When some objects are the parts of another object, they compose that object and that object is composite. This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions. In §1, we review some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding the nature of composition. In §2, we consider some answers to the question: which pluralities of objects together compose something? As we will see, the (...) dominant answers are all of them and none of them. In §§3-4, we examine one of the main arguments that has driven philosophers to these extreme answers: the argument from vagueness. In §5, we turn to the question of whether composition is unique: is it sometimes the case that some things compose more than one thing? Finally, in §6, we turn from the question of which composites exist to the question of which composites exist fundamentally. (shrink)

Social groups, including racial and gender groups and teams and committees, seem to play an important role in our world. This article examines key metaphysical questions regarding groups. I examine answers to the question ‘Do groups exist?’ I argue that worries about puzzles of composition, motivations to accept methodological individualism, and a rejection of Racialism support a negative answer to the question. An affirmative answer is supported by arguments that groups are efficacious, indispensible to our best theories, and accepted given (...) common sense. Then, I turn to an examination of the features of social groups. I argue that social groups can be divided into two sorts. Groups of Type 1 are organized social groups like courts and clubs. Groups of Type 2 are groups like Blacks, women, and lesbians. While groups of both sorts have some features in common, they also have marked differences in features. Finally, I turn to views of the nature of social groups. I argue that the difference in features provides evidence that social groups do not have a uniform nature. Teams and committees are structured wholes, while race and gender groups are social kinds. (shrink)

Two lines of investigation into the nature of mental content have proceeded in parallel until now. The first looks at thoughts that are attributable to collectives, such as bands' beliefs and teams' desires. So far, philosophers who have written on collective belief, collective intentionality, etc. have primarily focused on third-personal attributions of thoughts to collectives. The second looks at de se, or self-locating, thoughts, such as beliefs and desires that are essentially about oneself. So far, philosophers who have written on (...) the de se have primarily focused on de se thoughts of individuals. This paper looks at where these two lines of investigations intersect: collective de se thoughts, such as bands' and teams' beliefs and desires that are essentially about themselves. There is a surprising problem at this intersection: the most prominent framework for modeling de se thoughts, the framework of centered worlds, cannot model a special class of collective de se thoughts. A brief survey of this problem's solution space shows that collective de se thoughts pose a new challenge for modeling mental content. (shrink)

An overview of contemporary part-whole theories, with reference to both their axiomatic developments and their philosophical underpinnings.

Recent work in metaphysics has focused on the nature of artefacts, most accounts of which assume that artefacts depend on the intentions of their individual makers. Artefacts are thus importantly different from institutional kinds, which involve collective intentions. However, recent work in social ontology has yielded renewed focus on the social dimensions of various kinds, including artefacts. As a result, some philosophers have suggested that artefacts have a distinctly social dimension that goes beyond their makers' individual intentions but which stops (...) short of the collective intentionality of institutional kinds. I aim to combine these insights into an account of artefacts that involves disjunctive conditions of mind-dependence: Artefacts can either depend on the singular intentions of their makers or they can depend on the collective acceptance of particular social groups. Whether the first or second disjunct is satisfied depends on the artefact's context of creation. I'll argue that this applies not to artefact kinds but to individual artefacts. I then consider two objections to my view based on Robinson Crusoe cases and show how my account allows us to fit artefacts into a taxonomy of social kinds. (shrink)

Social metaphysics is a source of important philosophical and moral insight. Furthermore, much social metaphysics appears to be substantive. However, some have recently argued that standard views of metaphysics cannot accommodate substantive social metaphysics. In this paper I offer a new diagnosis of this problem and defend a new solution, showing that this problem is an illuminating lens through which to examine the nature and boundaries of metaphysics. This case instantiates a broad, common pattern generated by attempts to align distinctions (...) between realism and anti-realism, mind-independence and mind-dependence, and legitimate and non-legitimate inquiry. I show that the best response is to abandon the association between substantive metaphysics and mind-independence, and I sketch a new definition of substantivity, given in terms of explanatory power, that makes room for substantive social metaphysics while also offering an attractive basis for general metaphysics. (shrink)

