Abstract
Social constructionism is often considered a form of anti-realism. But in contemporary feminist philosophy, an increasing number of philosophers defend views that are well-described as both realist and social constructionist. In this paper, I use the work of Sally Haslanger as an example of realist social constructionism. I argue: (i) that Haslanger is best interpreted as defending metaphysical realism about social structures; (ii) that this type of metaphysical realism about the social world presents challenges to some popular ways of understanding metaphysical realism.
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Notes
Haslanger (2012a, pp. 198–200).
Thanks to Rebecca Mason for helping me frame the point this way.
I certainly don’t claim that this is the only way of interpreting Haslanger—most especially because she tends to change her views over time. I instead present this as one way of reading substantial parts of her work.
Haslanger (2012b).
Haslanger’s own original presentation of her view struggles with this issue. She can say that some trans women are women, but only those trans women who ‘pass’ as women. Jenkins (2016) persuasively argues that Haslanger is best understood as defending a theory of gender role. But gender role isn’t the full story about gender—we also need a story about gender identity.
Haslanger herself says this fairly explicitly:
My claim is not that my account [of gender] ‘analyzes our concept’, in the sense that it provides an interpretation of what people have in mind when they use the term, or that it is what determines the extension of gender/race language in a Fregean way, but that it captures the social reality that underlies our thinking and speaking, but is hidden from view. (‘Reply’, p. 29)
I maintain that my analysis of gender is descriptive, in fact, descriptive of the material reality of gender, even if it is not descriptive of anyone’s thinking about gender. In short, I am offering a theory of what gender is, not what some people think it is, or what they think it should be. This is the goal of real definition. (2014, p. 31).
See especially the discussion of neo-descriptivism on pp. 433–434 of (2012d).
Importantly, Haslanger doesn’t think all social categories are structures, in her sense of ‘structure’. We get structures only when a category becomes particularly entrenched and stable.
Sider (2011, p. 44). Lest it seem like I’m simply picking on Sider here, the reason I’m focusing on his work so closely is he has attempted to articulate and defend ideas which are very common in contemporary metaphysics, but which are often simply assumed or gestured toward.
Sider suggests that allowing structure (=perfect joint carving) to be ‘tied to human history, biology, psychology, or interests’ would thereby make structure subjective (p. 38). But it isn’t overly clear what ‘tied to’ means in this context.
Schaffer doesn’t specify exactly how permissive. Is there any entity corresponding to every predicate? To every [predicate, context] pair?
Though this is plausibly one area in which the entity-grounding approach defended by Schaffer might come apart in significant ways from the fact-grounding approach to realism defended by Kit Fine. For Fine, grounding doesn’t by itself give us a guide to what is fundamental (what exists ‘in reality’ or what is ‘real’): he explicitly allows that propositions about what exists ‘in reality’ might be grounded, and likewise that propositions which are ungrounded might not be about what exists ‘in reality’ (2001, p. 27). A Finean view could thus allow that facts about Haslangerian structures are grounded, but real. Fine thinks that the default assumption is that the grounded is not real, but also suggests that this default assumption might be oughtweighed by the kind of metaphysical reasons Haslanger appeals to.
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Barnes, E. Realism and social structure. Philos Stud 174, 2417–2433 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0743-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0743-y