Rights and obligations—sometimes referred to as deontology or deontic powers—are key to most contemporary conceptions of social ontology. Both Cambridge Social Ontology and the dominant analytic conception associated, most prominently, with John Searle, place rights and obligations at the centre of their accounts. Such a common emphasis has led some to consider deontology to be a point of similarity between these different theories. This is a mistake. In this paper, I show that a distinctive conception of rights and obligations underpins (...) Cambridge Social Ontology and its social positioning theory. Moreover, I argue that a fuller understanding of the account of rights and obligations defended in Cambridge in fact reveals that it can be differentiated from other conceptions and, most importantly, Searle's, by its recognition that a practical dimension is always involved in social constitution. (shrink)

In some of his later contributions Dewey places particular emphasis on the category of organisation. Organisation features prominently both in his later metaphysical writings and in some of his more substantively focussed contributions. Organisation is also a central category for two contemporary ontological projects, namely Tony Lawson’s perspective on social ontology and the interactivist framework developed by Mark Bickhard and his collaborators. In these modern naturalist perspectives, the thorough theorisation of organisation is seen as crucial in accounting for emergent phenomena, (...) resisting ontological and causal reductionism and resolving ambiguities associated with certain formulations of downward causality. This paper compares Dewey’s remarks on organisation in his later writings with these contemporary treatments of organisation and argues that Dewey anticipates some of the insights that have been systematically set out in these modern programmes of research. (shrink)

In The Public and Its Problems, a classic of social and political philosophy, John Dewey exhibits his strong faith in the potential of human intelligence to solve the public's problems. In his characteristic provocative style, Dewey clarifies the meaning and implications of such concepts as "the public," "the state," "government," and "political democracy." He distinguishes his a posterior reasoning from a priori reasoning, which, he argues permeates less meaningful discussion of basic concepts. Dewey repeatedly demonstrates the interrelationships between fact and (...) theory. (shrink)

The distinguished author of books on psychology, ethics, and politics, John Dewey specialized in the philosophy of education. In this landmark work on public education, Dewey discusses methods of providing quality public education in a democratic society. First published close to 90 years ago, Democracy and Education sounded the call for a revolution in education, stressing growth, experience, and activity as factors that promote a democratic character in students and lead to the advancement of self and society. Unabridged reproduction of (...) the classic 1916 edition. (shrink)

In opposition to the ontological neglect that characterizes so much economics a group of researchers based in Cambridge in the UK argue that method and substantive theory can benefit if informed by explicit, systematic and sustained social ontology. This paper sets out key elements of the general socio philosophical ontology that this Cambridge group outline and explores how within this approach social reality is understood as being constituted through the emergence and transformation of social totalities. A particular focus is on (...) the importance placed by the Cambridge approach on processes of social positioning and in exploring what this involves. The paper highlights that it is this general socio philosophical ontology that provides the basis for the critique of the dominant methods of modern economics since these presuppose an implicit ontology quite inconsistent with both it and indeed any realistic conception. This implicit ontology is also shown to constrain the way economic objects are characterized within mainstream economics. Finally the paper provides an illustration of how powerful accounts of specific social existents can be developed that are consistent with the broader social ontological conception that the Cambridge group defend by sketching one account of the firm and the modern corporation recently forwarded that draws systematically upon the notion of social positioning. (shrink)

In this book Steven Levine explores the relation between objectivity and experience from a pragmatic point of view. Like many new pragmatists he aims to rehabilitate objectivity in the wake of Richard Rorty's rejection of the concept. But he challenges the idea, put forward by pragmatists like Robert Brandom, that objectivity is best rehabilitated in communicative-theoretic terms - namely, in terms that can be cashed out by capacities that agents gain through linguistic communication. Levine proposes instead that objectivity is best (...) understood in experiential-theoretic terms. He explains how, in order to meet the aims of the new pragmatists, we need to do more than see objectivity as a norm of rationality embedded in our social-linguistic practices; we also need to see it as emergent from our experiential interaction with the world. Innovative and carefully argued, this book redeems and re-actualizes for contemporary philosophy a key insight developed by the classical pragmatists. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview, Tony Lawson discussed his role in, and relationship to, Critical Realism as well as various defences of mathematical modelling in economics. In Part 2 he t...

1. Introduction Perspectives and resources from John Dewey and other classical pragmatists have been applied in contemporary political philosophy for some time. Yet Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy (2019) is to date the most comprehensive and ambitious attempt to draw on several such resources and to develop them within a systematic account of democracy. Frega not only applies Dewey’s seminal conception of the public but also ontological perspectives drawn from Dewey...