Problems in normative ethics paradigmatically concern what it is obligatory or permissible for an individual to do. Yet sometimes, each of us ought to do something individually in virtue of what we ought to do together. Unfortunately, traversing these two different levels at which a moral obligation can arise – individual and collective – is fraught with difficulties that easily lure us into conclusions muddying our understanding of collective obligations. This paper seeks to clearly lay out a systematic problem central (...) to the relation between collective and individual duties in view of alleviating some such confusion and facilitating more concerted attempts at resolving it: Collective duties require individuals to act in order for the collective duty to be fulfilled. Yet typically, a collective duty does not entail any one set of individual duties that would prescribe such contributory actions: The work we need to do in order to fulfil a duty can be allocated differently to the individuals collectively bearing it. Much like in matters of distributive justice, then, deriving individual duties from a collective one requires us to employ a distributive scheme, which raises separate normative concerns that have rarely taken centre stage in the debate so far. (shrink)

Most social policies cannot be defended without making inductive inferences. For example, consider certain arguments for racial profiling and affirmative action, respectively. They begin with statistics about crime or socioeconomic indicators. Next, there is an inductive step in which the statistic is projected from the past to the future. Finally, there is a normative step in which a policy is proposed as a response in the service of some goal—for example, to reduce crime or to correct socioeconomic imbalances. In comparison (...) to the normative step, the inductive step of a policy defense may seem trivial. We argue that this is not so. Satisfying the demands of the inductive step is difficult, and doing so has important but underappreciated implications for the normative step. In this paper, we provide an account of induction in social contexts and explore its implications for policy. Our account helps to explain which normative principles we ought to accept, and as a result it can explain why it is acceptable to make inferences involving race in some contexts (e.g., in defense of affirmative action) but not in others (e.g., in defense of racial profiling). (shrink)

This paper introduces a persistence puzzle involving two sports clubs with a somewhat intertwined history. As one might assume, the implications of the puzzle go far beyond a mere plea for a precise metaphysical analysis of certain perplexing quandaries regarding sports clubs and represents a challenge for our everyday understanding of social groups. To overcome the supposed impediment to the puzzle, as a starting point, I will accept the assumption that these entities are both social groups and abstract artifacts and (...) will further argue that they are _temporal abstract objects_. Since temporal objects are in time, it will be determined that the cause of the conundrum is the seeming inability to correctly account for the I-relation between the temporal parts, and I will elaborate on why such an explanation is required. Ultimately, I’ll introduce the notion of _I-shifting_, which will explain how temporal abstract objects persist through time and consequently solve the puzzle. (shrink)

An increasing number of philosophers argue that indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) in the sense that indeterminacy has its source in the world itself (rather than how the world is represented or known). The standard arguments for metaphysical indeterminacy are centered around the sorites paradox. In this essay, I present a novel argument for metaphysical indeterminacy. I argue that metaphysical indeterminacy follows from the existence of constitutive social construction; there is indeterminacy in the social world because there is indeterminacy in (...) how the social world is constructed. (shrink)

Most philosophical work on social ontology continues to be done without much connection to social scientific concerns. This special issue, however, calls for attention to a naturalized metaphysics, one based on the best science we have. It follows that a naturalized social metaphysics should begin with the best social science available. In contrast with the physical sciences, however, the best social science is not so clear. Thus, this paper acquaints professional philosophers with some of the prominent metaphysical views extant in (...) the social sciences; the ways that more philosophically oriented social scientists engage them; and how professional philosophers might contribute.In particular, the paper covers several arguments especially relevant to a naturalized social metaphysics. One argument suggests that folk intuitions cannot be excluded from consideration. In fact, in the social sphere, it may be that scientific concepts not only cannot always trump folk conceptions but actually must be constrained by them. The paper further introduces arguments defending not only metaphysically real levels of being but also the metaphysical reality of the categories of social science. Finally, the paper will introduce an argument that beyond culture and individual agency, social being also includes structure as a distinct category. (shrink)

