语言和社会本体论

通过对言语行为的探讨,有可能解释人类实在和非人类的物理实在之间是如何协调一致的。在分析社会的制度性实在时,我们需要四个概念,即集体意向性、功能的施加、身份功能和建构性规则。使用建构性规则创造身份功能的模式非常类似于第五类言语行为,即宣告。正是这种宣告式的言语行为生成并维持身份功能,继而建立起人类所有的制度性实在。此外,身份功能产生"道义权力",正是这种权力才使人类社会统合在一起。     

Social Structures and the Ontology of Social Groups

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint that not every arbitrary collection of people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology.     

Social Ontology as Convention

I will argue that social ontology is constituted as hierarchical and interlocking conventions of multifarious kinds. Convention, in turn, is modeled in a manner derived from that of David K. Lewis. Convention is usually held to be inadequate for models of social ontologies, with one primary reason being that there seems to be no place for normativity. I argue that two related changes are required in the basic modeling framework in order to address this (and other) issue(s): (1) a shift to an intentional model—among other reasons, in order to account for normativity—and (2) moving away from the belief-desire, propositional attitude, framework for understanding the intentional realm toward an interactive, pragmatic model of intentionality. These shifts provide natural approaches to: (1) understanding the normativities of social realities; (2) the sense in which social ontology is often constituted in implicit relations among the participants rather than elaborated and iterated explicit beliefs and desires; (3) and language.     

Mathematical Practice,Fictionalism and Social Ontology

From the perspective of mathematical practice, I examine positions claiming that mathematical objects are introduced by human agents. I consider in particular mathematical fictionalism and a recent position on social ontology formulated by Cole (2013, 2015). These positions are able to solve some of the challenges that non-realist positions face. I argue, however, that mathematical entities have features other than fictional characters and social institutions. I emphasise that the way mathematical objects are introduced is different and point to the multifaceted role that relations and interconnections play in this context. Finally, I argue that mathematical entities can be considered to be pragmatically real.

     

Of Marriage and Mathematics: Inferentialism and Social Ontology

Topoi - The semantic inferentialist account of the social institution of semantic meaning can be naturally extended to account for social ontology. I argue here that semantic inferentialism...     

Moral Realism,Social Construction,and Realism,Social Construction,and Communal Ontology

The paper examines two forms of naturalistic moral realism, “Microstructure realism” (MSR) and “Reason realism” (RR). The latter, as we defend it, locates the objectivity of moral facts in socially constructed reality, but the former, as exemplified by David Brink’s model of naturalistic moral realism, secures the objectivity of moral facts in their micro-structure and a nomic supervenience relationship. We find MSR’s parity argument for this account of moral facts implausible; it yields a relationship between moral facts and their natural-scientific constitution that has a queer, slapped-together quality. We argue that the relationship needs to be spelled out by a process of social construction, involving collective intentionality and constitutive rules. We explain how our constructivist model of RR differs from a form of it defended by Michael Smith (1994), which analyzes moral facts by reference not to construction but rather to a hypothetical situation of full rationality. We agree with Smith, as against Bernard Williams, that a rational agent may have reasons for acting that go beyond the agent’s “subjective motivational set,” but we locate such reasons by reference to the agent’s membership in an actual community, and we explore the prospects for moral objectivity given this constraint on moral reasons.     

Perpetrators and Social Death: A Cautionary Tale

Understanding evil requires both addressing the grave wrongs done to the victim and addressing the perpetrator who does these wrongs. Claudia Card's concept of social vitality was developed to explain what génocidaires destroy in their victims. This essay brings that concept into conversation with perpetrator testimony, arguing that the génocidaires’ desire for their own social vitality, achieved through their destruction of the social world of their targets, in fact boomerangs to corrode the vitality of their own lives. This is true whether they succeed or fail in their genocidal project. Card's recent analysis of “being a badass” is brought to bear on the cultivation of evil, and the essay suggests four strategies for meeting Card's “moral challenge of avoiding evil responses to evil.”     

