Social Constructs (or, 'What is A Woman, Really?')

Summary

In this thought-provoking script, Philosophy Tube delves into the concept of social constructs, using the metaphor of Earths with varying societal norms to explore the nature of properties like gender and race. The video unpacks metaphysics, distinguishing between intrinsic and relational properties, and challenges viewers to consider the implications of these constructs on identity and society. It suggests that our understanding and application of these categories are not fixed but are subject to change, highlighting the intersection of philosophy, politics, and justice.

Takeaways

• 🔍 Abigail discusses body modifications and introduces the concept of social constructs in philosophy.
• 🛠️ Philosophical inspiration often comes from passionate, yet unexamined, viewpoints expressed by people.
• 💬 The concept of 'Mother' as a social construct sparked a metaphysical debate on the forum Mumsnet.
• 🌌 Metaphysics explores fundamental questions about existence, such as the nature of objects and their properties.
• 🧩 Philosophers distinguish between intrinsic properties (inseparable from objects) and relational properties (dependent on context).
• 🗂️ Social categories like 'being a woman' or 'being black' can be intrinsic, relational, or something else entirely.
• 🌍 An analogy using Earth Two and Earth Zero explores how different societies construct and value social categories.
• ⚾ Using baseball, Asta's theory illustrates how social constructs track underlying properties to serve purposes in social contexts.
• 🧬 Homeostatic property clusters explain how vague bunches of properties, like 'coolness,' are socially conferred.
• 🕵️ The discussion touches on how disagreements in social constructs can impact lives, particularly in contexts like gender and race.

Q & A

What is the main topic of discussion in the Philosophy Tube video script?

The main topic of the script is the concept of social constructs, particularly focusing on the philosophical debate around what constitutes a social construct and how they relate to intrinsic properties and our understanding of the world.

What is the purpose of the Mumsnet forum thread mentioned in the script?

The Mumsnet forum thread serves as a real-world example that sparked the discussion in the script, specifically the debate on whether 'mother' is a social construct, highlighting the strong emotional reactions people can have towards such philosophical questions.

What is the difference between intrinsic and relational properties according to the script?

Intrinsic properties are those that cannot be separated from the object itself, like the three sides of a triangle. Relational properties, on the other hand, depend on the object's relationship to something else, such as the property 'being next to me' which changes if my location changes.

What is the role of the 'Earth Two' hypothetical scenario in the script?

The 'Earth Two' scenario is used as a thought experiment to illustrate the concept of social constructs. It presents a society with an additional social category called 'Schmeight' based on height, helping to explore the idea of how social constructs are created and function within a society.

How does the script use the game of baseball to explain social constructs?

The script uses baseball to illustrate how social constructs like 'being a strike' are conferred onto certain occurrences (like a pitch) to serve a purpose within the game, similar to how social properties are conferred in society to track certain underlying features.

What is a homeostatic property cluster according to the script?

A homeostatic property cluster is a concept where a group of properties tend to occur together, either because one property causes the others or because there is an underlying mechanism causing them to co-occur. This concept is used to explain how categories like 'mammals' are formed and understood.

What does the script suggest about the nature of social constructs in relation to justice and politics?

The script suggests that social constructs are not fixed and can be changed, implying that they are inherently political. It raises the question of whose interests social constructs serve and the possibility of redefining them in a way that aligns with justice and fairness.

Why does the script mention the gay rights movement in the context of social constructs?

The script mentions the gay rights movement to illustrate how the understanding of social constructs like homosexuality can change over time and how different societies might construct these concepts differently, affecting the discourse on rights and freedoms.

What is the philosophical viewpoint presented by Asta in the script, and how does it relate to social constructs?

Asta's viewpoint, as presented in the script, is that social constructs are used to track underlying properties in a particular context or 'game'. This perspective suggests that the social significance of a feature depends on the social status conferred upon it by the community in a given context.

How does the script use the concept of 'full VR' versus 'augmented reality' to discuss social constructs?

The script uses the terms 'full VR' and 'augmented reality' as metaphors to describe different levels to which social constructs overlay or transform our understanding of reality. 'Augmented reality' implies adding to the existing properties, while 'full VR' suggests a complete construction of reality that may not necessarily reflect the underlying properties.

