Mark Chan (St. Hugh's College): 'Sui generis social joint-carving'
Abstract: Ted Sider (2017) defends the view that his account of structure is compatible with social metaphysics being substantive. Because higher-level social concepts, he suggests, can be functionally defined in more fundamental terms, social kinds such as gender and race can count as joint-carving within his framework. But a residual issue remains: can higher-level joint-carving really be reduced to lower-level, fundamental joint-carving? In this paper, I argue that it cannot. Since some concepts can be explanatorily powerful at higher levels without being so at lower levels, social joint-carving is irreducible to lower-level joint-carving. I then sketch an alternative account on which social joints are sui generis.
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Ockham Society Convenors: Jack Tristani, Yuxin Tang and Meredith Ross-James | Ockham Society Webpage
