•  654
    The metaphysics of social kinds
    Philosophy Compass 11 (12): 841-850. 2016.
    It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosoph…Read more
  •  1170
    Women are not adult human females
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Some philosophers argue that women are adult human females. Call this the Adult Human Female thesis (AHF). The aim of this paper is to show that AHF is false.
  •  112
    Reorienting Deliberation: Identity Politics in Multicultural Societies
    Studies in Social Justice 4 (1): 7-23. 2010.
    Many political theorists argue that cross-cultural communication within multicultural democracies is not best served by a commitment to identity politics. In response, I argue that identity politics only interfere with democratic participation according to an erroneous interpretation of the relationship between identity and reasoning. I argue that recognizing the importance of identity to the intelligibility of reasons offered in the context of civic deliberation is the first step towards the ki…Read more
  •  333
    Two Kinds of Unknowing
    Hypatia 26 (2): 294-307. 2011.
    Miranda Fricker claims that a “gap” in collective hermeneutical resources with respect to the social experiences of marginalized groups prevents members of those groups from understanding their own experiences (Fricker 2007). I argue that because Fricker misdescribes dominant hermeneutical resources as collective, she fails to locate the ethically bad epistemic practices that maintain gaps in dominant hermeneutical resources even while alternative interpretations are in fact offered by non-domin…Read more
  •  231
    Social kinds are essentially mind-dependent
    Philosophical Studies 178 (12): 3975-3994. 2021.
    I defend a novel view of how social kinds (e.g., money, women, permanent residents) depend on our mental states. In particular, I argue that social kinds depend on our mental states in the following sense: it is essential to them that they exist (partially) because certain mental states exist. This analysis is meant to capture the very general way in which all social kinds depend on our mental states. However, my view is that particular social kinds also depend on our mental states in more speci…Read more
  •  119
    Against Social Kind Anti-Realism
    Metaphysics 3 (1): 55-67. forthcoming.
    The view that social kinds (e.g., money, migrant, marriage) are mind-dependent is a prominent one in the social ontology literature. However, in addition to the claim that social kinds are mind-dependent, it is often asserted that social kinds are not real because they are mind-dependent. Call this view social kind anti-realism. To defend their view, social kind anti-realists must accomplish two tasks. First, they must identify a dependence relation that obtains between social kinds and our ment…Read more
  •  1191
    Social Ontology
    In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, Routledge. 2020.
    Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. …Read more
  •  111
    Rejecting the “implicit consensus”: A reply to Jenkins
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 140-147. 2020.
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.