There is a widespread sentiment that social objects such as nation-states, borders, and pieces of money are just figments of our collective imagination and not really ‘out there’ in the world. Call this the ‘antirealist intuition’. Eliminativist, reductive materialist, and immaterialist views of social objects can all make sense of the antirealist intuition, in one way or another. But these views face serious difficulties. A promising alternative view is nonreductive materialism. Yet it is unclear whether and (...) how nonreductive materialists can make sense of the antirealist intuition. I develop a version of nonreductive materialism that is able to meet this explanatory demand. The central idea is that social objects are materially constituted, response-dependent objects. I go on to offer an independent argument in favor of this response-dependent view of social objects. I then suggest that a proponent of this view can appeal to the response-dependent nature of social objects to explain, or explain away, the antirealist intuition. (shrink)

Under the influence of naturalistic approaches, contemporary philosophy of science tends to characterize scientific objectivity not by virtue of the individualistic following of rules or satisfying epistemic utilities, but as a property arising from the organisational features of groups. This paper presents a critical review of one such proposal, that of Helen Longino, probing some of its main features against the debate between Pasteur and Pouchet in mid-nineteenth-century France regarding the spontaneous generation of life. After considering some weaknesses and strengths, (...) it is argued that Longino’s social epistemology is only able to generate normativity by implicitly assuming a classic procedural notion of epistemic acceptability. The paper also aims to use this historical case to shed light on the complex, multidimensional nature of the dynamics of actual science, arguing both against purely epistemic and exclusively social approaches in a satisfactory meta-scientific explanation of controversies. (shrink)

Anthony Quinton; I*—The Presidential Address: Social Objects, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 1–28, https://doi.

It is often seen as a truism that social objects and facts are the product of human intentions. I argue that the role of intentions in social ontology is commonly overestimated. I introduce a distinction that is implicit in much discussion of social ontology, but is often overlooked: between a social entity’s “grounds” and its “anchors.” For both, I argue that intentions, either individual or collective, are less essential than many theorists have assumed. Instead, I (...) propose a more worldly – and less intellectualist – approach to social ontology. (shrink)

This paper is a realist argument for the existence of “social objects”. Social objects, I argue, are the outcome states of a contingent causal process and in turn posses causal properties. This argument has consequences for what we can mean by realism and consequences for the development of a realist methodology. Realism should abandon the notion of natural necessity in favour of a view that the “real” nature of the social world is contingent and necessity (...) is only revealed in outcome states. This, I argue, has both theoretical and methodological implications and I develop my argument through two case studies, of homelessness and ethnicity. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In Elder-Vass’s response to my critical discussion of his social ontology, it is maintained (1) that a social object is not identical with but is merely composed of its suitably interrelated parts, (2) that a social object is necessarily indistinguishable in terms of its causal capacities from its interrelated parts, and (3) that ontological individualism lacks an adequate ontological justification. In this reply, I argue that in view of (1) the so-called redescription principle defended by Elder-Vass ought (...) to be reformulated and renamed; that the conjunction of (1) and (2) renders social objects causally redundant; and that ontological individualism can be coherently formulated and theoretically justified within Elder-Vass’s own metaphysics of objects with causal powers. (shrink)

The value-freedom of scientific knowledge is commonly hold to be a necessary condition for objectivity. Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism aims to overcome this connection. She questions the suitability of the normative ideal of value-freedom and develops an alternative conception of objectivity, which integrates social and epistemic aspects of scientific enquiry. The function of this notion of ‘social objectivity’ is to make value-laden assumptions assessable through a process of criticism, even if there cannot be any guarantee of their elimination. (...) This assessability requires common standards of evaluation, which are threatened by Longino’s rejection of the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive values guiding theory choice. I will argue that in order to resolve this inherent tension, social objectivity has to be understood as based on a procedural epistemology and, differing from Longino’s own approach, must include the normative requirement to strive for consensus instead of allowing for epistemological pluralism. (shrink)

1. There is a tendency nowadays for linguists, philosophers and other theorists of language, to dismiss the notion of an object like the English language or the Polish language as simply mythological or mythopoeic—as of no interest to any serious science of language. Some theorists even appear to deny that there are such things as languages . ‘This notion [of a public language] is unknown to empirical inquiry and raises what seem to be irresolvable problems’, Chomsky said in a lecture (...) he gave recently in London. (shrink)

