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THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY Freedom, Responsibility and Rights in Collective Contexts Frank Hindriks Call for Participation The University of Groningen hosts a manuscript workshop on The Structure of Society: Freedom, Responsibility and Rights in Collective Contexts by Frank Hindriks. This event takes place in Groningen, the Netherlands, on March 8-9, 2018. During this workshop, a number of internationally acclaimed scholars will comment on the penultimate version of the book. PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and recent assistant professors are hereby invited to apply (< 3 years after receiving a PhD). A limited number of people will be accepted to attend the workshop and actively participate in the discussions. Accommodation and sustenance costs will be covered. Please send your CV and a brief letter of motivation to Frank Hindriks at f.a.hindriks@rug.nl before February 1, 2018. Participants by invitation: Gunnar Björnsson, Olle Blomberg, Stephanie Collins, Francesco Guala, Kendy Hess, Arto Laitinen, Abraham Roth, David Schweikard, Kai Spiekermann, Christine Straehle, Tobias Hansson Wahlberg, and Bill Wringe. THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY Freedom, Responsibility and Rights in Collective Contexts Description of the book A society consists of people who participate in social practices, institutions and collective agents. In this groundbreaking book, Hindriks asks what such social structures are, what they do, and what they should do. Social structures consist of interdependent agents and actions. Their function is to generate cooperative benefits for participants and society at large. Social practices do so by providing a common conception of how things are done. Institutions are cooperative practices governed by norms. And collective agents sustain cooperative practices of collective decision-making and action. The main goal of the book is to investigate the ramifications that social ontology has for ethics and political philosophy. Social structures supervene on but cannot be reduced to individual agents and their actions. This Supervenience Holism poses problems for Normative Individualism, the liberal ideal according to which autonomous individuals are of unique moral significance. (1) Social structures constrain individual behavior and might crowd out autonomous choice altogether. (2) Furthermore, collective agents can be autonomous, which means that the moral standing of individuals is not unique. Hindriks argues that individuals have collective rights and responsibilities that safeguard justice within society and protect individual autonomy. Furthermore, collective agents have a duty to facilitate the autonomy of their members. Because of this, individual autonomy remains a coherent ideal. However, as collective agents can be autonomous, Normative Individualism has to be rejected in favor of Normative Holism. As it turns out, the range of rights that collective agents possess turns out to be limited. Hence, the liberal conviction that some rights are unique to human beings can be preserved. Context This book builds on the ideas of many others including but not restricted to Lynne Rudder Baker, Christina Bicchieri, Ann Cudd, Brian Epstein, Peter French, Margaret Gilbert, Ian Hacking, Sally Haslanger, Tracy Isaacs, Christopher Kutz, Will Kymlicka, David Lewis, Christian List, Francesco Guala, David Miller, Philip Pettit, Thomas Scanlon, John Searle, Raimo Tuomela and Iris Marion Young. 2 Book Contents 1. Introduction 1.1 Social Structures and Liberal Values 1.2 Normative Individualism Under Threat 1.3 Preview and Methodology Part I. Social Practices 2. A Holist Theory of Social Practices and Groups 2.1 Social Practices and Social Groups 2.2 The Rules-in-Equilibrium Theory 2.3 Social Structures and Social Mechanisms 3. Group Freedom and Group Rights 3.1 Relational Autonomy 3.2 Social Practices, Freedoms, and Rights 3.3 Group Rights and Their Limits Part II. Institutions 4. The Constitution of Institutions 4.1 Constitutive Rules 4.2 Social Construction 4.3 Constitution and Causation 5. Responsibility for Just Institutions 5.1 The Function of Institutions 5.2 Social Critique and Change 5.3 Collective Responsibility Part III. Collective Agents 6. The Constitution of Collective Agents 6.1 Group Agents: Collective Decision-Making 6.2 Corporate Agents: Normative Powers 6.3 Constitution and Causation 7. The Significance of Corporate Autonomy 7.1 Corporate Responsibility 7.2 Normative Holism 7.3 Corporate Rights: Beyond Liberalism Keywords References Index 3 THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY Freedom, Responsibility and Rights in Collective Contexts Chapter Abstracts 1. Introduction Abstract. According to Normative Individualism, human beings have a special and unique moral standing: due to their autonomy, they have equal moral rights. This liberal ideal faces threats from two sides. First, social practices, institutions and collective agents can severely constrain or even crowd out autonomous choice. Second, collective agents can be autonomous too, which means that the moral standing of humans is not unique. This book presents a non-reductive or holist ontology of social structures, and assesses the consequences it has for Normative Individualism. To this end, it investigates the ramifications that social structures have for freedom, responsibility and rights both the collective and the corporate level. It defends Normative Holism arguing that this view is consistent with the core tenets of liberalism. Keywords: autonomy, Corporate Autonomy Problem, Individual Autonomy Problem, Normative Individualism, Normative Holism, society PART I. SOCIAL PRACTICES 2. A Holist Theory of Social Practices and Groups Abstract. Social practices are patterns of activity that are stable and as such form equilibria. Furthermore, they are based on common conceptions of how things are done, or on rules that their participants follow. This rules-in-equilibrium theory can be used to make sense of the truism that social practices enable and constrain. Social practices affect the options