Truth in the Making: Fabrication, Possibility, and the Ontology of Social Reality

Truth in the Making 1 Truth in the Making: Fabrication, Possibility, and the Ontology of Social Reality David Matta American University of Beirut Lebanese Mindfulness Association Corresponding author email: [email protected] https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18005727 Abstract This paper argues that social truth is not discovered in the same manner as scientific truth, but constructed through human participation, narrative fabrication, and the selective realization of possibilities. While correspondence to facts remains central in the natural sciences, it is insufficient to explain how truth operates in technological and social domains. Drawing on a phenomenological account of selfhood and a modal conception of reality as a field of unrealized possibilities, the paper proposes a three-domain ontology distinguishing natural science, technology, and social reality. Within this framework, technology is understood as the fabrication of artifacts constrained by natural laws, while social reality functions as a normative technology embedded within nature. The mechanisms of social selection are elaborated through engagement with Bourdieu's theory of habitus and Butler's account of performativity, showing how embodied dispositions and iterated practices stabilize certain possibilities while foreclosing others. From this perspective, lying is reinterpreted not merely as moral failure or epistemic error, but as a counterfactual or premature commitment to an unrealized possible world. The paper critically engages correspondence realism, deflationary theories of truth, and pragmatist alternatives, including a direct rebuttal to the reductionist objection that social facts are ultimately reducible to physical or psychological states. It concludes that understanding truth as "in the making" does not undermine objectivity or responsibility; rather, it clarifies the distinctive mechanisms through which different domains generate, stabilize, and sometimes distort truth, while heightening accountability for the worlds we help construct. Keywords: truth, social reality, technology, fabrication, possible worlds, counterfactuals, phenomenology, correspondence theory, lying, narrative identity, pragmatism, social ontology, performativity, habitus 1. Introduction Truth is often treated as a unified concept governed by a single criterion: correspondence with reality. According to this view, a statement is true if it accurately reflects how the world is, and false if it does not (Russell, 1912; Tarski, 1944). This conception has proven indispensable in the natural sciences, where empirical observation, experimentation, and replication allow claims to be tested against relatively stable features of the physical world. Truth in the Making 2 However, when extended without modification to technology and social life, correspondencebased accounts of truth encounter persistent conceptual difficulties. This paper advances the following claim: we do not discover social truth in the way we discover scientific facts; we construct it—through narratives, commitments, and projections that reality may later confirm or collapse. This claim does not deny the existence of an external world, nor does it reduce truth to arbitrary agreement. Instead, it proposes that different domains of human engagement with reality rely on different truth-generating mechanisms. To make this case, the paper introduces a three-domain ontology distinguishing natural science, technology, and social reality. It argues that while correspondence remains appropriate in the natural sciences, both technology and social reality involve forms of fabrication that cannot be adequately evaluated by correspondence alone. Social truth, in particular, emerges through temporal stabilization rather than immediate factual matching. Recognizing this structure allows for a more precise understanding of deception, responsibility, and the ethical risks associated with narrative authority. 1.1 Contribution to Theory This paper makes four distinct contributions to existing scholarship. First, it reframes lying not as mere false assertion but as a temporal and modal phenomenon—a premature or counterfactual commitment to an unrealized possible world. This moves the analysis of deception beyond moral and epistemic categories into ontological territory. Second, it introduces the concept of fabrication as world-selection: the mechanism by which human narratives and expectations bias reality toward certain actualizations rather than others. Third, it provides a phenomenological account of the structural split between the inhabited self and the presented self, showing why narration is constitutive of social existence rather than a deviation from authenticity. Fourth, it offers a modal critique of correspondence theories of truth, arguing that correspondence fails in social domains not because truth is relative, but because social truth unfolds temporally through stabilization rather than instantaneously through matching. These contributions are positioned against three major alternatives: robust correspondence realism, deflationary theories of truth, and classical pragmatism. The paper engages each critically, showing where they succeed and where they fall short in accounting for social truth. 