Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-6bnxx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-20T15:17:11.043Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Groups Are Concrete Material Particulars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2022

Kevin Richardson Open the ORCID record for Kevin Richardson [Opens in a new window]
Kevin Richardson*
Affiliation:
Duke University, Department of Philosophy, Durham, North Carolina, USA
*
Email: kevin.richardson@duke.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Social ontologysocial groupssocial normsopacitymetaphysics

Information

Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , May 2022 , pp. 468 - 483
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Almotahari, Mahrad. 2014. “Metalinguistic Negation and Metaphysical Affirmation.” Philosophical Studies 167 (3): 497–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anglberger, Albert, and Korbmacher, Johannes. 2020. “Truthmakers and Normative Conflicts.” Studia Logica 108 (1): 49–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anglberger, Albert J. J., Korbmacher, Johannes, and Federico, L. G. Faroldi. 2016. “An Exact Truthmaker Semantics for Permission and Obligation.” In Deontic Logic and Normative Systems, edited by Roy, Oliver, Tamminga, Allard, and Willer, Malte, 16–31. London: College Publications.Google Scholar
Barker, Chris. 1992. “Group Terms in English: Representing Groups as Atoms.” Journal of Semantics 9 (1): 69–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Yami, Hanoch. 2019. Logic & Natural Language: On Plural Reference and Its Semantic and Logical Significance. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2006. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. New York; Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2016. Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Max. 1971. “The Elusiveness of Sets.” Review of Metaphysics 24 (4): 614–36.Google Scholar
Burke, Michael. 1994. “Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Among Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3): 591–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Michael. 1997. “Persons and Bodies: How to Avoid the New Dualism.” American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (4): 457–67.Google Scholar
Champollion, Lucas. 2015. “The Interaction of Compositional Semantics and Event Semantics.” Linguistics and Philosophy 38 (1): 31–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Champollion, Lucas. 2016. “Overt Distributivity in Algebraic Event Semantics.” Semantics and Pragmatics 9 (16): 1–65.Google Scholar
Copp, David. 1984. “What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie 23 (2): 249–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cotnoir, Aaron J. 2010. “Anti-Symmetry and Non-Extensional Mereology.” The Philosophical Quarterly 60 (239): 396–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cotnoir, Aaron J. 2013. “Strange Parts: The Metaphysics of Nonclassical Mereologies.” Philosophy Compass 8 (9): 834–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cotnoir, Aaron J., and Bacon, Andrew. 2012. “Non-Well Founded Mereology.” The Review of Symbolic Logic 5 (2): 187–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cotnoir, Aaron J., and Varzi, Achille. 2021. Mereology. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1977. “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2 (1): 244–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1967. “The Logical Form of Action Sentences.” In The Logic of Decision and Action, edited by Rescher, N., 81–95. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Effingham, Nikk. 2010. “The Metaphysics of Groups.” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 149 (2): 251–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Brian. 2015. The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Brian. 2019. “What Are Social Groups? Their Metaphysics and How to Classify Them.” Synthese 196 (12): 4899–932.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit. 2003. “The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter.” Mind 112 (446): 195–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit. 2017a. “I Metaphysics.” Philosophical Issues 27 (1): 98–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit. 2017b. “A Theory of Truthmaker Content I: Conjunction, Disjunction and Negation.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (6): 625–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit. 2017c. “A Theory of Truthmaker Content II: Subject-Matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (6): 675–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Florio, Salvatore. 2021. The Many and the One: A Philosophical Study of Plural Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forbes, Graeme. 2021. “Referential Opacity.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/referential-opacity/.Google Scholar
Harris, Keith. 2020. “How Individuals Constitute Group Agents.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3): 350–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawley, Katherine. 2017. “Social Mereology.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 3 (4): 395–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horden, John, and de Sa, Dan López. 2020. “Groups as Pluralities.” Synthese 198 (11): 10237–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1985. “Metalinguistic Negation and Pragmatic Ambiguity.” Language 61 (1): 121–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jago, Mark. 2017. “Propositions as Truthmaker Conditions.” Argumenta 2 (2): 293–308.Google Scholar
