Journal of Social Ontology最新文献

{"title":"An Introduction to Metametaphysics","authors":"G. Feis","doi":"10.1515/jso-2017-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2017-0001","url":null,"abstract":"One might wonder why a social ontologist should care about metametaphysics and read an introduction to the topic such as the one written by Tuomas E. Tahko. Answering the question requires to take stance on some substantial disputes about social ontology and its methods. Before making some of these general remarks, let us focus on the book. Tahko’s Introduction, though not interested in historical questions, follows a chronological order in presenting the topics of metametaphysics. After an introduction on why we should care about metametaphysics (ch. 1), we start with the Carnap-Quine debate (ch. 2) before focusing on ontological commitment and its alternatives (ch. 3). These chapters allow us to distinguish the three main positions in the contemporary metametaphysics debate (ch. 4): Quiniean views, NeoAristotelian views, and deflationists views – further divided along the realist vs. anti-realist axis. After setting the stage and explaining how we arrived at the current state of the art, the book presents the main contemporary topics of metametaphysics: grounding and ontological dependence (ch. 5), levels of reality and fundamentality (ch. 6). Then the book adds something in the last three chapters to the standard view of (meta)metaphysics, as Tahko is convinced that some (modal) epistemological issues are deeply entrenched with metametaphysics. The issues discussed are the status – a priori or a posteriori? – of metaphysics (ch. 7), the role of intuitions and thought experiments in metaphysics (ch. 8) and the relationships between metaphysics and science (ch. 9). A clearly written glossary, a bibliography and indexes (names and concepts) finish the volume, which targets both graduate students and experts in philosophy whose main interests lie outside metametaphysics. Now it is time to get into the book and produce some spoilers about it. First, the book is written by a Neo-Aristotelian: Tahko is clear in stating his background credo but struggles to remain neutral in presenting the issues. His background","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"3 1","pages":"129 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2017-0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44834747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Complicity and Moral Accountability","authors":"Olle Blomberg","doi":"10.1515/jso-2017-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2017-0002","url":null,"abstract":"In this short book, Mellema examines the phenomenon of complicity in wrongdoing, that is, the phenomenon of being an accomplice to a principal agent causing harm. He also examines related phenomena such as collective and shared responsibility, as well as enabling, facilitating, and condoning harm produced by others. An agent is an accomplice to a principal agent’s wrongdoing if she contributes to the outcome in certain ways. According to Mellema, she must not only perform some kind of contributory action or intentionally omit to perform an action. She must also be aware of the principal agent’s wrongdoing. An accomplice may share in the responsibility for the outcome of the principal agent’s wrongdoing. In part, whether she does share in it depends on the nature of the contributory action or omission. In the absence of a valid excuse, she is also always morally blameworthy for her contributory action or omission itself. Mellema draws on Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of “accessory sins” to characterise different kinds of contributory actions or omissions. As Mellema plausibly argues, these accessory sins can be understood as ways in which one can become complicit in someone else’s wrongdoing. For example, one can become complicit in another’s wrongdoing in virtue of commanding, counselling, or encouraging them with respect to their wrongdoing, or in virtue of consenting to, not denouncing, or in participating in their wrong doing. If I merely encourage you to shoplift, then I am normally not responsible for the shopkeeper’s loss after your theft, but if I rather actively participate in your shoplifting by distracting the security guard as you stuff your pockets, then I am also responsible for the shopkeeper’s loss. Drawing on Appiah’s (1991) work, Mellema argues that in the former kind of case, an accomplice can nevertheless be “morally tainted” by a wrongdoing even if she is not responsible for it. This moral taint effects her moral status negatively in virtue of her being associated or related to the principal agent is certain ways. Mellema illustrates the idea of moral taint with an example case taken from Kutz (2000, pp. 163–164). The case involves a pacifist employee who works on a project for the United States Department of Defense. According to Mellema, the","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"3 1","pages":"139 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2017-0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41922632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Relevance of Causal Social Construction","authors":"Teresa Marques","doi":"10.1515/jso-2016-0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2016-0018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Social constructionist claims are surprising and interesting when they entail that presumably natural kinds are in fact socially constructed. The claims are interesting because of their theoretical and political importance. Authors like Díaz-León argue that constitutive social construction is more relevant for achieving social justice than causal social construction. This paper challenges this claim. Assuming there are socially salient groups that are discriminated against, the paper presents a dilemma: if there were no constitutively constructed social kinds, the causes of the discrimination of existing social groups would have to be addressed, and understanding causal social construction would be relevant to achieve social justice. On the other hand, not all possible constitutively socially constructed kinds are actual social kinds. If an existing social group is constitutively constructed as a social kind K, the fact that it actually exists as a K has social causes. Again, causal social construction is relevant. The paper argues that (i) for any actual social kind X, if X is constitutively socially constructed as K, then it is also causally socially constructed; and (ii) causal social construction is at least as relevant as constitutive social construction for concerns of social justice. For illustration, I draw upon two phenomena that are presumed to contribute towards the discrimination of women: (i) the poor performance effects of stereotype threat, and (ii) the silencing effects of gendered language use.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"3 1","pages":"1 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2016-0018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46719062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mediated Recognition and the Categorial Stance","authors":"Heikki J. Koskinen","doi":"10.1515/jso-2015-0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I articulate a systematic model of mediated recognition based on the notion of the categorial stance. Mediated recognition is understood as a trilateral form of recognition, while the categorial stance is conceived as an epistemic position operating with the most general ontological categories and relations. The central thesis argued for is that the categorial stance can be used as a rational resource for conceptually mediated recognition. I begin with tools found in earlier research literature, then characterize the idea of conceptual rationality, consider contexts of mediated recognition, and finally, integrate the categorial stance into the model.