Voici le résumé de la prochaine séance, une réflexion (en anglais) sur l’ontologie des objets sociaux, par Asya Passinsky (NYU), qui aura lieu mardi 30 avril à 17h30 en salle U/V :

Asya Passinsky
« The ontology of social objets »




« 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 response-dependent answer to the puzzle, which I think is more promising.  »