Abstract
If you are a realist about groups (e.g. religious institutions, football teams, the Mafia etc.) there are three main theories of what to identify groups with. I offer reasons for thinking that two of those theories (groups as sui generis entities and groups as mereological fusions) fail to meet important desiderata. The third option is to identify groups with sets, which meets all of the desiderata if only we take care over which sets they are identified with. I then canvass some possible objections to that third theory, and explain how to avoid them.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
An alternative is that they exist at the times that their members exist at, but no-where in space (i.e. are located at times, but not spatial regions). However, I have difficulty understanding how that is supposed to work in relativistic spacetimes (such as our own!) where distinctions between time and space are notoriously hard to come by.
Ross Cameron has pressed me over the distinction between conceptual and metaphysical primitives. If a theory introduces conceptual primitives it brings about only complexity in theories, rather than (as in the case of metaphysical primitives) complexity in the world itself. One might claim (as Cameron put to me in conversation) that conceptual primitives are ‘freebies’, and shouldn’t count against a theory. So (P) is a desideratum only if the primitives are metaphysical. Grant the distinction and the claim, for the dialectic demands we are concerned with metaphysical primitives for here we are assuming realism about groups. It would be odd (although, admittedly, not inconsistent) to then think that the commitments of our group talk demand added complexity in the world with regards to what exists, but that group talk doesn’t carry an analogous demand regarding complexity in the world with regards to membershipG.
x is a fusion of the ys at time t =df each x is a part of y at t, and every part of y overlaps at least one of the xs at t.
Sheehy denies that groups are ‘mere aggregates’, but does think they are material particulars ‘constituted’ by individuals [101]. In this context I don’t know how to read ‘constituted’ except as ‘fusions of’. Certainly fusions are not all ‘mere aggregates’ in Sheehy’s sense as they need not have their parts essentially.
Although some philosophers think endurantism is compatible with UDC, such a pairing is deeply problematic (Varzi 2007).
Where the pluralities might be empty, and thus the set would be the empty set.
I use events because it is relatively uncontentious that events have temporal parts, whereas the same cannot be said of material objects.
That is unless the group has no membershipG at times between when it has its first and last memberG. Then it would exist intermittently. I don’t see any philosophical problem with things having an intermittent existence (although others may demur) and there’s no intuitive problem with groups not existing when they have no membersG and then coming back into existence when they do. Indeed, I find the idea that a group ceases to be when it has no membersG to be quite intuitive.
That is, unless you take Lewis’ stance of identifying the null set with the fusion of every individual, which is surely not a precondition of accepting that sets are located.
Note that this may partly undermine the reason for thinking fusionism fails to meet (I), in that if you think this tactic is appropriate one has to wonder why you don’t endorse UDC. However, you may dislike UDC not on the grounds that the restriction strategy doesn’t work, but for other reasons [Comesaña 2008; Effingham 2007], or may accept unrestricted composition but disdain UDC for other reasons (such as it entailing perdurantism). In any case, fusionism’s failure to meet (P) still gives Setism the edge.
We could mimic the tactic of structuralists who don’t reify structures but then, whilst we are left with a way of accounting for talk about groups, we haven’t included groups in our ontology. Maybe that would be a good theory, but following the mission statement laid down in Sect. 1, this paper is concerned only with realists about groups, so I set aside discussion of such possibilities.
References
Armstrong, D. (1986). In defense of structural universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64, 85–88. doi:10.1080/00048408612342261.
Bourne, C. (2006). A future for presentism. Oxford: OUP.
Bunge, M. (1979). A systems concept of society: Beyond individualism and holism. Theory and Decision, 10, 13–30. doi:10.1007/BF00126329.
Caplan, B., & Matheson, C. (2006). Defending musical perdurantism. British Journal of Aesthetics, 46, 59–69. doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayj004.
Comesaña, J. (2008). Could there be exactly two things? Synthese, 162, 31–35. doi:10.1007/s11229-007-9170-0.
