Contributions To Social Ontology

Recent years have seen a dramatic re-emergence of interest in ontology. From philosophy and social sciences to artificial intelligence and computer science, ontology is gaining interdisciplinary influence as a popular tool for applied research. Contributions to Social Ontology focuses specifically on these developments within the social sciences. The contributions reveal that this revived interest in social ontology involves far more than an unquestioning acceptance or application of the concepts and methods of academic philosophers. Instead as ontology permeates so many new areas, social ontology itself is evolving in new and fascinating ways. This book engages with these new developments, pushing it forward with cutting-edge new material from leading authors in this area, from Roy Bhaskar to Margaret Archer. It also explicitly analyzes the relationship between the new ontological projects and the more traditional approaches. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers alike across the social sciences and particularly in philosophy, economics and sociology.

The contributions gathered in this volume present the state of the art in key areas of current social ontology. They focus on the role of collective intentional states in creating social facts, and on the nature of intentional properties of groups that allow characterizing them as responsible agents, or perhaps even as persons. Many of the essays are inspired by contemporary action theory, emotion theory, and theories of collective intentionality. Another group of essays revisits early phenomenological approaches to social ontology and accounts of sociality that draw on the Hegelian idea of recognition. This volume is organized into three parts. First, the volume discusses themes highlighted in John Searle’s work and addresses questions concerning the relation between intentions and the deontic powers of institutions, the role of disagreement, and the nature of collective intentionality. Next, the book focuses on joint and collective emotions and mutual recognition, and then goes on to explore the scope and limits of group agency, or group personhood, especially the capacity for responsible agency. The variety of philosophical traditions mirrored in this collection provides readers with a rich and multifaceted survey of present research in social ontology. It will help readers deepen their understanding of three interrelated and core topics in social ontology: the constitution and structure of institutions, the role of shared evaluative attitudes, and the nature and role of group agents.

Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition brings together contributions discussing issues arising from theoretical and empirical research on social ontology and social cognition. It is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary collection in this rapidly expanding area. The contributors draw upon their diverse backgrounds in philosophy, cognitive science, behavioral economics, sociology of science and anthropology. Based largely on contributions to the first Aarhus-Paris conference held at the University of Aarhus in June 2012, the book addresses such questions as: If the reference of concepts like money is fixed by collective acceptance, does it depend on mechanisms that are distinct from those which contribute to understanding the reference of concepts of other kinds of entity? What psychological and neural mechanisms, if any, are involved in the constitution, persistence and recognition of social facts? The editors’ introduction considers strands of research that have gained increasing importance in explaining the cognitive foundations of acts of sociality, for example, the theory that humans are predisposed and motivated to engage in joint action with con-specifics thanks to mechanisms that enable them to share others’ mental states. The book also presents a commentary written by John Searle for this volume and an interview in which the editors invite Searle to respond to the various questions raised in the introduction and by the other contributors.

This unique collection examines the connections between two complementary approaches to philosophical social theory: Hegel-inspired theories of recognition (Anerkennung), and analytical social ontology. The chapters investigate the social constitution of persons and the nature of social and institutional reality.

This book provides a better understanding of some of the central puzzles of empirical political science: how does “government” express will and purpose? How do political institutions come to have effective causal powers in the administration of policy and regulation? What accounts for both plasticity and perseverance of political institutions and practices? And how are we to formulate a better understanding of the persistence of dysfunctions in government and public administration – failures to achieve public goods, the persistence of self-dealing behavior by the actors of the state, and the apparent ubiquity of corruption even within otherwise high-functioning governments?

Economists increasingly recognise that engagement with social ontology – the study of the basic subject matter and constitution of social reality - can facilitate more relevant analysis. This growing recognition amongst economists of the importance of social ontology is due very considerably to the work of members of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. This volume brings together important papers by members of this group, some previously unpublished, in a collection that reveals the breadth and vitality of this Cambridge project. It provides a brilliant introduction to the central themes explored, perspectives sustained, insights achieved and how the project is moving forward. An initial set of papers examine how ontology is understood and justified within this Cambridge project and consider how it compares with prominent historical and contemporary alternatives. The majority of the included papers involve social ontological analysis being put to work directly in underlabouring for specific types of development in economics. The papers are grouped according to their contribution to clarifying and developing (i) various competing traditions and projects of modern economics, (ii) history of thought contributions, (iii) methodological concerns, (iv) ethics and (v) conceptions of particular aspects of social reality, including money, gender, technology and institutions. Background to and a brief history of the Cambridge group is provided in the Introduction. Social Ontology and Modern Economics will be of interest not only to economists but also philosophers of social science, social theorists and those eager to explore the nature of gender, social institutions and technology.

This volume features a critical evaluation of the recent work of the philosopher, Prof. Raimo Tuomela and it also offers it offers new approaches to the collectivism-versus-individualism debate. It specifically looks at Tuomela's book Social Ontology and its accounts of collective intentionality and related topics. The book contains eight essays written by expert contributors that present different perspectives on Tuomela’s investigation into the philosophy of sociality, social ontology, theory of action, and (philosophical) decision and game theory. In addition, Tuomela himself gives a comprehensive response to each essay and defends his theory in terms of the new arguments presented here. Overall, readers will gain a deeper insight into group reasoning and the "we-mode" approach, which is used to account for collective intention and action, cooperation, group attitudes, social practices, and institutions as well as group solidarity. This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers and graduate students and researchers interested in contemporary philosophy of sociality, sociological theory, social ontology as well as the philosophy of mind, decision and game theory, and cognitive science. Tuomela’s book stands as a model of excellence in social ontology, an especially intractable field of philosophical inquiry that benefits conspicuously from the devotion of Tuomela’s keen philosophical mind. His book is must reading in social ontology. J. Angelo Corlett, Julia Lyons Strobel