Is Everything Socially Constructed?

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So it sounds like, in this sense of social constructiona various aspects of a body or a person are the ones that are socially stucted. And for obvious reasons, that seems very important a but i know there are people out there who will tell me that quarks and leptons and atoms and particles are socially constructed. No, no, and i'm not, i would like to say that not everything is socially constructed,. There are plenty of things in the world that aren't socially constructed. drawing some kind of distinction between those that are and those that aren't is tricky. But i think it falls somewhere out there.

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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