DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axp042, Khalidi, MA. Speakers do not refer to the same kind, with different essential properties in different worlds. The author has no competing interests to declare. Indeed, according to Searle, mere causal mind-dependence does not justify the claim that social kinds are not real (Searle 1995, 156). Metaphysics, vol. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 40(2): 244–264. In: Margolis, E and Laurence, S (eds. 2017. Oxford University Press. I argue that none of these captures the sense in which social kinds fail to be real according to social kind anti-realists. In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is an epistemological position first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. Ground. Passinsky, A. Many millennia ago, there were different social conventions, and different kinds of objects were money. 19th-20th Century Realism and Anti-Realism ... -Chekhov started his literary career writing short stories to . Philosophy of Science and Race. In that case, social kind anti-realists may have reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons—their argument is invalid. But social kinds may be unreal (in some sense) for different reasons. In: Sperber, D, Premack, D and Premack, AJ (eds. These facts obtain anyway, regardless of what we may think. 55–67. Several of the essays collected in Haslanger (2012), as well as Guala (2014), Khalidi (2010, 2013, 2015, 2016); Mallon (2003, 2016); and Root (2000) defend the thesis that social kinds are mind-dependent, but not that they are unreal. Most often, the sense of reality that social kinds are supposed to lack is characterized figuratively. But the existence of d does not depend on the set which contains d alone—to the contrary, the existence of the set depends on the existence of the dollar bill (Fine 1995). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511998553, Khalidi, MA. Similarly, it is matter of convention that bills issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are money—indeed, it is a matter of convention that anything (e.g., bits of paper, gold coins, cowry shells, etc.) The case against MD1 is quite simple: two entities can be modally correlated without one being dependent on the other (Fine 1995). Mallon, R. 2003. I will argue that Einheuser’s two-dimensional framework does not support MD2. In section 3, I consider two ways of analyzing the way in which social kinds are supposed to depend on our mental states: a modal-existential relation and a ground-theoretic relation. Though it is tempting to regard conferred properties, and conferred property kinds, as metaphysically second rate, this is not yet a reason to believe that they are unreal. The Journal of Philosophy, 70(19): 699–711. : opposition to or deliberate eschewal of realism especially in art and literature There are as many different varieties of antirealism as there are of realism—perhaps more. Thus, what social kind anti-realists deny is that social kinds are ‘out there.’ They argue that facts about them do not obtain ‘anyway, regardless of what we may think.’ Rather, the way in which social kinds depend on our mental states is such that our minds ‘constitute’ or ‘construct’ them. 351–383. Bellarmine advocated an antirealist interpretation of Copernicus’s heliocentrism—as a useful instrument that saved the phenomena—whereas Galileo advocated a realist interpretation—the planets really do orbit the sun. For example, MD2 says that it is conventional that money is a commonly used medium of exchange and measure and store of value. 2008. According to MD2, social kinds do not exist ‘out there’ independently of what we may think about them. Mind, 100(4): 587–626. 109–136. On the Nature of Social Kinds. 2013. 2003a. 25Moreover, if, as I suspect, Searle’s distinction between ontologically subjective and ontologically objective features of the world simply corresponds to the distinction between mind-dependent and mind-independent features, then the claim that conferred property kinds are ontologically subjective is equivalent to the claim that those kinds are mind-dependent and does not offer any independent reason for thinking that such kinds are unreal. Philosophical Perspectives, 23(2): 95–125. The arguments in this paper provide further reasons to support Khalidi’s conclusion. Pettit, P. 1991. However, because it is a modal-existential relation, the arguments presented in this section undermine it as well. A Framework for Social Ontology. To demonstrate that this is the case, I consider three prominent ways of characterizing the realism/anti-realism distinction. On her view, an individual is a woman in a context, C, because we perceive her to be a woman in that context.24 Specifically, the property of being a woman is conferred on a subject, S, if S is perceived to have some other property, which Ásta calls the base property (in her earlier work, these properties were called “grounding properties”). is money. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139149136.008. Raven, MJ. The poet and writer Heinrich Heine tried in his books to accept the world as it is instead of trying to escape from it. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 4(1): 73–122. Interactive Kinds. “Against Social Kind Anti-realism”. Ásta. A carving, c, is an abstraction from the actual conceptual conventions of the world in question. 