we might think that this is an instance of the problem of overdetermination. If so, there may not be a distinct problem of disjunctions for Rule.

  37. Again, I don’t accept this view. Nonetheless, I take it to be at least initially plausible.

  38. There is, of course, disagreement about exactly what acceptance entails. In particular, there’s disagreement about whether it’s necessary that the acceptance of a social rule is explicit. For instance, some accept that there are social rules whose acceptance is merely implicit, others who accept that there are social rules that are, in some sense, taken up but not accepted. See Gilbert (2013) for elaboration.

  39. Barnes (2017), 8.

  40. See Schaffer (2017a).

  41. Schaffer (2019), 771.

  42. According to Schaffer (2017a), laws aren’t identical to functions. Rather, they’re individuated by the functions we use in representing them. But I’m not convinced. Of course, the details of this disagreement are subtle, and consideration thereof is another paper. Thus, I leave it to the side for now.

  43. It’s important to note that, in other work (e.g., (Schaffer 2017a)), Schaffer doesn’t conceive of Laws as figuring among the grounds of grounded going-on. Consequently, his understanding of the social (Schaffer 2019) marks a significant departure from his earlier work; in particular, given that his earlier work wasn’t vulnerable to this sort of difficulty. Nonetheless, I take it that the problem I raise is a general problem for accounts of this sort; what, in other contexts, we call “Humean” accounts of laws.

  44. There are, of course, other conceptions of Laws to choose from. Given the vast literature on Laws, however, I won’t consider them here. For now, then, I acknowledge that other accounts of Rule are available to its proponents. However, I suspect that they will run into similar problems. (See, for instance, Berker (2019) for a similar line of reasoning.)

  45. For the canonical version of such an account, see Lewis (1969).

  46. See Rescorla (2019) for a comprehensive survey of the literature.

  47. Whether these conventions support intra-world counterfactuals is a different question. I suspect that they do. For instance, If I were driving on the left-hand side, I’d be on the wrong side of the road seems true. And it’s plausibly true in virtue of the relevant driving convention.

  48. See Rosen (2017).

  49. It’s worth noting, however, that the objection from doubleton sets arises here, as well. For it’s certainly in the nature of {[[The building is seven stories], [Around here, buildings in excess of six stories are illegal]]} both that the building is seven stories and that Around here, buildings in excess of six stories are illegal. But, again, I assume that Rosen will insist that there be a relation between both partial grounds of social constructions, on Rule. On such a view, we can rule out doubleton cases, since this extra relation isn’t essential to the existence of the set. However, it does raise the probability that Rule will fall afoul of the subsumption strategy. But, again, I leave discussion of this issue for another time.

  50. Of course, this is merely an intuition. But one way to test whether x is essential to y is to ask: Does x have to exist in order for y to exist? If this is an acceptable test, I take it that it yields the right result in this case. For though it may be plausible that genders don’t exist without social rules (regarding gender), it’s implausible that social rules (regarding gender) must exist in order for genders to exist. An interesting question, then, becomes whether extant accounts of gender are ruled out; for instance, Haslanger (2012)‘s. I don’t think they do, since, contra Griffith (2018a), I don’t think that Haslanger’s conditions on being a woman, say, are profitably understood as grounding conditions. Unfortunately, haven’t the space to defend this here.

  51. Notably, Griffith (2018b) accepts grounding pluralism, and, so, the view that there are kinds of what Wilson (2014) calls “small-g” grounding relations that correspond to kinds of construction (call them “small-c” construction relations). However, because he accepts that small-c construction relations are unified by construction per se – that is, in the way that the big-G Grounding relation is often said to unify small-g grounding relations – his view isn’t a version of pluralism in the sense in question. In particular, that small-c construction relations are derivative of big-C Construction is incompatible with their fundamentality. But, of course, more needs to be said about which version of pluralism the constructivist ought to accept; much more than can be said here, unfortunately. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing me on this point.

  52. Again, Schaffer (2019) mentions this problem, but doesn’t attend to it.

  53. Note: Since I take myself to be arguing against ground-theoretic conceptions of construction generally, I don’t take myself to be on the hook for responding to this challenge.

  54. One way to press this is as follows. We can test whether x and y are of the same kind by Leibniz’s law; that is, by checking whether they share all of their kind-relevant properties. If real definitions are pluralistic, it’s possible that x and y are of the same kind of thing despite having all different kind-relevant properties. But we should be hesitant to give up Leibniz’s law on this basis.

  55. One might insist that rather than that pluralism is inadequate, this shows that my conception of pluralism is. In particular, one might understand construction functionally such that though construction has one real definition (i.e., in terms of the relevant function), different relations can perform the function in different cases. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.) However, the sense in which such a view is genuinely pluralistic is unclear. For instance, we might think that the being an ancestor of relation is functional. In particular, we might accept that being an ancestor is nothing more than being a mother or a father or a grandmother or a grandfather or a great grandmother or a great grandfather, and so on. In other words, we might think that because the being an ancestor of relation is multiply realizable, it’s essentially functional (or “widely disjunctive”). But such a view has difficulty accommodating the being an ancestor of relation’s explanatory relevance. In particular, many of the special sciences appeal to this relation in making predictions about our behavior. And this itself strongly suggests that something unifies the relations in question. In particular, it strongly suggests monism about ancestry. And, I take it, the same is true in the case of construction. That is, the fact that we appeal to Big-C Construction in generic explanations itself suggests that Construction is monistic; in particular, when those explanations are transitive.

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Pagano, E. What Social Construction Isn’t. Philosophia 49, 1651–1670 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00305-3

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