Jansen, Ludger. 2009. “Unity and Constitution of Social Entities.” In Unity and Time in Metaphysics, edited by Honnefelder, Ludger, Runggaldier, Edmund, and Schick, Benedikt, 15–45. Berlin: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korman, Daniel Z. 2015. Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landman, Fred. 1989. “Groups, II.” Linguistics and Philosophy 12 (6): 723–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lasersohn, Peter. 1990. A Semantics for Groups and Events. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Link, Godehard. 1983. “The Logical Analysis of Plurals and Mass Terms: A Lattice-Theoretic Approach.” In Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings, edited by Portner, Paul and Partee, Barbara H., 127–47. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Linnebo, Øystein. 2016. “Plurals and Modals.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (4–5): 654–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linnebo, Øystein. 2017. “Plural Quantification.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer), edited by Zalta, Edward N.. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plural-quant/.Google Scholar
López de Sa, Dan. 2015. “Expressing Disagreement: A Presuppositional Indexical Contextualist Relativist Account.” Erkenntnis 80 (S1): 153–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López de Sa, Dan. 2007. “The Chief Supreme Court Justice: A Metaphysical Puzzle? (El presidente del tribunal supremo: ¿un problema metafísico?.” Crítica: Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 39 (115): 61–68.Google Scholar
Ludwig, Kirk. 2017. From Plural to Institutional Agency: Collective Action II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, Graham, and Pettit, Philip. 2011. Semantics and Social Science. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Richard M. 1988. Metaphysical Foundations: Mereology and Metalogic. München: Philosophia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKay, Thomas. 1991. “Representing ‘De Re’ Beliefs.” Linguistics and Philosophy 14 (6): 711–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKay, Thomas. 2006. Plural Predication. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, David H. 1982. “The Reduction of Society: D. H. Mellor.” Philosophy 57 (219): 51–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, Friederike. 2019. “Natural Language and Its Ontology.” In Metaphysics and Cognitive Science, edited by Goldman, Alvin I. and Mclaughlin, Brian P., 206–32. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, Friederike. 2021. “Levels of Ontology and Natural Language: The Case of the Ontology of Parts and Wholes.” In The Language of Ontology, edited by Miller, J. T. M., 181–211. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliver, Alex, and Smiley, Timothy. 2016. Plural Logic, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oppenheim, Paul, and Putnam, Hilary. 1958. “Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2: 3–36.Google Scholar
Parsons, Terence. 1990. Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Passinsky, Asya. 2021. “Norm and Object: A Normative Hylomorphic Theory of Social Objects.” Philosopher’s Imprint 21 (25): 1–21.Google Scholar
Pitts, Alyson. 2011. “Exploring a ’Pragmatic Ambiguity’ of Negation.” Language 87 (2): 346–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinton, Anthony. 1976. “Social Objects.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76 (1): 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richard, Mark. 1983. “Direct Reference and Ascriptions of Belief.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 12 (4): 425–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richard, Mark. 2008. “Opacity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, edited by Lepore, Ernest and Smith, Barry C., 667–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ritchie, Katherine. 2013. “What Are Groups?” Philosophical Studies 166 (2): 257–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, Katherine. 2015. “The Metaphysics of Social Groups.” Philosophy Compass 10 (5): 310–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, Katherine. 2018. “Social Creationism and Social Groups.” In Collectivity: Ontology, Ethics , and Justice, Social, edited by Hess, Kendy M., Igneski, Violetta, and Isaacs, Tracy, 13–34. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Ritchie, Katherine. 2020. “Social Structures and the Ontology of Social Groups.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 402–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruben, David-Hillel. 1983. “Social Wholes and Parts.” Mind 92 (366): 219–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Nathan. 1986. “Reflexivity.” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 27 (3): 401–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Nathan. 1992. Reflections on Reflexivity. Linguistics and Philosophy 15 (1): 53–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saul, Jennifer M. 2007. Simple Sentences, Substitution, and Intuitions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schnieder, Benjamin. 2006. “‘By Leibniz’s Law’: Remarks on a Fallacy.” The Philosophical Quarterly 56 (222): 39–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheehy, Paul. 2006. The Reality of Social Groups. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. 2001. Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, Theodore. 2011. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strohmaier, David. 2018. “Group Membership and Parthood.” Journal of Social Ontology 4 (2): 121–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomasson, Amie L. 2007. Ordinary Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomasson, Amie L. 2019. “The Ontology of Social Groups.” Synthese 196 (12): 4829–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uzquiano, Gabriel. 2004. “The Supreme Court and the Supreme Court Justices: A Metaphysical Puzzle.” Noûs 38 (1): 135–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varzi, Achille C. 2008. “The Extensionality of Parthood and Composition.” The Philosophical Quarterly 58 (230): 108–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahlberg, Tobias. 2014. “Institutional Objects, Reductionism and Theories of Persistence.” Dialectica 68 (4): 525–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahlberg, Tobias. 2019. “Why the Social Sciences Are Irreducible.” Synthese 196 (12): 4961–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar