Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Group reductionism is the view that groups (such as the Swiss Federal Council and Pink Floyd) are their members, the sums of their members or the sets thereof. Group essentialists reject these identifications. They claim that groups are sui generis particulars and believe that group creation involves the coming into existence of a new particular, which goes out of existence when the group is disbanded. In this paper, I argue that – provided some widespread assumptions about vagueness and quantification are correct – group essentialists must accept quasi-group maximalism, a view according to which whenever there is a group, there are plenty of quasi-groups, i.e. particulars which are neither determinately groups, nor determinately not groups.