Artifacts include practical items such as tables, chairs, and screwdrivers, as well as artworks such as paintings, sculptures, and musical works. Social objects include social and institutional things such as dollars, borders, states, corporations, and universities. Although we are all familiar with such entities, it is far from clear what their nature or essence consists in and whether they even have a real nature or essence. The aim of this chapter is to survey and critically examine various (...) positions on these two central philosophical issues concerning essence and artifacts, artworks, and social objects. I first consider whether the kinds 'artifact' and 'social object'—as well as kinds of artifacts and social objects—have essences. I then inquire into what these essences may be. (shrink)

The idea for this issue of the Rivista di Estetica comes from a conference that was held at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade, June 2011. The question that the speakers were asked to tackle was “What keeps society together?”. At least since John Searle’s 1995 book, The Construction of Social Reality, a popular answer to that question has been that collective intentionality lies at bottom of all manifestations of social reality – from interactions (...) in informal groups to... (shrink)

One reason for the renewed interest in Austrian philosophy, and especially in the work of Brentano and his followers, turns on the fact that analytic philosophers have become once again interested in the traditional problems of metaphysics. It was Brentano, Husserl, and the philosophers and psychologists whom they influenced, who drew attention to the thorny problem of intentionality, the problem of giving an account of the relation between acts and objects or, more generally, between the psychological environments of cognitive (...) subjects and the different sorts of external (physical, geographical, social) environments which they inhabit. The present essay addresses this environmental version of the problem of intentionality. It draws not only on the work of Husserl and Scheler but also on the Gestalt psychological writings of Kurt Koffka and Kurt Lewin. It considers the influential subjective idealist theory of animal environments put forward by J. von Uexküll and contrasts this with a realist theory of organism-environment interaction based on the work of the ecological psychologists J. J. Gibson and Roger Barker. This realist theory is then exploited as a basis for an ontology of social objects of a range of different sorts. (This is the English original of the French translation.). (shrink)

First, I want to thank PPP for the privilege of having my work read and commented on by esteemed colleagues. In this response, I briefly review some of the key issues that they have raised. These issues include 1) the usefulness of a definition of mental disorder for North American psychiatry, 2) the absence of a concrete criterion to address the demarcation problem, 3) the place and role of values in such a demarcation, and 4) the worries of over-inclusiveness, problematic (...) values and imposition of values.The first question that needs to be clarified is raised by Waterman's commentary : Is it really necessary to define mental disorder and mental health? Here I feel I should clarify a background assumption of... (shrink)

In this article, I side with those who argue that the debate about the definition of “disease” should be reoriented from the question “what is disease” to the question of what it should be. However, I ground my argument on the rejection of the naturalist approach to define disease and the adoption of a normativist approach, according to which the concept of disease is normative and value-laden. Based on this normativist approach, I defend two main theses: (1) that conceptual analysis (...) is not the right method to define disease and that conceptual engineering should be the preferred method and (2) that the method of conceptual engineering should be implemented following the principles of Alexandrova’s account of social objectivity in the context of the definition of disease. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason (...) to believe that no concrete object can be created in this way. The central idea of my positive account is that social objects have a normative component to them, and seemingly concrete social objects have both normative and material components. I develop this idea more rigorously using resources from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition. The resulting normative hylomorphic account, I argue, solves the puzzle by providing a satisfying explanation of creation-by-agreement and the like, while also avoiding the difficulties facing extant accounts of social objects. (shrink)

Companies increasingly seek to strategically integrate social objectives in commercial activities to address societal challenges, yet little is known about how companies can sustain such a commitment over time. To address this question, we conduct a case-based, abductive study of two pharmaceutical companies widely considered industry leaders in facilitating access to medicine over a 20-year period (2000–2019). We identify product and operation-level integration as distinct types of integration efforts enacted by these companies. Tracing the intraorganizational dynamics associated with these (...) efforts, we theorize that sustained integration is contingent on companies’ ability to respond to and address the challenges specific to product and operation-level integration. The theoretical framework we develop contributes to an emerging debate on the potential of companies to make progress on societal challenges by strategically integrating social objectives, including but not limited to those related to global health. (shrink)

