Kevin Richardson (Duke University), "Critical social ontology"
Synthese, 2023
Social ontology is the philosophical study of the social world. What are social groups? What are social institutions? Is there such a thing as a group belief? What does it mean for race and gender to be socially constructed? These are some of the questions discussed by social ontologists like me.
One recent issue in social ontology has surrounded the role of ethical and political values in our theorizing. Some social ontologists theorize with explicitly political values and motivations in mind. For example, feminist metaphysicians claim that they seek theories of gender that help end of the oppression of women. This kind of theorizing is called critical social ontology; it is social ontology that is explicitly done in order to critique society or end social injustice.
Many have worried about the methodology of critical social ontology. The obvious problem with introducing values into ontology is that those values threaten to distort the ontological facts. Traditionally, ontology is about what the world is like, not what we want the world to be like. Whether free will exists does not depend on whether it would be good if free will existed. The nature of time does not depend on what theory of time would be most practically expedient for us.
Similarly, you might think it is a mistake to let values influence social ontology. What social categories are does not depend on what social categories we want there to be. A theory about the natural of social institutions is not a theory of what social institutions are just. Critical social ontology is a mistaken enterprise, from this perspective, because it misunderstands or corrupts the goal of ontology. For example, the feminist who is theorizing about the nature of gender is likely to read her political goals into reality itself. This is a bad result.
In my paper, “Critical Social Ontology,” I aim to vindicate critical social ontology and the traditional view of ontology. I argue that the presence of explicit moral and political values does not tarnish the objectivity or factuality of the inquiry. Values can shape what kinds of questions we ask. Values can also shape the answers we give to those questions. However, values cannot, by themselves, settle what answers are appropriate; we need descriptive facts to enter the picture.
The skepticism of critical social ontology stems from the fact that there are many cases in which our values distort reality. In my paper, I consider the case of gender ideology. Women have often been thought to be innately predisposed to be caring and maternal. This belief has supported laws and conventions that overwhelmingly hold women responsible for childcare and childrearing. Those who believe that women ought to be responsible for childcare are happy to endorse ideology to this effect.
However, there are many people who reject this idea as harmful ideology. They are motivated to discover the fact that women are not innately disposed to being caring or maternal. In some cases, our values can motivate us to identify certain beliefs as distortions of reality. If you care about gender equality, you are more likely to consider the hypothesis that gender differences are not innately fixed by sex. The hypothesis will be true or false, independently of your motivations, but you may not be in a position to discover that it is false until you are sufficiently motivated.
Does this mean that the ethical and political perspectives that we prefer will necessarily vindicate all of the factual assumptions that they presuppose? No. Critical social ontology is a form of inquiry, not a form of propaganda. As a consequence, we cannot know in advance that our inquiries will result in conclusions that would be politically advantageous to us. To end racial injustice, it may be important to talk about races as if they exist. This does not imply that races do exist, or that a theory of the nature of race must make it plausible that races exist. Rather, we might discover that races do not exist, that they are utterly discredited as categories. In that case, we must adjust our ethical and political perspectives in accordance with social reality.
Inconvenient facts – whether metaphysical or otherwise – are not a distinctive challenge to critical social ontology; they are a challenge to all human inquiry. There is always a practical concern shaping our inquiry, and there is always a possibility that we get answers that frustrate our practical concerns. Facts about climate change are, as Al Gore famously said, inconvenient truths. The inconvenient truths of climate change are like the inconvenient truths of social ontology: we should not ignore or resist them, even when their acceptance is in tension with our ethical and political visions.
One might observe: If some theory of social ontology entails or permits social injustice, then that theory of social ontology should be subjected to critique. One might then observe that both modus ponens and modus pollens are applicable here.