Institutional Objects, Reductionism and Theories of Persistence

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Can institutional objects be identified with physical objects that have been ascribed status functions, as advocated by John Searle in The Construction of Social Reality (1995)? The paper argues that the prospects of this identification hinge on how objects persist -i.e. whether they endure, perdure or exdure through time. This important connection between reductive identification and mode of persistence has been largely ignored in the literature on social ontology thus far.

Social Mereology

“…Brian Epstein (2015) also works with the metaphysics of material objects but again stops short of identifying groups with sums. Tobias Hansson Wahlberg (2014: 538) is an exception, endorsing the mereological view; he does not, however, rebut Ruben's arguments as the main point of his paper lies elsewhere.…”

“…There is also the option of a more ordinary looking and flexible parthood relation. (Hansson Wahlberg [2014] explores issues of temporal persistence for social groups. )…”

Social Groups Are Concrete Material Particulars

“…According to reductive materialism, social groups are concrete material particulars; for example, tennis teams are located in space-time and they participate in causal relations. Materialism comes in two forms: (i) fusionism is the view that social groups are fusions of their members (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958;Quinton 1976;Mellor 1982;Copp 1984;Martin 1988;Sheehy 2006;Sider 2001;MacDonald and Pettit 2011;Wahlberg 2014;Hawley 2017); (ii) pluralism is the view that social groups just are their members (Black 1971;López de Sa 2007;Korman 2015;Horden and López de Sa 2020).…”