In his recent Immaterialism, Graham Harman develops a theory of social objects based on his object-oriented ontology. Whereas some of the more mainstream theories in the humanities would dissolve such objects into their material constituents or their various effects on others, object-oriented social theory theorizes them as inert, resilient entities with a private reality that exceeds their components and actions. Harman’s theory focuses on what social entities are qua objects, and consequently says little about (...) their specificity as social objects. A more complete social theory would also outline how human existence is to be understood in relation to a social world comprised of discrete and inert entities, as opposed to, for example, far more continuous material fields or networks of associations. We argue that an unexpected yet solid candidate for such an extension of object-oriented social theory already exists in Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of practico-inert being and group formation. We first outline Harman’s and Sartre’s respective ontologies of social objects, and then discuss how their many complementarities make the latter a suitable extension of the former. (shrink)

What are social objects and what makes them different from other realms of scientifically studied reality? How can sociology theoretically account for the relationship between objects of social reality such as norms and social structures, and their existence as objects of experience for living human actors? Contemporary sociology is characterized by a fundamental dissensus with regard to this question. Ironically, this is the very problem Alfred Schutz tackled in his phenomenological critique of Max Weber’s (...) sociological theory. As Schutz demonstrated nearly a century ago, phenomenology’s egological method is indispensable to a non-reductionist theory of intersubjectivity, namely, one that does full justice to embodied conscious life while demonstrating the relative independence of the intersubjective (social) sphere. In the process, Schutz’s mundane phenomenology results not only in a thorough rejection of all kinds of philosophical solipsism but also warns of the dangers, one that Husserl himself succumbed to, of granting collective structures transcendental status. Through a critical reading of Schutz’s early theory in the Phenomenology of the Social World, alongside key texts by Husserl, this paper shows the continued relevance of Schutz’s phenomenological theory of intersubjectivity to serve both as ontological grounding of “the social” and a method for investigating and describing concrete social objects in their transformation into theoretico-analytical objects amenable to empirical observation. (shrink)

Although biological species might seem paradigmatic natural objects, several objections can be advanced against their independence from taxonomic activities and from scientific and social practices in general. Darwin himself, in the second chapter of the Origin, claimed to be looking «at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other». In this contribution, I sketch the sticking points of the issue whether species are natural or (...) class='Hi'>social objects in the light of two of the main accounts of social objects, namely Searle’s, on the one hand, and Ferraris’ on the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Can The Psychopathologized Speak?Notes on Social Objectivity and Psychiatric ScienceAwais Aftab*, MD (bio)In "Exclusion of Psychopathologized Standpoints Due to Hermeneutical Ignorance Undermines Psychiatric Objectivity" (2022), Bennett Knox offers a compelling argument that failure of psychiatric community to engage with the "psychopathologized" in processes such as the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) constitutes a form of epistemic injustice and threatens the social (...) objectivity of psychiatric science. I find myself in agreement with the central thesis and I am glad to see it articulated so well by Knox. While it is clear that the exclusion of psychopathologized standpoints in psychiatric science cannot be justified, there are issues that arise that require further clarification, and may generate disagreements, when we consider the complexities of how this inclusion is to take place, what requirements can be imposed on this process of inclusion, and the relationship between the DSM and psychiatric science broadly when it comes to social objectivity.The Methodological Objectivity of the DSM Does Not Exhaust the Methodological Objectivity of Psychiatric ScienceThe DSM is a nosological project within a particular historical context, operating with a certain set of assumptions (Aftab & Ryznar, 2021). The DSM has limitations in terms of what sorts of perspectives it can meaningfully incorporate, but the limitations of the DSM are not the limitations of psychiatric science. This is because psychiatric science is a pluralistic domain and includes many different methodologies and perspectives (Jerotic & Aftab, 2021). As one example, the DSM is poorly equipped to capture the phenomenology of psychiatric conditions. It is not something that it sets out to do. This, however, only becomes a serious problem if we adopt the attitude "if it's not in the DSM then it doesn't really count." Unfortunately, many in the psychiatric community have [End Page 267] adopted this sort of attitude, at least implicitly, resulting in a serious neglect of phenomenology (and various other perspectives, including those of the psychopathologized), leading Nancy Andreasen to bemoan the "death of phenomenology." (Andreasen, 2007) The DSM is methodologically limited by design; there are things that it will fail to do. The appropriate response is to acknowledge these inherent limitations. Other perspectives such as neurodiversity or Hearing Voices Movement also bring their own sets of assumptions and limitations. The DSM is simply one element, one perspective, one methodology in a scientific field that is capable of and ought to adopt a plurality of perspectives and methodologies. This is worth pointing out because Knox appears to assume that if it proves difficult or impossible for the DSM to include radically diverse perspectives, then "all the worse for psychiatry's objectivity." If it is impossible for the DSM, that does not mean that it is also impossible for psychiatric science.1In Determining What Counts as Inappropriate Exclusion, What Is the Role of Scientific Expertise?Longino herself brings up this question: "in determining what counts as inappropriate exclusion of dissenting perspectives, does it matter what kind of issue is involved? Are the duties of inclusion different when the question is, Should we be trying to learn about such and such, for example, atomic fission? than when it is, Is atomic fission a controllable or uncontrollable process?" (Longino, 2002, p. 133) The danger that needs to be averted here is that of trivializing expertise and placing experts on an equal footing with non-experts, a danger that is strikingly illustrated by our social response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.Take an example from medicine. Individuals with lung cancer have a lot to offer when it comes to the treatment of lung cancer, including their experiences of care, and choice of, say, aggressive chemotherapy vs palliative comfort care, etc. but how much do they have to contribute on the matter of the histopathological classification of lung cancer? Consider the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) (Kotov et al., 2021). This quantitative nosological project has a very specific aim: to determine the patterns of covariation among psychiatric symptoms using statistical techniques such as factor analysis. This... (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against what I call “natural realism” about social kinds, the view according to which social categories have natural boundaries, independent of our thought. First, I draw a distinction between two different types of entity realism, one being about the existence of the entity, “ontological realism”, and the other one being about the direct mind-independence of the entity, “natural realism”. After endorsing ontological realism, I present the natural realist argument according to which there would (...) be certain social kinds, such as economic recessions and racism, even if we had no clue about their existence and nature. I claim that the argument fails insofar it mistakes the single instances for the kinds themselves. I then argue against natural realism by showing how the vagueness characterizing the boundaries of social kinds puts the realist in front of a dilemma: either she accepts the vagueness of these boundaries as ontic, a metaphysically problematic thesis, or she accepts that most or all social kinds remain unknown, an epistemologically problematic thesis. Thus, I argue that antirealism, according to which social kinds are constructed, is a better alternative to the realist account. (shrink)