2. Natural Science, Technology, and Social Reality Discussions of truth frequently conflate distinct domains of human engagement with the world. Clarifying the differences between natural science, technology, and social reality is essential for understanding why correspondence succeeds in some contexts and fails in others. The natural sciences aim to describe and explain features of the world that exist independently of human intervention. Their objects—physical forces, biological processes, chemical interactions—would continue to operate even in the absence of human observers. In this domain, truth is appropriately evaluated through correspondence, predictive accuracy, and explanatory coherence. Scientific claims succeed insofar as they track stable patterns in nature. Truth in the Making 3 Technology occupies a different ontological position. Technological artifacts are not discovered in nature as such; they are fabricated through the application of scientific knowledge under material constraints (Heidegger, 1977; Ihde, 1990). Bridges, algorithms, medical devices, and infrastructures are real objects, but their reality depends on human design, construction, and maintenance. Technological success is therefore not primarily a matter of correspondence, but of functionality, reliability, and integration within broader systems. An artifact is "true" to its purpose insofar as it works. Social reality shares this technological structure, though its materials are normative rather than physical (Searle, 1995). Institutions, currencies, legal systems, leadership roles, and social identities do not exist in nature without human participation. They are constructed through collective recognition, enactment, and temporal persistence. Like technological artifacts, they are real precisely because they function—because they coordinate behavior, stabilize expectations, and structure collective life. From this perspective, the social world can be understood as a normative technology embedded within nature. It is not what nature would be if left untouched, but what emerges through sustained human intervention. Social truths, like technological artifacts, are fabricated rather than discovered, though always under constraints imposed by both natural conditions and human practices. 2.1 Fabrication Distinguished from Construction A crucial terminological clarification is required. "Construction" has become a contested term, often taken to imply that constructed entities are merely conventional, arbitrary, or unreal (Hacking, 1999). "Fabrication," as used in this paper, denotes something more precise: the making of something real within constraints. To fabricate is not to invent freely, but to bring into being under conditions that limit and shape the outcome. Technological fabrication operates under physical constraints: a bridge must bear weight, an algorithm must execute, a vaccine must trigger immune response. The fabricated artifact is no less real for being made; its reality is established through functional success. Social fabrication operates under normative and practical constraints: an institution must coordinate action, a currency must be accepted, a leader must be recognized. These constraints are not physical, but they are no less binding. A currency that no one accepts is not a currency; a leader whom no one follows is not a leader. Fabrication thus differs from mere invention or fantasy. Fantasy faces no constraints and need not become real. Fabrication, by contrast, is world-making within limits—the production of realities that must hold, function, and endure. This distinction protects the present account from the charge of relativism: fabricated truths are not arbitrary, but are answerable to the constraints under which they are made. 3. Reality as a Field of Possibilities The distinction between discovery and fabrication presupposes a modal understanding of reality. At any given moment, the world consists not only of what is actual, but of multiple unrealized possibilities (Lewis, 1986). Which of these possibilities becomes actual depends on a range of factors, including natural constraints, technological interventions, and social coordination. Truth in the Making 4 3.1 The Modal Framework: Actualism, Possibilism, and Selective Realization The metaphysics of modality presents a spectrum of positions. At one extreme, modal realism (Lewis, 1986) holds that possible worlds are concrete, existing entities no less real than the actual world. At the other extreme, actualism insists that only the actual world exists, and that modal claims must be reducible to claims about actual entities and their properties (Plantinga, 1974). Between these poles lie various moderate positions that grant modal truths without committing to the full ontology of possible worlds. This paper does not require commitment to Lewis's full modal realism. What it does require is the weaker claim that actuality is not exhaustive—that at any moment, the world admits of multiple trajectories, and that which trajectory is realized depends in part on factors that are not themselves already determined. This is compatible with a range of actualist and moderate positions, provided they acknowledge genuine contingency in how events unfold. The key claim, for present purposes, is selective realization: human practices, narratives, and expectations participate in determining which possibilities become actual. This is not a metaphysically extravagant claim. It requires only that human action has causal efficacy and that the future is not already fixed. Within this framework, fabrication functions as a mechanism of modal selection—biasing reality toward certain outcomes by stabilizing expectations, coordinating behavior, and rendering alternative trajectories less accessible. 3.2 Mechanisms of Social Selection: Habitus and Performativity The claim that human practices "select" among possibilities requires elaboration. Through what mechanisms does this selection occur? Two theoretical frameworks prove especially illuminating: Bourdieu's concept of habitus and Butler's theory of performativity. For Bourdieu (1990), habitus refers to the system of durable, transposable dispositions that structure perception, thought, and action. These dispositions are acquired through socialization and embodied in posture, gesture, taste, and practical sense. Habitus operates below the level of conscious deliberation; it is "history turned into nature" (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 78). Crucially, habitus does not merely reflect social structure—it reproduces it. By shaping what feels natural, possible, and desirable, habitus channels action along certain trajectories