While discussions of realization have nearly always been discussions of the realization of mental properties, it is important to remember that the application of the notion is much broader than this.
Shoemaker (2007: 5)
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to make headway on a metaphysics of social construction. In recent work (forthcoming), I’ve argued that social construction should be understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. However, I agree with grounding skeptics like Wilson (Inquiry 1–45, 2014) that bare claims about what grounds what are insufficient for capturing, with fine enough grain, metaphysical dependence structures. To that end, I develop a view on which the social construction of human social kinds (e.g., race) is a kind of realization relation. Social kinds, I argue, are multiply realizable kinds. I depart from the Wilson by further arguing that an appeal to grounding is not otiose when it comes to social construction. Social construction, I claim, belongs to the “big-G” Grounding genus, but it is the specific “small-g” relation of realization at work in cases of human kind social construction.
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Notes
See Epstein (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016) and Schaffer (forthcoming) for grounding approaches to social construction. The notion of grounding has become a key tool with which metaphysicians have attempted to limn the metaphysical structure of reality. ‘Grounding,’ refers to a non-causal or metaphysical way in which certain features of reality are what they are in virtue of other features of reality. Grounded items are derivative from, dependent upon, and explained by what they are grounded in. Grounding is directional in the sense that grounds (non-causally) give rise to what they ground. Importantly, grounding indicates ontological priority: grounds are more ontologically fundamental than that which they ground. Some grounding theorists take grounding to impose a partial ordering across levels of reality insofar as it is asymmetric, irreflexive, and transitive. For discussion of grounding see Fine (2001, 2012), Schaffer (2009, 2016a), Audi (2012), Rosen (2010), Raven (2012), Correia and Schnieder (2012), Trogdon (2013a), and Bliss and Trogdon (2016)).
Also see Koslicki (2015) for another influential critique of Grounding.
These are controversial commitments, but I don’t have space to defend these claims here. Fortunately, the argument of the rest of the paper won’t rely upon these commitments. See Wilson (2014: 570ff.) on why grounding relations need not be irreflexive. I don’t include transitivity on the list of formal properties since I don’t think truthmaking, qua Grounding species, is transitive. See my (2014). I also want to remain neutral about whether grounds always necessitate what they ground. See Trogdon (2013b) Leuenberger (2014), and Skiles (2014) for discussion.
The arguments given below will not depend upon this particular conception of Grounding pluralism, only on there being some small-g relations that are also Grounding relations. Moreover, I am not convinced that all of the small-g relations on Wilson’s list are species of Grounding. For example, I do not think that token identity or type identity are Grounding relations.
Koslicki (2015) also argues that Grounding is too course-grained to account for various examples of metaphysical dependence. However, Koslicki does not think that Wilson’s small-g relations are metaphysical dependence relations (2015: fn. 2).
It should be noted that, strictly speaking, Wilson thinks that the small-g relations need to be supplemented with a primitive notion of fundamentality. Below I’ll discuss Wilson’s primitive fundamentality framework.
Also see Berker (ms.) and Raven (forthcoming).
However, I entertain the possibility of the ‘dimensioned’ realization of social kinds below when I consider the role of social context in social kind realization. ‘Dimensioned’ realization occurs when the realized and realizer properties belong to different objects.
It’s important to note that not just any arbitrary property of S, e.g., wearing a hat, will be among the realizers for being black. We can appeal to the definition of the kind to set limits on its possible realizers. Moreover, Grounding is taken to be non-monotonic: if [p] grounds [q] then it is not the case that for any arbitrary [r], [p], [r] ground [q]. As a species of Grounding, realization inherits this feature of non-monotonicity. Thanks to Chris Tucker for raising this issue.
See Jenkins (diss.) for further clarification on deontic powers and Andersson (2007) for a theory of different forms of social power.
In RSK, ‘P1, …, Pn’ and ‘K’ refer to property types. However, when P1, …, Pn realize K, there are tokens of P1, …, Pn and K such that the token social powers of a K-token are a non-empty proper subset of the token powers of P1, …, Pn-tokens.
Jenkins (2016b: chp 4) argues that belonging to certain social kinds constitutes an “ontic injustice.” Such injustice involves the wrongful deprivation of deontic powers on the basis of being classified as of particular social kinds.
Pereboom (2011: 134) objects to the subset view, arguing that the token powers of a realized property cannot be literally identical to a subset of the token powers of the realizer property, due to cases of multiple realization (either merely possible or over time). If a token property M is realized by a token property P1 at a time and then later by P2, the token powers of M cannot be identical to a subset of the token powers of P1 or P2 given than the token powers of P1 and P2 are not identical. In response, it is not clear that this objection applies to the realization of social kinds. It is an open question whether any particular token of a social kind K can have multiple realizers over time (although I take it that different instances of K can have different realizers). It may be that as realizer properties change, so does the token of K. At any rate, I haven’t adopted the subset view as an account of every case of realization, but only in a modified form tailored to the realization of social kinds. Second, Pereboom’s argument makes a controversial assumption that property tokens are multiply realizable. But Polger and Shapiro argue “property instances are not multiply realized. This seems self-evident. Instances are not repeatable. If something is not repeatable, then it is not repeatable in different ways. So property instances are simply not the right sorts of things to be multiply realized” (2008: 214). It is open to the subset theorist to hold that property types, but not property tokens are multiply realizable. See Wilson (2011: 140) for a similar response.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for recognizing this upshot of the account.