Outlines

00:00

🤔 Philosophical Inquiry into Social Constructs

In this segment, Abigail introduces the topic of social constructs by reflecting on a Mumsnet forum discussion about the nature of 'mother' as a social construct. She delves into the realm of metaphysics, exploring the distinction between objects and their properties, and the difference between intrinsic and relational properties. Abigail uses the concept of Earth Two, a hypothetical world with an additional social category called Schmeight, to illustrate how social constructs can be both real and invented, shaping lives and societal structures. The summary emphasizes the philosophical debate about the nature of existence and the impact of social constructs on identity and society.

05:01

🌐 The Relativity of Social Constructs Across Hypothetical Earths

This paragraph examines the concept of social constructs through the lens of different hypothetical Earths, each with unique social systems based on certain properties. It discusses how these constructs are not just about personal feelings but are embedded in social structures and can affect life opportunities. The narrative uses the example of Earth Two's Bigs and Minis to highlight how social constructs are often based on observable features but are given meaning and significance by societal consensus. The summary underscores the idea that what is considered a social construct can vary greatly between different societies and the philosophical implications of such variability.

10:03

🎲 Asta's Theory of Social Categories and Baseball Analogy

The third paragraph presents a philosophical theory by Asta, which likens social constructs to the rules in a game of baseball, where certain natural properties are given social significance. Asta's theory suggests that social constructs serve a purpose, such as tracking underlying natural properties, and uses the example of a baseball umpire calling a strike to illustrate how social properties are conferred. The summary explains how Asta's theory can be applied to understand social categories like race, sex, and gender, and how these constructs can be both real in their impact and artificial in their creation.

15:04

🐾 The Complexity of Social Status and Homeostatic Property Clusters

In this section, the discussion moves to the complexities of social status and the concept of homeostatic property clusters, which are likened to the properties of mammals. The narrative explains how certain features become socially significant based on the context and the 'game' being played by society. It uses the example of high school 'coolness' to illustrate how social properties can be conferred without clear rules and how they can affect an individual's life. The summary highlights the idea that social constructs are not fixed and can be influenced by community consensus, much like scientific classifications.

20:05

🏳️‍🌈 The Politics and Ethics of Social Constructs

The final paragraph brings the philosophical discussion back to the real world, emphasizing the political and ethical implications of social constructs. It touches on the gay rights movement and how different societies might construct the meaning of 'gay' differently. The summary points out that while the video used abstract examples to explain metaphysics, the concepts discussed have real-world consequences, especially in terms of justice and societal change. It concludes by reminding viewers that philosophy is not just an academic pursuit but has practical implications for shaping the world.

Keywords

💡Social Construct

A social construct refers to concepts or categories that are created and shaped by society rather than being inherent to the natural world. In the video, the concept is explored through the lens of gender, race, and other identity categories, questioning whether they are intrinsic or imposed by societal norms. The script uses the example of a hypothetical Earth Two to illustrate how social constructs can vary between societies and shape their environments and norms.

💡Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, and potentiality and actuality. The video discusses metaphysics in the context of understanding the nature of 'being a woman,' 'being a man,' and other identity properties, exploring whether they are intrinsic to existence or constructs of society.

💡Intrinsic Properties

Intrinsic properties are characteristics that are inherent to an object or entity and cannot be separated from it without changing its essential nature. The video uses the example of triangles having three sides as an intrinsic property, and contrasts this with social constructs, which are not inherent but are assigned by societal consensus.

💡Relational Properties

Relational properties are those that depend on the relationship between an object and something else. The video gives the example of a car being 'next to me' as a relational property because it changes depending on the viewer's location. This concept is used to discuss how identity categories like race or gender might be relational within a societal context.

💡Earth Two Hypothetical

The Earth Two hypothetical is a thought experiment used in the video to illustrate the concept of social constructs. It imagines a society that categorizes people based on height as 'Bigs' or 'Minis,' affecting their social status and opportunities. This hypothetical is used to explore how social constructs are created and the impact they have on individuals' lives.

💡Strike in Baseball

In the context of the video, a 'strike' in baseball is used as a metaphor for social constructs. The umpire's call of 'strike' confers a social property onto the pitch, similar to how society confers properties like 'being a woman' or 'being a man.' The video uses this analogy to discuss how social constructs are assigned and the role they play in societal structures.

💡Homeostatic Property Cluster

A homeostatic property cluster is a concept from biology, referring to a group of properties that tend to occur together and are used for classification. The video uses this concept to discuss how social constructs like 'mammal' or 'coolness' are not based on a single property but a cluster of properties that society deems significant.

💡Augmented Reality vs. Full VR

The video uses the terms 'augmented reality' and 'full VR' to describe different perspectives on social constructs. Augmented reality suggests adding societal meanings to natural properties, while full VR implies that these constructs are entirely created by society, without any underlying natural properties. This distinction is used to debate the nature of identity categories.

