Concept
Social ontology
Overview
Social ontology is a branch of ontology and metaphysics that studies the nature and basic categories of the social world. It asks which kinds of social entities exist—such as social groups, institutions, social roles, and social categories—and what their existence consists in, including how they depend on and arise out of social interaction, shared attitudes and material realizations.
A primary concern of social ontology is to distinguish genuine social entities from mere aggregates of individuals, and to clarify the relations between individual minds and collective phenomena—such as norms, organizations, and social structures. The field investigates, for example, the metaphysical status of corporations and states, the nature of money and property, the ontology of social categories such as gender and race, and the structure of social practices, rules, and institutions.
Work in social ontology both draws on and informs many areas of philosophy—including the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, philosophy of language, metaethics, feminist philosophy and critical race theory—as well as empirical disciplines such as sociology, economics, anthropology, law, psychology and history. Influential contemporary contributors include John Searle, Margaret Gilbert, Raimo Tuomela, Amie Thomasson, Tony Lawson, Brian Epstein, Ruth Millikan, Sally Haslanger, Maurizio Ferraris, Lynne Rudder Baker and Hans Bernhard Schmid, among many others.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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There is a tendency for certain attributes to maintain their concreteness (qualitativeness) in things, and for others to suggest the connection of things with other things, and so to emphasize a more abstract aspect of experience. Thus then arises a temporary and practical distinction that tends to be taken as opposition between qualities and relations. As spatial and temporal characteristics possess their chief…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
States what Social ontology is.
This preparatory treatment consists in finding general propositions which express concisely what is common to large classes of observed facts; and these are called the empirical laws of the phenomena. We have, therefore, to inquire, whether any similar preparatory process can be performed on the facts of the social science; whether there are any empirical laws in history or statistics.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Social ontology is.
Such considerations as these reinforce our proposition that the perception of consequences which are projected in important ways beyond the persons and associations directly concerned in them is the source of a public; and that its organization into a state is effected by establishing special agencies to care for and regulate these consequences. But they also suggest that actual states exhibit traits which perform…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
States what Social ontology is.
Philosophers who discussed Social ontology
Related ideas
- Alfred Schütz
- Deontic logic
- John Searle
- Analytic philosophy
- Philosophy of social science
- Metaphysics
- Metaethics
- Max Weber
- Social relation
- Critical race theory
- Ontology
- Political philosophy
- Moral responsibility
- Émile Durkheim
- Speech act
- Feminist philosophy
- Philosophy of language
- Philosophy of mind
- Ruth Millikan
- Sally Haslanger
- Maurizio Ferraris
- Critical realism (philosophy of the social sciences)
- Tony Lawson
- Amie Thomasson
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.