The relation between core and total social realizers is a complicated matter. See Root (2000), Mallon (2004), and my (forthcoming). For a related approach to social facts and their contexts, see Epstein (2014, 2015) who distinguishes between ‘grounds’ and ‘anchors’ of social facts. If we opt to include properties of the subject’s social context among the realizers of a social kind, then social construction can be considered a case of ‘dimensioned’ realization because some of the realizer properties are not properties of the subject realizing the social kind. See Gillett (2002, 2003) on ‘flat’ and ‘dimensioned’ realization.
Cf. Stone (2007: chap. 5). Context may play an important role in determining what properties serve as realizers for a social kind. There may be different realizers for a kind K in different contexts. See my (forthcoming) for discussion of contextually-(in)sensitive social kinds.
According to Funkhouser, we have a case of multiple realizability whenever we have “sameness of type through any differences in the (lower-level) conditions that give rise to instances of that type” (2007a: 467).
N.B. one need not endorse this version of Grounding pluralism to appreciate this point.
There is a debate about the connection between Grounding and explanation. Some think that Grounding (or as they would say ‘Ground’) is metaphysical explanation, while others hold that Grounding ‘backs’ or ‘underwrites’ explanatory relations. See Bliss and Trogdon (2016: Sect. 4) for an overview.
Cf. Raven (forthcoming: Sects. 2.3.2.2 and 4.3). On this score, the Grounding framework has an explanatory advantage over a mere stipulation that realizers are always more fundamental than what they realize.
Wilson herself suggests that there is a case to be made for priority in either direction when it comes to realization: “A functionalist atomist might maintain that bodies are prior to hands on grounds that a body’s function can be implemented in the absence of a hand, but not vice versa. Alternatively, a functionalist atomist might maintain that hands are prior to bodies, on grounds that a body’s function sensitively depends on the functions of its parts, including its hands” (2014: 565). Neither of these positions seems to me to establish priority in either direction. In the first case, merely modal asymmetry of the implementation of the body’s function and the existence of a hand is insufficient to establish priority. In the second case, there is a bald assertion of priority but no reason is given to think that the body’s function does depend on the function of hands (and certainly not on the function of any particular hand).
Some subset theorists, e.g., Shoemaker (2001: 80) and Clapp (2001), conceive of the relation between powers of the realized and its realizer as a part-whole relation. Even if that’s right, the subset relation would not by itself entail priority since the obtaining of a part-whole relation does not settle whether the parts or the whole are prior to one another.
Baker’s notion of constitution establishes the direction of priority, but in the opposite direction that we are interested in: “The constituted thing has ontological priority over its constitutor” (2007: 166).
Sometimes we do know that the realizer is prior to what it realizes. But what explains this will be something other than the mere fact that a realization relation obtains. In the case of the neural realization of pain, for example, we think that the neural state is more fundamental than pain because we assume that the biological is more fundamental than the mental, in general. In this case, what indicates the direction of priority is in the nature of the relata (in addition of certain other assumptions), not the obtaining of realization. However, I don’t think that appeal to the natures of the relata will always help fix the direction of priority (pace Wilson (2016)). I discuss this below with respect to social reality.
It’s important to note that Wilson is not suggesting that positing an absolutely fundamental base, in addition to whatever small-g relations run up from that base, is sufficient to establish the direction of priority. She thinks that sometimes identifying a non-fundamental base that is treated as fundamental with respect to some set of non-fundamenta can help fix the direction of priority (2014: fn. 64; 2016: 197).
See Barnes (forthcoming) for discussion of realism about these structures.
E.g., “Suppose that both my hand and my body are classical mereological fusions of the Many. What should we say about whether my hand depends on my body, or vice versa? One thing we might say is that, as fusions of the Many, both my body and my hand depend upon the many but neither metaphysically depends on the other per se” (emphasis added 2014: 564). Also see (2014: 565–6) and (2016: 201).
And by noting the poverty of explanations of being a woman in terms of, say, anatomy alone.
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Acknowledgements
I thank an anonymous referee for the journal, Kelly Trogdon, Matthew Haug, Christopher Tucker, Jonah P.B. Goldwater, Chad Vance, and Joshua Gert for their comments on earlier versions of the paper. Financial support was provided by a Faculty Summer Research Grant from the College of William & Mary.
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Griffith, A.M. Social construction: big-G grounding, small-g realization. Philos Stud 175, 241–260 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0865-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0865-x