It is natural to think that social groups are concrete material particulars, but this view faces an important objection. Suppose the chess club and nature club have the same members. Intuitively, these are different clubs even though they have a common material basis. Some philosophers take these intuitions to show that the materialist view must be abandoned. I propose an alternative explanation. Social groups are concrete material particulars, but there is a psychological explanation of nonidentity intuitions. Social groups appear coincident (...) but nonidentical because they are perceived to be governed by conflicting social norms. (shrink)

I formulate a theory of groups based on pluralities and counterparts: roughly put, a group is a plurality of entities at a time. This theory comes with counterpart-theoretic semantics for modal and temporal sentences about groups. So this theory of groups is akin to the stage theory of material objects: both take the items they analyze to exist at a single time, and both use counterparts to satisfy certain conditions relating to the modal properties, temporal properties, and coincidence properties of (...) those items. (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)

Organisations are computing systems. The university’s sports centre is a computing system for managing sports teams and facilities. The tenure committee is a computing system for assigning tenure status. Despite an increasing number of publications in group ontology, the computational nature of organisations has not been recognised. The present paper is the first in this debate to propose a theory of organisations as groups structured for computing. I begin by describing the current situation in group ontology and by spelling out (...) the thesis in more detail. I then present the example of a sports centre to illustrate why one might intuitively think of organisations as computing systems. To substantiate the thesis, I introduce Piccinini’s restrictive analysis of physical computation. As I show, organisations meet all criteria for being computing systems. Organisations are structured groups with the function of manipulating medium-independent vehicles according to rules. Furthermore, I argue for the modal claim that this is a necessary feature of organisations. Having sketched the computational account of organisations, I compare it to other proposals in the literature. (shrink)

Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states—typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can avoid this debate. (...) I show how a more general view of action captures what is central to action without mentioning mental states, and I argue that a group’s members can fulfill the role in group action that mental states play in our actions. Group behavior is explicable in terms of reasons, regardless of whether the group itself cognizes those reasons. After discussing the kind of reasons at issue and arguing that groups can act in light of them without minds, I assess how this account bears on the question of group responsibility. (shrink)

Hermeneutical injustices, according to Miranda Fricker, are injustices that occur “when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (Fricker 2007, 1). For Fricker, the relevant injustice in these cases is the very lack of knowledge and understanding experienced by the subject. In this way, hermeneutical injustices are instances of epistemic injustices, the kind of injustice that “wrongs someone in their capacity as a subject of knowledge” (...) (Fricker 2007, 5). In this paper, however, I identify different means by which our hermeneutic activities lead to social injustices, of both a practical and epistemic kind, and I identify different ways in which those injustices manifest themselves. Since Fricker’s use of the notion of “hermeneutical injustices” to denote a well-defined kind of injustice is rightfully well-established, I here refer to the more general kinds of injustices I have in mind as “hermeneutic injustices” instead. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey (2016) challenged group acceptance accounts of justification by arguing that these accounts make the possession of evidence arbitrary and hence lead to illegitimate manipulation of the group's evidence. She proposes that the only way out is to rely on the epistemic propriety of the individual group members, which leads to a dilemma for group acceptance views: either they are wrong about justification, or they cease to rely only on group acceptances. I argue that there is a third option (...) based on general expectations of epistemic propriety that restricts the group's maximal justification. A group cannot be more justified than any individual in the group's position could be expected to be. I motivate this solution by a discussion of normative defeat and epistemic expectations as proposed by Goldberg (2018). (shrink)

When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different (...) liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative. (shrink)