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"3 1","pages":"67 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2015-0019","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46199347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the “We”","authors":"Janna van Grunsven","doi":"10.1515/jso-2017-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2017-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran’s edited collection of essays, Phenomenology of Sociality – Discovering the ‘We’ [PoS hereafter] has a two-fold aim. The first is to highlight the fruitful ways in which the phenomenological tradition can be brought to bear on current trends in analytic philosophy and interdisciplinary research focused on the nature of various social phenomena, such as joint-attention, joint-intentionality, group-formation, shared affectivity, and shared responsibility. We might refer to this as the volume’s pluralist-interdisciplinary aim. In the pursuit of this aim, numerous essays in PoS helpfully locate phenomenological approaches to sociality with respect to Michael Bratman and Margaret Gilbert’s works on collective identity and joint-agency; Stephen Darwall’s second-person standpoint ethics; Austinian speech-act theory; contemporary developments on the nature of social cognition in cognitive science and developmental psychology, etc. The second aim of PoS is broadly historical. This aim translates into a number of essays that primarily offer careful re-examinations of phenomenological distinctions and taxonomies, provided by canonical but also by lesser-known phenomenologist, with an eye to demonstrating phenomenology’s ability to shed light on intersubjective experience and the social world in its multi-layered manifestations. The more historically oriented essays will surely be of interest to those who already possess a solid familiarity with and interest in the phenomenological tradition and its guiding concepts. For this review, however, I have chosen to focus on a selection of articles that contribute primarily to the volume’s pluralist-interdisciplinary aim, since, I take it, this aligns most directly with the interests of the readers of the Journal of Social Ontology. In the phenomenological tradition it is widely argued that second-person experience plays a primary role in our understanding of others; the constitution of the social world; and the objective world more generally (for a compelling account that emphasizes the latter, see Cathal O’Madagain’s integrative contribution to the volume, which augments Donald Davidson’s interactionbased approach to objectivity with Husserl’s intersubjective approach to theorize","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"3 1","pages":"133 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2017-0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66896992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Framework for Ontological Policy Reconstruction: Academic Knowledge Transfer in the Netherlands as a Case Study","authors":"M. Pauly","doi":"10.1515/jso-2015-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper provides a framework for analyzing the ontology underlying a given public policy, i.e. the categories and concepts used by the policy. It provides a set of questions concerning the language, logic and deontology of a policy and their development over time. The framework is applied to a particular case study, the valorization policy for Dutch universities, in order to suggest the usefulness of the framework in the design and normative evaluation of public policy.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"229 1","pages":"303 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2015-0028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66896902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Ontology of Interactive Kinds","authors":"Rico Hauswald","doi":"10.1515/jso-2015-0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper defends the notions of an interactive kind and a looping effect as features of social and human scientific classifications and aims to give a realist interpretation of them. I argue that interactive kinds can best be modeled as a special case of changing causal property cluster kinds. In order to do so, I develop a typology of looping effects according to the sort of entities that are affected, the main types of which are individual-looping, category-looping, and kind-looping. Based on this distinction, I identify interactive kinds as those causal property cluster kinds that are subjected to kind-looping.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"2 1","pages":"203 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2015-0049","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66896573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Natural Kinds, Social Constructions, and Ordinary Language","authors":"Cecilea Mun","doi":"10.1515/jso-2015-0051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0051","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I argue for the importance of clarifying the distinction between metaphysical, semantic, and meta-semantic concerns in the discourse of what Emotion is. This allows us to see that those involved in the Scientific Emotion Project and the Folk Emotion Project are in fact involved in the same project – the Science of Emotion. It also helps us understand why questions regarding the natural kind status of Emotion, as well as answers to questions regarding the value of ordinary language emotion terms or concepts to emotion research, will not help resolve the observed crisis in the Science of Emotion.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"181 1","pages":"247 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2015-0051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66896596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mind-Dependent Kinds","authors":"M. A. Khalidi","doi":"10.1515/jso-2015-0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the criterion of mind-dependence is capable of distinguishing real or natural kinds from non-real kinds. Although there is a way of modifying the criterion of mind-independence in such a way as to rule in artificial kinds but rule out psychological and social kinds, this does not make the latter non-real. I conclude by proposing a different way of distinguishing real from non-real kinds, which does not involve mind-independence and does not necessarily exclude psychological and social kinds.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"2 1","pages":"223 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2015-0045","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66896504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Dual Aspect Theory of Shared Intention","authors":"Facundo M. Alonso","doi":"10.1515/jso-2015-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article I propose an original view of the nature of shared intention. In contrast to psychological views (Bratman, Searle, Tuomela) and normative views (Gilbert), I argue that both functional roles played by attitudes of individual participants and interpersonal obligations are factors of central and independent significance for explaining what shared intention is. It is widely agreed that shared intention (I) normally motivates participants to act, and (II) normally creates obligations between them. I argue that the view I propose can explain why it is not a mere accident that both (I) and (II) are true of shared intention, while psychological and normative views cannot. The basic idea is that shared intention involves a structure of attitudes of individuals – including, most importantly, attitudes of reliance – which normally plays the relevant motivating roles and creates the relevant obligations.","PeriodicalId":37042,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Social Ontology","volume":"2 1","pages":"271 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jso-2015-0024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66896891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}