Social ontology
Social ontology is a domain-specific branch of ontology (philosophy) which studies the nature and properties of the social world. Social ontology deals with examining the various entities in the world arising from social interaction.[1]
Notable contemporary philosophers who study social ontology include Margaret Gilbert, Amie Thomasson, and Ruth Millikan.[1]
Definition
General ontology has a number of subfields, domain-specific or regional ontologies. Social ontology is such a domain-specific subfield, which should include the basic entities, properties and kinds studied by the social sciences. There are two kinds of social entities: social individuals and social complexes or collectives.
According to Lynne Rudder Baker, taking “social community” as a primitive, we can characterize a social property as a property the instantiation of which requires the existence of a social community. Typically, for human beings that means a linguistic community. Social ontology at a time t contains all the instantiated social properties that are irreducible and ineliminable at that time. This will comprise the social properties that are primary kinds that are instantiated at t and the entities (individual or complex) that have those social properties as their primary-kind properties.[2]
References
- ^ a b Epstein, Brian (2018). "Social Ontology". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
- ^ Baker, Lynne Rudder (1 February 2019). "Just What is Social Ontology?". Journal of Social Ontology. 5 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1515/jso-2019-2001. ISSN 2196-9663. This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
External links
- Social ontology in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy