Collectivity: Ontology, Ethics, and Social Justice

by Kendy M. Hess (Editor), Violetta Igneski (Editor), Tracy Isaacs (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786606327
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	11/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	342
File size:	552 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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).

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.

Read an Excerpt

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 and their centrality in social and political debates, a direct examination of the ways social groups come to be is called for.

1. FEATURE GROUPS AS SOCIAL KINDS

As the name suggests, membership in a feature group seems to require sharing (or being taken to share) one or more properties or features. Someone's being a member of a feature group is also often used to infer that the individual has other features. For example, if I find out that the candidate I am scheduled to interview is a woman, I might infer that she will be wearing makeup and will carry a purse rather than a briefcase. These features might not be part of what it is to be a woman but features that are commonly associated with women given broader social norms and practices. Depending on the particulars of the view, the metaphysics of feature groups may also help to explain stereotypes operative in making additional inferences, as for example one drawing the inference from the interviewee being a woman to the conclusion that she will be good at organizing departmental events. These conditions can be formulated more generally as follows:

Membership in Feature Groups: Someone, x, is a member of feature group G just in case x has (been socially assigned) features associated with G.

Feature Group Induction: If x is a member of feature group G, it will often be inferred that x has additional features F associated with G.

Membership in Feature Groups and Feature Group Induction are strikingly similar to conditions often given for natural kinds. Natural kinds are usually taken to be characterized by some essential or defining feature(s) and to factor in inductive inferences. For instance, water might be characterized by the feature of being composed of H2O. That some particular sample is water might figure in inferences about its boiling and freezing points.

While one might hold that feature social groups are kinds, they do not seem to be paradigmatic instances of natural kinds. Some natural kinds, like H2O, might have shared intrinsic (i.e., internal and non-relational) essences, but social feature groups plausibly do not. There is, for example, no genetic material that all and only Blacks share. If one holds that a shared intrinsic essence is necessary for a kind to be natural, feature social groups are not natural kinds. Further, while being a member of a feature social group might figure in inductive inferences, the conclusions drawn are often unreliable and can be normatively dangerous in ways inferences from something's inclusion in a natural kind are not. The example involving the woman job candidate above provides one instance of an unreliable and potentially oppressive inference involving a social kind. How to understand naturalness is contentious, but these disanalogies between paradigmatic natural kinds and paradigmatic feature social groups provide reason to hold that feature groups are not natural kinds. However, the similarities between feature groups and kinds made manifest by the conditions above should not be overlooked.

To account for the similarities and differences, we should take feature groups to be social kinds. The features associated with social kinds do not "cut nature at its joints"; social kinds are not nomologically necessary. Rather, social kinds are kinds with membership or instantiation conditions that depend on social factors such as social behavior, patterns of action, habits, beliefs, intentions, processes, practices, activities, rules, laws, norms, and arrangements. The intensions (i.e., membership conditions) of feature groups could depend on social factors in two distinct, but not mutually exclusive, ways.

First, our practices and intentions might be used to count the possession of some natural non-socially dependent properties as those that specify membership in some feature group. For example, levels of skin pigmentation and having XX chromosomes are properties that are not constitutively dependent on our intentions or practices. They are properties that are "out there" in the world. Our practices and beliefs could classify (or "count") these as the properties required for being a member of a feature group and endow them with further features (e.g., norms or statuses).

Mari Mikkola's trait/norm covariance model of sex and gender "counts" non-socially dependent properties as social kind properties in this way. She takes descriptive traits to describe "the way the world is." Descriptive traits include, for instance, physical traits, features of one's appearance, that one engages in particular tasks, and that one calls oneself a woman. Evaluative norms, on the other hand, are stereotypical judgments that reflect values and norms of a culture. Descriptive traits and evaluative norms are linked or co-vary due to social views. Mikkola states that "although it is a mind-independent feature of reality that Jane wears makeup, that Jane acts in a feminine way because she wears makeup is mind-dependent." Societal views are what "count" Jane's wearing makeup as feminine or womanly.

Second, social practices and intentions might construct properties that determine feature group membership. On this picture, natural features might help to guide our ascriptions of social kind membership, but the properties that ultimately define membership in a feature group are constitutively dependent on social factors. They might depend on factors like representations, beliefs, and intentions. They also include more external, less mentalistic factors, such as patterns of interaction, habits, rules, laws, norms, arrangements, and material resources. Ásta's, Haslanger's, and Thomasson's views involve this sort of construction of social properties.

Ásta argues that person x is a woman in a context C when the property being a woman is conferred on x in C. While a person having some bodily features might be part of what justifies the conferral of the property, x is not a woman because of those features. Instead, x is a woman in virtue of being conferred the property being a woman, which is constituted through institutional or communal constraints and enablements. A person has the socially constructed property given attitudes, actions, or states of another subject (or group of subjects). The property itself, not just ascriptions of it, is dependent on our perceptions, judgments, intentions, and practices.

