Ontic Injustice
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by White Rose E-theses Online Ontic Injustice By Katharine Rhiannon Clare Jenkins A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities Department of Philosophy March 2016 Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... vii Thesis Summary ............................................................................................................. ix Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Institutionalist Realism About Human Social Kinds ............................. 7 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 7 2. Situating Institutionalist Realism ......................................................................... 9 2.1. Nominalism .................................................................................................... 10 2.2. Scepticism ....................................................................................................... 14 3. Searle’s Account of Institutional Reality ............................................................ 17 4. Passing, Travelling and Reality ........................................................................... 25 4.1. Racial Passing ................................................................................................. 26 4.2. Travelling and Reality ................................................................................... 29 5. Conferralism .......................................................................................................... 36 6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 2: Institutionalist Realism About Race and Gender ................................. 43 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 43 2. Race and Gender as Hierarchical Categories .................................................... 44 2.1. The Racial Contract ....................................................................................... 44 2.2. The Sexual Contract ....................................................................................... 47 3. De Jure Subordination and Institutional Reality ............................................. 50 3.1. Status Function Declarations ....................................................................... 51 3.2. Collective Recognition ................................................................................... 58 4. De Facto Subordination and Institutional Reality ........................................... 61 4.1. Telic normativity ............................................................................................ 62 4.2. Socialized practices ........................................................................................ 65 4.3. Opaque social facts ........................................................................................ 68 4.4. Deontic powers as enforceable claims......................................................... 72 5. Qualitatively Opaque Institutional Kinds .......................................................... 75 5.1. Opaque Deontic Powers ................................................................................ 76 5.2. Status Functions ............................................................................................ 79 6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 81 Chapter 3: Contemporary Realities of Race and Gender ........................................ 83 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 83 2. The De Facto Racial and Sexual Contracts ........................................................ 84 2.1. Racial and Gender Inequality ....................................................................... 85 2.2. Differential Deontic Powers .......................................................................... 87 2.3. Continued Subpersonhood ........................................................................... 92 3. Racial and Sexual Violence .................................................................................. 95 3.1. Racial Violence ............................................................................................... 95 3.2. Sexual Violence ............................................................................................... 99 4. Desiderata for an Ontology of Race and Gender ............................................ 102 5. Meeting the Desiderata ...................................................................................... 105 5.1. Critical Relevance ......................................................................................... 105 5.2. Intersectionality ........................................................................................... 106 5.3. Trans Respect ............................................................................................... 108 5.4. Lived Experience .......................................................................................... 117 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 121 Chapter 4: Ontic Injustice .......................................................................................... 125 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 125 2. Defining Ontic Injustice ..................................................................................... 125 3. The Wrong of Ontic Injustice ............................................................................ 131 4. Ontic Injustice, Equality, and Freedom ........................................................... 139 4.1. Equality ......................................................................................................... 139 4.2. Freedom ........................................................................................................ 141 5. Distinguishing Ontic Injustices ......................................................................... 146 6. Alternative Ontological Frameworks ............................................................... 151 7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 154 Chapter 5: Applications of Ontic Injustice .............................................................. 156 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 156 2. Pornography: Definitions and Claims ............................................................. 157 2.1. Defining Pornography ................................................................................. 157 2.2. The Subordination and Constructionist Claims ...................................... 158 3. Interpreting MacKinnon’s Claims .................................................................... 162 3.1. Subordination, Construction, and Ontic Injustice ................................... 162 3.2. Speech Act Analyses .................................................................................... 168 4. The Revised Argument....................................................................................... 174 5. Ontic Injustice and the Black Lives Matter Movement ................................. 179 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 183 Concluding Remarks .................................................................................................. 185 References .................................................................................................................... 187 Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council in funding this PhD. I would also like to thank Jesus College, Cambridge for granting me a Junior Research Fellowship that supported the last few months of work on this thesis. The work presented in this thesis has benefitted enormously from the skilled guidance I have received from my supervisors, Jennifer Saul and Miranda Fricker. I am profoundly grateful to each of them for the advice, support and encouragement they have so generously given to me throughout this project. It has been a great pleasure and an immense privilege to work with them both. I would like to thank the following people for helpful comments on and stimulating discussions of various ideas presented in this thesis: Åsa Andersson, Beatrice Balfour, Elizabeth Barnes, Shannon Dea, Koshka Duff, Lorna Finlayson, Rachel Fraser, Hilkje Hänel, Sally Haslanger, Jules Holroyd, Rosanna Keefe, Kathryn Maude, Lisa Millbank, and Neil Williams. Versions of various portions of this thesis have been presented at events at the following institutions: the University of Sheffield, the University of Nottingham, the University