I Don't Want You to Always Call Me

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LZ Granderson: Small differences in how we divide labor or how we organize our time can make a difference, and can have elements of justice in it as well. LZ: It's not going to make sense for the state to say, ok, everybody has to have breakfast at eight and lunch at noon and dinner at six. So you've got to find ways to sort of manage this. You so are my family going to then start having just a snack in them in the evening when our traditions have been big meals in the evening, et cetera. How do you do this? And there's also restaurant times. If you want to have lunch at three 30 in the

Reality is just out there — but how we perceive reality and talk about it depends on choices we human beings make. We decide (consciously or not) to conceptualize the world in certain ways, whether it’s because those ways provide elegant predictive descriptions or because they serve a more subtle political purpose. To get at the true nature of reality, therefore, it’s important to think about which aspects of it are socially constructed, and why. I talk with Sally Haslanger about these issues, and the techniques we can use to understand the world and make it a better place.

Update (22 March): Our discussion here could have (and did) leave some listeners with the wrong impression of how Sally and I feel about trans rights -- we are entirely for them! My fault for not making things more clear during the conversation. So I have added a brief note during the podcast intro to make our position perfectly explicit. Thanks to everyone who commented.

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Sally Haslanger received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Ford Professor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among her awards are the Carus Lectureship, the Distinguished Woman Philosopher award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of several books, including Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique.

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