Contra recent, inflationary views, the paper submits a deflationary approach to legal ontology. It argues, in particular, that to answer ontological questions about legal entities, we only need conceptual analysis and empirical investigation. In developing this proposal, it follows Amie Thomasson’s ‘easy ontology’ and her strategy for answering whether ordinary objects exist. The purpose of this is to advance a theory that, on the one hand, does not fall prey to sceptical views about legal reality (viz., that ontological truths about (...) legal entities are established by metaphysical principles); and, on the other, is compatible with common-sense jurisprudence (viz., that there in fact exist legal entities, and they all have important practical implications). While this methodology is common to legal philosophers interested in elucidating the ‘artifactual nature’ of law, the paper departs from their projects by taking a step forward in connecting this deflationary approach to legal ontology with an expressivist account of legal discourse, thus providing enough resources to satisfy the general ambition of jurisprudence, viz., to establish the conditions for the analysis of legal reality and its normative character. (shrink)

Although there is already an important discussion regarding social ontology (a first-order investigation about social entities, e.g., social objects, social events, social relations, and social categories), not much attention has been paid to social meta-ontology (a second-order inquiry concerning what it means and how to answer whether there are any such entities). With the intention to contribute towards bringing the latter into the philosophical spotlight, I submit here a brief survey of the meta-ontological issues about two specific kinds of social (...) entities, viz., social and institutional practices. After elaborating on Thomasson’s easy approach to ontology, I argue that it can be extended to account for the existence of those social entities. (shrink)

Proxy agency is the capacity of individuals and groups to act for other individuals or groups in specific social transactions. For example, a legal team acts as a proxy for a client in a courtroom, or the Prime Minister acts as a proxy for the UK Government when attending international meetings, etc. Although a very common social phenomenon, it has not yet received enough philosophical treatment. Currently, the most developed account of this capacity is Ludwig’s proxy agency in collective action. (...) Yet, his account relies on a deflationary, we-content approach to collective intentionality (á la Bratman). In this chapter, I argue that this approach is far too weak to explain proxy agency in institutional contexts—where the individuals and groups formally authorised to perform rule-guided group activities for the principal hold a strong, non-conditional we-commitment. In order to elucidate this feature, I provide an account of proxy agency based on a more robust, we-mode approach to collective intentionality (á la Tuomela). I suggest with this that, for institutional proxy agency to operate as expected, there must be appropriate conditions of sociality in place—which ultimately coheres with the larger project developed by Tuomela on social ontology. (shrink)

Following Tuomela, I argue that institutions consist in institutional activities conducive to the realisation (or “satisfaction”) of institutional activity types. Since this realisation is carried out by institutional groups, our having an answer to 'what are institutional groups?' is a necessary step towards a better understanding of what institutions are and how we create them. In this chapter, I offer an answer to this question.

In a recent contribution to legal ontology, Kenneth Ehrenberg identifies a puzzle concerning _the basic validity rule_ of legal systems: If formal institutions require a codified foundational constitutive rule, then legal systems cannot be formal institutions, since their foundational constitutive rule is necessarily an uncodified basic validity rule. To solve this puzzle, Ehrenberg suggests taking this rule as ‘a foundational and self-identifying institutional fact’. Here, I challenge his solution and the very existence of this puzzle. By arguing, contra Ehrenberg, that (...) the basic validity rule is not the foundational constitutive rule of a legal system, but only the foundational constitutive rule of legal validity; that its codification in fact contributes towards the institutionalisation of a legal system; and that the true foundational constitutive rule of a legal system is the formal group structure of the higher-constitutional organisations, I submit an alternative account of the institutional nature of legal systems. (shrink)

How do we build up our institutional reality? What do we need in order to construct such things as universities, law firms, banks, retail stores, factories, leg.

What grounds the capacity of human agents to engage in individual, temporally extended activity (e.g. a philosopher writing a book), small-scale social interact.

Raimo Tuomela (1940-2020) was a leading figure within social philosophy and a pioneer of contemporary social ontology. His main research and publications helped define the scholarly agenda of a philosophical investigation of social reality. Working first on (social) scientific realism and (social) action theory, he then developed an unprecedented account of collective intentionality—the kind of intentionality that individual agents require in order for them to perform intentional actions together, as a group.

