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We live in a world of crowds and corporations, artworks and artifacts, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects - they are made, at least in part, by people and by communities. But what exactly are these things? How are they made, and what is the role of people in making them?
In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein rewrites our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social sciences. Epstein explains and challenges the three prevailing traditions about how the social world is made. One tradition takes the social world to be built out of people, much as traffic is built out of cars. A second tradition also takes people to be the building blocks of the social world, but focuses on thoughts and attitudes we have toward one another. And a third tradition takes the social world to be a collective projection onto the physical world. Epstein shows that these share critical flaws. Most fundamentally, all three traditions overestimate the role of people in building the social world: they are overly anthropocentric.
Epstein starts from scratch, bringing the resources of contemporary metaphysics to bear. In the place of traditional theories, he introduces a model based on a new distinction between the grounds and the anchors of social facts. Epstein illustrates the model with a study of the nature of law, and shows how to interpret the prevailing traditions about the social world. Then he turns to social groups, and to what it means for a group to take an action or have an intention. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus, these often depend on more than the actions and intentions of group members.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- INTRODUCTION
- PART ONE - FOUNDATIONS, OLD AND NEW
- 1 Individualism: a recipe for warding off "spirits"
- 2 Getting to the consensus view
- 3 Seeds of doubt
- 4 Another puzzle: a competing consensus
- 5 Tools and terminology
- 6 Grounding and anchoring
- 7 Case study: laws as frame principles
- 8 Two kinds of individualism
- 9 Against conjunctivism
- PART TWO - GROUPS AND THE FAILURE OF INDIVIDUALISM
- 10 Groups and constitution
- 11 Simple facts about groups
- 12 The identity of groups
- 13 Kinds of groups
- 14 Group attitudes: patterns of grounding
- 15 Group action: more than member action
- 16 Group intention
- 17 Other theories I: social integrate models
- 18 Other theories II: status models
- LOOKING AHEAD
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Brian Epstein received his PhD in philosophy from Stanford University, his master's in philosophy from Oxford University, and graduated summa cum laude with an AB in philosophy from Princeton University. His research interests include philosophy of social science, metaphysics, and philosophy of language, focusing in particular on issues in the theory of reference and the ontology of social kinds. He also has interests in conceptual schemes, the philosophy of music, and the philosophy of economics. Between degree programs, he worked at a number of technology startups and consulting firms.
Zusammenfassung
In The Ant Trap, Brian Epstein rewrites our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social sciences. He develops a new model of the social world, and shows that the actions and intentions of social groups often depend on more than their members.
Vorwort
Winner of the 2016 American Philosophical Association Joseph B. Gittler Award
Winner of the 2016 Lakatos Award
Zusatztext
Brian Epstein has produced an ambitious, innovative approach to the analytical explanation of social facts and entities, including small and large social groups, collective actions, public artifacts, organizations, etc. Throughout, he urges a deep openness to unexplored methodological and ontological possibilities not exemplified in current social science practice or theory and systematically demonstrates how new analytical tools address what he sees as lacunae or confusions in current theory.
