Ruth Millikan's new collection of essays continues the project initiated with her remarkable ... more Ruth Millikan's new collection of essays continues the project initiated with her remarkable 1984 book, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. That book was essentially three projects in one: a naturalistic account of the notion of a function; a theory, based on her treatment of functions, of the nature of linguistic items and semantic representation; and an application of the theory to a wide array of topics in language, epistemology, and metaphysics. In a number of areas, the book has been tremendously influential. Her work on functions has shaped a generation in philosophy of biology, particularly with respect to teleological explanation, and her approach to semantic representation has likewise played a major role in recent theories of mental content. In the practice of philosophy of language itself, curiously, her work as yet has had less impact. There are a number of possible reasons for this. To her supporters, her vision of language and thought is radical and...
Agent-based modeling is showing great promise in the social sciences. However, two misconceptions... more Agent-based modeling is showing great promise in the social sciences. However, two misconceptions about the relation between social macroproperties and microproperties afflict agent-based models. These lead current models to systematically ignore factors relevant to the properties they intend to model, and to overlook a wide range of model designs. Correcting for these brings painful trade-offs, but has the potential to transform the utility of such models. Agent-based modeling is starting to crack problems that have resisted treatment by analytical methods. Many of these are in the physical and biological sciences, such as the growth of viruses in organisms, flocking and migration patterns, and models of neural interaction. In the social sciences, agent-based models have had success in such areas as modeling epidemics, traffic patterns, and the dynamics of battlefields. And in recent years, the methodology has begun to be applied to economics, simulating such phenomena as energy ma...
Individualists about social ontology hold that social facts are “built out of ” facts about indiv... more Individualists about social ontology hold that social facts are “built out of ” facts about individuals. In this paper, I argue that there are two distinct kinds of individualism about social ontology, two different ways individual people might be the metaphysical “builders ” of the social world. The familiar kind is ontological individualism. This is the thesis that social facts supervene on, or are exhaustively grounded by, facts about individual people. What I call anchor individualism is the alternative thesis that facts about individuals put in place the conditions for a social entity to exist, or the conditions for something to have a social property. Examples include conventionalist theories of the social world, such as David Hume’s theories of promises, money, and government, and collective acceptance theories, such as John Searle’s theory of institutional facts. Anchor individualism is often conflated with ontological individualism. But in fact, the two theses are in tensio...
Rasso~l, J. n.d. 'Notes on the History of the Non-European Unity Movement in South Africa, ~n... more Rasso~l, J. n.d. 'Notes on the History of the Non-European Unity Movement in South Africa, ~nd the Role of Hosea Jaffe' (mimeograph), African Studies Special Collection Umvers1ty of Cape Town. ' Simons, M. 1976. 'Organised Coloured Political Movements', in H. van der Merwe & C. Groen~wald (ed.), Occupational and Social Change among Coloured People in So~th AJ:zca: Proceedings of a Workshop of the Centre for Intergroup Studies at the U~zverszty of Cape Town, Cape Town: Juta, pp. 202-37. Soudie~, C. 2011. 'The Contribution of Radical Western Cape Intellectuals to Indigenous Knowledge Project in South Africa', Transformation: Critical Perspectiv: on Southern Africa, 76, pp. 44-66.
Models treating the simple properties of social groups have a common shortcoming. Typically, they... more Models treating the simple properties of social groups have a common shortcoming. Typically, they focus on the local properties of group members, and on the features of the world with which group members interact. I consider economic models of bureaucratic corruption, to show that (a) even simple properties of groups are constituted by the properties of the wider population, and
Ruth Millikan's new collection of essays continues the project initiated with her remarkable ... more Ruth Millikan's new collection of essays continues the project initiated with her remarkable 1984 book, Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. That book was essentially three projects in one: a naturalistic account of the notion of a function; a theory, based on her treatment of functions, of the nature of linguistic items and semantic representation; and an application of the theory to a wide array of topics in language, epistemology, and metaphysics. In a number of areas, the book has been tremendously influential. Her work on functions has shaped a generation in philosophy of biology, particularly with respect to teleological explanation, and her approach to semantic representation has likewise played a major role in recent theories of mental content. In the practice of philosophy of language itself, curiously, her work as yet has had less impact. There are a number of possible reasons for this. To her supporters, her vision of language and thought is radical and...
