How to Project a Socially Constructed Sexual Orientation

Was bisexuality a widespread feature of ancient Greek society? This question is an instance of cross-cultural projection -- of taking the means through which people are categorized in one culture and applying it to members of another. It’s widely held by those who think that sexual orientation is socially constructed that its projection poses a problem. In this paper, I offer a more careful analysis of this alleged problem. To analyze projection, I adapt Iris Einheuser’s substratum-carving model of conventionalism to fit the specific needs of social construction (and social metaphysics more broadly). Using this model, I show that projection is conceptually coherent, and so does not for that reason pose any problem. Along the way, I identify some of the epistemic difficulties facing projection. While these difficulties are formidable, they are not substantially affected by the constructivist claim. I therefore conclude that there is no unique problem facing the projection of a socially constructed sexual orientation.

Individualistic and Structural Explanations in Ásta’s Categories We Live By

AbstractÁsta’s Categories We Live By is a superb addition to the literature on social metaphysics. In it she offers a powerful framework for understanding the creation and maintenance of social categories. In this commentary piece, I want to draw attention to Ásta’s reliance on explanatory individualism – the view that the social world is best explained by the actions and attitudes of individuals. I argue that this reliance makes it difficult for Ásta to explain how many social categories are maintained and why certain categories are reliably available to us and so resistant to change. These explanatory deficiencies could be overcome, I argue, by eschewing explanatory individualism and positing social structures to figure in structural explanations of the maintenance and availability of social categories.

Young, Gilbert, and Social Groups

In this paper I critique the concept of social groups deployed by Iris Marion Young in her well-known theory of the five faces of oppression. I contend that Young’s approach to conceptualizing social groups creates arbitrary and inconsistent categories, essentializes certain groups, and fails to take seriously the complexity of pluralism. I propose that Margaret Gilbert’s work in social metaphysics provides a more philosophically robust account of social groups that serves as a helpful corrective to Young’s approach. Gilbert’s account of “we”-ness, as well as her theory of the nature of individuals and collectivities, provides a helpful vantage point for critiquing Young’s project and its emphasis on the social process of differentiation in the formation of social groups.

Optimism for Naturalized Social Metaphysics: A Reply to Hawley

Metaphysics has undergone two major innovations in recent decades. First, naturalistic metaphysicians have argued that our best science provides an important source of evidence for metaphysical theories. Second, social metaphysicians have begun to explore the nature of social entities such as groups, institutions, and social categories. Surprisingly, these projects have largely kept their distance from one another. Katherine Hawley has recently argued that, unlike the natural sciences, the social sciences are not sufficiently successful to provide evidence about the metaphysical nature of social entities. By contrast, I defend an optimistic view of naturalistic social metaphysics. Drawing on a case study of research into contextual effects in social epidemiology, I show that social science can provide a valuable evidence for social metaphysicians.

O sociologické imaginaci

This article discusses the controversy of the sociological imagination as it was developed by Charles Wright Mills and its relevance for the current epistemology of social science. His notion of the sociological imagination has several problems due to the unreflected general prejudice distinguishing between structure and subjectivity, which creates from sociology a kind of social metaphysics. As a result, social context is conceptualised as an unproblematic domain used for the rationalisation of an actor’s behaviour and knowledge, and the sociological imagination gives the sociologist an absolute critical position which situates him paradoxically in the name of justice and freedom against humanity.

Not In Their Name

Given their size and influence, states are able to inflict harm far beyond the reach of a single individual. But there is a great deal of unclarity about exactly who is implicated in that kind of harm, and how we should think about both culpability and responsibility for it. The idea of popular sovereignty is dominant in classical political theory. It is a commonplace assumption that democratic publics both authorize and have control over what their states do; that their states act in their name and on their behalf. Not In Their Name approaches these assumptions from the perspective of social metaphysics, asking whether the state is a collective agent, and whether ordinary citizens are members of that agent. If it is, and they are, there is a clear case for democratic collective culpability. The book explores alternative conceptions of the state and of membership in the state; alternative conceptions of collective agency applied to the state; the normative implications of membership in the state; and both culpability (from the inside) and responsibility (from the outside) for what the state does. Ultimately, Not In Their Name argues for the exculpation of ordinary citizens and the inculpation of those working in public services, and defends a particular distribution of culpability from government to its members.