Entities of the Social World: Realities or Theoretical Constructs?

Abstract

This paper seeks to address the following problem: is it possible to affirm, in the social sphere, the existence of real entities with “independent” subsistence, prior to any theoretical model that attempts to represent them? The aim of this research is to apply Hacking’s concept of “realism about entities” to the field of the social sciences, in order to elucidate the nature of the theoretical entities usually postulated by sociological theories and to determine whether at least some of them subsist across different theoretical approaches, even in opposed or incompatible theories. If this were the case, we might consider that they possess a certain kind of per se existence, that is, an existence prior to and independent of any human cognitive approach. If so, it is necessary to ask in what sense we can postulate the real existence of such “entities”.

As regards the methodological approach, I will begin with a semantic clarification of the concept of phenomenon as understood by Hacking, in order to apply it to the social sphere. In a second stage, I will analyze what kind of social phenomena can be considered “real”. To this end, I will propose a possible classification of the various meanings that the term “reality” may acquire in this context.

I will take Popper’s metaphor of the “three worlds” and apply it partially to three possible senses of reality: the first refers to the natural laws and circumstances that would make the existence of the social world possible a priori; the second is linked to the reality of mental states; and the third is related to the cultural products resulting from the physical and mental intervention of human beings upon nature. Once externalized, these products acquire a gravity of their own, which in turn exerts feedback on the natural environment and on individual consciousnesses.