NDPR Aaron M. Griffith Truth & Social Reality: A Metaphysical Inquiry

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.06.7 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Aaron M. Griffith, Truth & Social Reality: A Metaphysical Inquiry, Oxford University Press, 2025, 208pp., $100.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780198948452.

Reviewed by Frank Hindriks, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen

Social construction talk can be used to deny that certain things are real or that they exist objectively. Anti-realists take social constructs to depend on our beliefs and regard them as little more than projections. However, social construction can also be explicated in realist terms. Aaron Griffith offers a realist account of the social construction of social reality in three steps. [1] He argues that social constructs implicate patterns of interaction in ways which mean they can be causes. [2] Furthermore, those patterns are the truth makers of social constructs. [3] Finally, truths about social constructs are not themselves socially...