Despite clear overlap between the study of extended minds and the study of group minds, these research programs have largely been carried out independently. Moreover, whereas proponents of the extended mind thesis straightforwardly advocate the view that there are, literally, extended mental states, proponents of the group mind thesis tend to be more circumspect. Even those who advocate for some version of the thesis that groups are the subjects of mental states often concede that this thesis is true only in (...) some loose or metaphorical sense. I argue that this imbalance is a mistake. A literal interpretation of the group mind thesis is no less plausible than the extended mind thesis, because group minds are particularly defensible instances of extended minds. However, the extended mind thesis, and the view that group minds are extended minds, are defensible only following a revision of the extended mind thesis. (shrink)

Cooperation admits of degrees. When factory workers stage a slowdown, they do not cease to cooperate with management in the production of goods altogether, but they are not fully cooperative either. Full cooperation implies that participants in a joint action are committed to rendering appropriate contributions as needed toward their joint end so as to bring it about, consistently with the type of action and the generally agreed upon constraints within which they work, as efficiently as they can, where their (...) contributions are sensitive to information (where available) about how others are contributing in the sense that they adjust as needed their contributions in light of information about how others are contributing to ensure effective pursuit of their joint end, where this includes rendering aid to other participants if needed, insofar as they are able. Full cooperation entails those cooperating are engaged in a joint intentional action. Some prominent studies of joint intentional action focus exclusively on cases of full cooperation (notably that of Michael Bratman (2014)). But not all joint intentional action is fully cooperative. One example is the work slowdown. Another example is provided by competitive games like chess and football, or sports like boxing and wrestling, where participants are clearly not intending to contribute to the pursuit of all of the goals of the others engaged in the activity, even when those goals are internal to the type of activity in question, but instead intend actively to frustrate some of them. In this paper, I provide a taxonomy of forms of non-cooperative behavior within the context of behavior that is still to some degree cooperative, and I argue that the minimal conditions of joint intentional action define minimal cooperative behavior, that is, that minimally joint intentional action is per se minimally cooperative behavior. I define in precise terms what that comes to, and how it is possible in cases in which it seems that one or more participants are in one or more ways acting so as to frustrate the contributions of other participants to their joint action. (shrink)

Groups and other sorts of collective entities are frequently said to believe things. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for instance, was asked by reporters at White House press conferences whether the Trump administration ‘believes in climate change’ or ‘believes that slavery is wrong’. Similarly, it is said on the website of the Aclu of Illinois that the organization ‘firmly believes that rights should not be limited based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity’. A widespread philosophical view is that belief on (...) the part of a group’s members is neither necessary nor sufficient for group belief. In other words, groups are said to be able to believe that p even when not a single individual member of the group believes that p. In this paper, I challenge this view by focusing on two phenomena that have been entirely ignored in the literature: group lies and group bullshit. I show that when group belief is understood in terms of actions over which group members have voluntarily control, as is standardly thought, paradigmatic instances of a group lying or bullshitting end up counting as a group believing. Thus we need to look elsewhere for an adequate account of group belief. (shrink)

Identity politics has been critiqued in various ways. One central problem—the Reinforcement Problem—claims that identity politics reinforces groups rooted in oppression thereby undermining its own liberatory aims. Here I consider two versions of the problem—one psychological and one metaphysical. I defang the first by drawing on work in social psychology. I then argue that careful consideration of the metaphysics of social groups and of the practice of identity politics provides resources to dissolve the second version. Identity politics involves the creation (...) or transformation of groups in ways that do not succumb to the metaphysical Reinforcement Problem. (shrink)