2008b. Given this two-dimensional framework, MD2 can be understood as follows. Journal of the American Philosophical Association. Rather, w′ is a world in which speakers refer to a different kind (i.e., K2) by a word which is homonymous with our word-form ‘money,’ and express a different concept by their use of it. Philosophers’ Imprint, 1(1): 1–30. But What Are You Really? According to him, the scientific knowledge has to be at least in principle, if principle or theory is refutable and the logic behind no matter how large is empirical evidence, scientist does not attempt to prove or make their theory plausible by means of observations and experiments. Searle, J. Anti-realism in science. Lanham: Roman & Littlefield Publishing, Inc. pp. Astá defends the thesis that the property of being a man and the property of being a woman are conferred properties (Ásta 2013, 2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892631.001.0001, Hayek, F. 1943. This is because proponents of social kind anti-realism do not argue that social kinds fail to be real because our thoughts cause them to exist. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7: 131–193. Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Schaffer, J. Gideon Rosen describes the distinction between realism and anti-realism as follows: What the realist mainly claims is the right to say things like this: “Our discourse about X concerns a domain of fact that is out there. For example, the essence of Queen Elizabeth II (say, her biological origin) specifies what it is to be Queen Elizabeth II, as opposed to Queen Elizabeth I, or Queen Victoria. As such, it does not support social kind anti-realism. ), Blackness Visible. Dispositional Theories of Value. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/met.30. Mallon, R. 2016. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/met.30, Mason, Rebecca. In other words, even if MD3 accomplishes the Dependence Task, it does not accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55(1): 73–85. Although modal correlation is (defeasible) evidence of the presence of a dependence relation, it does not constitute such a relation. You’re looking at a computer screen. 2015. I consider several ways of accomplishing the Dependence Task. Although inhabitants of w might call XYZ by a word which is homonymous with our word ‘water,’ XYZ is not water, and our concept WATER doesn’t apply to it (Putnam 1973, 1975; Burge 1986). The Meaning of ‘Meaning’. 26Many discussions of response-dependence concern response-dependent concepts, see Johnston (1989), Pettit (1991), Wedgwood (1997), and Wright (1992). Moreover, social conventions may change in the future such that there ceases to be any permanent residents. In Hoeltje, M, Schnieder, B and Steinberg, A (eds. The same goes for any property that is essential to being K. If we have no control over which properties are essential to being K (because we have no control over which properties K has necessarily), then we cannot determine which properties are essential to being K— a fortiori we cannot determine which properties are essential to being K by the way in which we use our terms and apply our concepts. 21An anonymous reviewer worries that I am not entitled to assume that social kinds are individuated by their essential properties. Moreover, social conventions may change such that bills issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing cease to be money. For example, according to the collective acceptance view, something is money only if we collectively accept that some conditions (e.g., being a bill issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing) suffice for being money.12 If we collectively accept that being a bill issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is sufficient for being money, then anything that is a bill issued by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is money. However, this claim is not equivalent to social kind anti-realism. Ian Hacking (1999, p. 4Social kind anti-realism is a prominent view in the literature, but it is not the only view. 2016. That is, world w′ = is not a world in which kind, K1, (i.e., money) has different essential properties, as determined by our conceptual conventions in that world. With respect to each relation, I argue that either it fails to accomplish the Dependence Task, or it fails to accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. Anti-realism is defined in disagreement with realism; it is any position that is comprised of either the renunciation of an unprejudiced reality or the renunciation that verification-hypothetical assertions are false or true. 2006. Ethics, 54(1): 1–13. The essential properties of an individual are what it is to be that very individual, as opposed to some other individual. In this section, I want to reconsider MD2 by appeal to a framework devised by Iris Einheuser to defend what she calls ‘conventionalism,’ the view that ‘some aspects of reality depend on our conventions’ (2006: 460). Other articles where Antirealism is discussed: philosophy of religion: Realism and antirealism: A renewed concern of philosophers of religion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries was to determine the sense in which religious claims may be said to be true. Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth- century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/0199251878.003.0002, Putnam, H. 1973. For example, it is not the case that racism and recessions exist only if we have thoughts about racism and recessions. For ease of exposition, I will treat grounding as a relational predicate, and I will take the relata of the grounding relation to be facts: (MD1-G) A kind, K, is mind-dependent =df The fact that an entity, x, is K is grounded in the fact that we collectively accept that some conditions, c1…cn, suffice for being K.17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9230-4, Ásta. Protosociology, 18/19: 269–440. 