Vincent Tanzil

Intuition is a psychological state that often accompanies some propositions, particularly when engaging in thought experiments. I argue that these intuitive states can sometimes serve as evidence for the propositions they accompany. To support this claim, I present a novel argument for the evidentiary role of intuition: Some philosophical arguments rely solely on intuition for at least one of their premises. Some conclusions from such arguments are justified. If the conclusion of an argument is (i) justified and; (ii) justified by its premises, then premises of that argument are justified. Therefore, all premises of such arguments are justified. If all premises of such arguments are justified, then that implies that some premises of such arguments are justified only by intuition. Therefore, intuitions can justify. One virtue of this argument is that it does not require establishing the nature of intuition before demonstrating that it can be justificatory.

This dissertation argues for an antirealism about socially constructed properties by arguing that it has a more plausible way of addressing the issues of a complete theory of social construction than its realist counterpart. The first chapter lays the groundwork for the dissertation. In this chapter, I lay down the definitions of socially constructed properties, realism, and antirealism about them. Socially constructed properties are those that depend on the collective acceptance or behavior of a society. Realism about socially constructed properties holds that these properties are universals or tropes instantiated in the world. Antirealism, by contrast, denies that such properties are instantiated in the world. The second chapter lists and explains the issues that a complete theory of social construction must address. The issues are: (a) SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION; (b) CONTINGENCY; (c) SOCIAL TRUTH; (d) OBJECTIVITY; (e) CAUSAL POWER; (f) INCONSISTENCY; (g) ETHICS. The third chapter delineates how realism might address these issues. While realism might have straightforward account of most of the issues, I argue that realism fails to address INCONSISTENCY and CAUSAL POWER satisfyingly. If realism is right, then social construction yields genuine properties even when it results in inconsistent properties. However, the world cannot accommodate inconsistent properties. Thus, realism is false. Second, many have claimed that socially constructed properties such as race, gender, and being the president have causal powers. However, I argue that this claim is problematic. The fourth and the final chapter argues that antirealism—of the conceptualist variety—fares better in accounting for these issues. Conceptualism is the view that there are no socially constructed properties, only socially constructed concepts whose application conditions are determined by collective acceptance or behavior of a society. This view readily avoids the issues above: the messiness of the social world does not make the world countenance worldly inconsistencies and socially constructed properties have no causal powers since they do not exist. Moreover, conceptualism is consistent, if not conducive, to the project of resisting oppression based on socially constructed properties.

Social metaphysics raises intriguing questions about realism and antirealism. I focus on properties because other social entities arguably involve the instantiation of socially constructed properties, properties are relevant to discussions of causation, and their reality may have implications for the reality of other social entities. I delineate a possible distinction between socially constructed, social, and nonsocial properties. I outline and then resist recent attempts to revise the criteria for realism and antirealism about such properties, specifically about the mind‐independence criterion for existence, relative frame manipulability, and kind projectibility. Instead, I propose that realism and antirealism about socially constructed properties should be understood in terms of the existence of socially constructed universals or tropes. If we accept this alignment, we can draw on the traditional arguments for and against the existence of specific kinds of properties within a given domain, without having to revise the conditions for realism that we have traditionally relied on.