Episode 115: Katherine Ritchie discusses social groups
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What does it mean to belong to a social group?
Hi, I'm Yujin, and I am an intern for the Elucidations. Let me tell you what is coming up in today's episode. We understand who we are by referring to the social groups that we belong to. Each of us identifies with a certain race, gender, or sexual orientation, and we live our social lives by belonging to some teams, institutions, or corporations. But what exactly are we talking about when we speak of social groups? For example, if what we mean by that isn't just any collection of individual human beings, what common property needs to be there among its members? Our guest Katherine Ricci thinks there are indeed interesting differences between demographic groups like women in general and sports teams like the Chicago Bulls.
She argues that a social group has a structure. It is made up not just by who are in it, but also what role each member plays and what relation each has with one another. To explore these questions, this episode of Elucidations will feature Catherine Ricci for discussing the metaphysical status of social groups.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations. I'm Matt Teichman, and with me today is Catherine Ritchie, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, CUNY. And she's here to discuss social groups. Catherine Ritchie, welcome.
Hi. Hi Matt. Thanks for having me.
Over the past I don't know decade or so. There's been an increased interest among philosophers in discussing the nature or metaphysics of social groups, whether that be like teams or c corporations or things like men, women, white people, black people. Americans, teachers. Truck drivers, etcetera, etcetera. And I think to a lot of people this seems like a non traditional metaphysical topic. Like this isn't exactly what Kant and Aristotle and Hume, and Plato and so forth. were writing about when they wrote about the grand metaphysical issues. So I thought maybe we could begin by talking about what metaphysics is and then we can think about maybe like how this stuff about what groups of people are fits into that.
Sure, yeah. So if we're thinking about metaphysics, um, we're thinking about ontology, we're thinking about Questions having to do with the nature of reality. Um, sometimes questions about what exists. So we might ask, does God exist? So that would be an ontological question. We might ask something about the nature of reality. So what are quarks like? Supposing quarks exist, what are they like? And when we're thinking about social metaphysics, we're thinking about questions having to do with whether certain kinds of social entities exist. So are there teams? Are there racial groups? And then we're also thinking about questions having to do with the nature of these entities. So if they do exist, how do they come to be?
What are they like? How much can they change? Maybe should they go out of existence? Are these good entities or not? Um so we're getting at those sorts of questions. So I think a lot of the questions that we're asking and doing social metaphysics or asking about social groups say, are very similar questions to questions that have been at the center of ontology and metaphysics. They're just applied to the social realm.
Okay, good. So ontology is the study of what does or doesn't exist. So just to take a simple example, I personally do not believe that ghosts exist. So another way to say a fancier way to say that would be to say Matt's ontology does not include ghosts.
Yeah, exactly. Right. So if you're thinking about an ontology, your th your ontology includes what you think exists or a theory might have a particular ontology, so some scientific theory might posit that certain things exist. So if that is a true theory, the things it says exist do exist. And so for instance, I think there are teams and committees and I also think there are not ghosts.
Is this different from like I don't know, modern science or physics? Like you know, couldn't we say that like well back in the day maybe they used to think that there were ghosts.
How does social metaphysics define the existence of groups like teams or racial categories?
But you know, now we understand that like ah that this or that light effect in the sky, that's caused by a chemical phenomenon.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does it mean to belong to a social group?
0:00–4:24
2
How does social metaphysics define the existence of groups like teams or racial categories?
4:24–9:04
3
Why are structures and roles essential to distinguishing different groups?
9:04–13:23
4
How can the same individuals belong to distinct groups like a basketball team and a book club?
13:23–18:24
5
What distinguishes organized groups from arbitrary collections of people?
18:24–24:11
6
How do power relations shape the internal dynamics of social groups?
24:11–29:01
7
What are the implications of social group theory for identity politics and social justice?
29:01–34:51
8
Why is understanding social groups important for ethical and practical actions?
34:51–39:49
Speakers
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