The location problem in social ontology

Abstract

Mental, mathematical, and moral facts are difficult to accommodate within an overall worldview due to the peculiar kinds of properties inherent to them. In this paper I argue that a significant class of social entities also presents us with an ontological puzzle that has thus far not been addressed satisfactorily. This puzzle relates to the location of certain social entities. Where, for instance, are organizations located? Where their members are, or where their designated offices are? Organizations depend on their members for their existence, but the members of an organization can be where the organization is not. The designated office of an organization, however, need be little more than a mailbox. I argue that the problem can be solved by conceptualizing the relation between social entities and non-social entities as one of constitution, a relation of unity without identity. Constituted objects have properties that cannot be reduced to properties of the constituting objects. Thus, my attempt to solve the Location Problem results in an argument in favor of a kind of non-reductive materialism about the social.Keywords Constitution · Constitutive rule · Location · Organization · Non-reductive individualism · Normative power · Social ontology · Status Mathematical, mental, and moral facts are difficult to accommodate within an overall worldview. Mathematical entities present an ontological puzzle to philosophers because they are abstract. How the relation between mental and physical properties should be conceptualized is complicated by qualia because of their inherently subjective phenomenology. And the moral domain resists reduction, many believe,

Human Persons as Social Entities

“…Different philosophers construe social ontology in different ways -for example, in terms of collectivities, or institutional facts, or group agents (see, for example, Gilbert 1989;Searle 2006;Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2011;Hindriks 2013). The subjects of study of social ontology are typically plural entities, not individuals.…”

A Unified Social Ontology

“…See Tuomela (2007), Hindriks (2009Hindriks ( , 2012Hindriks ( , 2013 and Marmor (2009) for other versions of the constitutive rule theory.…”

“…Searle (1969) argued that, against a background of brute facts, constitutive rules serve to create institutional facts. See Ransdell (1971), Conte (1988), Lagerspetz (1995), Tuomela (1995;2002;, Hindriks (2009;2013), and Morin (2011) for more recent discussions of the notion of a constitutive rule.…”

Institutional Objects, Reductionism and Theories of Persistence

“…Consequently, I think Frank Hindriks's () reading (see also Epstein, , for a similar interpretation) of Searle is wrong. Hindriks takes constitution to be an asymmetrical relation holding between distinct but suitably related things.…”

“…He then goes on to say: “It seems plausible to say that the entity described by the X‐term constitutes the institutional entity at issue. Searle's use of the term ‘constitutive rule’ suggests that this is what Searle has in mind” (Hindriks , 425). However, I do not think we should make too much out of Searle's use of the expression “constitutive” here.…”