💡Judith Butler

Judith Butler is a philosopher mentioned in the video, known for arguing that sex is a social construct rather than a purely biological property. The video references Butler's work 'Gender Trouble' to highlight the ongoing debate about the nature of gender and the social implications of considering it a construct.

💡Justice

Justice in the video is related to the application of metaphysics in societal structures and laws. It raises questions about how social constructs should be defined and what the implications are for fairness and equality. The video suggests that understanding social constructs can lead to discussions about what is just and how society should be organized.

💡Mechanic Metaphor

The mechanic metaphor is used in the video to describe how we can 'pop the hood' on social constructs to examine the underlying properties and the societal systems that have been built around them. It suggests that just as a mechanic understands a car's workings, we can understand and potentially change the social constructs that shape our world.

Highlights

Introduction to Philosophy Tube by Abigail.

Discussion on how passionate philosophical viewpoints can become show episodes.

Explanation of metaphysics and its role in understanding existence.

The humorous anecdote about a professor arguing time does not exist while arriving late.

Exploration of social constructs, with a focus on the example of 'mother' as a social construct.

Introduction of the concept of intrinsic and relational properties using the example of a car.

Discussion on whether properties like 'being a woman' or 'being black' are intrinsic or relational.

Imaginary scenario of Earth Two to illustrate social constructs of 'Bigs' and 'Minis'.

Explanation of how different Earths would perceive social constructs like race and gender.

Introduction to Asta’s theory on social categories using the analogy of a baseball strike.

Discussion on homeostatic property clusters using the example of mammals.

Asta's view on how social properties like 'being cool' are conferred by communities.

Exploration of conflicting social properties when communities disagree.

The idea that social constructs shape and are shaped by our environment.

Final thoughts on the importance of considering justice in metaphysics and social constructs.

Transcripts

- Hi, my name's Abigail.

I've just been doing a little bit of body modification work.

Welcome to Philosophy Tube!

Every now and again,

when I'm out and about in the world,

I'll see somebody say something and immediately think,

"That's gotta be an episode of the show."

Usually it's somebody very passionately defending

a philosophical viewpoint without necessarily realising

the depth of what they are saying.

And to me, that's like the Bat-Signal.

I grab my tools and I go to work.

I wanna pop the hood on what they've said

and take a look at all the philosophy inside.

And today I have found a doozy!

There's a British website called Mumsnet.

It's a forum for parents.

And a while ago, there was a thread that started

with "'Mother' is a social construct - discuss."

And one lady wrote, "Carrying and birthing my child

was not a f*****g social construct."

And I saw that and I was like,

Ahhhh!

Philosophy Tube time, baby!

This lady was actually making a metaphysical claim.

Metaphysics is the bit of philosophy

that, broadly, looks at existence.

So if ethics is, how do I be a good driver?

And aesthetics is, how do I make my car look cool?

Metaphysics is, what are cars?

What are they made of?

How do they work?

If you were to take a class,

you might look at things like causation, free will,

space, and time.

I once had a metaphysics lecture

where the professor argued that time does not exist,

which was very funny because, no joke,

he turned up 10 minutes late.

So when I saw that comment, I wondered two things.

Firstly, what is a social construct?

And secondly, why do people sometimes

have such strong feelings about them?

Fasten your seat belts.

Philosophers draw a useful distinction

between an object and its properties.

This car is silver.

It has the property 'being silver.'

I could paint it a different colour -

take that property away, give it a new one,

but it would still be the same object.

You might well wonder,

how many of the properties can we take away

before the object is gone?

If I give this car new paint, new engine, new brakes,

new electricals, is it still the same car?

That's the kind of question a metaphysician

would think about.

For now though, you understand this distinction

between an object and its properties.

And there's different kinds of properties, too.

Some we would say are intrinsic,

that means you can't really separate the object

from the property.

It's an intrinsic property of triangles

that they have three sides.

If you take that away it's not a triangle anymore.

Others we would say are relational.

This car has the property 'being next to me.'

But if I move then it doesn't have that property anymore,

'cause it depends on my location.

If this car was my favourite,

we would say that it has the property 'being my favourite,'

which is not only relational

but depends on my feelings rather than my location.

And now here's the million-dollar question.

What kind of property are things like 'being a woman?'

'Being a man?'

'Being black,' 'white,' 'gay,' 'straight,' whatever?

Are they intrinsic?

Are they relational?

Are they something else?