The Bare Metaphysical Possibility of Bare Dispositions

Many philosophers hold that all dispositions must have independent causal bases. 1 challenge this view, hence defending the possibility of bare dispositions . In part I, I explain more fully what I mean by "disposition,""causal basis," and "bare disposition." In part 2, I consider the claim that the concept of a disposition entails that dispositions are not bare. In part 3. I consider arguments. due to Prior, Pargetter, and Jackson, that dispositions necessarily have distinct causal bases. In part 4, I consider arguments by Smith and Stoljar that there can't be bare dispositions because they would make for unwelcome "barely true" counterfactuals. In the end. I find no reason to deny the possibility of bare dispositions.     

On Decolonizing Social Ontology and the Feminist Canon for Transnational Feminisms

Serene J. Khader’s Decolonizing Universalism presents a vision for how feminism might be decolonized for transnational work by doing without traditional Western feminist values and focusing instead on opposing sexist oppression. This paper presents a challenge to the idea that feminism consists in opposing sexist oppression, claiming that it instead consists in opposing gender oppression, where that includes combating cissexism and heterosexism. More specifically, it argues that critiquing cissexist criteria within gender categories as well as critiquing harms that follow from having a queer sexual identity are decidedly feminist tasks. Furthermore, cases of these harms where group identities cannot arise in the social ontology due to a lack of hermeneutical resources challenge the idea that feminism is concerned only with oppression. The second half of the paper extends Khader’s critique of the Western liberal moral vocabulary of feminism by proposing a radical decolonization of the feminist canon as it is usually conceived in the global North.     

Ostracism: The Kiss of Social Death

To be ostracized is to be ignored and excluded. How does ostracism affect individuals? Considerable research has now shown that the initial (reflexive) reactions to even the most minimal forms of ostracism are painful and distressing. Fundamental needs of belonging, self‐esteem, control, and meaningful existence are thwarted; sadness and anger increase. These effects emerge despite individual differences or situational factors that should lead logically to easy dismissal. With time to appraise the ostracism episode, individuals become differentially sensitized based on (i) the specific needs that are thwarted, (ii) their own individual differences, and (iii) their assessment of who ostracizes and why. These differences lead to need‐restorative behaviors that range from being overly socially attentive and susceptible to influence to being aggressive and antisocial.     

John Searle and Pierre Bourdieu: Divergent Perspectives on Intentionality and Social Ontology

Despite Searle's claim of theoretical proximity between his concept of the Background and Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, there is at least one substantial difference in the respective ways in which these concepts have been elaborated: the Background is conceived as a nonintentional neurophysiological reality whereas the habitus is fully intentional, or rather constitutes a nonrepresentational level of intentionality completely overlooked from Searle's standpoint. Moreover, each concept implicates a distinct perspective on social reality: the former suggests that significance is superimposed yet essentially external to this reality; the latter indicates that significance is immanent. I elaborate on the comparison between the two concepts/perspectives from different angles in order to highlight the existing differences as well as explore possible underlying affinities, which depend upon reconsidering the conventional understanding of intentionality as an exclusive attribute of mental phenomena. I show that Searle's analysis of the Background is inundated with indications of the undeniably intentional character of something he attempts to define as a nonintentional reality. Finally, I discuss the connection between the immanence of significance in Bourdieu's account of social reality and the conflict-centered orientation of this account. This dimension is noticeably absent from Searle's theorizing of the social.     

The Bare Past

Philosophia - In this paper, I first introduce one of the most prominent objections against the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), the so-called ‘epistemic objection’, according to...     

从社会文化的角度看脑死亡

从社会文化的角度思考脑死亡,有多方面的重要性.它既影响到人们对脑死亡事实的认定.更影响到人们相应的价值选择.中国传统社会中蕴含着赞同脑死亡的文化因子,同时.儒家传统的孝文化以及死亡仪式化的深远影响也成为脑死亡社会化的重大障碍.要使脑死亡观念在社会上广为接受,除了要进行科学普及,更需要重塑相关的社会文化.