A down-to-earth admission of abstract objects can be based on detailed explanation of where the objectivity of mathematics comes from, and how a ‘thin’ notion of object emerges from objective mathematical discourse or practices. We offer a sketch of arguments concerning both points, as a basis for critical scrutiny of the idea that mathematical and social objects are essentially of the same kind—which is criticized. Some authors have proposed that mathematical entities are indeed institutional objects, a (...) product of our collective imposition of function onto reality (the phrase comes from Searle) and of surrogation or hypostasis. Yet there are significant disanalogies between the typical social objects and mathemata, on which basis I argue that one should make a clear distinction between both. The comparison of mathematical with social objects helps understanding how non-physical objects can figure prominently in our explanations of reality. Yet mathematical objects have a different kind of cognitive grounding, and the more elementary of them emerge under relatively very simple sociocultural conditions. The differences are also reflected in the wide scope of use of mathematical concepts, and the much higher degree of variation found among social objects. On the basis of all of these features, I defend the thesis that one can significantly distinguish degrees of objectivity, and I use the distinction to articulate a graded ontology where one can locate the different kinds of mathematical and social objects. (shrink)

What objects exist in the social world and how should we understand them? Is a specific Pizza Hut restaurant as real as the employees, tables, napkins and pizzas of which it is composed, and as real as the Pizza Hut corporation with its headquarters in Wichita, the United States, the planet Earth and the social and economic impact of the restaurant on the lives of its employees and customers? In this book the founder of object-oriented philosophy develops (...) his approach in order to shed light on the nature and status of objects in social life. While it is often assumed that an interest in objects amounts to a form of materialism, Harman rejects this view and develops instead an “immaterialist” method. By examining the work of leading contemporary thinkers such as Bruno Latour and Levi Bryant, he develops a forceful critique of ‘actor-network theory’. In an extended discussion of Leibniz’s famous example of the Dutch East India Company, Harman argues that this company qualifies for objecthood neither through ‘what it is’ or ‘what it does’, but through its irreducibility to either of these forms. The phases of its life, argues Harman, are not demarcated primarily by dramatic incidents but by moments of symbiosis, a term he draws from the biologist Lynn Margulis. This book provides a key counterpoint to the now ubiquitous social theories of constant change, holistic networks, performative identities, and the construction of things by human practice. It will appeal to anyone interested in cutting-edge debates in philosophy and social and cultural theory. (shrink)

