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Critical social ontology

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Abstract

Critical social ontology is any study of social ontology that is done in order to critique ideology or end social injustice. The goal of this paper is to outline what I call the fundamentality approach to critical social ontology. On the fundamentality approach, social ontologists are in the business of distinguishing between appearances and (fundamental) reality. Social reality is often obscured by the acceptance of ideology, where an ideology is a distorted system of beliefs that leads people to promote or accept widespread social injustices. Social reality is also obscured in cases where ordinary thought and language simply is not perspicuous enough to represent the social objects, kinds, and structures that are central to understanding social injustice. In both cases, I argue that the critical social ontologist will benefit from using the tools and concepts of fundamental metaphysics.

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Notes

  1. Barnes (2014, 2017), Mikkola (2017), Sider (2017), Schaffer (2017), Griffith (2018), Passinsky (2021) and Richardson (2023).

  2. This interpretation of ancient Greek metaphysics is essentially the one found in Aristotle (2016, p. A6), but for more recent detailed accounts, see (Dancy, 2004; Irwin, 1977; Silverman, 2009).

  3. Here is a small sample of philosophers who argue that ordinary objects do not exist: (Benovsky, 2018; Cowling, 2014; Dorr, 2005; Inwagen, 1990; Merricks, 2001; Turner, 2011).

  4. For surveys of the vast literature on grounding, see Trogdon (2013), Raven (2015) and Bliss & Trogdon (2014).

  5. Lewis (1983, 1984), Sider (2011) and Dorr & Hawthorne (2013).

  6. There are those who speak in terms of real definition generic identity, and essence. For a sample of recent literature, see: (Correia and Skiles, 2019; Dorr, 2016; Fine, 2015; Rayo, 2013; Rosen, 2015).

  7. Example due to Inwagen (1990, pp. 101–102).

  8. I am thinking of truthmaker theorists like Cameron (2010), specifically.

  9. See Thomasson (2010) for an account of the conceptual analysis approach.

  10. Witt (2011), Haslanger (2012) and Mikkola (2015, 2016).

  11. See Bettcher (2013) and Dembroff (2018) for further discussion of oppressive gender kinds.

  12. The conceptual engineering literature is massive. For surveys, see: (Burgess and Plunkett, 2013a, b; Cappelen et al., 2019; Isaac et al., 2022).

  13. There is no standard way to make the distinction I am making. Isaac et al. (2022) distinguishes between goals and purposes. Koch (2021) directly distinguishes between semantic and practical goals, though his notion of practical goals is narrower than mine.

  14. Example Marcuse (1955), Horkheimer (1972) and Adorno (1973, 2016).

  15. Though see Burman (2023) for a recent corrective to this trend.

  16. Barnes (2014), Barnes (2017) and Mikkola (2017).

  17. Sider (2017), Schaffer (2017), Griffith (2018) and Passinsky (2021).

  18. See Passinsky (2021) for an articulation of this view.

  19. Sider (2017) and Richardson (2023).

  20. It is common to require an ideological belief to be caused by the social structures it purports to justify. See Geuss (1981) and Elster (1986, pp. 168–169).

  21. See Stoljar (1995) for a review of this debate.

  22. For this kind of critique of essentialism, see Spelman (1988), Harris (1990) and Grillo (1995).

  23. See Witt (2010), Passinsky (2021) and Mason (2021).

  24. For discussion of this possibility, see Thomasson (2017) and Scharp (2019).

  25. Or at least, we cannot appeal to the folk notion of feminized in a context in which there is no such notion publicly available. However, as a reviewer points out, the folk may well begin talking about the property feminized The fact that the folk are not currently talking about a property does not mean that they can never talk or have intuitions about it. My claim is twofold: (i) that we do not have to wait on the folk to start talking about feminized in order to theorize about it, in fundamental terms; (ii) even if the folk had intuitions about feminized, we may want an analysis of feminized, in which case the fundamentality approach would be useful.

  26. As a reviewer noted: it may not be that people have folk views about gender kinds, either. In such a case, the things I say about the fundamentality approach will apply to the case of gender kinds.

  27. Barnes (2017, p. 2428) explicitly discusses the case of equistructurality and takes it to count against the naturalness framework. Though see Sider (2017) and Richardson (2023) for responses.

  28. Fine (2017a, p. 106) criticizes the tendency of fundamentality theorists to speak as if fundamentality inquiry is the only or most important form of metaphysical theorizing. I suspect such a tendency is responsibility for the common equivocation of what is metaphysically fundamental and what is theoretically fundamental (for metaphysicians).

  29. For recent discussions of subject matter, see Yablo (2014, pp. 23–44), Fine (2017b) and Brast-McKie (2021).

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Richardson, K. Critical social ontology. Synthese 201, 204 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04197-0

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