In recent years, some prominent legal philosophers have argued both that law (as a legal system) is a certain kind of abstract artifact and that we can elucidate its nature by elucidating its artifactual properties (e.g., authorship, functionality, etc). In this chapter, I present an objection to their arguments and show that law is not an abstract artifact, but rather a composite, concrete entity. I do so by arguing that law is an institutional practice, the purpose of which is for (...) legal organisations to produce legal artifacts (e.g., laws, legal judgements, international treaties, etc) through the performance of legal activities. Based on this, I next provide an ontological analysis of these artifacts by elaborating on the conditions for their creation and maintenance. By distinguishing law as an institutional practice from legal artifacts as institutional objects created by legal organisations, I intend to advance a more precise ontological account of legal phenomena. (shrink)

Amie L. Thomasson, currently appointed Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College and celebrated as one of the most influential living philosophers, has gained international recognition as a leading figure in metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, and aesthetics. Although her extensive body of work stretches far beyond the topic of this book, it is fair to say that her most notable contributions as well as controversial theses lie in her deflationary approach to ontology, which is why it (...) is the selected theme of this volume. (shrink)

Amie L. Thomasson, the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College, has gained international recognition as a leading figure within various areas of philosophy. She has recently been celebrated as one of the most influential living philosophers for her significant contributions to metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, and aesthetics. By engaging critically with her approach to metaphysics, modality, conceptual analysis, and the methodological issues concerning ontological questions about ordinary objects, social entities, and fictional characters, as well as (...) including a chapter from Thomasson herself where she makes explicit the internal connections which run through her body of work, this volume delivers the first thorough discussion of Thomasson’s philosophy. (shrink)

Raimo Tuomela, late Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT), University of Helsinki, is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of our time. He published extensively on various topics within social philosophy; particularly, on social action, cooperation, group belief, group responsibility, group reasoning, social practices, and institutions. To celebrate his legacy, this volume engages with and delves deeply into his philosophy of sociality. By gathering original essays from a world-class line-up of social ontologists, (...) social action theorists, and social philosophers, this collection provides the first comprehensive and critical treatment of Tuomela's outstanding contribution to social ontology and collective intentionality. (shrink)

Class, race and gender are three of the most salient factors in society. They determine to an important extent the opportunities we have, e.g. to access public.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Social Ontology, Normativity, and Philosophy of Law conference, which took place on May 30–31, 2019 at the University of Glasgow. At the invitation of the Social Ontology Research Group, a panel of prominent scholars shed light on a range of key topics within social ontology, normativity, and philosophy of law from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autopoiesis and other organisation theories is inconclusive for three reasons: First, (...) non-living self-organising processes like autocatalysis meet the defining features of autopoiesis without being teleological; second, organisational approaches, whether defined in terms of the closure of constraints, self-determination or autonomy, are unable to specify teleological normativity, that is, the individuation of an ultimate beneficiary; third, all self-organised systems produce local order by maximising the throughput of energy and/or material (obeying the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle) and thereby are specifically organised to undermine their own critical boundary conditions. Despite these inadequacies, an alternative approach called teleodynamics accounts for teleology. This theory shows how multiple self-organising processes can be collectively linked so that they counter each other’s MEP principle tendencies to become codependent. Teleodynamics embraces – not ignoring – the difficulties of self-organisation, but reinstates teleology as a radical phase transition distinguishing systems embodying an orientation towards their own beneficial ends from those that lack normative character. (shrink)

Fred Sanger, the inventor of the first protein, RNA and DNA sequencing methods, has traditionally been seen as a technical scientist, engaged in laboratory bench work and not interested at all in intellectual debates in biology. In his autobiography and commentaries by fellow researchers, he is portrayed as having a trajectory exclusively dependent on technological progress. The scarce historical scholarship on Sanger partially challenges these accounts by highlighting the importance of professional contacts, institutional and disciplinary moves in his career, spanning (...) from 1940 to 1983. This paper will complement such literature by focusing, for the first time, on the transition of Sanger’s sequencing strategies from degrading to copying the target molecule, which occurred in the late 1960s as he was shifting from protein and RNA to DNA sequencing, shortly after his move from the Department of Biochemistry to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, both based in Cambridge (UK). Through a reinterpretation of Sanger’s papers and retrospective accounts and a pioneering investigation of his laboratory notebooks, I will claim that sequencing shifted from the working procedures of organic chemistry to those of the emergent molecular biology. I will also argue that sequencing deserves a history in its own right as a practice and not as a technique subordinated to the development of molecular biology or genomics. My proposed history of sequencing leads to a reappraisal of current STS debates on bioinformatics, biotechnology and biomedicine. (shrink)

