Imagining the Nation: Ontological and Epistemic Objectivity

Description

Imagining the Nation: Ontological and Epistemic Objectivity, Estudios sociolingüísticos y socioculturales, Departamento de Filología Moderna, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
Abstract
In the last century and a half scholars from different disciplines began to distinguish between the material reality (universe), the biosphere, and the social reality (semiosphere), as three important heuristic categories. In the latter half of the 20th century, the philosophers John L. Austin and John Searle proposed that language and its use (languages) enable humans to generate social reality. They also analyzed the mechanisms of the process. From another perspective, the evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar offered an explanation of how language was selected in the process of human evolution, and argued that its primary function is group-building, that is, the generation of social cohesion. Drawing on these insights, the dilemma of whether nations exist objectively or are subjective entities can be resolved by analyzing this problem in the light of Searle’s distinction between ontological objectivity / subjectivity and epistemic objectivity / subjectivity.

Period	15 Mar 2017
Held at	UNIVERSIDAD DE LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA, Spain
Degree of Recognition	International