180426 SE Analytic Social Ontology (2008S)

Social metaphysics is the study of the existence and nature of sociality-of social actions, relations, roles, rules, norms, conventions, practices, customs, and collectives. The systematic investigation of these issues is unified by a common theme: how are individual human beings and their properties related to the social realm? Individualist positions hold that social entities and relations can somehow be reduced to individuals and their properties. Collectivist positions argue against this reduction, typically on the grounds that individuals and their properties are somehow constituted by their membership in the social realm. Charting the logical geography of these positions will be our key to the contemporary Analytic debate. The dialectical structure of our seminar is to assume an audience prejudiced in favor of individualism, then to bring forth and investigate a variety of considerations against individualism, and finally to see where we end up. We shall watch this dialectic unfold in three areas of inquiry: first, the more general question of what exactly it would mean to reduce social entities and relations to individuals and their properties; second, the question of whether we have to resort to collective intentionality for a complete account of joint action; and third, the explanatory significance of recent appeals to socially distributed cognition in the social, behavioral, and psychological sciences.

Didaktik:
This course is designed to provide students with a better understanding of what's at stake when we attempt to locate sociality in a comprehensive picture of the world, and the nature of thinking and acting in groups. It will also provide us with an opportunity to reflect on matters of philosophical methodology and its status vis-a-vis the social and psychological sciences. In order to hone our skills of analyzing and evaluating philosophical arguments, the seminar-style format of this course is accompanied by several types of assignments: [a] ongoing weekly commentaries on the assigned readings with peer-commentary, to be submitted on our course website; [b] the completion of topic-specific problem sets; [c] short integrative essays that help to synthesize multiple perspectives, theories, and themes; and [d] giving a group presentation. Successful participation in the seminar will prepare students for their own research in social metaphysics and the philosophy of the social sciences, and satisfies the departmental foreign language requirement.