Asya Passinsky is a PhD student at NYU and a visiting student at the IJN.
Title: "Metaphysics of Social Objects"
Date, Time, Place: 17/05/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Ordinary experience suggests that under certain circumstances,
we can create things like money, boundaries, stocks, governments,
nation-states and corporations by mere declaration. But we cannot
likewise create other kinds of objects in this way. For example, we can
cannot create H2O molecules, trees, tables or numbers by mere
declaration. So how is it that we can create social objects in this way?
I will argue against a reductivist answer to this
creation-by-declaration puzzle which identifes every token social object
with a token physical object, and against an eliminativist answer
which maintains that social objects do not exist. I will conclude with
some speculative remarks about a realist answer to the puzzle.
