Elia Nathan Bravo on Witches and Empty Concepts

Elia Nathan Bravo did not believe in witches, not in the classical European sense of  a “sorceress with the power to cast curses thanks to a fidelity pact with the devil.” (Nathan Bravo 2002: 122)  Even more, she was certain that there were no witches, at least as certain as we are that there are […]

CFA: Social Ontology 2023 (Deadline: January 30, 2023)

Theme: Social ontology and the social sciences, and the method(s) of social ontology August 16-19, 2023, Stockholm University, Sweden Deadline for abstracts: January 30, 2023 Social Ontology is the internationally leading philosophical and philosophy-related interdisciplinary conference series on social and collective phenomena. Social Ontology 2023 in Stockholm particularly invites contributions on the nature and existence […]

What makes something “social”?

We use the term ‘social’ to refer to a wide range of phenomena at different levels of abstraction… and it is very likely that most if not all of the social phenomena we care about as philosophers are complex enough to occur at more than one ontological level.

Is racism really that different from classism, ableism, etc?

They are all social system of group oppression, and this is no superficial ontological feature. Thus the question can be neither whether they are different or not, nor even how deep these differences go. The question has to be how useful is it to treat these systems together, and when it is good to separate them or treat them in smaller groups

Should we stop talking of race, gender, etc.?

Does rejecting the metaphysical reality of races committees us to “resist a policy of providing support to black-owned businesses, or any other race-based prioritization”, presumably, because we would be committed to reject as false the race-talk behind such measures. 

Social Ontology is Ontology

Social ontology is ontology. This might seem too much a truism to be worth stating, but its consequences are far-reaching. On the one hand, its methodology is completely on a par with other fields of ontology, like the ontology of abstract objects, midsize objects, the mind, etc. The consensual methodology in these fields is to […]

Social Ontology and Reductive Conceptions of Philosophy of Disability (The Consequences for Disabled Philosophers)

Over the weekend, disabled philosopher Johnathan Flowers once again tweeted a thread about the ableism of the profession and the exclusion of disabled philosophers of disability. In the course of the thread, Johnathan pointed out how philosophers of disability aren’t recognized as (say) doing metaphysics, as philosophers of language, as politiical philosophers, and so on, […]