Demarcating the Social World with Hume

Abstract

Abstract Where lies the boundary between the natural and social worlds? For the local constructionist, who wants to say that whilst global constructionism is false, nonetheless there remains a domain of socially constructed phenomena, there is going to be a demarcation question. In this paper I explore two initially plausible accounts of the boundary, based on mind-dependence and constructive mechanisms, and show that each is bound to fail. After further rejecting an explanatory account drawn from the work of Ásta, I look at Hume’s account of the artificial to develop a distinctly Humean account of the boundary, improving it with a necessity condition to deal with potentially pernicious counter-examples, and suggesting that it provides our best answer to the local constructionist’s demarcation question.