In this paper we address the problem of short-term electric energy prediction using a time series forecasting approach applied to data generated by a Paraguayan electricity distribution provider. The dataset used in this work contains data collected over a three-year period. This is the first time that these data have been used; therefore, a preprocessing phase of the data was also performed. In particular, we propose a comparative study of various machine learning and statistical strategies with the objective of predicting (...) the electric energy consumption for a given prediction horizon, in our case seven days, using historical data. In this paper we have tested the effectiveness of the techniques with different historical window sizes. Specifically, we considered two ensemble strategies, a neural network, a deep learning technique and linear regression. Moreover, in this study, we tested whether the inclusion of meteorological data can help achieve better predictions. In particular, we considered data regarding temperature, humidity, wind speed and atmospheric pressure registered during the three-year period of data collection. The results show that, in general, the deep learning approach obtains the best results and that such results are obtained when meteorological data are also considered. Moreover, when meteorological data is used, a smaller historical window size is required to obtain precise predictions. (shrink)

On 26 June 2000, during the presentation of the Human Genome Project's first draft, Bill Clinton, then President of the United States, claimed that "today we are learning the language in which God created life".1 Behind his remarks lay a story of more than half a century involving the understanding of DNA as information. This paper analyses that story, discussing the origins of the informational view of our genes during the early 1950s, how such a view affected the research on (...) the genetic code (1950s and '60s) and the transformation of the information idea in the context of DNA sequencing and bioinformatics ('80s and '90s). I suggest that the concept of DNA as information reached a climax with the proposal of the Human Genome Project (HGP), but is currently facing a crisis coinciding with the questioning of the information society. Finally, I discuss the emergence of systems biology as an alternative paradigm. (shrink)

Minimal cognition is an emerging field of research in the context of the life-mind continuity thesis. It stems from the idea that life and mind are strongly continuous, involving the same basic set of organisational principles. Minimal cognition has been sometimes regarded as the analysis of the minimum requirements for the emergence of cognitive phenomena. In the target article, Deacon describes the emergence of the autogenic system as an interpreting system that displays the simplest form of interpretive competence, its most (...) critical function being the capacity to re-present itself in ever new substrates and to interpret environmental conditions with respect to system self-maintenance. Since Deacon describes the autogen in cognitive terms, this article examines whether the autogen model can embody the critical disposition that underpins the emergence of minimal cognition. It finds that it does so, but argues that the autogenic system itself fails to be cognitive because it lacks the displacement of constraints that enable the semiotic scaffolding exhibited by life processes. The article then discusses the implications of the idea that autogenic processes underpin the emergence of minimal cognition for the life-mind continuity thesis. (shrink)

En este trabajo se propone una revisión de la fenomenología de la vida de Michel Henry y su relación con la intencionalidad, tal como esta es pensada en y por Husserl. Se pasa revista al modo en el que el fundador del método fenomenológico se ocupa de cuestiones centrales de la fenomenología de la vida, así como de la forma en la que Henry habla de la vida, la autodonación, la autorevelación, la verdad, el cuerpo originario o absoluto, etc. La (...) tesis es que en el fenomenólogo francés no se trata, en sentido propio, de una inversión de la intencionalidad, sino de una “absorción en sí misma”. (shrink)

We support the development of non-reductive cognitive science and the naturalization of phenomenology for this purpose, and we agree that the ‘relational turn’ defended by Gallagher is a necessary step in this direction. However, we believe that certain aspects of his relational concept of nature need clarification. In particular, Gallagher does not say whether or how teleology, affect, and other value-related properties of life and mind can be naturalized within this framework. In this paper, we argue that (1) given the (...) phenomenological standards recognized by Gallagher, his commitment to a naturalized phenomenology should entail a commitment to a naturalized concept of value; and (2) the kind of ‘relational nature’ described by Gallagher in his paper is insufficient for this purpose. (shrink)

Este artículo explora la digitalización de las sociedades democráticas tardomodernas como una de las realizaciones del programa neoliberal que trabaja en la conformación de nuevas subjetividades. En esta labor el imperativo tecnológico es fundamental porque tiende a convertirse en fuente exclusiva de normatividad. Sus consecuencias son la fragmentación de la experiencia, la quiebra de las identidades, la disrupción y el desvío del deseo de comunidad. Para evitarlas, se apunta cuál puede ser el procedimiento para la construcción de una subjetividad alternativa (...) de tipo democrático-emancipatorio que diverja de los procesos de subjetivación ligados a la digitalización neoliberal. En la realización de esta tarea se recurre a filósofas y filósofos de tradiciones diversas. (shrink)

The claim that knowledge is grounded on a basic, non-inferentially grasped set of principles, which seems to be Aristotle’s view, in contemporary epistemology can be seen as part of a wider foundationalist account. Foundationalists assume that there must be some premise-beliefs at the basis of every felicitous reasoning which cannot be themselves in need of justification and may not be challenged. They provide justification for truths based on these premises, which Aristotle unusually call principles (archái). Can Aristotle be considered a (...) foundationalist? Are his first principles necessary premises to right inferences? We will look at the issue here. (shrink)