while rendering alternatives unthinkable or impractical. This provides a concrete mechanism for selective realization. The modal field is not equally open in all directions; it is structured by embodied dispositions that make some possibilities salient and others invisible. A possibility that no one can perceive, desire, or pursue is a possibility in name only. Habitus thus functions as a filter on the modal field, selecting for actualization those possibilities that align with internalized structures of perception and practice. Butler's (1990, 1993) theory of performativity offers a complementary account. For Butler, identity categories—particularly gender—are not expressions of an underlying essence but effects of repeated, stylized performances. There is no doer behind the deed; the doer is constituted through the doing. Gender, on this account, is "a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance" (Butler, 1990, p. 45). Performativity illuminates the temporal dimension of fabrication. Social realities are not established once and for all; they must be continuously re-enacted to persist. Each iteration is Truth in the Making 5 also an opportunity for variation, subversion, or failure. The stability of social facts depends on the regularity of their performance—and this regularity is never guaranteed. Performativity thus reveals both the power and the fragility of fabricated realities: they hold only as long as they continue to be enacted. Together, habitus and performativity specify the mechanisms through which selective realization operates. Habitus explains how possibilities are filtered through embodied dispositions; performativity explains how selected possibilities are stabilized through iterative enactment. Neither reduces social reality to individual choice or collective agreement; both emphasize the embodied, temporal, and practice-dependent character of world-making. Human beings participate in this process of actualization not only through direct action, but through interpretation, narration, and expectation (Taylor, 2004). By committing to certain descriptions of the world, individuals and groups stabilize particular trajectories while rendering others less likely. Reality, especially in its social and institutional forms, is therefore not merely observed but selectively realized. This modal perspective does not imply that reality is arbitrary. Possibilities are constrained by physical laws, material conditions, and existing social structures. Nevertheless, within these constraints, human fabrication plays a decisive role in determining which possibilities are realized and which remain counterfactual. 4. Fabrication and the Structure of the Self Fabrication is not limited to artifacts and institutions; it is also intrinsic to selfhood. Phenomenologically, the self is given in two irreducible modes: the self one inhabits prereflectively, and the self one presents through narration and social interaction (Husserl, 1970; Merleau-Ponty, 1962). This split is not a moral failure or psychological defect; it is a structural condition of appearing in a shared world. 4.1 The Phenomenological Structure of Self-Presentation The phenomenological tradition, from Husserl through Merleau-Ponty to contemporary thinkers, has consistently emphasized that selfhood is not a simple given but an achievement—a structure that emerges through the interplay of embodiment, temporality, and intersubjectivity (Zahavi, 2005). The self is not first constituted in isolation and then presented to others; rather, self-constitution and self-presentation are interwoven from the outset. Husserl's analysis of internal time-consciousness reveals that even the most basic sense of self involves a temporal structure: the living present retains what has just passed and protends toward what is about to come (Husserl, 1970). The self is not a static point but a flowing synthesis. Merleau-Ponty extends this insight into the embodied realm: the body-subject is always already engaged with a world, always already visible to others, always already caught up in patterns of gesture, expression, and comportment that exceed deliberate control (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). From this phenomenological ground, the split between inhabited and presented self can be understood more precisely. The inhabited self is the pre-reflective sense of being a continuous center of experience—what Zahavi (2005) calls the "minimal self." It is tacit, felt, and ongoing. The presented self, by contrast, is the narrative and social self—articulated, Truth in the Making 6 styled, and offered to others for recognition. This presented self is not a mask concealing a true inner nature; it is a necessary condition for social existence. Without narration, the self cannot appear in a shared world; without stylization, it cannot be recognized. Ricoeur's work on narrative identity provides a crucial bridge here. For Ricoeur (1991), personal identity is constituted through narrative: the stories we tell about ourselves create coherence across time and change. This narrative identity is neither pure fiction nor simple fact; it is a configuration that renders a life intelligible. The self is "emplotted"—given a shape, a trajectory, a meaning—through the stories it inhabits and tells. The inhabited self is tacit, felt, and continuous, while the presented self is articulated, coherent, and socially legible. There is no access to a pure, unconstructed self prior to narration. Identity emerges through the same processes of stabilization that characterize social reality more broadly. Recognizing this structural split helps explain why fabrication is unavoidable in social life. Narration is not a deviation from authenticity; it is a condition of social existence. However, it also introduces the risk that coherence and consistency may be mistaken for truth. 5. Lying as Counterfactual Commitment Within this framework, lying cannot be adequately understood as mere false assertion (Augustine, trans. 