Cooperation has been analyzed primarily in the context of theories of collective intentionality. These discussions have primarily focused on interactions between pairs or small groups of agents who know one another personally. Cooperative game theory has also been used to argue for a form of cooperation in large unorganized groups. Here I consider a form of minimal cooperation that can arise among members of potentially large organized groups (e.g., corporate teams, committees, governmental bodies). I argue that members of organized groups (...) can be minimally cooperative in virtue of playing roles in an organizational structure and having a common goal. The minimal form of cooperation I argue for is not grounded in collective intentions involving symmetric mental states, special collective intentional modes, or joint commitments. More generally, I show how considering minimal cooperation in the context of organized groups provides an opportunity to reevaluate the extent to which the social world and social phenomena depend on internalist mental factors (e.g., intentions, beliefs) and externalist non-mental factors (e.g., documents, laws, job descriptions). The view of minimal cooperation among members of organized groups I offer provides support for an externalist rather than internalist theory of at least one social phenomenon. (shrink)

Are epistemic reasons merely a species of instrumental practical reasons, making epistemic rationality a specialized form of instrumental practical rationality? Or are epistemic reasons importantly different in kind? Despite the attractions of the former view, Kelly (2003) argues quite compellingly that epistemic rationality cannot be merely a matter of taking effective means to one’s epistemic ends. I argue here that Kelly’s objections can be sidestepped if we understand epistemic reasons as instrumental reasons that arise in light of the aims held (...) by social collectives of which we are members, rather than being fixed by our own individual goals. This social version of epistemic instrumentalism would not be subject to counterexamples that point to the failure of individual people to possess desires or goals that would account for all of the epistemic reasons we find it natural to attribute to them. I conclude by comparing the proposed view to the alternative version of instrumentalism defended by Kornblith (1993). I argue that the social view I sketch here has one noteworthy advantage. It better accounts for the intuitive distinctness of our practical and epistemic reasons for belief in cases where flouting epistemic norms would better help us to achieve our own individual goals. (shrink)

How do groups of people persist through time? Groups can change their members, locations, and structure. In this paper, I present puzzles of persistence applied to social groups. I first argue that four-dimensional theories better explain the context sensitivity of how groups persist. I then exploit two unique features of the social to argue for the stage theory of group persistence in particular. First, fusion and fission cases actually happen to social groups, and so cannot be marginalized as “pathological.” Second, (...) it is implausible that groups spatially coincide pre-fission. This means that theories that depend on pre-fission spatial coincidence, such as some endurance theories and the worm theory, cannot explain fission cases. All things considered, the stage theory offers the best explanation of how groups persist. (shrink)

Musical works change. Bruckner revised his Eighth Symphony. Ella Fitzgerald and many other artists have made it acceptable to sing the jazz standard “All the Things You Are” without its original verse. If we accept that musical works genuinely change in these ways, a puzzle arises: why can’t I change Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony? More generally, why are some individuals in a privileged position when it comes to changing musical works and other artifacts, such as novels, films, and games? I give (...) a view of musical works that helps to answer these questions. Musical works, on this view, are created abstract objects with no parts. The paradigmatic changes that musical works undergo are socially determined normative changes in how they should be performed. Due to contingent social practices, Bruckner, but not I, can change how his symphony should be performed. Were social practices radically different, I would be able to change his symphony. This view extends to abstract artifacts beyond music, including novels, films, words, games, and corporations. (shrink)

Recently, there has been growing concern that increased partisanship in news sources, as well as new ways in which people acquire information, has led to a proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers: in the former, one tends to acquire information from a limited range of sources, ones that generally support the kinds of beliefs that one already has, while the latter function in the same way, but possess the additional characteristic that certain beliefs are actively reinforced. Here I argue, (...) first, that we should conceive of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers as types of epistemically pernicious groups, and second, that while analyses of such groups have typically focused on relationships between individual members, at least part of what such groups epistemically pernicious pertains to the way that members rely on the groups themselves as sources of information. I argue that member reliance on groups results in groups being attributed a degree of credibility that outruns their warrant, a process I call groupstrapping. I argue that by recognizing the groupstrapping as an illicit method of forming and updating beliefs we can make progress on some of the open questions concerning epistemically pernicious groups. (shrink)