people have, including the identities they can adopt. Furthermore, they typically benefit many, but can also burden some. Because of this, social practices give rise to social groups including, for instance, ethnic minorities and gay people. It is argued that social structures such as social practices do not reduce to individual agents and their actions. First, they retain their identity in the face of certain changes in the pool of participants. And second, they sustain causal powers that are due to irreducible social mechanisms. These two claims form the core of Ontological Holism. Keywords: ascriptive group, inscriptive group, Ontological Individualism, Ontological Holism, signaling device, social group, social mechanism, social practice, social structure, Supervenience Holism 4 3. Group Freedom and Group Rights Abstract. Autonomous agents make informed and independent choices from a range of options, which can but need not fit their conception of the good life. The capacity of autonomy is partly constituted by the social context. Social practices can prevent the members of the social groups that constitute them from making autonomous choices. When this is the case, those groups may be entitled to certain freedoms. Group freedoms and group rights, it is proposed, are freedoms and rights that individuals have due to their group affiliations. Although it is natural to think that the existence of group unfreedoms warrants the introduction of a group right, it is argued that this is rarely the case. Some group unfreedoms are best resolved by generic means that issue in individual freedoms. And group rights can be warranted by individual unfreedoms, even if the ultimate concern is for people’s socially constituted identities. Keywords: exclusive neutrality, group freedom, group right, inclusive neutrality, Individual Autonomy Problem, relational autonomy PART II. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 4. The Constitution of Social Institutions Abstract. Institutions are rule- or norm-governed social practices. When people accept and follow the rules of an institution, those rules regulate activities and constitute practices. Furthermore, they confer statuses on agents and objects that define their roles in the relevant practices. Status rules explicate the rights and obligations – the normative powers – that are constitutive of an institutional status. Base rules specify the preconditions an entity has to meet in order for it to have a particular status. But what is the ontological standing of institutional entities? Status objects and roles are social constructs, which could be taken to suggest that they are fictions. Instead, they are social artefacts that are constituted by interdependent attitudes and actions in a particular social context. And because of that context, they have distinct causal powers. Keywords: base rule, constitution, constitutive rule, institution, normative power, regulative rule, social construction, status rule 5 5. Responsibility for Just Institutions Abstract. The function of institutions is to generate cooperative benefits. How well an institution performs this function depends on its rules and the attitudes that support them. Institutions ought to function in a just manner. This requires not only a just basic structure, but also informal norms that are fair and attitudes that are egalitarian. Because of this, the state is not the only agent who bears responsibility for justice: individual citizens do so as well. As isolated individual actions have little impact, individuals have a duty to join forces and fight injustices in a coordinated fashion. They should mobilize others and encourage them to contribute to just causes. In response, others should make a qualified commitment, one that is conditional on enough others joining in so that collectively they can make a difference. Once this condition is met, they ought to cooperate and promote justice. Keywords: collective responsibility, duty to join forces, duty to organize, function, Irreducibility Thesis, Responsibility Individualism, social change PART III. COLLECTIVE AGENTS 6. The Constitution of Collective Agents Abstract. Collective agents are collections of individuals who decide and act as a unit. They sustain social practices of collective decision-making and action. In order to form a collective agent, individuals have to commit to a collective decision procedure as well as to enacting the decisions in which it issues. Collective agents can acquire an institutional status. By doing so, they expand their agential powers and increase their significance for society. They have a distinct ontological standing: they can survive changes in membership and have causal powers of their own. Collective agents can also have a distinct moral standing: they can be autonomous. Their decision procedures can be such that their decisions are rational. Furthermore, if they adopt a suitable range of evaluative policies, they can be normatively competent. Keywords: collective agent, corporate agent, corporate autonomy, corporate freedom, evaluative policies, group agent 6 7. Corporate Responsibilities and Rights Abstract. Autonomous collective agents have responsibilities and rights. A collective agent can be responsible without any members being responsible. However, a properly accountable collective agent sees to it that such situations rarely occur. Autonomous collective agents ought to organize themselves such that they are in a position to fulfill their (other) obligations. Furthermore, they have a duty to safeguard the autonomy of their members. Normative Individualism has to be rejected in favor of Normative Holism, because the moral standing of humans is not unique. This entails that collective agents as such can have a number of rights. However, as they are less vulnerable than human beings, they are not entitled to the same range of protections. Because of this, Normative Holism preserves the liberal view that some rights are unique to human beings. Keywords: Corporate Autonomy Problem, corporate responsibility, corporate right, duty of accountability, duty to collectivize, Irreducibility Thesis, Normative Holism 7