Dependence in Social Ontology

Current metaphysics is in no small part concerned with investigating the various ways in which things and phenomena may depend on more fundamental things and phenomena – by learning about these relations of dependence we learn about the metaphysical structure of the world. One area in which it is natural to suppose that some kind of dependence must play a pivotal role is the social realm. There is widespread agreement that such things as money, marriages, or nation states depend for their existence on the attitudes and activities of social beings like us. However, both the extent and the nature of this dependence are controversial. This workshop aims to contribute to a clarification of the pertinent notion of dependence and to examine some of its possible applications.

At the first day before the official part of the workshop starts we will have a short time slot to talk about critical perspectives in the context of social ontology. If you should be interested you can contact Daniel James (danjel.james[at]philosophie.hu-berlin.de).

Participation in the workshop is free of charge and everyone is welcome to attend. Please register with [email protected] if you wish to attend and also if you would like to join us for the conference dinner on Saturday.

Programme:

Friday, December 7
3pm – Frank Hindriks (Groningen): Three Concepts of Rules
4:30pm – Daniel James (Berlin) & Mathias Böhm (Berlin): What Makes
Constitutive Rules Constitutive?
6pm – Miguel Hoeltje (Essen): Response Dependence, Social Ontology, and
Missing Explanations

Saturday, December 8
9:30am – Mari Mikkola (Berlin): Quasi-Essentialism, Sex, and Gender
11am – Heiner Koch (Tübingen): Acceptance Dependence
1:40pm – Al Prescott-Couch (Harvard): Social Reality and Collective
Recognition
3:10pm – Raphael van Riel (Bochum): Construction Failures
4:40pm – Final Panel Discussion