Half-naturalized social kinds

We often legitimately ascribe reality both to social and to natural kinds. But the bases for these ascriptions are not entirely the same. In both case s, reality is typically determined by what characterizations of causal fact ors are indispensable to adequate explanation. Nonetheless, a psychological role as part of an identity that instances embrace is sometimes, distincti vely, a condition for ascribing reality to a social kind. Although such ass essments of reality can be construed as employing a standard of causal acti vity shared with natural science, they reveal a distinctive moral dimension in the bases for ascribing reality to social kinds.