1952; Bok, 1978). Many lies are not simple denials of fact, but counterfactual or premature commitments to unrealized possible worlds. Statements such as "this would have been true if circumstances had been different" or "this will be true once reality catches up" reflect a temporal displacement rather than outright negation. 5.1 The Modal Structure of Deception Traditional analyses of lying focus on the speaker's intention to deceive and the falsity of the statement (Bok, 1978; Carson, 2010). These analyses capture paradigm cases but struggle with more complex phenomena: self-deception, bullshit (Frankfurt, 2005), strategic ambiguity, and what might be called "aspirational assertion"—claiming something not because it is true now, but because one intends to make it true. The modal framework developed here offers a different lens. Consider the speaker who asserts something false but believes—sincerely, if unjustifiably—that reality will vindicate the claim. Is this lying? The traditional account says yes: the statement is false, and the speaker knows it. But this misses something phenomenologically crucial: from the speaker's standpoint, the claim is addressed to a possible world that the speaker is trying to bring into being. Lying, in this sense, involves treating a possible world as authoritative before it has been realized. The speaker commits to a projection that has not yet been confirmed by reality (Anscombe, 1957; Davidson, 1984). This explains why liars often experience their claims as sincere and why consistency becomes psychologically compelling. Once a projected world has been adopted, contradictory facts threaten not only truth but the coherence of the world itself. 5.2 Temporal Dimensions of False Assertion Truth in the Making 7 The temporal structure of lying deserves further attention. At least three temporal modes of false assertion can be distinguished. First, retrospective counterfactual: "If things had gone differently, this would have been true." Here the lie addresses an alternative past, a branching path not taken. The speaker inhabits a counterfactual history and speaks from within it. Second, prospective commitment: "This is not true yet, but it will be." Here the lie is addressed to an anticipated future. The speaker treats future vindication as sufficient warrant for present assertion. Third, atemporal projection: "This is how things really are, beneath appearances." Here the lie claims access to a deeper or truer reality obscured by surface facts. Each of these modes involves a displacement from the actual present to an alternative modal or temporal location. What makes them lies, on the present account, is not simply that they are false, but that they treat an unrealized world as authoritative while concealing this displacement from the audience. The liar speaks as if from actuality while in fact speaking from possibility. This account does not excuse deception. On the contrary, it clarifies why fabrication becomes ethically dangerous when it is insulated from correction, especially under conditions of power or authority. Understanding the modal structure of lying reveals its mechanism without justifying its practice. 6. Against Correspondence: A Modal Critique Correspondence theories of truth presuppose a relatively stable world against which statements can be measured. While this presupposition is appropriate in the natural sciences, it becomes problematic in technological and social domains. Artifacts and institutions are not true by mirroring reality, but by functioning within it. Their truth is performative and temporal rather than descriptive and instantaneous. 6.1 Engaging Robust Correspondence Realism Robust correspondence realism holds that truth consists in a relation of correspondence between propositions (or sentences, or beliefs) and mind-independent facts (Russell, 1912; Armstrong, 1997). On this view, truth is non-epistemic: a statement is true or false regardless of whether anyone knows it, believes it, or can verify it. The world is as it is, and our statements are true when they accurately represent that world. This view has considerable force in the domain of natural science. The claim that water is H₂O is true because it corresponds to the molecular structure of water, which exists independently of human belief or practice. The claim that the Earth orbits the Sun was true even when most humans believed otherwise. In such cases, correspondence provides a clear and compelling account of truth. The difficulty arises when correspondence is extended to social reality. Consider the claim that "the United States dollar is legal tender." To what mind-independent fact does this correspond? There is no physical property of dollar bills that makes them legal tender; their status depends entirely on collective acceptance and institutional backing. If everyone ceased to treat dollars as legal tender, they would cease to be legal tender. The "fact" to which the statement corresponds is itself constituted by human practice. This is not to say that claims about social reality are arbitrary or merely conventional. The claim about the dollar is true—but its truth is not correspondence to a mind-independent fact. Truth in the Making 8 Rather, its truth is constituted by the very practices it describes. This is what Searle (1995) calls an "institutional fact": a fact that exists only because we collectively treat it as existing. Correspondence realism, in its robust form, cannot adequately account for such facts. 