The 1920s and 30s were key decades for the history of American social science. The success of such quantitative disciplines as economics and psychology during World War I forced social scientists to reexamine their methods and practices and to consider recasting their field as a more objective science separated from its historical foundation in social reform. The debate that ensued, fiercely conducted in books, articles, correspondence, and even presidential addresses, made its way into every aspect of (...) class='Hi'>social science thought of the period and is the subject of this book. Mark C. Smith first provides a historical overview of the controversy over the nature and future of the social sciences in early twentieth-century America and, then through a series of intellectual biographies, offers an intensive study of the work and lives of major figures who participated in this debate. Using an extensive range of materials, from published sources to manuscript collections, Smith examines "objectivists"--economist Wesley Mitchell and political scientist Charles Merriam--and the more "purposive thinkers"--historian Charles Beard, sociologist Robert Lynd, and political scientist and neo-Freudian Harold Lasswell. He shows how the debate over objectivity and social purpose was central to their professional and personal lives as well as to an understanding of American social science between the two world wars. These biographies bring to vivid life a contentious moment in American intellectual history and reveal its significance in the shaping of social science in this country. (shrink)

I examine ramifications of the widespread view that scientific objectivity gives us a permission to trust scientific knowledge claims. According to a widely accepted account of trust and trustworthiness, trust in scientific knowledge claims involves both reliance on the claims and trust in scientists who present the claims, and trustworthiness depends on expertise, honesty, and social responsibility. Given this account, scientific objectivity turns out to be a hybrid concept with both an epistemic and a moral-political dimension. The epistemic dimension (...) tells us when scientific knowledge claims are reliable, and the moral-political dimension tells us when we can trust scientists to be socially responsible. While the former dimension has received a fair amount of attention, the latter is in need of analysis. I examine what it means for scientists to be socially responsible, that is, to follow “sound” moral and social values in different stages of scientific inquiry. Social responsibility is especially important when scientists function as experts in society. Members of the public and policymakers do not want to rely on scientific research shaped by moral and social values they have good reasons to reject. Moreover, social responsibility is important in social research in which moral and social values can legitimately play many roles. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different answers to the question of how social scientists can identify appropriate moral and social values to inform their research. I argue that procedural accounts of social responsibility, such as well-ordered science and deliberative polling, have limitations. (shrink)

By presenting a number of concrete examples, this paper aims at soliciting a reflection on how social phenomena become the ?objects of a science? by being classified in specific ways, to answer specific questions, in different social sciences. This is in view of arguing that the objectivity of the procedures by which social scientific objects are identified and classified can only be assessed in relation to the actual questions addressed and formulated about these objects (...) ? rather than by referring back to some ideal standard or protocol of objective inquiry. This also goes against the practice, often endorsed by social scientific literature, of fixing a model for what social objects are to be like (scientific or philosophical, under some description or other) and the distortingly ?normative? idea of social scientific objectivity which derives from such practice. The objects of social scientific inquiry are complex in a specific sense, and a plural identification of those objects in the context of the widest array of methods of description, classification and analysis is to be pursued. (shrink)

Against the concept that objects are defined by their self-contained essence – “thing-in-themselves” – Husserl and Foucault claim they are defined by intersubjectivity or social institutions. I argue that biological and even physical (complex) systems can constitute the unity and meaning of objects.

s book, Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science: A critique of Gadamer and Habermas, intends to present an account of debates on objectivity in the social sciences, in stressing the political and epistemological responsibility, in public spheres, to those who want to create a fairer understanding of societies and history, without demonizing natural enterprises or leaving social studies out of acute critical questioning. Key Words: dialogue • hermeneutic • social sciences • natural sciences • method.

