On What Makes a Social Group a Group Agent

Authors

  • Giulia Lasagni

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v10i2.379

Keywords:

social ontology, group agency, organized social groups, social structure

Abstract

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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Published

2022-09-09

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2022)

Section

Essays

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