Essentially Contested Concepts and Semantic Externalism

In 1956, W.B. Gallie introduced his idea of essentially contested concepts. In my paper, I offer a novel interpretation of his theory and argue that his theory, thus interpreted, is correct. The key to my interpretation lies in a condition Gallie places on essentially contested concepts that other interpreters downplay or dismiss: that the use of an essentially contested concept must be derived “from an original exemplar whose authority is acknowledged by all the contestant users of the concept.” This reveals a similarity between Gallie’s views and the semantic externalist views of Hilary Putnam, and others, about natural kind terms like “water” and “tiger.” I argue that natural kind terms and terms for essentially contested concepts are two species of a single semantic genus. In the case of natural kind terms, a term refers to a natural kind, the exemplars are instances of that kind, and the relation between the exemplars and anything to which the term applies is co-membership of the kind. In the case of terms for essentially contested concepts, a term refers to an historical tradition, the exemplar is a stage or temporal part of that tradition, and the relation between the exemplar and anything to which the term refers is being the heir of. This allows me to understand the contests that alerted Gallie to the phenomenon of essentially contested concepts as contests over the ownership of historical tradition

Meme-making: Poaching, Reappropriation, or _Bricolage_?

Memes are a prominent example of a kind of digital artifact. It is widely agreed that an integral component of meme-making is the way in which it makes use of other existing material. In this paper, I examine three different ways of understanding this making use of. First, it has been seen in economic terms, as a kind of poaching. Secondly, the cultural concept of (re)appropriation has been deployed. Finally, Lévi-Strauss’s notion of bricolage is often mentioned. I argue that despite some interesting insights deriving from the first two approaches, it is the third that gives the most comprehensive and interesting take on meme-making

Making objects and events a hylomorphic theory of artifacts, actions, and organisms

Simon J. Evnine explores the view that some objects have matter from which they are distinct but that this distinctness is not due to the existence of anything like a form. He argues that objects must be understood in relation to how they come to exist and what their functions are, and applies his account to artifacts, organisms, and actions

Epistemic unities

ABSTRACT. I bring together social ontology and social epistemology by considering social entities (“epistemic unities”) that are constituted by the holding of epistemic relations between their members. In particular, I focus on the relation of taking someone as an expert. Among the types of structures examined are ones with a single expert and one or more non-experts who may or may not know of each other’s situation; and ones with more than one expert, including cases in which the relation between the experts is hierarchical and cases in which it is symmetrical. These structures model a variety of social situations which can thus be given a unified treatment. Among the cases I discuss are persons, which I argue are multiple-expert unities of persons at times. Taking a person as a social unity like this offers a clear sense in which some groups can also be person-like. 1

Containing Multitudes: Reflection, Expertise and Persons as Groups

From time to time, philosophers like to raise the possibility of the existence of group minds or group persons. In order for something to be interestingly and appropriately described as a group person it must satisfy two conditions. First, it must itself exhibit various characteristics that are distinctive of persons. Unless it did this, it would not be a group person. Secondly, it must be composed of entities that are themselves persons or relevantly person-like. Without this, it would not be a group person. It is the difficulty of seeing how these two conditions can be satisfied together that has made the existence and possible natures of group persons problematic. For the things that paradigmatically satisfy the first condition, namely persons, are not obviously thought of as being composed of person-like entities related in some group-like way. And the things that paradigmatically satisfy the second condition, such as sports teams, committees and string quartets, are not obviously thought of as themselves displaying personal characteristics. Investigators of group persons – though not always thinking of themselves as such – have usually approached the problem by starting with paradigmatic and uncontroversial groups and exploring the extent to which personal characteristics can be attributed to them. Since it would be unreasonable to expect such groups to exhibit, even in some possibly attenuated way, all the characteristics of an ordinary person, attention is usually directed to some subset of these characteristics. Can such a group have a single consciousness? Can it be the subject of intentional mental states like belief? Can it act? Can it be guilty