The Scalar Theory of Social Categories

We live in a world in which the boundaries of race, gender, and sexual orientation are increasingly being contested. Commonly accepted social binaries—man/woman, black/white, heterosexual/homosexual—are proving to be a fraught way to understand social identity. In a series of recent papers, I argue for a philosophical alternative to binary conceptions of social identity. On my proposed scalar (or continuous) theory of social identity, social identities come in degrees; e.g., one is not simply a man, but one is a man to a lesser or greater degree.  The scalar theory allows us to make sense of racial, sexual, and gender social identities that are often obscured by social binaries.

I have also written about the material nature of social groups and institutions.

Publications

• (Forthcoming) Ontological Erasure, Ergo.
  • ​In recent social metaphysics, philosophers have described forms of injustice that hold partly in virtue of metaphysical considerations: ontological oppression, ontological injustice, categorical injustice, and so on. The goal of this paper is to introduce another form of metaphysical injustice: ontological erasure. Ontological erasure occurs when an individual is wronged in virtue of it being indeterminate whether they are a member of a socially constructed group. My primary example of erasure concerns gendered groups that do not account for the possibility of trans people. In such cases, it is not that trans identity is considered and rejected; rather, the category of trans identity is ignored entirely.
    
• (2022) Social Groups are Concrete Material Particulars, Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
  • ​It is common to think that social groups are concrete material particulars; for example, the chess club consists entirely of its members (or a fusion thereof). But such views, whether they take groups to be fusions or pluralities, suffer from a coincidence objection. Suppose the chess club and nature club have the same members. Intuitively, these are different clubs even though they have a common material basis. Some philosophers take these intuitions to show that the materialist view must be abandoned. Other philosophers give a linguistic explanation of these intuitions. I propose an alternative explanation. Social groups are concrete material particulars, but we should provide a psychological, rather than linguistic, explanation of non-identity intuitions. On the psychological theory, social groups appear coincident but non-identical because they are perceived to be governed by conflicting social norms.
    
• (2022) The Metaphysics of Gender is (Relatively) Substantial, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
  • According to Sider, a question is metaphysically substantive just in case it has a single most natural answer. Recently, Barnes and Mikkola have argued that, given this notion of substantivity, many of the central questions in the metaphysics of gender are nonsubstantive. Specifically, it is plausible that gender pluralism—the view that there are multiple, equally natural gender kinds—is true, but this view seems incompatible with the substantivity of gender. The goal of this paper is to argue that the notion of substantivity can be understood in a way that accommodates gender pluralism. First, I claim that gender terms (at least as used in the ontology room) are referentially indeterminate, where referential indeterminacy holds in virtue of the way the world is. Second, I propose a degree-theoretic (or scalar) account of metaphysical substantivity; genders are substantial to the degree that they are determinate. I conclude that gender is relatively, although not absolutely, substantial.
    

Grounding Pluralism

Publications

Dependence is said in many ways.

• Donating to charity is right because it promotes happiness.
• It’s true that people exist or unicorns exist because it’s true that people exist.
• The ball is colored in virtue of being red.

Many philosophers take these claims to be underwritten by kind of dependence (or explanation) called metaphysical grounding.

I defend grounding pluralism, the view that there are multiple kinds of grounding. I posit three kinds: why-grounding (which tells us why things are the case), how-grounding (which tells us how things are the case), and what-grounding (which tells us what it is for something to be the case). 

• (2020) ​Varieties, Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding.
  • Grounding pluralism tells us that there are varieties of grounding. But there are also varieties of grounding pluralism! In this article, I survey the different ways in which one might be a pluralist about grounding.
• (2020) ​On What (in General) Grounds What, Metaphysics.
  • ​Consider a generic grounding claim like: an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. Traditionally, this claim is understood as simply quantifying over relationships of ground. Against this view, I argue that generic grounding claims are almost always claims of real definition.
• (2019) Grounding is Necessary and Contingent", Inquiry.
  • It is common to think that grounding is necessary in the sense that: if P grounds Q, then necessarily: if P, then Q. Though most accept this principle, some give counterexamples to it. Instead of straightforwardly arguing for, or against, necessity, I explain the sense in which grounding is necessary and contingent. I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: what-grounding and why-grounding, where the former kind is necessary while the latter is contingent. 
• (2018) Grounding Pluralism: Why and How", Erkenntnis.
  • Grounding pluralism is the view that there are multiple kinds of grounding. In this essay, I motivate and defend an explanation-theoretic view of grounding pluralism. Specifically, I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: why-grounding—which tells us why things are the case—and how-grounding—which tells us how things are the case.​