Social Ontology Segment 1

2024-2 Social Ontology

Segment 1

 

1. In what ways does Mason and Ritchie argue that social ontology has room for metaphysics?

Mason and Ritchie argue that both reductionism and eliminativism fail to exclude social entities from metaphysics. First, even if social entities are reducible to non-social entities, they still belong to metaphysics because they exist. Second, even if social entities can be eliminated and thereby do not exist, the question of whether they exist still belongs to metaphysical inquiries. By the same token, the possibility that social entities might be non-fundamental and mind-dependent does not exclude them from the study of metaphysics; metaphysicians have traditionally studied the relationship between fundamental and non-fundamental entities, as well as mind-dependent ones (e.g., mathematical objects). Finally, there is no clear distinction between social and natural kinds. 

 

2. What are the puzzles that make Searle grapple with the construction of social reality?  How does Searle address the puzzle in one way?

(1) How are social facts (dependent entirely on human agreement) possible?
(2) What is their structure?
(3) In what sense are they objective?

Searle's fundamental question that motivates him to construct his theory of social reality is: How can there be “things that exist only because we believe them to exist” (e.g., money, property, governments, and marriages), yet many facts about these things are objective? To elucidate this, Searle makes a distinction between ontological and epistemic objectivity. Although social kinds are ontologically subjective, judgments about them can be epistemically objective.

 

3. How do subjective vs. objective, intrinsic vs. extrinsic, and agentive vs. non-agentive match with examples?

(1) Subjective vs. Objective

Epistemically speaking, “objective" and “subjective” are primarily predicates of judgments.  

O: “Rembrandt is a better artist than Rubens."

S: “Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam during the year 1632."

In the ontological sense, "objective" and “subjective" are predicates of entities and types of entities, and they ascribe modes of existence.

O: mountains are ontologically objective because their mode of existence is independent of any perceiver or any mental state

S: pains are subjective entities, because their mode of existence depends on being felt by subjects

(2) Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic

Those features that we might call intrinsic to nature: having a certain mass and a certain chemical composition

Those features that exist relative to the intentionality of observers, users: Being as a screw driver (serving as  a screw driver, performing certain functions) 

(3) agentive vs. non-agentive

Agentive Functions: Functions that are assigned relative to the practical interests of conscious agents: "This stone is a paperweight," "This object is a screwdriver,” or “This is a chair." The ascription of the function ascribes the use to which we intentionally put these objects.

Nonagentive functions: Some functions are not imposed on objects to serve practical purposes but are assigned to naturally occurring objects and processes as part of a theoretical account of the phenomena in question. Thus we say “The heart functions to pump blood" when we are giving an account of how organisms live and survive.

 

4. According to Searle, how are institutional facts created?

Instituitional facts are created from collective intentionality through assignment of status functions (a special kind of agentive function). Collective imposition of status function takes the form of constitutive rules, i.e., X count as Y in C, which requires collective agreement. By doing so, the assignment creates a new institutional fact on top of brute facts.

 

5. What is the biggest concern about Searle's creation of institutional facts? (your opinion)

According to Searle, intentionality plays a pivotal role in creating both social kinds and institutional facts. He further claims that every social kind possesses self-referentiality-i.e., it cannot be defined without referring to itself. This implies that the attitude we take toward a phenomenon is partly constitutive of it. However, examples such as recession and racism show that certain social kinds do not depend on our attitudes toward them. The counterexamples not only undermine the role of intentionality but also rasie a doubt about his claim that all the social kinds are ontologically subjective.

 

6. How does Khalidi characterize each social kind, and what examples does he provide for each?

social kinds whose nature is such that human beings need not have any propositional attitudes towards them for them to exist

 

7. Do you agree with this kind of classification?

 

8. How should proponents of author intention handle conflicts between author intention and user intention?

Koslicki discusses the following possible responses to the challenge: (i) redescribe the initial author intent in
more general terms, so that it can include the subsequent user-intent; (ii) supplement the original author-
intent with user-intent, but do not replace it; (iii) appeal mostly to author intent but allow for occasional
replacement with user-intent

 

9. How would you go about defining artifacts as categories?

 

10. What conception of money does Guala favor?

Guala upholds the thesis that money is essentially institution. Money is 

 

11. What motivates Guala's view?

money-as-an-institution is more fundamental, in part, because the primacy of rules over institutional objects holds in general. Consider traffic regulation devices: surely they are often middle-sized institutional objects, such as signs and traffic lights, and surely their social properties (or functions) are derivative from the existence of the rules of traffic. 

 

12. What is the greatest objection to Guala's argument? 

Guala claims that the rules constituting an institution are, by nature, merely advisory. “The main reason why French people drive on the right is not because they want to avoid a fine, but because they want to avoid car accidents” (Guala 2020: 272). However, this does not hold true when considering institutions like marriage. For instance, some rules, such as “same-sex marriage is prohibited,” are not merely advisory but regulatory.

 

13. Which approach do you favor between normative and descriptive approaches?

 

Reading Lists

Mason, Rebecca & Ritchie, Katherine (2020). Social Ontology. In Ricki Bliss & James Miller (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. New York, NY: Routledge, 312-324.

Searle, J. R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.

Khalidi, Muhammad Ali (2015). Three Kinds of Social Kinds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (1):96-112.

K. Koslicki (2018). “Artifacts”, ch.8 of Form, Matter, Substance

Guala, Francesco. (2020) "Money as an Institution and Money as an Object" Journal of Social Ontology, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 265-279. 

Passinsky, Asya (2020). Should Bitcoin Be Classified as Money? Journal of Social Ontology 6 (2):281-292