7Though I argue that social kind anti-realism is not well-justified, we should not therefore conclude that social kinds are real after all. However, it does not follow that my belief that Sacramento is the capital of California is not real.18 Thus, revising the collective acceptance view by appeal to the notion of ground does not support social kind anti-realism. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190256791.001.0001, Audi, P. 2012. In such contexts, whether the property of being a woman is conferred on someone depends on whether others perceive them as identifying as a woman. Oxford University Press. 53–68. No Work for a Theory of Grounding. According to Ásta, ‘the property of being an essential property of an object—essentiality—is conferred. To defend conventionalism, Einheuser calls attention to two ways in which modal claims can be evaluated. Thus, K1 and K2 are different kinds that have different essential properties, not the same kind with different essential properties. Rather, the main targets of my critique are those philosophers who maintain that a social kind, K, exists but is not real. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67(3): 580–609. Many millennia ago, there were no permanent residents because the relevant social conventions were not in place. I surveyed several ways of defining the relation that is supposed to obtain between social kinds and our mental states and argued that each proposal either fails to accomplish the Dependence Task or fails to accomplish the Anti-Realist Task. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Thus, MD2 does not identify the way in which social kinds depend on our mental states. Individuals ostensibly acquire the essential properties of being a permanent resident by agreement or decree. Indeed, these considerations demonstrate that no modal existential analysis of mind-dependence can accomplish the Dependence Task. Rather, some other property, say, the property of being yellow, is essential to being money. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In this section, I consider an alternative relation of mind-dependence drawn from Ásta’s work on the metaphysics of social properties (2008, 2013, 2018). However, she maintains that ‘a more robust realism is…often thought to require that there be a world that not only exists, but also has a certain structure independently of the mental’ (2003b: 582). Koslicki, K. 2013. 2010. Successful thought amounts to the detection of something real, as opposed to a projection onto the real of our own peculiar or subjective perspective…” And so on down the list of familiar words and pictures. However, MD2 says something much stronger than this. Likewise, to say that the property of being a woman is response-dependent is to say that being a woman is the property of being disposed (under the relevant conditions) to produce the perception (in the relevant subjects) that some individual is a woman. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2026694, Cooper, R. 2004. As such, anyone who wishes to defend social kind anti-realism must provide an alternative explanation of how social kinds depend on our mental states in a way that impugns their reality. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9068-y, Searle, J. In the preceding sections, I considered two prominent ways of analyzing the relation that is supposed to obtain between social kinds and our mental states. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01317.x, Ásta. pp. Trogdon, K. 2013. 57–68. In the actual world, when c@ is applied to s@, the properties of being a commonly used medium of exchange is essential to money. Similarly, John Searle argues that social kinds are not real because they “only are what they are, because that is what we believe that they are” (Searle 2007: 4). Kinds defined in terms of conferred properties (i.e., conferred property kinds) are mind-dependent in the following sense: (MD3) A kind, K, is mind-dependent =df Being F is a conferred property and being F is essential to being K. According to MD3, a kind, K, is mind-dependent when at least one of its essential properties is a conferred property. 15Work by Audi (2012), Fine (2012), Koslicki (2013), Raven (2012), Rosen (2010), Schaffer (2009), and Wilson (2014) provide some early discussions of grounding and inspired debate concerning the existence and nature of ground. Consider the social kind permanent resident. Second, in the idiom of grounding, social kind anti-realism is the thesis that social kinds are not real because they are grounded in our mental states. Essence and Modality. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 97(2): 393–409. 12Francesco Guala (2010, 2014) also argues that collective acceptance of some conditions c1…cn is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of social kinds. Does it accomplish the Anti-Realist Task as well? In other words, magical realism can be defined as stories rooted in reality—with a touch of, well, magic. Specifically, someone is a permanent resident of say, the United States, because the appropriate individual(s) at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agree or declare that she is authorized to live and work in the United States permanently, although she is not a U.S. citizen. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/95.1.269, Fine, K. 2012. Mind-Dependent is irrelevant to the world //doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12220, Root, M. 2000 water and electrons not... Between them and our mental states are about the kinds, their instances, both or neither particular bill... 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