On What Makes a Social Group a Group Agent
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v10i2.379Keywords:
social ontology, group agency, organized social groups, social structureAbstract
Thriving philosophical disputes in social ontology revolve around the question as to whether social groups can be agents. In this article, I contend that if there is something that can turn a social group into an agent, then that something must encompass the group’s ontological structure. The point is made by connecting Ritchie’s structuralist ontology (2018) with a widely received account of group agency proposed among others by List and Pettit (2011). If the argument is convincing, structuralism offers a helpful framework for vindicating realism about group agency and provides the tools to individuate agentive properties of different kinds.
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