Following Ballantyne, we can distinguish between descriptive and regulative epistemology. Whereas descriptive epistemology analyzes epistemic categories such as knowledge, justified belief, or evidence, regulative epistemology attempts to guide our thinking. In this paper, we argue that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on what we call epistemic prudence. Our argument proceeds as follows: First, we lay out an objection to virtue-based regulative epistemology that is analogous to the no-guidance objection to virtue ethics. According to this objection, virtue-based regulative epistemology cannot (...) offer us useful guidance in our deliberations, because an abstract knowledge of virtue does not tell us what we should do here and now, especially in hard cases. We respond to this objection by showing that our making good epistemic decisions cannot simply be a matter of our following the right epistemic rules. In order to reliably inquire and deliberate well, we need epistemic prudence. Thus, while virtue-based regulative epistemology fails to determine how we should inquire and resolve deliberation here and now, this is also true of norm-based regulative epistemology. The upshot of this argument is that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on understanding the nature of epistemic prudence and on understanding how we can promote its development in ourselves and others. (shrink)

The Plotinian way of reading the relationship between stars and human issues as a matter of synchronicity rather than the traditional cause-effect relationship proposed by Astrology was followed by the humanists in general. The symbolic power of signs is based on inspiration more than on rational discourse, and it can be related by wise men to other symbolic languages, including literature, with which it shares many devices. The wise man, according to the Neoplatonic humanists, knows how to interpret the symbols, (...) how to read one thing in another, uncovering the meaning of universal analogy. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein’s hinges, the centrepiece of his book On Certainty, are the “ungrounded ground” on which knowledge rests. It is usually understood by this that hinges provide a foundation for knowledge without being themselves epistemically warranted. In fact, Wittgenstein articulates that hinges lack any truth-value and are neither justified nor unjustified. This inevitably places them wholly outside the categorial framework of JTB epistemology. What I call the “groundlessness interpretation”, inspired by OC 166, understands the fundamental pieces (...) of our cognitive scaffolding this way. The view has been largely successful. I argue that this interpretation is incomplete for two basic reasons: first, it is not based on undisputed evidence; second, by assuming that hinges are committed to reality by epistemic fiat, it looks as if Wittgenstein is asking us to blindly trust them regardless of their actual content. Contrary to this, I argue that Wittgenstein describes hinges as illuminating world-pictures that reflect reality and are answerable to facts in a derivate way. As the book shows, hinges originate in our engagement with reality and, while considered unquestionable, could be challenged, reassessed, and replaced by new ones. This indicates that hinges are both the result of knowledge-acquisition and somewhat continuous with one’s set of beliefs. It follows that hinges are ultimately rational, and so, apt instruments to confront scepticism. (shrink)

In the middle of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein warned that “the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws…leads…into complete darkness” (1958, p. 18). At the time, few philosophers and even fewer scientists were prepared to heed his warning. A half-century later, however, the reductive method of science—the method famously defined by Descartes, brilliantly exemplified by Newtonian physics, and long upheld as the gold standard of scientific explanation—seems to have finally lost (...) its luster. While reduction is still widely defended, in the last decades alternative views have gained credibility, to the extent that a “non-reductive science” is no longer dismissed as an oxymoron. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein’s hinges, the centrepiece of his book On Certainty, are the “ungrounded ground” on which knowledge rests. It is usually understood by this that hinges provide a foundation for knowledge without being themselves epistemically warranted. In fact, Wittgenstein articulates that hinges lack any truth-value and are neither justified nor unjustified. This inevitably places them wholly outside the categorial framework of JTB epistemology. What I call the “groundlessness interpretation”, inspired by OC 166, understands the fundamental pieces (...) of our cognitive scaffolding this way. The view has been largely successful. I argue that this interpretation is incomplete for two basic reasons: first, it is not based on undisputed evidence; second, by assuming that hinges are committed to reality by epistemic fiat, it looks as if Wittgenstein is asking us to blindly trust them regardless of their actual content. Contrary to this, I argue that Wittgenstein describes hinges as illuminating world-pictures that reflect reality and are answerable to facts in a derivate way. As the book shows, hinges originate in our engagement with reality and, while considered unquestionable, could be challenged, reassessed, and replaced by new ones. This indicates that hinges are both the result of knowledge-acquisition and somewhat continuous with one’s set of beliefs. It follows that hinges are ultimately rational, and so, apt instruments to confront scepticism. (shrink)