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Social Mereology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2018

KATHERINE HAWLEY
KATHERINE HAWLEY*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWSkjh5@st-andrews.ac.uk
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Abstract:

What kind of entity is a committee, a book group, or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings among their parts. Thus, the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago but fell out of favor following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. Recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done and why we should bother.

Keywords

social groupsmembershipcollectivesparthoodsocial ontology

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Type
Articles
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Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , Winter 2017 , pp. 395 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2018 

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