Realism and Antirealism About Socially Constructed Properties

ABSTRACT Social metaphysics raises intriguing questions about realism and antirealism. I focus on properties because other social entities arguably involve the instantiation of socially constructed properties, properties are relevant to discussions of causation, and their reality may have implications for the reality of other social entities. I delineate a possible distinction between socially constructed, social, and nonsocial properties. I outline and then resist recent attempts to revise the criteria for realism and antirealism about such properties, specifically about the mind‐independence criterion for existence, relative frame manipulability, and kind projectibility. Instead, I propose that realism and antirealism about socially constructed properties should be understood in terms of the existence of socially constructed universals or tropes. If we accept this alignment, we can draw on the traditional arguments for and against the existence of specific kinds of properties within a given domain, without having to revise the conditions for realism that we have traditionally relied on.