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint that not every arbitrary collection of (...) people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a symposium on Amie Thomasson’s Ontology Made Easy (2015). Thomasson defends two deflationary theses: that philosophical questions about the existence of numbers, tables, properties, and other disputed entities can all easily be answered, and that there is something wrong with prolonged debates about whether such objects exist. I argue that the first thesis (properly understood) does not by itself entail the second. Rather, the case for deflationary metaontology rests largely on a controversial doctrine about the (...) possible meanings of ‘object’. I challenge Thomasson's argument for that doctrine, and I make a positive case for the availability of the contested, unrestricted use of ‘object’. (shrink)

Social ontology is the study of the nature and properties of the social world. It is concerned with analyzing the various entities in the world that arise from social interaction. -/- A prominent topic in social ontology is the analysis of social groups. Do social groups exist at all? If so, what sorts of entities are they, and how are they created? Is a social group distinct from the collection of people who are its members, and if so, how is (...) it different? What sorts of properties do social groups have? Can they have beliefs or intentions? Can they perform actions? And if so, what does it take for a group to believe, intend, or act? -/- Other entities investigated in social ontology include money, corporations, institutions, property, social classes, races, genders, artifacts, artworks, language, and law. It is difficult to delineate a precise scope for the field (see section 2.1). In general, though, the entities explored in social ontology largely overlap with those that social scientists work on. A good deal of the work in social ontology takes place within the social sciences (see sections 5.1–5.8). -/- Social ontology also addresses more basic questions about the nature of the social world. One set of questions pertains to the constituents, or building blocks, of social things in general. For instance, some theories argue that social entities are built out of the psychological states of individual people, while others argue that they are built out of actions, and yet others that they are built out of practices. Still other theories deny that a distinction can even be made between the social and the non-social. -/- A different set of questions pertains to how social categories are constructed or set up. Are social categories and kinds produced by our attitudes? By our language? Are they produced by causal patterns? And is there just one way social categories are set up, or are there many varieties of social construction? -/- The term ‘social ontology’ has only come into wide currency in recent years, but the nature of the social has been a topic of inquiry since ancient Greece. As a whole, the field can be understood as a branch of metaphysics, the general inquiry into the nature of entities. (shrink)

This paper presents a systematic approach for analyzing and explaining the nature of social groups. I argue against prominent views that attempt to unify all social groups or to divide them into simple typologies. Instead I argue that social groups are enormously diverse, but show how we can investigate their natures nonetheless. I analyze social groups from a bottom-up perspective, constructing profiles of the metaphysical features of groups of specific kinds. We can characterize any given kind of social group with (...) four complementary profiles: its “construction” profile, its “extra essentials” profile, its “anchor” profile, and its “accident” profile. Together these provide a framework for understanding the nature of groups, help classify and categorize groups, and shed light on group agency. (shrink)

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

How can a collective pay attention virtuously? Imagine a group of scientists. It matters what topics they pay attention to, that is, which topics they draw to the foreground and take to be relevant, and which they leave in the background. It also matters which aspects of an investigated phenomenon they foreground, and which aspects they leave unnoticed in the background. If we want to understand not only how individuals pay attention of this kind virtuously, but also collectives, we first (...) need a framework to understand virtuous collective agency. A result of this article will be that virtuous collective action depends on the collective being institutionalized. At the same time, we have to think of the constituents of the collective in terms of practical identities (as opposed to individuals). This is what enables us to understand how a collective can acquire the stability required for virtue, and how we don’t end up with a summative account of group virtue, respectively. It will be argued that collectives only have the required stability in their actions when their commitments are habitualized in the form of institutionalized procedures. An Aristotelian understanding of virtue distinguishes between commitment, inclination, and action. Only when a subject’s inclination is fully lined up with her commitment, do we arrive at the required stability (of character) for virtuous action. In the case of individuals, to build up an appropriate inclination consists in an inscribing of the commitment into the feelings and body of the subject. If a commitment is fully ‘embodied’ in this sense, it has formed the individual’s inclination accordingly. How can one make sense of this in the case of collective subjects? This article tries to show that for collectives, the embodiment of commitment (the forming of the fitting inclinations) consists in creating policies, procedures, and rules that stabilize the acting according to the commitment, irrespective of the motivation of each individual involved in the collective. Hence, embodiment of commitment, in the case of collectives, is institutionalization. The article then explores what this requirement of institutionalization means for collective attention. The illustration will draw on a distinction between focused and open-minded attention. It will be shown that for either case – focused and open-minded – in order for a collective to pay attention virtuously, it needs to have its commitments institutionalized. (shrink)

