Abstract

Matteo Bianchin, Francesco Guala and Italo Testa discuss Brian Epstein's "The Ant Trap. Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences". Bianchin critically discusses Epstein's theses of the irreducibility of individual entities to social ones and of the alleged supervenience of the latter on the former, taking collective intentions and actions as case studies. Guala examines Epstein's idea that entities of the same kind can have not only different grounds but also different anchorages, which he deems as a problematic form of ontological pluralism in need of qualification. Testa discusses Epstein's variety of individualism in the light of the contemporary analytical debate on social ontology, highlighting the revolutionary - yet not fully worked out - outcomes of Epstein's theory for the (social) rethinking of metaphysical categories.