A look at the metaphysics of "social construction" relation and its relevance to philosophical naturalism

The term "social construction" is used in a wide range of fields, from the humanities and social sciences to the natural sciences. There is talk today of the social construction of many entities and representations. Items like emotions, gender, race, sexual orientation, mental illness, a variety of technologies, subatomic particles, physical facts, truth, scientific theories, and more are just some of the candidates whose social construction has been discussed. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find common ground between the various uses of the term "social construction" and, consequently, to provide a comprehensive definition of it. Social constructionism is a theory according to which many aspects of reality and our knowledge about it are constructed through interpersonal and social interactions. Although in recent years all kinds of identities and representations have been considered constructed by society, relatively little research has been done on its metaphysical nature and its relevance on other metaphysical relations. The first purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept and to review four different accounts of the metaphysics of this relation. Each of these reports is evaluated in terms of metaphysical adequacy to determine whether it is consistent with what users have in mind with the concept of social construction. In the final part of the article, after giving a definition of philosophical naturalism, it is examined whether a naturalized report of social construction can be given or not. It has been argued that if we consider representations as the subject of social construction, it will not conflict with naturalism. But if we consider the world as its subject, only one formulation of ontological constructivism is incompatible with metaphysical naturalism. But with regard to other formulations, we have to wait whether concepts like emergence and causal closure will be accepted in the empirical sciences. There is currently no a priori / philosophical evidence for a conflict between these versions of ontological constructivism and philosophical naturalism.