Copp, D. (1984). What collectives are: Agency, individualism and legal theory. Dialogue, 23, 249–269.
Cruse, D. (1979). On the transitivity of the part-whole relation. Journal of Linguistics, 15, 29–38. doi:10.1017/S0022226700013086.
Effingham, N. (2007). The Restricted Composition of Material Objects, University of Leeds Ph.D. thesis.
Epstein, B. (2009). Ontological individualism reconsidered. Synthese, 166, 187–213. doi:10.1007/s11229-007-9272-8.
Gilbert, M. (1989). On social facts. London: Routledge.
Goodman, N. (1966). The structure of appearance (2nd ed.). New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.
Jubien, M. (1993). Ontology, modality and the fallacy of reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Katz, Jerrold (1996). “Skepticism about Numbers and Indeterminancy Arguments”, from Benacerraf and his Critics ed. Morton and Stich, 119–39.
Lewis, D. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lewis, D. (1991). Parts of classes. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lewis, D., & Lewis, S. (1970). Holes. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 48, 206–212. doi:10.1080/00048407012341181.
Macdonald, G., & Pettit, P. (1981). Semantics and Social Science. London: Routledge.
Maddy, P. (1990). Realism in Mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Markosian, N. (1998). Brutal composition. Philosophical Studies, 92, 211–249. doi:10.1023/A:1004267523392.
Martin, R. (1988). Metaphysical Foundations: Mereology & Metalogic, München, Verlag.
McTaggart, J. (1921). The nature of existence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Melia, J. (2003). Modality. Chesham: Acumen.
Melia, J. (2008). “Ersatz Possible Worlds”, from Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics ed. Sider, Hawthorne and Zimmerman, 135–51.
Merricks, T. (2001). Objects and persons. Oxford: OUP.
Oppenheim, P., & Putnam, H. (1958). Unity of science as a working hypothesis. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2, 3–36.
Pollock, J. (1974). Knowledge and Justification. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, H. (1979). Mathematics, matter and method: Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quine, W. V. O. (1987). Quiddities: An intermittently philosophical dictionary. London: Belknap Press.
Quinton, A. (1976). Social Objects. Proceedings of the Aristotelian society, 76, 1–27.
Rescher, N. (1955). Axiom for the part relation. Philosophical Studies, 6, 8–10. doi:10.1007/BF02341057.
Resnik, M. (1997). Mathematics as a science of patterns. Oxford: OUP.
Ruben, D.-H. (1985). The Metaphysics of the social world. London: Routledge.
Shapiro, S. (1997). Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology. Oxford: OUP.
Sharvy, R. (1968). Why a class can’t change its members. Nous (Detroit, Mich.), 2, 303–314. doi:10.2307/2214458.
Sheehy, P. (2006). The reality of social groups. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Shoemaker, S. (1984). Identity, cause and mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sider, T. (2001). Four-dimensionalism. Oxford: OUP.
Thomasson, A. (2003). Realism and human kinds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76, 580–609. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00309.x.
Tuomela, R. (2002). The philosophy of social practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Uzquiano, G. (2004). The Supreme court and the Supreme court justices: A Metaphysical puzzle. Nous (Detroit, Mich.), 38, 135–153. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2004.00465.x.
van Inwagen, P. (1990). Material beings. New York: Cornell University Press.
van Inwagen, Peter (1995). “Non Est Hick”, from God, Knowledge & Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology, 191–216.
Varzi, A. (2007). Promiscuous Endurantism and Diachronic Vagueness. American Philosophical Quarterly, 44, 181–189.
Wake, A., Spencer, J., & Fowler, G. (2007). Holes as regions of spacetime. The Monist, 90(3), 372–378.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Jake Chandler, Ross Cameron, Philip Goff, Jon Robson, Duncan Watson and an anonymous referee of this journal for their helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Effingham, N. The metaphysics of groups. Philos Stud 149, 251–267 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9335-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9335-4