CEFISES Seminar: Naomi Thompson, “Social Metaphysical Explanation”

Please note that this conference will be held online via Teams (not in person). The link to the Teams’ session will be communicated individually on demand. Please contact either of the co-organisers so that we can add you to the session. Otherwise, you will be able to watch the livestream on YouTube without registration.

Livestream TBA

Series: Metametaphysics

Speaker: Naomi Thompson (University of Bristol)

Title: “Social Metaphysical Explanation”

Abstract
This paper argues that grounding and metaphysical explanation as they are ordinarily conceived are ill-suited to modelling explanations in the social sciences, and of the social world. Social facts are neither necessitated nor generated by their full grounds, and there are good reasons to think of social metaphysical explanations as non-factive. Where grounding and metaphysical explanation are generally taken to form strict partial orders, social metaphysical explanations are plausibly holistic. Social metaphysical explanation occurs in a context, and it requires that in that context, a social fact be represented as being determined on the basis of further facts, and that concepts corresponding to social kinds featuring in the social fact to be explained are salient in that context.