What do they depend on?

They are pretty important.

I guarantee that properties like that

have shaped your entire life.

They've sure as hell shaped mine.

So what the heck are they?

"In offering my theory of social categories,

"the aim is to reveal the cogs and belts and arrangements

"of parts in machines that often are oppressive."

To start solving this puzzle,

we can do something that philosophers love.

And if you enjoy this,

then you should absolutely study metaphysics

'cause this is like half of it.

Imagine another earth, called Earth Two.

And on Earth Two, they have all the same ideas we do

about sex, and race, and gender, all those same categories,

but they also have an extra one called Schmeight.

Shmeight is very simple.

There's two kinds of people on Earth Two, Bigs and Minis.

Bigs is any adult over five feet tall

and Minis is anyone under.

And let's say that whether you're a Big or a Mini

really affects your life on Earth Two.

Like if you're a Big, you can get a better job,

you can get a nicer house,

you're allowed to marry whoever you like...

If you're a Mini, life is hard.

Suppose we were to meet the people of Earth Two.

And we said Schmeight is just a social construct:

'being a Big' or 'being a Mini' -

those are clearly relational properties.

They depend on how other people feel about you.

They might say, No, it's not, it's not about feelings.

It's objectively observable.

Look, I have a tape measure!

I can tell whether someone is a Big or a Mini!

"Reaching tall things on my shelf

is not a f*****g social construct!"

But we might come back and say, Okay, yeah,

you can measure somebody's height, nobody's denying that.

But what we're driving at is...

Why do you care?

Why have you *constructed* your *social* systems around this feature?

Maybe you've got a good reason for it,

but on Earth One we don't do that.

We have the property 'being tall,'

but we don't have the property 'being a Big' or 'being a Mini.'

So you guys must have invented them.

And all the Earth Two people will be like,

Pfft, you guys are weird.

Meanwhile, the people of Earth Zero are looking at us going,

"Whoa, what's all this stuff about 'race' and 'sex'?"

We understand skin color and reproductive organs, yeah.

We're not erasing anybody's biology or anything like that.

But you guys divided your whole population

and you based your whole society around this?

Why?

And maybe we'd say, Well, it's evolutionary psychology,

you know?

On Earth One some of us can carry children,

some of us can't.

So we evolve different societal roles

and we make that distinction.

"Carrying and birthing a child

is not a f*****g social construct."

And they might go, Okay, yeah,

but what about Mother's Day cards?

I mean, are you seriously telling me

that you evolved to buy each other those?

Get outta town!

There's definitely some aspects of 'being a mother'

that you've invented.

I mean, there's nature.

You've got your natural properties, yeah.

But then you guys, you've added a whole bunch of stuff

on top of that.

You're doing augmented reality sh*t,

projecting extra properties onto the world.

On Earth Zero we don't have any of that.

We've just got the natural properties, no additives.

And then suddenly in come the people

from Earth Negative One.

And they're like, Whoa, hold on there.

What's all this stuff about "natural properties?"

The only reason that the people of Earth Two

bother to measure height,

the only reason they have a concept of height

is because they care about Schmeight.

The act of measuring someone's height

isn't a neutral thing that happens

before they get assigned Big or Mini.

When you measure something you're already assuming

that there is something there worth measuring.

So these supposedly objective natural properties of yours

are also social constructs!

It's not augmented reality, it's full VR, son!

On Earth Negative One, we don't have any of that.

We're all just...

Just vibin'.

Presumably life on those other earths

would look a little bit different.

If you were walking around Earth Two,

you'd see signs with like 'Bigs Only' and stuff.

'Cause social constructs shape our environment.

Suppose we took a whole city of people here on Earth One

and we are erased their memories,

so they didn't know about sex and race.

Would they reinvent those categories

when they saw their environment?

Would they look at public toilets and go,

Oh, hey, there's two different spaces here.

But in our homes, we've only got one.

What's up with that?

Would they go, Oh, hey, we've got darker skin.

And we all live on the bad side of town

where the houses aren't as nice, why?'

Our social constructs have shaped our environment,

which in turn reinforce our social constructs.

I think there was an episode of Star Trek actually...

So we've identified this whole layer of reality,

which really affects our lives,

but which we seem to be just inventing,

at least to some extent?

So...

What is going on?!

If you ask three philosophers how social constructs work,

you'll get four theories.

So we're gonna look at one by a philosopher called Asta,

she's Icelandic, so she only has one name.

I chose it not because I have

any particular attachment to it,

but because I think it's interesting

and it'll give you a flavour

for how philosophers tackle these questions.