Agent-based modeling is showing great promise in the social sciences. However, two misconceptions... more Agent-based modeling is showing great promise in the social sciences. However, two misconceptions about the relation between social macroproperties and microproperties afflict agent-based models. These lead current models to systematically ignore factors relevant to the properties they intend to model, and to overlook a wide range of model designs. Correcting for these brings painful trade-offs, but has the potential to transform the utility of such models. Agent-based modeling is starting to crack problems that have resisted treatment by analytical methods. Many of these are in the physical and biological sciences, such as the growth of viruses in organisms, flocking and migration patterns, and models of neural interaction. In the social sciences, agent-based models have had success in such areas as modeling epidemics, traffic patterns, and the dynamics of battlefields. And in recent years, the methodology has begun to be applied to economics, simulating such phenomena as energy ma...
Individualists about social ontology hold that social facts are “built out of ” facts about indiv... more Individualists about social ontology hold that social facts are “built out of ” facts about individuals. In this paper, I argue that there are two distinct kinds of individualism about social ontology, two different ways individual people might be the metaphysical “builders ” of the social world. The familiar kind is ontological individualism. This is the thesis that social facts supervene on, or are exhaustively grounded by, facts about individual people. What I call anchor individualism is the alternative thesis that facts about individuals put in place the conditions for a social entity to exist, or the conditions for something to have a social property. Examples include conventionalist theories of the social world, such as David Hume’s theories of promises, money, and government, and collective acceptance theories, such as John Searle’s theory of institutional facts. Anchor individualism is often conflated with ontological individualism. But in fact, the two theses are in tensio...
Rasso~l, J. n.d. 'Notes on the History of the Non-European Unity Movement in South Africa, ~n... more Rasso~l, J. n.d. 'Notes on the History of the Non-European Unity Movement in South Africa, ~nd the Role of Hosea Jaffe' (mimeograph), African Studies Special Collection Umvers1ty of Cape Town. ' Simons, M. 1976. 'Organised Coloured Political Movements', in H. van der Merwe & C. Groen~wald (ed.), Occupational and Social Change among Coloured People in So~th AJ:zca: Proceedings of a Workshop of the Centre for Intergroup Studies at the U~zverszty of Cape Town, Cape Town: Juta, pp. 202-37. Soudie~, C. 2011. 'The Contribution of Radical Western Cape Intellectuals to Indigenous Knowledge Project in South Africa', Transformation: Critical Perspectiv: on Southern Africa, 76, pp. 44-66.
Models treating the simple properties of social groups have a common shortcoming. Typically, they... more Models treating the simple properties of social groups have a common shortcoming. Typically, they focus on the local properties of group members, and on the features of the world with which group members interact. I consider economic models of bureaucratic corruption, to show that (a) even simple properties of groups are constituted by the properties of the wider population, and
Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition brings together contributions from researche... more Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition brings together contributions from researchers with a highly diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds – from philosophy to anthropology, economics, psychology, neurosci- ence and linguistics. Although the concepts and the methods that shape their contributions differ greatly, one thing that they all share in common is that they have been inspired in one way or another (indeed, in many ways) by John Searle’s pioneering and foundational work in the philosophy of language and mind and, more recently, society.
The project of editing a collection of essays on some of the most pressing and fascinating questions in current research on social ontology and social cognition started to take shape at the Interacting Minds Centre at the University of Aarhus in Summer 2011. Some of the essays included in this volume were first presented in the context of Objects in Mind, the first Aarhus-Paris conference on social ontol- ogy and social cognition, which was held at the Centre of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Aarhus on June 25–26, 2012.
Uploads
Papers by Brian Epstein
The project of editing a collection of essays on some of the most pressing and fascinating questions in current research on social ontology and social cognition started to take shape at the Interacting Minds Centre at the University of Aarhus in Summer 2011. Some of the essays included in this volume were first presented in the context of Objects in Mind, the first Aarhus-Paris conference on social ontol- ogy and social cognition, which was held at the Centre of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Aarhus on June 25–26, 2012.