Tobias Hansson Wahlberg: A Deflationary Truthmakers Account of Social Objects: The Cases of Corporations and Laws

Abstract:
In this talk, I’ll present sections from a draft chapter of a book manuscript on social ontology that I’m currently working on. The book aims to provide deflationary truthmakers accounts (drawing on work in general analytic metaphysics by people like David Armstrong, Hugh Mellor, John Heil and Ross Cameron) of various social phenomena, including institutional and non-institutional social properties, different types of social objects, and social causation.

Unlike standard analyses of these phenomena, deflationary truthmakers accounts are not phrased in terms of corresponding states of affairs, reductive identifications or ontological dependence relations.  The draft chapter that I’ll present focuses on social objects, and in the talk I’ll specifically discuss the sections about corporations and laws, which are institutional social objects.

My aim is to make the talk as self-contained as possible, so I won’t assume that attendees have read the draft.

You can use the contact card above to request the draft, if you wish to read it in advance.