A long-standing debate in group ontology and group epistemology concerns whether some groups possess mental states and/or epistemic states such as knowledge that do not reduce to the mental states and/or epistemic states of the individuals who comprise such groups (and are also states not possessed by any of the members). Call those who think there are such states inflationists. There has recently been a defense in the literature of a specific type of inflationary knowledge—viz., knowledge of facts about group (...) minds or group self-knowledge (GS-K). In this paper I address whether some groups do possess such knowledge. I argue that we have good reason to think they do not. I do so by exploring the most explicit defense of such knowledge in the literature—Lukas Schwengerer’s (2022) defense—as well as other ways of defending this thesis and arguing that such ways are problematic. In the latter part of the paper, I explain why the two most popular inflationary approaches to group knowledge simpliciter are incompatible with there being GS-K. In doing so I work to show why even inflationists should reject the view that there is inflationary group self-knowledge. (shrink)

How a group G can know that p has been the subject of much investigation in social epistemology in recent years. This paper clarifies and defends a form of non-supervenient, non-summative group knowledge: G can know that p even if none of the members of G knows that p, and whether or not G knows that p does not locally supervene on the mental states of the members of G. Instead, we argue that what is central to G knowing that (...) p is whether G has an epistemic structure that is functioning appropriately in accord with the action-related purposes of the group, and this structure may include non-agential elements such as devices that retain or process information. We argue that recent objections to non-summative group knowledge given by Jennifer Lackey do not in fact succeed in undermining the view, but do help to clarify the nature of non-summative group knowledge. The main upshot of our response to Lackey’s objections is that groups put their knowledge into action in ways that often differ from how individuals do so, and social epistemologists should be careful to notice these differences, especially insofar as groups often structure themselves by employing various epistemically-relevant devices. (shrink)

I apply the theory of embodiment to various questions concerning the identity of social groups.

We say that each social group is identical to its members. The group just is them; they just are the group. This view of groups as pluralities has tended to be swiftly rejected by social metaphysicians, if considered at all, mainly on the basis of two objections. First, it is argued that groups can change in membership, while pluralities cannot. Second, it is argued that different groups can have exactly the same members, while different pluralities cannot. We rebut these objections, (...) and argue that our plural view is superior to alternative reductive proposals which would identify social groups with the sets or fusions of their members. Finally we deal with some further potential challenges for the view of groups as pluralities. Thus we aim to establish it as a serious contender in the metaphysics of groups. (shrink)

Social categories play a central role in inquiry. Some authors have argued that social categories can only play this role because they have a particular metaphysical status, such as a connection to natural kinds or to comparatively joint-carving properties. This reflects the broadly realist idea that categories that play important roles in inquiry do so for metaphysical reasons. In this paper I argue that such metaphysical views of social categories cannot accommodate ‘empty’ social categories, cases in which social categories that (...) cannot have the metaphysical features attributed to them by such accounts still play a central role in inquiry. I defend an alternative approach: context-dependent naturalness, an analogue of metaphysical naturalness that concerns context-dependent, rather than metaphysical, structure. (shrink)

