Two New Publications

Two of my publications are finally out. Both of them are related to my PhD research into social ontology and the both investigate groups. The first one discusses group membership and argues that reducing it to mereological parthood plus further conditions is a viable option. The paper has an unusual history. Originally, I wrote another paper that argued the opposite conclusion, that is I tried to establish that all mereological accounts of groups fail. However, Katherine Hawley published a paper in the debate in 2018 and after reading it I decided that she was right, that we cannot take mereological accounts of the map at this point. So instead of publishing my first paper, I wrote a new one, filling a significant gap in the mereological account. You can find out everything in this crisp little piece.

My second paper undertakes a more ambitious project. It defends the conclusion that current interpretivist accounts of group agency fail and have to fail while functionalist accounts have a better shot. Like the first one, this second paper draws on the ontology of groups. Coinciding groups, that is groups which share all their members at all times, pose a special problem to interpretivist accounts, or so I argue.

I am proud to say that both papers have been published open access. As long as you have internet access, you can read them.