An earlier post offered what is for me a fairly large change of orientation on fundamental questions of social ontology: a conviction that the concept of ontological individualism is no longer supportable. My concern there was that this phrase gives too much ontological priority to individual actors; whereas the truth about the social world is …
Is ontological individualism still a viable social ontology?
image: a flat social ontology: actors and structures Over the years I've continued to advocate for the position of ontological individualism -- the idea that social entities, powers, and conditions are all constituted by the actions, thoughts, and mental frameworks of individual human beings, and nothing else. I'm no longer entirely confident that this is …
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Critical realism and ontological individualism
Most critical realists would probably think that their philosophy of social science is flatly opposed to ontological individualism. However, I think that this opposition is unwarranted. Let's begin by formulating a clear idea of ontological individualism. This is the view that social entities, powers, and conditions are all constituted by the actions, thoughts, and mental …
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Realism about social entities
Critical realism depends on the key notion that sociologists are justified in construing their statements about social entities as real, objective features of the social world — “intransitive” objects, in Bhaskar’s somewhat idiosyncratic vocabulary. But does a realist ontology actually require this assumption? Or are there realist interpretations of sociological theory that do not “reify” …
The open texture of the social world
What is involved in arriving at scientific knowledge about the social world? The position I have consistently taken emphasizes contingency and heterogeneity of the social: the social world is a mixture of diverse processes and structures; it is constituted by socially constituted and socially situated actors, leading to ineliminable features of contingency and heterogeneity; and …
A new social ontology of government
After several years of thinking about the nature of government as a network of organizations, I am happy to share the news that Palgrave Macmillan has published my short book, A New Social Ontology of Government: Consent, Coordination, and Authority (Foundations of Government and Public Administration). Thanks to Jos Raadschelders for proposing the book, and thanks …
Guest post by Nicholas Preuth
Nicholas Preuth is a philosophy student at the University of Michigan. His primary interests fall in the philosophy of law and the philosophy of social science. Thanks, Nick, for contributing this post! Distinguishing Meta-Social Ontology from Social Ontology Social ontology is the study of the properties of the social world. Conventional claims about social ontology …
Gilbert on social facts
I am currently thinking about the topic of "organizational actors", and Margaret Gilbert's arguments about social actors are plainly relevant to this topic. It seems worthwhile therefore to reproduce a review I wrote of Gilbert's book On Social Facts (1989) in 1993. It is a tribute to the power of Gilbert's ideas that the book …
Social ontology of government
I am currently writing a book on the topic of the "social ontology of government". My goal is to provide a short treatment of the social mechanisms and entities that constitute the workings of government. The book will ask some important basic questions: what kind of thing is "government"? (I suggest it is an agglomeration …
The mind of government
We often speak of government as if it has intentions, beliefs, fears, plans, and phobias. This sounds a lot like a mind. But this impression is fundamentally misleading. "Government" is not a conscious entity with a unified apperception of the world and its own intentions. So it is worth teasing out the ways in which …
Understanding Society 