The philosopher Graham Harman argues that contemporary debates about the nature of reality as such, and about the nature of objects in particular, can be meaningfully applied to social theory and practice. With Immaterialism, he has recently provided a case-based demonstration of how this could happen. But social theorists have compelling reasons to oppose object-oriented social theory’s 15 principles. Fidelity to Harman’s aesthetic foundationalism, and his particular use of serial endosymbiosis theory as a mechanism of (...) class='Hi'>social change, constrain the very practices which it is supposed to enable. However, social theory stands to benefit from object-oriented philosophy through what we call posthuman relationism – characterised as a commitment to the reality of the nonhuman, but not divorced from the human. The emphasis in object-oriented social theory on how objects withdraw from cognitive or affective capture and representation needs to be tempered by an equal focus on how objects appeal. (shrink)

The article defines a comprehensive concept of cognitive objectivity (CCCO) applied to embodied subjects in health care. The aims of this study were: (1) to specify some necessary conditions for the definition of a CCCO that will allow objective descriptions and assessments in health care, (2) to formulate criteria for application of such a CCCO, and (3) to investigate the usefulness of the criteria in work disability assessments in medical certificates from health care provided for social security purposes. The (...) study design was based on a philosophical conceptual analysis of objectivity and subjectivity, the phenomenological notions ‘embodied subject’, ‘life-world’, ‘phenomenological object’ and ‘empathy’, and an interpretation of certificates as texts. The study material consisted of 18 disability assessments from a total collection of 86 medical certificates provided for social security purposes, written in a Norwegian hospital-based mental health clinic. Four necessary conditions identified for defining a CCCO were: (A) acknowledging the patient’s social context and life-world, (B) perceiving patients as cognitive objects providing a variety of meaningful data (clinical, psychometric, and behavioural data – i.e. activities and actions, meaningful expressions and self-reflection), (C) interpreting data in context, and (D) using general epistemological principles. The criteria corresponding to these conditions were: (a) describing the patient’s social context and recognizing the patient’s perspective, (b) taking into consideration a variety of quantitative and qualitative data drawn from the clinician’s perceptions of the patient as embodied subject, (c) being aware of the need to interpret the data in context, and (d) applying epistemological principles (professional expertise, dialogical intersubjectivity, impartiality, accuracy and correctness). Genuine communication is presupposed. These criteria were tested in the work disability assessments of medical certificates. The criteria were useful for understanding both how objectivity fails during work disability assessments and how it can be improved in the writing of certificates. The article specifies four necessary conditions for the definition of a CCCO in health care and social security medicine and the corresponding criteria for its application. Analysis of the objectivity of work disability assessments in medical certificates for social security confirmed the usefulness of the criteria. (shrink)

While Roman Ingarden is well known for his work in aesthetics and studies in ontology, one of his most important and lasting contributions has been largely overlooked: his approach to a general ontology of social and cultural objects. Ingarden himself discusses cultural objects other than works of art directly in the first section of “The Architectural Work”1, where he develops a particularly penetrating view of the ontology of buildings, flags, and churches. This text provides the core insight (...) into how his more lengthy studies of the ontology of works of art in The Literary Work of Art and the rest of The Ontology of the Work of Art, combined with the ontological distinctions of Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, may be used to understand social and cultural objects. The view that results, I will argue, is based in foreseeing problems with the reductivist and projectivist views that remain popular, and is capable of resolving central problems still thought to plague those who would offer a theory of cultural objects. (shrink)

The existence of a social world raises both the metaphysical puzzle: how can there be a “reality” of facts and objects that are genuinely created by human intentionality? and the epistemological puzzle: how can such a product of human intentionality include objective facts available for investigation and discovery by the social sciences? I argue that Searle’s story about the creation of social facts in The Construction of Social Reality is too narrow to fully solve either (...) side of the puzzle. By acknowledging different forms of rules for constructing social reality paralleling rules for creating ‘make-believe’ truths, we can build a more comprehensive social ontology and allow for a more appropriate range of discovery for the social sciences. Nonetheless, I argue that despite the parallels between methods for constructing make-believe and social facts, it would be mistaken to treat talk about social reality as involving a mere pretense to refer. (shrink)

This article reviews a number of objections to social Trinitarianism that have been presented in the recent literature, especially objections alleging that social Trinitarianism is not truly monotheistic. A number of the objections are found to be successful so far as they go, but they apply only to some versions of social Trinitarianism and not to all. Objections to social Trinitarianism as such, on the other hand, are not successful. The article concludes with a proposal for (...) a social Trinitarian conception of the unity of God. (shrink)

