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A Puzzle for Social Essences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2021

MICHAEL J. RAVEN Open the ORCID record for MICHAEL J. RAVEN [Opens in a new window]
MICHAEL J. RAVEN*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA; UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON [email protected]
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Abstract

The social world contains institutions (nations, clubs), groups (races, genders), objects (talismans, borders), and more. This essay explores a puzzle about the essences of social items. There is widespread consensus against social essences because of problematic presuppositions often made about them. But it is argued that essence can be freed from these presuppositions and their problems. Even so, a puzzle still arises. In a Platonic spirit, essences in general seem detached from the world. In an Aristotelian spirit, social essences in particular seem embedded in the world. The puzzle is that these inclinations are individually plausible but jointly incompatible. The essay has four aims: to clarify and refine the puzzle; to explore the puzzle's implications for essence in general and for social essences in particular; to illustrate the fruitfulness of the general distinction between detached and embedded; and to develop this distinction to sketch a novel solution to the puzzle.

Keywords

social metaphysicsessenceground
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2022 , pp. 128 - 148
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

Thanks to audiences at the 2020 Social Metaphysics Workshop, the 2018 Social Ontology Conference, the 2015 Metaphysics Workshop ‘Artifacts and Metaphysical Explanation’, LOGOS (University of Barcelona), Union College, University of Victoria, and University of Washington, and to Matthew Andler, Kit Fine, Anthony Fisher, Martin Glazier, Aaron Griffith, Eric Hochstein, Katharine Jenkins, Kathrin Koslicki, Colin Marshall, Rebecca Mason, Conor Mayo-Wilson, Asya Passinsky, Dee Payton, Kevin Richardson, Cliff Roberts, Alex Skiles, Katie Stockdale, and anonymous referees and editors for their advice. Research for this essay was supported by a Social Science and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant for ‘The Essence of Anti-Essentialism’ (with Kathrin Koslicki), the Canadian Metaphysics Collaborative, and a University of Victoria Humanities Faculty Fellowship.

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