Qua Objects and Their Limits

It is both a matter of everyday experience and a tenet of sociological theory that people often occupy a range of social roles and identities, some of which are associated with mutually incompatible properties. But since nothing could have incompatible properties, it is not clear how this is possible. It has been suggested, notably by Kit Fine (1982, 1999, 2006), that the puzzling relation between a person and their various social roles and identities can be explained by admitting an ontology of social qua objects—objects constituted by, yet distinct from, the persons on which they are based. This article argues that admitting even a rich ontology of such qua objects does not suffice to explain the puzzle cases of interest. Instead, alternative resources are required which, once available, diminish the motivation for adopting an ontology of social qua objects in the first place. The paper concludes by considering whether there remains work for social qua objects in explaining differences in persistence conditions between a person and the social individuals to which they may give rise, but reaches a negative verdict. Social qua objects, if they exist, have little work to do in our theorizing about the relation between a person and their various social roles and identities.

The Ontology of Social Objects: Harman’s Immaterialism and Sartre’s Practico-Inert

In his recent Immaterialism, Graham Harman develops a theory of social objects based on his object-oriented ontology. Whereas some of the more mainstream theories in the humanities would dissolve such objects into their material constituents or their various effects on others, object-oriented social theory theorizes them as inert, resilient entities with a private reality that exceeds their components and actions. Harman’s theory focuses on what social entities are qua objects, and consequently says little about their specificity as social objects. A more complete social theory would also outline how human existence is to be understood in relation to a social world comprised of discrete and inert entities, as opposed to, for example, far more continuous material fields or networks of associations. We argue that an unexpected yet solid candidate for such an extension of object-oriented social theory already exists in Jean-Paul Sartre’s theory of practico-inert being and group formation. We first outline Harman’s and Sartre’s respective ontologies of social objects, and then discuss how their many complementarities make the latter a suitable extension of the former.

Divine persons as relational qua-objects

Is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity consistent with a very strong version of the thesis of divine simplicity? Yes, so long as the simple divine nature is a relational nature, a nature that could be characterized in terms of such relations as knowing and loving. This divine nature functions simultaneously as agent, patient, and action: as knower, known and knowledge, and lover, beloved, and love. I will draw on work on qua-objects by Kit Fine and Nicholas Asher and on my own account of relational facts to elucidate this model more fully.

Nature and texts in glass cases: The vitrine as a tool for textualizing nature

<div>What can glass cases teach us about how nature is written or read? This article seeks to understand the work done by glass cases in Bergen Museum in Norway around 1900 specifically, and more generally how glass cases was an important tool for making natural history museums into textual media. In this article it is claimed that when we focus on how natural history museums manufacture culturally specific museum nature, it is a legacy of a reform movement that set out to “discipline” museum nature around 1900 in order to make nature legible for “everyman”. An important museum movement by the end of the nineteenth century worked to make natural museums into places were one could learn by reading, not by touching or engaging with the natural objects, qua objects. This insistence on making nature readable, it is claimed, should make us cautious about analysing natural history museums as texts.</div><div> </div>

Mereological Principles in Metaphysics

The relevance of mereology for metaphysics is a perennial theme. In particular, the part-whole relation is applied recently to colocated qua-objects of different sortals: say, a statue and its constituting piece of clay. K.