The main proposal of this paper is that boundary objects and the trading zones in which they occur are the analogue of pheromone trails in the foraging of a termite colony. The colony can be construed as a _stigmergic_ system where the traces of the actions of individual termites coordinate their further actions without the existence of any central control or planning structures. The coordinated systems approach proposed by this paper lends support to the idea that such a system (...) is minimally cognitive in the sense that it is responsible for goal-directed behaviour. Boundary objects and trading zones in scientific practice play a similar functional role to pheromone traces because they are responsible for the same kind of coordination. This approach therefore provides a cognitive account of the social notions of boundary object and trading zone without making representationalist or computationalist assumptions. Moreover, it is scale-invariant—the same analytical technique can be applied at multiple scales simultaneously. It therefore provides a framework for an understanding of the complementarity of cognitive and social approaches to scientific investigation and points to areas for further ethnographic research. (shrink)

While philosophers have been debating for decades on whether different entities—including severely disabled human beings, embryos, animals, objects of nature, and even works of art—can legitimately be considered as having moral status, this question has gained a new dimension in the wake of artificial intelligence (AI). One of the more imminent concerns in the context of AI is that of the moral rights and status of social robots, such as robotic caregivers and artificial companions, that are built to (...) interact with human beings. In recent years, some approaches to moral consideration have been proposed that would include social robots as proper objects of moral concern, even though it seems unlikely that these machines are conscious beings. In the present paper, I argue against these approaches by advocating the “consciousness criterion,” which proposes phenomenal consciousness as a necessary condition for accrediting moral status. First, I explain why it is generally supposed that consciousness underlies the morally relevant properties (such as sentience) and then, I respond to some of the common objections against this view. Then, I examine three inclusive alternative approaches to moral consideration that could accommodate social robots and point out why they are ultimately implausible. Finally, I conclude that social robots should not be regarded as proper objects of moral concern unless and until they become capable of having conscious experience. While that does not entail that they should be excluded from our moral reasoning and decision-making altogether, it does suggest that humans do not owe direct moral duties to them. (shrink)

In speaking of the social dimensions of human experience, we inevitably become involved in the debate regarding how they are to be studied. Should we embrace the first-person perspective, which is that of the phenomenologists, and begin with the experiences composing our directly experienced lifeworld? Alternately, should we follow the lead of natural scientists and take up the third-person perspective? This is the perspective that asserts that we must begin with what is true for everyone, i.e., with what is (...) available to both me and Others. Both perspectives are one sided in that each presupposes the other for its intelligibility. The third-person perspective is Cartesian and, as I show, privileges space, while the first-person perspective is social in Levinas’s sense and presupposes time. Our reality, I argue, embraces both perspectives and is, in fact, set by their intertwining. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new way to understand the integration of facts and values in the concept of mental disorder that has the potential to avoid the flaws of previous hybrid approaches. I import conceptual tools from the account of procedural objectivity defended by Helen Longino to resolve the controversy over the definition of mental disorder. My argument is threefold: I first sketch the history of the debate opposing objectivists and constructivists and focus on the criticisms that (...) led to the emergence of the debate. Second, I offer a reconstruction of the “Natural Function Approach” argument to make explicit an unsound assumption underlying this approach. The reconstruction will allow me to show that the NFO’s argument depends on the ideal of value-free science that I will criticize. Then I propose an alternative ideal for psychiatry: social objectivity. I argue that the concept of mental health should be seen as “socially objective” rather than value-free, moving the debate towards the social procedures by which the definition is produced rather than the normative and factual content of its definition. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how it is to be explained that an action or object X counts as Y. I argue that John Searle's notion of a constitutive rule should not be employed because it involves a confusion. Instead, I propose an explanatory framework containing the following three elements: 1) The X-action or object is involved in certain social practices. 2) These practices confer properties on the X-items, in addition to their physical properties. 3) In virtue of (...) these additional properties the X-items fall under the Y-concept. Moreover, I stress that the social practices mentioned under 1) look differently from case to case and involve various constellations of prescriptive rules and interpersonal patterns of intentions. To illustrate and corroborate these claims, I discuss several cases of socially constituted actions and objects, in particular, the case of money, where I reject Searle's claim that something counts as money in virtue of giving its owner the right to buy something. (shrink)

Using a range of examples from specific social sciences, the book both identifies the practical and theoretical procedures involved in the identification of the ...