6.2 The Reductionist Objection and Its Failure A sophisticated objectivist might respond that social facts are ultimately reducible to physical or psychological facts. On this view, the claim that "the dollar is legal tender" does correspond to mind-independent facts—namely, the complex physical states of brains, the behavioral dispositions of economic agents, the patterns of transactions recorded in databases, and so forth. Social reality, the objection runs, is nothing over and above these physical and psychological substrates. If we knew everything about the physical world, we would know everything about the social world. This reductionist objection deserves careful consideration. It is true that social facts supervene on physical facts: there can be no change in social reality without some change in physical reality (brain states, documents, behaviors, etc.). However, supervenience does not entail reducibility. The question is not whether social facts are implemented in physical substrates—of course they are—but whether the truth of social claims can be explained by correspondence to those substrates. Several considerations tell against the reductionist view. First, the same social fact can be realized by indefinitely many physical configurations. The dollar's status as legal tender is compatible with countless different distributions of brain states, behavioral patterns, and institutional arrangements. There is no unique physical fact to which the social claim corresponds; rather, there is an open-ended class of physical realizers. Correspondence to a disjunction of this kind is not correspondence in any robust sense. Second, social facts have a normative dimension that physical facts lack. The dollar is not merely accepted as legal tender; it ought to be accepted. Economic agents who refuse it violate a norm. This normativity is essential to the social fact: a pattern of behavior that lacked normative backing would not constitute legal tender. But norms are not reducible to patterns of behavior or brain states. The norm exists even when it is violated; indeed, violation presupposes the norm. No purely physical description can capture this normative character. Third, social facts are what Searle (1995) calls "status functions": they exist because we collectively assign a status to entities that they do not have in virtue of their physical properties alone. A piece of paper becomes money not because of any physical transformation but because we treat it as money. The status is imposed, not discovered. Correspondence theories, which model truth on the relation between representation and represented, cannot accommodate this constitutive role of collective intentionality. The reductionist objection thus fails. Social facts are real, but their reality is not a matter of correspondence to physical substrates. It is a matter of collective recognition, normative backing, and temporal persistence—precisely the features emphasized by the fabrication account developed here. 6.3 Engaging Deflationary Theories Deflationary theories of truth deny that truth is a substantive property requiring philosophical analysis (Horwich, 1990; Field, 1994). On this view, to say that "Snow is white" is true is Truth in the Making 9 simply to say that snow is white. The truth predicate is a device of semantic ascent—useful for generalizing, endorsing, and disquoting—but it does not pick out a deep metaphysical relation. Deflationism has the virtue of parsimony. It does not require a metaphysics of facts or a theory of correspondence. However, it achieves this parsimony at a cost: it cannot explain why truth matters, why we strive for it, or how it functions differently across domains. If truth is merely a disquotational device, then the claim that social truth is "made" differently from scientific truth becomes puzzling. What is there to be made? The present account suggests that truth is not merely a linguistic convenience but a normative achievement—something that must be established, maintained, and defended. In the natural sciences, this achievement takes the form of empirical confirmation and theoretical coherence. In social life, it takes the form of collective recognition, institutional stability, and temporal persistence. Deflationism, by flattening these differences, obscures the distinctive mechanisms through which different domains generate truth. 6.4 Engaging Classical Pragmatism Classical pragmatism, as developed by James (1907) and Dewey (1938), offers a more congenial framework. For the pragmatists, truth is not a static correspondence but a dynamic relation between inquiry and its outcomes. A belief is true if it "works"—if it successfully guides action, solves problems, and integrates with other beliefs. Truth is something that "happens to" an idea; it is made true through the process of verification. This pragmatist insight is valuable and is echoed in the present account. The emphasis on functionality, temporal unfolding, and the practical consequences of belief aligns well with the claim that social truth is fabricated rather than discovered. However, classical pragmatism has its own limitations. First, pragmatism tends to conflate truth with warranted assertibility or justified belief. But a claim can be well-warranted and still false, or poorly warranted and still true. The present account maintains a distinction between the mechanisms by which truth is established and truth itself. Social truths are fabricated, but fabrication can fail: institutions can collapse, currencies can become worthless, leaders can lose legitimacy. The possibility of failure shows that social truth is not merely whatever we take to be true. Second, pragmatism focuses primarily on the epistemic dimension—on inquiry, belief, and justification. The present account emphasizes the ontological dimension: how realities come to be, not merely how we come to know them. Social fabrication is not just a way of forming beliefs; it is a way of making worlds. Third, contemporary neo-pragmatism, as exemplified by Rorty (1989), tends toward a deflationary or eliminativist stance on truth, treating "truth" as merely an honorific we bestow on beliefs we endorse. The present account resists this move. Truth remains a normative achievement, not a mere compliment. Asking whether a social institution "corresponds" to a fact often misses the point. The more relevant question is whether it holds—whether it continues to organize behavior and expectations over time. Truth, in these domains, is better understood as a trajectory than as a snapshot.