It goes like this.

Suppose that you're watching a game of baseball,

which, if you've never heard of it, is like cricket,

but it's even worse.

The guy who throws the ball, the... bowler?

he throws it towards home... wicket? where the batsman is

and he hits it.

And the bowler has to throw the ball within a certain zone.

And if he gets it in the zone and the batsman misses,

that's called a strike.

And if you get three strikes, then you're out.

But it has to be in the zone.

If he throws it up here, then it doesn't count.

And if it's very close to the zone, all the spectators go,

"Oh my Gooodddd, was that a strike?"

And then the umpire has to decide.

Asta says there are natural properties

about the trajectory of the ball.

She calls them underlying properties or base properties.

So she's thinking more augmented reality than full VR.

The umpire is trying to keep track

of those underlying properties.

And in order to do so, he confers the social property

'being a strike' onto the pitch when he says, "Stiii-rike one!"

So according to Asta, 'being a strike' is a social construct

that serves some purpose in the game

by keeping track of the ball's underlying properties.

Similarly, on Earth Two, 'being a Big' is a social construct

that serves the purpose in a social game

by keeping track of people's height.

"Each of us has a lot of features

"and only some of them matter socially

"in a particular context.

"Examples: I'm 168 centimeters tall and have shoe size 39.

"I have short hair and I'm wearing black pants.

"I speak English with an Icelandic accent.

"I'm extremely near-sighted, have moss green eyes

"and pale skin, breasts, broad shoulders.

"Some of these features matter socially in a context,

"others do not.

"What is it for a feature of you or me

"to matter socially in a context?

"The answer I give is,

"a feature is socially significant in a context

"in which people taken to have the feature,

"get conferred onto them a social status."

That last bit is important.

Baseball is one thing, people are another.

Properties like 'being a woman,' 'being a man,' a mother,

black, white, that's not a game.

That's your life.

Consider the property 'being cool'

in a context of a high school.

If you're cool, you might be able to get away with stuff

that other people can't.

But at the same time, there could be expectations on you

that might be stifling.

It's a lot of pressure being cool.

I imagine.

It's pretty clear how you get a strike in baseball. It's less clear how you become cool

'cause there aren't really any rules.

People just start treating you differently

and you thereby acquire coolness.

Nobody really decides it either.

There's no umpire at the school gates going, "Yyyyyou're cool!"

It's just, the community decides

to confer coolness on you or not, maybe even unconsciously.

In baseball, the umpire was trying to keep track

of the underlying properties of the ball's trajectory.

On Earth Two, they were trying to keep track

of the underlying property of height.

But what is the underlying property of 'being cool?'

Well, there probably isn't just one, right?

It's probably like a vague bunch of things,

like wearing the right clothes,

and having the right attitude, liking the right music...

It's not really a set list

and you don't have to have all of them.

Philosophers actually have a word for this vague bunch.

It's called a homeostatic property cluster.

It comes from biology.

Think about a word like 'mammals.'

Mammals have a whole bunch of properties.

We have warm blood, we produce milk,

we give birth to live offspring.

And if an animal has enough of those properties,

we say, "Okay, that's a mammal."

But it's not a hard and fast list.

The duck-billed platypus lays eggs,

but it's definitely a mammal.

Who decided that?

Is there a platypus umpire?!

No, sadly.

It's the community again.

The scientific community.

The philosopher Richard Boyd

says the whole point of classifying animals

is to be able to predict and explain things about them.

That's the science game, if you like.

And that's why homeostatic property clusters are so useful.

Properties in the cluster tend to occur together in nature,

either because having one causes you to have the rest

or because there's some underlying mechanism

that causes them to occur side by side.

So if you know that an animal has warm blood

and it gives birth to live offspring,

you can predict X, Y, and Z about it

because the properties tend to occur together.

When European scientists first encountered the platypus,

they were confused.

Some people thought they were faking,

others thought they belonged in a category all their own,

until they realised they had so many of the other properties

in the mammal cluster that you wanna win the science game,

you've gotta classify them as mammals.

On Earth Zero there are no mammals.

They know about warm-blooded animals, yeah.

But 'mammal' is a social construct

that we use to keep track of certain underlying properties.

And on Earth Zero, they play the science game differently,

so they don't use that social construct.

On Earth Negative One,

they don't even have the underlying properties.

They're all just like,

"Bro, have you seen these platypuses?"

"These things are adorable!"

Remember earlier on I was talking about

how the high school community

confers the property of coolness on you?

