Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T13:24:47.085Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Mereology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2018

KATHERINE HAWLEY
KATHERINE HAWLEY*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF ST [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

What kind of entity is a committee, a book group, or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings among their parts. Thus, the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago but fell out of favor following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. Recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done and why we should bother.

Keywords

social groupsmembershipcollectivesparthoodsocial ontology
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , Winter 2017 , pp. 395 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bird, Alexander. (2010) ‘Social Knowing: The Social Sense of “Scientific Knowledge”’. Philosophical Perspectives, 24, 23–56.Google Scholar
Effingham, Nikk. (2010) ‘The Metaphysics of Groups’. Philosophical Studies, 149, 251–67.Google Scholar
Epstein, Brian. (2015) The Ant Trap. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evnine, Simon J. (2016) Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions and Organisms. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fine, Kit. (2003) ‘The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter’. Mind, 112, 195–234.Google Scholar
Hansson Wahlberg, Tobias. (2014) ‘Institutional Objects, Reductionism and Theories of Persistence’. Dialectica, 68, 525–62.Google Scholar
Hawley, Katherine, and Bird, Alexander. (2011) ‘What are Natural Kinds?’ Philosophical Perspectives, 25, 205–21.Google Scholar
Hindriks, Frank. (2013) ‘The Location Problem in Social Ontology’. Synthese, 190, 412–37.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. (1991) Parts of Classes. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Loewer, Barry, and Schaffer, Jonathan. (2015) A Companion to David Lewis. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Graham, and Pettit, Philip. (1981) Semantics and Social Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Magidor, Ofra (2011) ‘Arguments By Leibniz's Law in Metaphysics’. Philosophy Compass, 6, 180–95.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. H. (1982) ‘The Reduction of Society’. Philosophy, 57, 51–75.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, Paul, and Putnam, Hilary. (1958) ‘Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2, 3–36.Google Scholar
Quinton, Anthony. (1975–76) ‘Social Objects’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, Katherine. (2013) ‘What Are Groups?’. Philosophical Studies, 155, 257–72.Google Scholar
Ruben, David-Hillel. (1983) ‘Social Wholes and Parts’. Mind, 92, 219–38.Google Scholar
Ruben, David-Hillel. (1985) The Metaphysics of the Social World. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Uzquiano, Gabriel. (2004) ‘The Supreme Court and the Supreme Court Justices: A Metaphysical Puzzle’. Noûs, 38, 135–53.Google Scholar
Wasserman, Ryan. (2017) ‘Material Constitution’. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/material-constitution/.Google Scholar