Sally Haslanger

Under conditions of ideology, a standard model of normative political epistemology—relying on a domain-specific reflective equilibrium—risks status-quo bias. Social critique requires a more critical standpoint. What are the aims of social critique? How is such a standpoint achieved and what grounds its claims? One way of achieving a critical standpoint is through consciousness raising. Consciousness raising offers a paradigm shift in our understanding of the social world; but not all epistemic practices that appear to “raise” consciousness are warranted. However, under certain conditions sketched in the chapter, consciousness raising produces a warranted critical standpoint and a _pro tanto_ claim against others. This is an important epistemic achievement, yet under conditions of collective self-governance, there is no guarantee that all warranted claims can be met simultaneously. There will be winners and losers even after legitimate democratic processes have been followed.

Jane Addams’ broadside, “Women and Public Housekeeping” (1910), argues that household tasks keeping women out of the public realm also provide knowledge that would make them excellent city leaders. This is an early example of feminist epistemology that provides a social critique that tackles gender bias and also challenges assumptions about where to find excellent philosophy (in part due to its very form as a broadside, reflecting the need for women to keep their non-housework efforts brief). Addams’ work is also an example of philosophy that might help advance women in politics, since it states men’s military conception of government should give way to public housekeeping. Finally, Addams challenges the public/private distinction that has burdened political philosophy and leads to gendered concepts of work and labor that don’t serve communities well. Civic housekeeping must learn from private housekeeping, and in turn such municipal participation would enrich women’s lives.

The general question about how societies reproduce themselves is highly relevant to law, for law is one of the primary tools we rely on for both stabilising and changing social systems. Of course, because law is backed by the coercive power of the state, it can have a significant impact. But law alone is not the unique source of social stability and change, and for it to have the impact we might want, we need an understanding of the multiple forces at work in the process of societal reproduction. This article explores the multiple dynamics that are relevant to social transformation, arguing that it is a mistake to think that the social forces governing society are located in our collective intentionality. Instead, as social subjects, we participate in and are shaped by social practices that have both a cultural dimension and a material dimension which produce stable equilibria through their looping effects. Law can prompt social transformation in multiple ways, including changing social meanings and material constraints, but its success in doing so is more likely if it sees itself as one force among many that affect the evolution of the complex systems that constitute societies.

In his essay, ‘Equity and Marxist Buddhism’, Tzu-wei Hung argues that Marxist Buddhism brings a commitment to social justice together with a distinctive form of virtue theory. In my commentary, I raise several questions from a Marxian perspective: (1) Might it be argued that Marxist Buddhism is (in the critical sense) ideological (similar to religion) because the spiritual goal of ‘transcendence’ distracts us from the need to fight for emancipation? (2) Can justice as equity be achieved by promoting individual altruism? (3) Aren’t both mainstream accounts of justice and Marxist Buddhism aspirational and so need to rely on non-ideal theory to achieve justice?

This chapter presents an interview with renowned philosopher Sally Haslanger, exploring her intellectual journey and contributions to philosophy. The conversation delves into her experiences navigating academic institutions, addressing issues such as stereotype threat and gender bias in the field. Haslanger elaborates on her interdisciplinary approach, emphasizing the importance of integrating feminist theory, metaphysics, and social epistemology. She reflects on the evolution of her philosophical perspective, particularly her engagement with critical theory and political philosophy. The interview also touches on the challenges of public discourse in philosophy, the role of philosophers in society, and the significance of hope and activism in striving for a more just world. Through her responses, Haslanger provides a compelling narrative of her career, highlighting the interplay between personal motivation, academic rigor, and social impact.

This paper explores the concept of gender as both enabling and constraining within social structures influenced by norms and meanings that shape our actions and identities. It argues that social structures, framed as networks of practices, establish relations which often embody sites of injustice by distributing power and opportunities unfairly. The paper further addresses how structural power and social injustice, particularly regarding gender, emerge through practices and norms deeply embedded in cultural frameworks. Finally, the paper discusses mechanisms of social critique and change, emphasizing the role of collective action in challenging dominant norms and ideologies.

In this chapter, Sally Haslanger engages comprehensively with the papers critiquing and analyzing her philosophical work. She offers detailed clarifications, robust defenses, and expansions on her original theses, directly addressing the key challenges and misconceptions raised by her interlocutors. Through this dialogical engagement, the chapter elucidates not only the robustness and adaptability of her philosophical framework but also its capacity to inspire ongoing debate and refinement. Haslanger particularly focuses on questions pertaining to meaning, normativity, ideology critique as well as social construction.

This chapter considers, within an externalist semantics, several ways we might understand the project of improving our concepts to promote greater justice. The tools that culture provides us with—such as language, concepts, and inferential patterns—provide frames for coordination and shape our interaction. There are multiple ways these tools can fail us, for example by the limited structure of options they make intelligible. However, we can sometimes reconfigure the resources so that our practical orientations are more responsive to what is good and coordinate in ways that are just. Such reconfiguration often happens in law; it also occurs in social movements, counter-publics, subaltern communities, and in fascist propaganda. Contestation over meaning is not “mere semantics” for—together with political and material change—it can shape our agency and our lives together.

Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.

What is the best method for undertaking critical social theory, and what are its ontological and normative commitments? Andreas Reckwitz has developed compelling answers to these questions drawing on practice theory. As a practice theorist myself, I am very sympathetic to his approach. This paper sketches a social theory that extends the reach of practice theory to include non-human animals and allows us to discriminate between importantly different kinds of social formations. In doing so, I argue that a strongly normative basis for differentiating social phenomena is compatible with the methods of social theory and critical social theorists need not shy away from first-order moral commitments.

This paper provides an account of social practices that reveals how they are constitutive of social agency, enable coordination around things of value, and are a site for social intervention. The social world, on this account, does not begin when psychologically sophisticated individuals interact to share knowledge or make plans. Instead, culture shapes agents to interpret and respond both to each other and the physical world around us. Practices shape us as we shape them. This provides resources for understanding why social practices tend to be stable, but also reveals sites and opportunities for change. (Challenge social meanings! Intervene in the material conditions!)

This chapter considers several ways, within a Stalnakerian externalist semantics, we might understand the project of improving our concepts to promote greater justice. The tools that culture provides us—language, concepts, inferential patterns—provide frames for coordination and shape our interaction. There are multiple ways these tools can fail us, e.g. by the limited structure of possibilities and options they make intelligible. However, we can sometimes reconfigure the resources so that our practical orientations are more responsive to what is good and coordinate in ways that are just. This chapter argues that, in some cases, the necessary amelioration is epistemic, but in other cases it is properly semantic. Such reconfiguration often happens in law; it also occurs in social movements, counter-publics, subaltern communities, and in fascist propaganda. Contestation over meaning is not ‘mere semantics’ for—together with political and material change—it can shape our agency and our lives together.