Or the scientific community

confer the property of mammal on the platypus?

What if communities disagree?

What if someone was like,

"Actually the only important thing

for deciding whether an animal is a mammal

is whether or not it lays eggs."

What if the anime club think that you're really cool,

but the quidditch team don't?

Are you cool?

Or not?

Asta says there is literally no answer to that.

There are underlying properties about you,

but the social property of coolness

and what exactly is in the cluster

we're attempting to track

depends on the game we're tryna play,

which might not matter so much for being cool,

but there could be some other social properties

where it might really affect your life

if somebody refused to confer them on you.

We've been talking today about baseball and platypuses, but

obviously what we're really talking about is sex,

and race, and gender, and all that good stuff.

When I wrote the script

I deliberately went a bit more abstract with it

because sometimes when we talk about social constructs,

people get really angry.

Like remember earlier on,

I talked about social constructs being full VR

rather than augmented reality?

That was a reference to a philosophy called Judith Butler.

They wrote a famous book in the '90s,

called "Gender Trouble" in which they argue

that sex is a social construct,

as opposed to a biological natural property.

It's a pretty fascinating book.

It spawned a lot of interesting philosophy.

Maybe we could talk about it in detail another time,

but people get so angry about it.

Even today, people protest Judith Butler, which is wild.

I mean, nobody ever protested Socrates.

Everybody loved him!

Unfortunately, some of the people

who get angry about social constructs

aren't really making a philosophical argument

so much as they are trying to rationalise

a dislike of trans people.

Especially in my country,

the debate about who does and does not have the

property 'being a woman' or 'being a man' isn't really about metaphysics.

It's just a kinda proxy way of deciding

whether people like me get health care and human rights,

which is a shame.

I mean...

I think this philosophy is kind of interesting on its own.

I wish we could talk about it without... that.

I said up top that social constructs

are built into our environment

and the way we think about our environment

facilitates different kinds of engagement with it.

For instance, say you take your car in

to have the airbags replaced after they've gone off.

And the mechanic says, "Why did the airbags go off?"

And you say, "Well, an onboard sensor

"measured a deceleration

"of greater than average breaking speed

"and that sent an electrical current

"along a circuit to a heating element

"triggering a chemical reaction, releasing nitrogen gas."

The mechanic might say, "Okay,

but why did the airbags go off?" And you say

I had 19 pints and crashed into a wall!

If you give that first explanation

about sensors and nitrogen,

well then I guess we just have to fit another airbag.

But if you give the second explanation about drunk driving,

well, now we need to talk about your insurance.

Depending on how you explain the problem,

different solutions present themselves.

When we talk about social constructs,

the implication is that the constructs aren't fixed.

We could change the stuff that we projected onto the world

if we wanted to.

At the very least we could ask,

"Why are we projecting this stuff?

"Whose interests does it serve?"

There's an inherent possibility of changing society here,

which is therefore inherently political.

And that can be pretty scary.

For instance, consider that the gay rights movement

in my country leant hard on the idea of 'born this way' -

the idea that homosexuality is innate

and therefore can't be right or wrong.

We can imagine that on Earth Three,

they made a different argument.

More like 'whether it's innate or not,

it's not the government's business.'

Like a personal freedom line.

I'm not saying either approach is better.

I'm just saying we can imagine a world

in which the meaning of 'gay'

is socially constructed differently.

But if you say to a gay person,

"Hey, you know, homosexuality?

That's just a social construct!"

We might be like, "Whoa, what are you saying?"

Because the concept of gay rights is built on top of it.

So it's worth remembering

that we aren't really talking about baseball and platypuses.

We're talking about people and therefore,

questions of justice arise

in how we should apply this metaphysics.

If Asta is right, and 'man' and 'woman'

are socially constructed categories that we apply

in order to track some underlying cluster

of natural properties, we might then ask,

if we're playing the justice game,

what should be in that cluster?

And separate but related question,

"What should the law say about it?"

I deliberately chose non-controversial examples today

to help you get a grasp of the metaphysics

without getting bogged down in questions of justice

or pushing my own views.

But it's worth remembering

that that is an artificial separation.

When you leave the classroom,

politics and metaphysics will come at you at the same time.

We're not just doing philosophy for the hell of it.

We are tinkering with the engine of the world here.

So drive safe.

<Fun fact: the original plan was to do a Victorian Naturalist aesthetic, but then I read that quote about 'cogs and belts' and I was like, "Ohh, mechanic!"

Philosophy Tube time, baby