Plural Action


Book Description

Collective Intentionality is a relatively new label for a basic social fact: the sharing of attitudes such as intentions, beliefs and emotions. This volume contributes to current research on collective intentionality by pursuing three aims. First, some of the main conceptual problems in the received literature are introduced, and a number of new insights into basic questions in the philosophy of collective intentionality are developed (part 1). Second, examples are given for the use of the analysis of collective intentionality in the theory and philosophy of the social sciences (part 2). Third, it is shown that this line of research opens up new perspectives on classical topics in the history of social philosophy and social science, and that, conversely, an inquiry into the history of ideas can lead to further refinement of our conceptual tools in the analysis of collective intentionality (part 3).




Intentional Acts and Institutional Facts


Book Description

Ten original essays examine the central themes of John Searle’s ontology of society. Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle’s work. Moreover, these essays open the door to new approaches to addressing fundamental questions about social phenomena. This book also features a new essay by Searle himself that summarizes and further develops his work.




From Individual to Plural Agency


Book Description

Kirk Ludwig develops a novel reductive account of plural discourse about collective action and shared intention. He argues that collective action is a matter of there being multiple agents of an event and requires no group agents, while shared intentions are distributions of intentions across members of the group.




Bibliotheca Indica


Book Description




We, Together


Book Description

"Social ontology, conventionally defined, is not primarily about us. Rather, it is about the social world (or worlds), about social reality (or realities), or about the domain(s) of social facts. Social ontology aims at providing an inventory of the basic kinds of entities that make up the social world(s) - items such as norms, institutions, social practices, status positions, power structures, and artifacts. It is the study of the basic kinds of properties of these entities, and of how the social world exists, how it is constituted, or constructed"--




Contrastive Rhetoric


Book Description

This volume explores contrastive rhetoric for audiences in both ESL contexts and international EFL contexts, exposing the newest developments in theories of culture and discourse and pushing the boundaries beyond any previously staked ground. The book presents a comprehensive set of empirical investigations involving a number of first languages; 13 of the 17 authors are English-as-a-second-language speakers, many working in non-US contexts. This work develops a coherent agenda for contrastive rhetoric researchers, studying genres such as school writing, grant proposals, business letters, newspaper editorials, book reviews, and newspaper commentaries. Four chapters provide ethnographies and observations about contrastive rhetoric and the teaching of EFL and ESL. The book ends with a look to the future, suggesting it is more accurate to use the term ‘intercultural rhetoric’ to account for the richness of rhetoric variation of written texts and the varying contexts in which they are constructed.