According to Haslanger, gender and race depend on being socially subordinated or privileged. For example, she states that "S is a woman iff S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.) and S is 'marked' as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female's biological role in reproduction." Being socially subordinated is a property that is constructed by social practices and intentions.

On Thomasson's view, all social groups involve norms. Norms can specify how members of a group are to act, how others are to treat them, or what specific roles individual members are to play. For instance, a norm like one ought to be soft-spoken could be a feature that is part of what defines membership in a feature group. Normative features (at least most of those relevant to social groups) are plausibly features that are constructed, rather than natural features that we target as those required for group membership.

Some views might involve both construction and counting. For instance, consider Searle's view. He states, "We make it the case by Declaration that for any x that satisfies condition p, x has the status Y and performs function F in [context] C." According to Searle, constitutive rules of this form are put in place by collective acceptance in a community. For example, Searle takes being a dollar bill to require the following condition p: being printed by the Federal Reserve with a particular color and design. Merely meeting p is not sufficient for being a one-dollar bill. The declaration or collective acceptance that meeting p gives an object a status and function is also necessary for something to have the status and function. Statuses and functions are constructed features, but being p might not be socially dependent. While Searle does not focus on social groups, his view might be extended to cover them. For instance, we might declare that certain bodily features, genetic material, or historical ancestry are the conditions p that someone must satisfy to have the status of being Black or being a woman.

My aim here is to keep the discussion of feature groups at a general level to allow for all of these views (and others). I will not argue for a particular view of which social features specify social kind membership in any particular feature groups. I leave open whether counted properties, constructed properties, or a combination of the two mark membership in social kinds. I claim only that feature groups are social kinds. I now turn to the question of whether feature groups themselves are socially created. That is, I turn to the question of whether the construction or counting of properties leads to the creation of social objects.

2. SOCIAL KINDS AND SOCIAL CREATIONISM

There are multiple ways for things to come to be. Plants and animals produce offspring. Stars form in nebulas when pressure builds and leads to a collapse. Robots can be built out of circuitry and gears; tables can be made out of wood and nails. Conventions might be generated by certain patterns of reproduction or beliefs and common knowledge. Widows come to be due to the death of a spouse. According to Social Creationism, all social groups are new objects created through (some specific types of) thoughts, intentions, and patterns of interaction. To determine whether feature social groups are socially created objects we need to consider what kinds are.

The main discussions of the metaphysics of kinds focus on natural kinds. The dominant views of kinds identify them with properties or clusters of properties. On the view that kinds are properties, one might hold that some properties (e.g., being water) are natural kinds, while other properties (e.g., being larger than a breadbox or being blue) are not. On the view that kinds are property clusters, kinds are not identified with a single property. Rather, kind membership is defined in terms of multiple properties. In discussions of natural kinds, properties are taken to be clustered by internal biological mechanisms or external factors in the natural environment (including interactions with other populations in the environment). For social kinds, properties might be clustered by our intentions, interactions, practices, habits, or other social factors. For instance, the property of having recent ancestral ties to Africa might be clustered with the property of being deemed unintelligent as a result of the dispersal of propaganda, economic discrimination, and educational policies.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Introduction, Kendy Hess, Violetta Igneski, and Tracy Isaacs
Part One: Ontology
Chapter 1: Social Creationism and Social Groups, Katherine Ritchie
Chapter 2: The Peculiar Unity of Corporate Agents, Kendy Hess
Chapter 3: Can There Be an Ethics for Institutional Agents? Sean Cordell
Chapter 4: At Cross Purposes: The Responsible Subject, Organizational Reality and the Criminal Law, Jennifer Quaid
Part Two: Ethics
Chapter 5: Making Sense of Collective Moral Obligations: A Comparison of Existing Approaches, Anne Schwenkenbecher
Chapter 6: Individual Duties in Unstructured Collective Contexts, Violetta Igneski
Chapter 7: Global Obligations and the Human Right to Health, Bill Wringe
Chapter 8: When Are Collective Obligations Too Demanding? Felix Pinkert
Chapter 9: Who Does Wrong When an Organization Does Wrong? Stephanie Collins
Part Three: Social Justice
Chapter 10: What Would a Feminist Theory of Collective Action and Responsibility Look Like? Tracy Isaacs
Chapter 11: Identities of Oppression: Collec

Editorial Reviews

Hess, Igneski, and Isaacs have assembled an exceptional collection of new papers exploring the issues of ontology, ethics and social justice with respect to collectives. Many of the chapters advance and deepen prior analyses of the way collective entities should be considered from the point of view of moral responsibility, practically and theoretically. Collectivity makes provocative moves in the direction of aligning moral assessment and ontological considerations with the real world of corporations, organizations, groups, nations, and other collectives that control much of the social, political, and economic events that shape our lives for good or ill.

Peter A. French

This is a very fine collection of essays by a group of prominent scholars who together both deepen our philosophical understanding of collective responsibility and open our eyes to the importance of taking oppression, group identity, and social justice seriously in ascribing of it.

Marion Smiley