Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:57:22.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Categories in Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2020

ELANOR TAYLOR
ELANOR TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
JOHNS HOPKINS [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social categories play a central role in inquiry. Some authors have argued that social categories can only play this role because they have a particular metaphysical status, such as a connection to natural kinds or to comparatively joint-carving properties. This reflects the broadly realist idea that categories that play important roles in inquiry do so for metaphysical reasons. In this paper I argue that such metaphysical views of social categories cannot accommodate ‘empty’ social categories, cases in which social categories that cannot have the metaphysical features attributed to them by such accounts still play a central role in inquiry. I defend an alternative approach: context-dependent naturalness, an analogue of metaphysical naturalness that concerns context-dependent, rather than metaphysical, structure.

Keywords

social categoriesexplanationnaturalnesskinds
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Summer 2020 , pp. 171 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Many thanks to Ásta, Patrick Connolly, Michaela McSweeney, Elizabeth Miller, Katherine Ritchie, and two anonymous referees for helpful conversation and critique. Thanks also to audiences at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Edinburgh, and Social Ontology 2018.

References

Ásta. (2018) Categories We Live By. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, E. (2014) ‘Going Beyond the Fundamental: Feminism in Contemporary Metaphysics’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 114, 335–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, E. (2017) ‘Realism and Social Structure’. Philosophical Studies, 174, 2417–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berenstain, N. (2016) ‘Epistemic Exploitation’. Ergo, 3, 569–90.Google Scholar
Bettcher, T. M. (2007) ‘Evil Deceivers and Make-believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion’. Hypatia, 22, 43–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bokulich, A. (2018) ‘Representing and Explaining: The Eikonic Conception of Scientific Explanation.’ Philosophy of Science, 85, 793–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. (1991) ‘Anti-Foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds’. Philosophical Studies, 61, 127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, N. (1980) ‘Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 61, 75–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, P. H. (2000) Black Feminist Thought. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Craver, C. (2009) ‘Mechanisms and Natural Kinds’. Philosophical Psychology, 22, 575–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dotson, K. (2014) ‘Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression’. Social Epistemology, 28, 115–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, B. (2015) The Ant Trap. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, B. (2017) ‘What Are Social Groups? Their Metaphysics and How to Classify Them’. Synthese, 196, 4899–4932.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. (1974) ‘Special Sciences’. Synthese, 28, 97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, M. (1989) On Social Facts. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haslanger, S. (2000) ‘Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?’ Noûs, 34, 31–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, K. (2016) ‘Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman’. Ethics, 126, 394–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, M. A. (2013a) ‘Three Kinds of Social Kinds’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 90, 96–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, M. A. (2013b) Natural Categories and Human Kinds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovacs, David. (2017) ‘Grounding and the Argument from Explanatoriness’. Philosophical Studies, 174, 2927–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, M. (1993) ‘Natural Laws and the Problem of Provisos’. Erkenntnis, 38, 233–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, J. (2019) The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth. New York: Little, Brown & Co.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1983) ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61, 343–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, R. (2016) The Construction of Human Kinds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, K., and Engels, F.. (1970) The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Mills, C. (2000) ‘But What Are You Really?’ Radical Philosophy Today, 1, 23–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikkola, M. (2017) ‘On the Apparent Antagonism between Feminist and Mainstream Metaphysics’. Philosophical Studies, 174, 2435–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. (1975) ‘The Nature of Mental States’. In Putnam, Mind Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 429–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, K. (2013) ‘What Are Groups?’ Philosophical Studies, 166, 257–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, K. (2018) ‘Social Structures and the Ontology of Social Groups’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 100, 402–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2017) ‘Social Construction as Grounding; Or: Fundamentality for Feminists, a Reply to Barnes and Mikkola’. Philosophical Studies, 174, 2449–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, T. (2011) Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, T. (2017) ‘Substantivity in Feminist Metaphysics’. Philosophical Studies, 174, 2467–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, E. (2016) ‘Naturalness in Context’. Inquiry, 59, 319–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, E. (2018) ‘Against Explanatory Realism.’ Philosophical Studies 175, 197–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Witt, C. (2011) The Metaphysics of Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar