Social mereology

Katherine Hawley

doi:10.1017/apa.2017.33

Social mereology

Katherine Hawley

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

31 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

What kind of entity is a committee, a book group, or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings among their parts. Thus, the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago but fell out of favor following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. Recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done and why we should bother.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	395-411
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of the American Philosophical Association
Volume	3
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2017.33
Publication status	Published - 12 Feb 2018

Keywords

Social groups
Membership
Collectives
Parthood
Social ontology

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10.1017/apa.2017.33

Hawley_2017_JAPA_Social_Mereology_AAM
© American Philosophical Association 2018. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work will be available at https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2017.33
Accepted author manuscript, 357 KB

The Importance of Being Competent: The Importance of Being Competent: Ethics and Epistemology
Hawley, K. J. (PI)
The Leverhulme Trust
1/09/14 → 31/08/16
Project: Fellowship

Cite this

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abstract = "What kind of entity is a committee, a book group, or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings among their parts. Thus, the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago but fell out of favor following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. Recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done and why we should bother.",

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KW - Collectives

KW - Parthood

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ER -

Social mereology

Abstract

Keywords

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The Importance of Being Competent: The Importance of Being Competent: Ethics and Epistemology

Cite this