Although it is widely held that we do not owe basic respect to nonhuman animals, a close examination of why we owe this respect to human beings leads to the conclusion that we owe it to nonhuman animals as well. While Kant’s basic notion of respect for persons is intuitively plausible, Kant’s two arguments for why respect is owed to human beings ultimately fail, and a reconsideration of which feature of human beings actually grounds the respect that humans are owed (...) is called for. Ultimately, it is not the robust rational autonomy that Kant suggests, but rather the basic subjectivity that underlies it (being the subject-of-a-life). Since this subjectivity is shared by nonhuman animals, they are owed respect as well. (shrink)

The author describes and sociocognitive skills that he argues as being necessary for tool use. We propose that those skills could be based on simpler detection systems humans could share with other animal tool users. More specifically, we discuss the impact of object affordances on the understanding and the social learning of tool use.

After reading the essays of Mr. Ts'ai and Mr. Chu, I have a few immature opinions. Generally speaking, I feel that in dealing with the errors of their opponents, both Ts'ai I in his criticism of Huang Yüeh-mien and Chu Kuang-ch'ien in his criticism of Ts'ai I are quite accurate and convincing. However, in presenting their own arguments of what is right, both of them are on shaky ground and in error. That is because in one way or another, consciously (...) or unconsciously, they either deny the objective aspect of the existence of beauty or deny the social aspect of the existence of beauty . All of them consider the objective and the social aspects of beauty as being either this or that, as mutually exclusive and irreconcilable opposites. They think that if we acknowledge the social aspect of beauty, we then have to deny the objective aspect, the fact that the existence of beauty does not depend on the subjective conditions of a person ; or if we acknowledge the objective aspect, we have to deny the social aspect, the fact that the existence of beauty depends on the social life of human beings. But in fact it is not like that. On the one hand, beauty cannot be separated from human society; on the other hand, it can have an objective existence which is independent of man's subjective consciousness. It is this question that I shall discuss. (shrink)

The philosophy of mathematical practice sometimes investigates the social constitution of mathematics but does not always make explicit the philosophical-normative framework that guides the discussion. This chapter investigates some recent proposals in the philosophy of mathematical practice that compare social facts and mathematical objects, discussing similarities and differences. An attempt will be made to identify, through a comparison with three different perspectives in social ontology, the kind of objectivity attributed to mathematical knowledge, the type of representational (...) or non-representational semantics adopted, and the justificatory or coordinative role entrusted to axiomatics. After a brief introduction to key issues in social ontology, Sect. 3 of the chapter offers a survey of contributions by Feferman, Ferreirós, and Cole, highlighting a difference between approaches based on rules, practices, and intentional states, respectively. Section 4.1 also discusses results by Carter, Collin, Giardino, and Pantsar, focusing on differences between the objectivity of knowledge and objectivity of objects and showing that many authors combine a realist, structuralist, and pragmatist perspective, as well as the idea that objectivity comes in degrees. Section 4.2 focuses on the kind of semantics that is adopted in socially oriented approaches. A representational semantics is preferred by authors grounding their views on mental states, whereas a non-representational semantics best fits with views based on practices. Section 5 considers how axiomatics can be understood in a social perspective. Axiomatics generally plays a justificatory role also in theories that aim to explain the social constitution of mathematical knowledge. Yet, if one shifts from approaches based on mental states to approaches anchored on rules or habits, axiomatics can be viewed as an institution based on obligations, functions, coordination problems, and agent’s actions and roles, thus playing an organizational and coordination role. (shrink)

This lecture is divided, roughly, into three parts. First, there is a general and perhaps rather simple-minded discussion of what are the ‘facts’ that social anthropologists study; is there anything special about these ‘facts’ which makes them different from other kinds of facts? It will be useful to start with the common-sense distinction between two kinds or, better, aspects of social facts; first—though neither is analytically prior to the other—and putting it very crudely, ‘what people do’, the aspect (...) of social interaction, and second, ‘what—and how—people think’, the conceptual, classifying, cognitive component of human culture. Now in reality, of course (and perhaps not so ‘of course’; people do tend to think of them as separate ‘things’), these two aspects are inextricably intertwined. But it is essential to distinguish them analytically, because each aspect gives rise to quite different kinds of problems of understanding for the social anthropologist. We shall see that the problem of how to be ‘objective’, and so to avoid ethnographic error, arises in both contexts, but in rather different forms in each. (shrink)