I propose a `stage theory’ of groups: a group is a fusion of group-stages, where a group-stage is a plurality of individuals at a world and a time. The stage theory consists of existence conditions, identity conditions, and parthood conditions for groups.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that aims to give a theoretical account of what there is and what it is like. Social justice movements seek to bring about justice in a society by changing policy, law, practice, and culture. Evidently, these activities are very different from one another. The goal of this article is to identify some positive connections between recent work in metaphysics and social justice movements. I outline three ways in which metaphysical work on social reality can (...) make a contribution to movements seeking social justice, viz., (1) by providing basic categories and concepts useful for clarifying and defending claims made by social justice movements; (2) by offering accounts of the natures of social categories, structures, and institutions that these movements seek to change; and (3) by contributing to “unmasking” or “debunking” projects that reveal putatively natural arrange- ments to be social in nature and hence subject to moral critique, alteration, and possibly eradication. (shrink)

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 amongst their parts. So the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago, but fell out of favour following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. But 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. (shrink)

The question “What is the meaning of life?” is longstanding and important, but has been shunned by philosophers for decades. Instead, contemporary philosophers have focused on other questions, such as “What gives meaning to the life of a person?” According to James Tartaglia, this research on “meaning in life” is shallow and pointless. He urges philosophers to redirect their attention back to the fundamental question about “meaning of life.” Tartaglia argues that humanity was not created for a purpose and, therefore, (...) is meaningless. He assumes that humanity could not be meaningful unless we were created for a purpose. I will outline a different way that humanity could become meaningful. In addition, I will explain how the research on “meaning in life” is important for understanding how humanity could become meaningful. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to rescue the holist position on corporate agency (CA) from indignities heaped upon it by friends and enemies alike. Two general criticisms strike at the core of the position: the charge of ‘material failures’ (that the corporate agent lacks a proper material presence) and the charge of illusion (that the intentionality of the corporate agent consists in the intentionality of the members). Both attack the holist position on metaphysical grounds, logically prior to any claims (...) of agency; if these charges cannot be answered then much of the CA literature collapses.The article begins by outlining the criticisms and a holist account of corporate agents that incorporates and transcends earlier offerings on corporate agency from French, List and Pettit, and others. It then addresses the charge of material failures, demonstrating that the holist corporate agent is a material entity (nothing ‘ghostly,’) and arguing that neither its scattered nature nor its dependency on voluntary participation undermines that status. It closes by addressing the charge of illusion, demonstrating that the common charge of double-counting member intentionality is false. Both charges arise from the same misreading of the holist position, which ignores the metaphysics of the corporate agent. (shrink)

Philosophers increasingly argue that collective agents can be blameworthy for wrongdoing. Advocates tend to endorse functionalism, on which collectives are analogous to complicated robots. This is puzzling: we don’t hold robots blameworthy. I argue we don’t hold robots blameworthy because blameworthiness presupposes the capacity for a mental state I call ‘moral self-awareness’. This raises a new problem for collective blameworthiness: collectives seem to lack the capacity for moral self-awareness. I solve the problem by giving an account of how collectives have (...) this capacity. The trick is to take seriously individuals’ status as flesh-and-blood material constituents of collectives. The idea will be: under certain conditions that I specify, an individual can be the locus of a collective's moral self-awareness. The account provides general insights concerning collectives’ dependence on members, the boundaries of membership, and the locus of collectives’ phenomenology. (shrink)

Several social metaphysicians have argued that groups are constituted by, but not identical to, their members. While the constitution view is promising, there are significant difficulties with existing versions of that view. Fortunately, lessons may be extracted from more traditional metaphysics and applied to the case of group agents. Drawing on such lessons, I present a novel account of the constitution relation holding between individuals and group agents. According to the resulting structural-constitution view, when individuals constitute a group of a (...) certain kind, they do so in virtue of exhibiting the structure characteristic of groups of that kind. (shrink)