Dewey’s social ontology could be characterized as a habit ontology, an ontology of habit qua second nature that offers us an account of intentionality, social statuses, institutions, and norms in terms of habituations. Such an account offers us a promising alternative to contemporary intentionalist and deontic approaches to social ontology such as Searle’s. Furthermore, it could be the basis of a social ontology better suited to explain both the maintenance and the transformation of social reality. In the first part I (...) will characterize Dewey’s model as a social ontology based on the notion of habit, and present it as an alternative to intentionalist approaches to social reality. In the second part I will argue that habit ontology offers us an account of social norms that is based on a peculiar understanding of the notion of ‘status’, and represents an alternative to deontic accounts. In the third part I will claim that Dewey’s notion of “public” offers us a dynamic understanding of social institutions and a ‘reactive’ notion of collective intentionality as an achievement rather than as a presupposition of social practices. In the final section I will summarize some advantages of the Deweyan over the Searlean social ontology concerning our understanding of acceptance, maintenance and transformation of statuses, and of the role played by the ‘background’. (shrink)

Lecture I [Chapter The Function of Theory, pp. 45-53] The direct use of language for definite purposes according to the needs of the moment long preceded grammar, rhetoric and the dictionary. Breathing, eating, digesting, seeing and hearing long preceded anatomy and physiology. We first act to meet special needs and particular occasions. Only afterwards do we reflect upon what we do and how and why we do it, and try to frame general principles, a philosophy of the matter. So with (...) social, coll... (shrink)

Résumé Ce document examine les liens entre la manière de rendre compte de la réalité sociale esquissée par George Herbert Mead et développée par Beth Singer et la contrepartie que l’on trouve chez les promoteurs du réalisme critique. Que ce soit principalement dans l’optique d’une défense de la pertinence des contributions de Mead ou dans la perspective d’un raffinement de l’ontologie sociale associée au réalisme critique, les auteurs qui ont déjà comparé ces perspectives ont considéré avant tout les différences. Dans (...) cet article, je soutiens qu’il existe des similitudes importantes entre la manière de rendre compte de la collectivité, des normes et des droits chez Mead et Singer et les thèses récentes énoncées de certains partisans du réalisme critique. En outre, je suggère que dans les cas mêmes où les limitations de l’analyse de Mead sont évidentes, par exemple dans sa description par trop « socialisée » du soi, diverses réponses aux critiques peuvent être apportée et plus d’une se trouve en cohérence avec des aspects centraux du réalisme critique. (shrink)

In this paper I will focus on the notion of “dominant patterns”, as revealed by the recently discovered typescript of what we can assume to be Dewey’s fragmentary and incomplete preliminary lectures notes for the Lecture Series on Social and Political Philosophy.1 I will show that the way the notion of “dominant patterns” is dealt with in the text of the lectures notes is not only consistent with the conceptual content of the whole series of the Lectures in China as (...) published by R. W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen,2 but also gives us further arguments to appreciate the centrality of this question to the development of Dewey’s philosophical project during this period. In particular, I will argue that a comparative... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although less known than his theory of democracy, John Dewey's social philosophy provides an articulate and original perspective on political life based on pragmatist intuitions. Dewey's struggle with social philosophy spanned more than four decades of his intellectual life. This article provides an overview of the main themes that characterize it and shows that two distinct projects animate Dewey's social philosophy. One is closer to the British reformist social philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and John S. Mill. Another is closer (...) to the program of a critical theory of society initially developed by Karl Marx and subsequently expanded by the Frankfurt school. The article contends that to understand Dewey's social philosophy we should first understand what he took and what he rejected from both these tradition, how he managed to steer a middle course between Mill and Marx. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article I will first reconstruct a Deweyan model of social ontology, based on the process of habituation. Habit ontology leads to a social philosophy that is not merely descriptive, since it involves a critical redescription of the social world. I will argue that a habit-modeled social ontology is critical insofar as it includes an account of social transformation and of the inevitability of social conflict. Such an understanding is based on a diagnosis of social pathologies of our (...) form of life and includes an account of the experience of domination. Accordingly, it is described as a matter of an imbalance of recognition that embodies subjugating patterns and is seen from the critical perspective of freedom understood as emancipation from oppression. This leads to a reconstruction of the genesis of critical attitudes from life's processes of habituation, which leads to an extended naturalist account of social authority. (shrink)