ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the main controversies over social kinds. Social kinds are objective objects of knowledge, or as Searle calls it "epistemically objective." Truths about social kinds are not subjective in the way in which whether an apple tastes good or not is subjective and depends on the particular person taking a bite. Haslanger explicitly argues for realism about social kinds. Her critical realism about social kinds has it that social kinds, while socially constructed, are real types. When a commitment to philosophical naturalism involves the metaphysical commitment that only phenomena posited by theories of natural science are allowed into the ontology, social kinds pose a problem. John Searle is committed to the view that what it is for something to be a social kind is for it to be believed to be and regarded so, e.g. for something to be money is for it to be regarded as or believed to be money.
