The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. -/- However, there (...) are ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Hawley.1Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Although we may have to rely on certain communities, (...) I argue that social construction doesn’t imply a demand for trust because the relevant communities don’t take on any relevant commitments. Bitcoin is indeed trust-free. (shrink)

Social phenomena—quite like mental states in the philosophy of mind—are often regarded as potential troublemakers from the start, particularly if they are approached with certain explanatory commitments, such as naturalism or social individualism, already in place. In this paper, we argue that such explanatory constraints should be at least initially bracketed if we are to arrive at an adequate non-biased description of social phenomena. Legitimate explanatory projects, or so we maintain, such as those of making the social world fit within (...) the natural world with the help of, e.g., collective intentionality, social individualism, and the like, should neither exclude nor influence the prior description of social phenomena. Just as we need a description of the mental that is not biased, for example, by (anti)physicalist constraints, we need a description of the social that is not biased, for example, by (anti)individualist or (anti)naturalist commitments. Descriptive social ontology, as we shall conceive of it, is not incompatible with the adoption of explanatory frameworks in social ontology; rather, the descriptive task, according to our conception, ought to be recognized as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. If social phenomena are, for example, to be reduced to nonsocial (e.g., psychological or physical) phenomena, we need first to understand clearly what the social candidates for the reduction in question are. While such descriptive or naive approaches have been influential in general metaphysics (see Fine 2017), they have so far not been prominent in analytic social ontology (though things are different outside of analytic philosophy, see esp. Reinach (1913). In what follows, we shall outline the contours of a descriptive approach by arguing, first, that description and explanation need to be distinguished as two distinct ways of engaging with social phenomena. Secondly, we defend the claim that the descriptive project ought to be regarded as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. We begin, in Section 2, by considering two different ways of engaging with mental phenomena: a descriptive approach taken by descriptive psychology and an explanatory approach utilized in analytic philosophy of mind. We take these two ways of approaching the study of the mind to be analogous to the distinction we want to draw in social ontology between a descriptive and an explanatory approach to the study of social phenomena. We consider next, in Section 3, how our approach compares to neighboring perspectives that are familiar to us from general metaphysics and philosophy more broadly, such as Aristotle’s emphasis on “saving the appearances”, Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, as well as Fine’s contrast between na¨ive and foundational metaphysics. In Section 4, we apply the proposed descriptive/explanatory distinction to the domain of social ontology and argue that descriptive social ontology ought to take precedence in the order of inquiry over explanatory social ontology. Finally, in Section 5, we consider and respond to several objections to which our account might seem to be susceptible. (shrink)

Macroeconomic traditions disagree on the policies needed for the economy to properly function and how to assess them. In this paper, we contend that these disagreements originate from the social ontological commitments of a theory. The ontology of money underlines these disagreements between Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and mainstream economics. First, we assess MMT’s ontology of money. Next, we identify MMT’s normative commitments and classify MMT’s ontology as a taxonomic definition with thick concepts. Finally, we offer reasons why MMT's ontology (...) of money leads to rivalries with other economic traditions. We argue disagreements on policy are expected, given the ontological differences elaborated. (shrink)

Social ontologists commonly think that our ideas about social entities, and about other people also inhabiting the social realm, play an important role in making those entities into what they are. At the same time, we know that our ideas are often indeterminate in character, which presumably would mean that this indeterminacy should carry over to the social realm. And yet social indeterminacy is a neglected topic in social ontology. It is argued that this neglect can be traced to how (...) a particular approach that favors ahistorical reconstructions in making sense of social entities has come to dominate social ontology. If we think beyond the parameters set by this approach, however, we can see that recognizing indeterminacy as a pervasive phenomenon in the social realm might open up new interpretative possibilities in relation to different social categories. This argument is at least partly in line with recent calls for a move towards nonideal social ontology. (shrink)

In this article, we identify three key design dimensions along which cryptocurrencies differ -- privacy, censorship-resistance, and consensus procedure. Each raises important normative issues. Our discussion uncovers new ways to approach the question of whether Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies should be used as money, and new avenues for developing a positive answer to that question. A guiding theme is that progress here requires a mixed approach that integrates philosophical tools with the purely technical results of disciplines like computer science and (...) economics. Note: this article is the second entry within a two-part sequence on the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Cryptocurrency. (shrink)

In this article, we describe what cryptocurrency is, how it works, and how it relates to familiar conceptions of and questions about money. We then show how normative questions about monetary policy find new expression in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These questions can play a role in addressing not just what money is, but what it should be. A guiding theme in our discussion is that progress here requires a mixed approach that integrates philosophical tools with the purely technical results (...) of disciplines like computer science and economics. Note: this article is the first entry within a two-part sequence on the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Cryptocurrency. (shrink)