Social Ontology Normativity And Law

This volume contains the proceedings of the Social Ontology, Normativity, and Philosophy of Law conference, which took place on May 30–31, 2019 at the University of Glasgow. At the invitation of the Social Ontology Research Group, a panel of prominent scholars shed light on normativity from the perspective of social ontology and the philosophy of law.

Social ontology, in its broadest sense, is the study of the nature of social reality, including collective intentions and agency. The starting point of Tuomela's account of collective intentionality is the distinction between thinking and acting as a private person ("I-mode") versus as a "we-thinking" group member ("we-mode"). The we-mode approach is based on social groups consisting of persons, which may range from simple task groups consisting of a few persons to corporations and even to political states. Tuomela extends the we-mode notion to cover groups controlled by external authority. Thus, for instance, cooperation and attitude formation are studied in cases where the participants are governed "from above" as in many corporations. The volume goes on to present a systematic philosophical theory related to the collectivism-versus-individualism debate in the social sciences. A weak version of collectivism (the "we-mode" approach) depends on group-based collective intentionality. We-mode collective intentionality is not individualistically reducible and is needed to complement individualistic accounts in social scientific theorizing. The we-mode approach is used in the book to account for collective intention and action, cooperation, group attitudes, and social practices and institutions, as well as group solidarity. Tuomela establishes the first complete theory of group reasons (in the sense of members' reasons for participation in group activities). The book argues in terms of game-theoretical group-reasoning that the kind of weak collectivism that the we-mode approach involves is both conceptually and rational-functionally different from what an individualistic approach ("pro-group I-mode" approach) entails.

Being Social brings together leading and emerging scholars on the question of sociality in poststructuralist thought. The essays collected in this volume examine a sense of the social which resists final determination and closure, embracing an anxiety and undecidability of sociality, rather than effacing it. Through issues including queer politics, migration, and Guantanamo, recent events such as the occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul, and theoretical explorations of themes such as writing, law, and democracy, contributors assess how a reconfigured sociality affects thinking and practice in the legal and political realms. With a particular emphasis on Jean-Luc Nancy, whose work brings questions of community to the fore, these essays explore how the consistent 'unworking' of sociality informs the tenor and form of political debate and engagement.

In an era where new areas of life and new problems call for normative solutions while the plurality of values in society challenge the very basis for normative solutions, this book looks at a growing field of research on the relations between social and legal norms. New technologies and social media offer new ways to communicate about normative issues and the centrality of formal law and how normativity comes about is a question for debate. This book offers empirical and theoretical research in the field of social and legal norms and will inspire future debate and research in terms of internationalization and cross-national comparative studies. It presents a consistent picture of empirical research in different social and organizational areas and will deepen the theoretical understanding regarding the interplay between social and legal norms. Including chapters written from four different aspects of normativity, the contributors argue that normativity is a result of combinations between law in books, law in action, social norms and social practice. The book uses a variety of different international examples, ranging from Sweden, Uzbekistan, Colombia and Mexico. Primarily aimed at scholars in sociology of law, socio-legal studies, law and legal theory, the book will also interest those in sociology, political science and psychology.

Ten original essays examine the central themes of John Searle’s ontology of society. Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle’s work. Moreover, these essays open the door to new approaches to addressing fundamental questions about social phenomena. This book also features a new essay by Searle himself that summarizes and further develops his work.

Presenting legal and philosophical essays on money, this book explores the conditions according to which an object like a piece of paper, or an electronic signal, has come to be seen as having a value. Money plays a crucial role in the regulation of social relationships and their normative determination. It is thus integral to the very nature of the “social”, and the question of how society is kept together by a network of agreements, conventions, exchanges, and codes. All of which must be traced down. The technologies of money discussed here by Searle, Ferraris, and Condello show how we conceive the category of the social at the intersection of individual and collective intentionality, documentality, and materiality. All of these dimensions, as the introduction to this volume demonstrates, are of vital importance for legal theory and for a whole set of legal concepts that are crucial in reflections on the relationship between law, philosophy, and society.

This book explores the role of time in rational agency and practical reasoning. Agents are finite and often operate under severe time constraints. Action takes time and unfolds in time. While time is an ineliminable constituent of our experience of agency, it is both a theoretical and a practical problem to explain whether and how time shapes rational agency and practical thought. The essays in this book are divided into three parts. Part I is devoted to the temporal structure of action and agency, from metaphysical and metaethical perspectives. Part II features essays about the temporal structure of rational deliberation, from the perspective of action theory and theories of practical reasoning. Part III includes essays about the temporal aspects of failures of rationality. Taken together, the essays in this book shed new light on our understanding of the temporality of agency that coheres with our subjective sense of finitude and explains rational agency both in time and over time. Time in Action will be of interest to advanced students and researchers working on the philosophy of time, metaphysics of action, action theory, practical reasoning, ethical theory, moral psychology, and rational justification.

This thought-provoking book develops and elaborates on the artifact theory of law, covering a wide range of related theoretical and practical topics. Featuring international contributions from both noted and up-and-coming scholars in law and philosophy, it offers a range of perspectives that flesh out the artifact theory of law, it also introduces criticisms of previous formulations of the theory and inquires into its potential payoffs.