Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition

Book Preface

Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition brings together contributions from researchers with a highly diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds – from philosophy to anthropology, economics, psychology, neuroscience and linguistics. Although the concepts and the methods that shape their contributions differ greatly, one thing that they all share in common is that they have been inspired in one way or another (indeed, in many ways) by John Searle’s pioneering and foundational work in the philosophy of language and mind and, more recently, society. In order to provide a rich and varied source of ideas, arguments and empirical material for people interested in social ontology and social cognition, the editorial board and guest editors have placed great weight upon the inclusion of a diverse range of views from heterogeneous perspectives – in some cases even views with which they themselves would not agree. If, as a result, the reader should fi nd some arguments or some formulations controversial, either in tone or in substance, the editors request that she bear this in mind and interpret it as a testimony to the broad and engaged interest that John Searle’s work continues to generate.

The project of editing a collection of essays on some of the most pressing and fascinating questions in current research on social ontology and social cognition started to take shape at the Interacting Minds Centre at the University of Aarhus in Summer 2011. Some of the essays included in this volume were fi rst presented in the context of Objects in Mind , the fi rst Aarhus-Paris conference on social ontology and social cognition, which was held at the Centre of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Aarhus on June 25–26, 2012. We owe a special debt to the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus and to the European ORA Project “NESSHI” (the Neuro-turn in European Social Sciences and Humanities: Impact of neuroscience on economics, marketing and philosophy) for providing us with generous support to organize the event. We particularly want to thank Sacha Bourgeois- Gironde and Andreas Roepstorff for their inspiration and their generous support.

We would also like to express our gratitude to a number of friends and colleagues who agreed to act as anonymous referees in reviewing contributions to the volume. To Raimo Tuomela we owe a particular debt. In his capacity as the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer book-series Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality , Raimo oversaw a rigorous and constructive review process and offered valuable advice and guidance throughout the editorial ‘journey’.