Critique of the Standard Model of Ideal Social Ontology

Abstract

This chapter criticizes the standard model of ideal social ontology. It provides two reasons for shifting away from this standard model. The first reason being that one essential feature of the standard model—that collective intentionality is the basic building block of social reality and a necessary condition for the existence of either all institutions or standard institutions—is false. Second, some essential features of the standard model of ideal social ontology, such as reflexivity and performativity, keep central social phenomena out of sight. Examples include economic classes, opaque social structures, and social power that is invisible to some or all members of a particular society. These phenomena belong to the first kind of social kind in Muhammad Ali Khalidi’s classification of social kinds. Consequently, the standard model of ideal social ontology makes the social world unduly narrow.