Collectivity: Ontology, Ethics, and Social Justice - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1786606305 ISBN 13: 9781786606303

Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Collectivity: Ontology, Ethics, and Social Justice brings new voices and new approaches to under-developed areas in the philosophical literature on collectives and collective action. The essays in this volume introduce and explore a range of topics that fall under the more general concept of collectivity, including collective ontology, collective action, collective obligation, and collective responsibility. A number of the chapters link collectivity directly to significant issues of social justice.

The volume addresses a variety of questions including the ontology and taxonomy of social groups and other collective entities, ethical frameworks for understanding the nature and extent of individual and collective moral obligations, and applications of these conceptual explorations to oppressive social practices like mass incarceration, climate change, and global poverty. The essays draw on a variety of approaches and disciplines, including feminist and continental approaches and work in legal theory and geography, as well as more traditional philosophical contributions.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Kendy M. Hess is the Brake Smith Associate Professor of Social Philosophy and Ethics at the College of the Holy Cross.

Violetta Igneski is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University.

Tracy Isaacs is Professor of Philosophy, Women's Studies and Feminist Research at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts (2011) and co-editor, with Richard Vernon, of Accountability for Collective Wrongdoing (2011).

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Collectivity

Ontology, Ethics, and Social Justice

By Kendy Hess, Violetta Igneski, Tracy Isaacs

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2018 Kendy Hess, Violetta Igneski, and Tracy Isaacs
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78660-630-3

Contents

Introduction, 1, 
PART I: ONTOLOGY, 11, 
1 Social Creationism and Social Groups Katherine Ritchie, 13, 
2 The Peculiar Unity of Corporate Agents Kendy Hess, 35, 
3 Can There Be an Ethics for Institutional Agents? Sean Cordell, 61, 
4 At Cross Purposes: The Responsible Subject, Organizational Reality, and the Criminal Law Jennifer Quaid, 81, 
PART II: ETHICS, 107, 
5 Making Sense of Collective Moral Obligations: A Comparison of Existing Approaches Anne Schwenkenbecher, 109, 
6 Individual Duties in Unstructured Collective Contexts Violetta Igneski, 133, 
7 Global Obligations and the Human Right to Health Bill Wringe, 153, 
8 When Are Collective Obligations Too Demanding? Felix Pinkert, 175, 
9 Who Does Wrong When an Organization Does Wrong? Stephanie Collins, 197, 
PART III: SOCIAL JUSTICE, 221, 
10 What Would a Feminist Theory of Collective Action and Responsibility Look Like? Tracy Isaacs, 223, 
11 Identities of Oppression: Collective Intentionality's Seriality Problem Eric Chelstrom, 241, 
12 Resisting Oppression Together: Shared Intentions and Unequal Agents Christina Friedlaender, 265, 
13 Geographically Gated Communities: Collective Participation, Marginalization, and the Importance of Shared Values Sarah Roe and Elyse Zavar, 291, 
Index, 319, 
About the Contributors, 331, 

CHAPTER 1

Social Creationism and Social Groups

Katherine Ritchie

Social groups, like gender and racial groups, teams, committees, and legislative bodies, seem to be the sort of things that are created by us. If there were no humans, we didn't act in particular ways, or we didn't have certain kinds of attitudes and intentions, there would be no such groups. Given that social groups depend on us (in some sense or other), one might take the following thesis to be true:

Social Creationism: All social groups are social objects created through (some specific types of) thoughts, intentions, agreements, habits, patterns of interaction, and practices.

Here I argue that not all social groups come to be in the same way. This is due, in part, to social groups failing to share a uniform nature. I focus on two rough classes of groups. The first, which I call "feature social groups," include racial, gender, sexual orientation, and other groups that involve sharing (or being taken to share) some features. Feature groups, I argue, are social kinds. They either falsify Social Creationism or are created but in an easy way as byproducts of property instantiations. The second, which I call "organized social groups," include groups such as teams, committees, courts, and clubs. They are objects that are socially created in the way Social Creationism requires.

I adopt the distinction between objects and properties (i.e., the particular-universal distinction). Notice that Social Creationism is a thesis about objects. If kinds are properties or clusters of properties (the two dominant views of the metaphysics of kinds), groups that are social kinds falsify the thesis. However, this is not to arbitrarily stack the deck. For, I argue that even if kinds are objects, they come to be in a way that is distinct from and "easier" than the way organized social groups are created. The difference is not just relevant to metaphysical inquiry. It helps to explain why some groups seem to be natural and others do not and why some groups often come to be without people (collectively) intending for them to exist, while others do not (or do so less often). It is also part of the explanation as to why certain sorts of groups are widespread and persistent (e.g., racial groups) while others (e.g., a graduate admissions committee) are not.

To keep track of the distinction between the ways objects and properties depend on social factors, I adopt the following terminological conventions. I reserve "social creation" for claims about objects (i.e., particulars) coming to be through beliefs, intentions, practices, and so on. I use "social construction" for the claim that properties (i.e., universals) come to be through beliefs, intentions, and so on.

The chapter is structured as follows. I sketch a view of feature social groups as social kinds (Section 1). I then (Section 2) examine three views of natural kinds, outline social analogs, and consider whether feature groups (so understood) are socially created. I argue that they are not on two of the three approaches and that on the third approach, while they are created, it is only derivatively. They are just the extensions of social properties. Next, I sketch a view of organized groups as structured wholes (Section 3). I argue that organized groups are socially created in a robust sense (Section 4). Finally, I draw concluding remarks (Section 5).

Before proceeding, notes on the complexity of the categorization of groups and on connections to other arguments are needed. Brian Epstein has convincingly argued that social groups vary along multiple dimensions. While I take groups within a class (e.g., groups that are in the class of organized groups) to share a general ontological status, I do not require that they all share a highly specific nature. Moreover, while here I discuss two classes of groups, I do not commit to the view that all groups can be classified as either feature or organized groups. In addition to teams, courts, races, and genders, there are non-human animals groups (e.g., pods of dolphins and herds of elephants) and groups of inanimate entities (e.g., books in a library and food groups). There are also human groups such as communities, crowds, queues, and mobs. There might be many classes of social groups and groups more generally. Part of my aim here is to shed some light on the massive complexity of the social world by revealing some of the complexity of a small portion of social reality.

Others have made the point that some social entities are intentionally created, while others come to be in a derivative sense. For instance, Amie Thomasson has argued that some social entities are intentionally created, and others are byproducts. She argues that laws and corporations are things that are intentionally created, while class systems, gender bias, and economic recessions are byproducts that are, as she puts it, "generated, rather than created or constructed." Raimo Tuomela takes states of inflation and pollution to "belong to social artifacts broadly understood" but takes these to be derived in a way that can be unintended and unanticipated. John Searle holds that there are "systematic fallouts" (e.g., recessions) that are at the "macro" level.

The examples Thomasson, Tuomela, and Searle offer all involve systematic patterns or events. They do not consider the question of whether groups could be "generated" in this way. Groups might depend on broad social patterns, but groups themselves are far more entity-like than economic cycles or class discrimination. Social groups can be parts of events. For example, two teams might play a game. However, groups are not identical to events. The arguments I offer here differ from those that have come before in focusing squarely on entities that are neither events nor processes or patterns. Given the important roles social groups play in our lives...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1786606305
• ISBN 13: 9781786606303
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 342
• Herausgeber: Hess Kendy M., Igneski Violetta, Isaacs Tracy
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar