Social Objects without Intentions

Abstract

It is often seen as a truism that social objects and facts are the product of human intentions. I argue that the role of intentions in social ontology is commonly overestimated. I introduce a distinction that is implicit in much discussion of social ontology, but is often overlooked: between a social entity's "grounds" and its "anchors." For both, I argue that intentions, either individual or collective, are less essential than many theorists have assumed. Instead, I propose a more worldly -and less intellectualist -approach to social ontology.It is often seen as a truism that social objects (such as dollars) and social facts (such as that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates) are the product of human intentions. As distinct from natural objects and facts, which exist or are the case independently of us, social objects and facts exist in virtue of our having attitudes toward the world, attitudes usually taken with some practical aim in mind.This postulate is a basic building-block of prevailing theories of social ontology. Lynne Baker, for instance, explains that artifacts "are objects intentionally made to serve a given purpose."

Social Construction and Grounding

“…With respect to the grounding of socially constructed facts, we may treat contexts as enablers for the specific grounds of the constructed fact. Alternatively, Brian Epstein (; : chp. 6) has developed a ‘ground‐anchor’ model that allows us to identify the specific feature of the wider social context, the “anchor,” that explains why some socially constructed fact is grounded in the facts that it is.…”

The creation of institutional reality, special theory of relativity, and mere Cambridge change

“…Searle is sometimes criticized on grounds that it is doubtful that all of institutional reality is created through declarations: much of institutional reality seems rather to evolve gradually and unintentionally, without the performance and acceptance of declarations (see e.g. Blackburn 2010;Epstein 2014;Lawson 2016). In this paper, I ignore this kind of criticism and focus instead on the kinds of example where Status Function Declarations intuitively do play an essential role.…”

The metaphysics of social kinds

“…This is what Francesco Guala calls the “difference thesis” (Guala ). Brain Epstein (, , and ) denies that social kinds depend on our mental states, although his primary target is ontological individualism.…”