The human person, the human social individual and community interactions

Abstract

An account of the nature of human community organising structures has been systemised as social positioning theory. Here I explore the sorts of human entities that are able successfully to draw on and make use of community structures of the form portrayed in the theory, focussing especially on the sorts of human community interactions that are facilitated.

1. Introduction

Social positioning theory, which is primarily an account of human community organisational structures, has recently been brought to bear in framing, orienting or otherwise informing investigations into the natures of a number of specific social items, including money and the corporation.¹ Such endeavour, however, has yet to include any systematic consideration of the rather fundamental phenomena of human (community) interactions and the sorts of human entities that engage in them. Here I do consider the bearing of social positioning theory on matters such as these.

According to the theory (briefly summarised below), a human community possesses a number of interrelated components each formed by way of (mostly) pre-existing and unrelated entities becoming relationally organised through their occupying relevant positions. The community components so formed thus possess relational properties that the original entities lack and so are irreducible to them. With human persons amongst the entities organised through community positioning, questions arise as to the properties they possess that enable them successfully to occupy such positions, the nature of the relational human components that result, and the sorts of human community interactions that occur given the relational nature of the participants.

Addressing these questions, it will be seen, is not a straightforward matter. For, in most cases any given human person is an occupant of not just one but a (possibly large) number of positions simultaneously. It follows that each person is also simultaneously associated with a similar (possibly large) number of different community components of varying communities. Thus, a given person may, through community positioning, give rise to, perhaps several of, say, a citizen of a country, a particular type of gendered person, a marriage partner, a schoolteacher, a local councillor, a charity worker, a nurse, a member of a sports club, of a political party, of a dance or other social organisation, of a religious group, of an international academic association, of various other international organisations, and so on. Further, and to add to the intricacies, positions themselves are regularly transformed, just as the set that any given person occupies frequently changes, so that the set of components associated with the person is also ever-changing.

If then, we observe human community participants around us when out and about, what sorts of beings or entities are we witnessing, and do they, qua social entities, change at all when participant interactions occur? Seemingly, each such entity prior to an interaction comprises numerous relational components at once. But is any participant in an interaction a single community component, say, or a set of components simultaneously, a time-varying mixture of these, or something else? Perhaps the interacting entities differ according to place or context? If so, what determines the form of any particular interaction? What furthermore must a human person be like to be able to support or underpin many different components at one and the same time, seemingly as a way of life? Where, furthermore, is the human person either prior to, or when, human community interactions are occurring? Is it the case, in fact, that in the continuous flux of community goings on, the human person effectively disappears altogether?

In short, what are the natures of the human community position occupants and the community component participants they underpin? How do participant interactions even occur given the seemingly complex if possibly fleeting natures of the entities involved, entities that, in virtue of multiple positioning, appear either to be facing in no particular direction at all, or to be looking out in all directions at once? And where if anywhere is the human person in the resulting flux of community activity? These are the sorts of questions I pursue here.

As it happens, the nature of community or social interactions and their relation to associated entities is currently a topic of some debate in various branches of social theory. Specifically, traditional accounts of such interactions have recently been called into question by social theorists seeking, often under the head of (some version of) ‘new materialism’, to problematise anthropocentric orientations to theorising. They do this specifically by way of encouraging a closer attention to the findings of certain non-social or ‘natural’ sciences, emphasising, in doing so, the non-passive or active or ‘agential’ nature of matter and process, including interactions (see, e.g. Coyle and Frost, 2010; Gamble et al. 2019).

Especially relevant here is a performative strand of this new materialism, one that tends in fact to associate itself with quantum mechanics, that stresses how human persons or agents and others engage with each other in a manner in which the interactions involved are a central productive feature (see, e.g. Zohar, 1990; Zohar and Marshall, 1993; Barad, 1996, 2007; Wendt, 2015; Rovelli, 2021). Specifically, and in opposition to the traditional theorising of human agents or individuals as pregiven isolated atoms acting on, or interacting with, purely passive material, it is maintained that any social entities that figure in interactions do not exist as separate individuals prior to interactions but are (at most) rendered determinate only through different forms of interaction. Only in the context of certain types of interactions, or so it may appear, do the entities that are bus drivers or schoolteachers or nurses emerge.

This strand of social theorising, then, is especially focussed on the sorts of issues that are my concern here. I find, however, that the social positioning conception, in which powers and internal or constitutive social relations are core, is, if at first sight similar to the noted strand of contributions, ultimately very different in its manner of accounting for the issues before us. As such, relevant versions of this new materialism provide a useful contrast or foil for purposes of briefly drawing out and indicating the significance of various features specific to the account derived by way of drawing on the insights of social positioning theory.

My basic aim, though, remains that of examining the bearing, if any, that social positioning theory has on the natures of the human entities involved in community life, whether of the form of occupants of positions or the relational components formed out of them, along with the manner in which community participants interact.

2. Social positioning theory

2.1 The theory in outline

Before I embark on the noted endeavour, however, I should elaborate a little on some of social positioning theory’s central features, and specifically those most relevant to the concerns of the current paper.²

To this point, the theory has been concerned first and foremost with the nature of organising social structure, and most especially community organising relations; the conception sustained is one in which social relationality is found to be at the heart of all community life. It is through (mostly) pre-existing elements becoming relationally organised that novel community components are formed. If, in the case of specifically human person components, it is human persons that become relationally organised, how, or where, or in what sort of manner, generally speaking, do these persons and social relations connect or come together, according to the theory, and how in doing so do they each stand vis a vis the other?

I start with their coming together. As already briefly noted, a key feature of community social structures, according to the theory, are sets of community positions that human persons and other kinds of entities can enter or be entered into. These positions divide into person positions and non-person or object positions, with mostly human persons allocated to the former and non-person objects or entities to the latter. It is through entering or being entered into positions that human persons and other entities become relationally organised. My focus here is person positions and in particular the manner in which, through occupying such positions, human persons become so organised and give rise to person components.

The mechanism is as follows. Community positions consist specifically of packages or sets of rights and obligations. Any specific right (obligation) contained in a package constituting a specifically person position is matched to at least one obligation (right) contained in a package also constituting a (usually different) person position. Such matched right-obligation pairs are the community organising social relations. When persons are allocated to, or enter, person positions, they, or their representatives, have (are granted) direct access to the rights and obligations that constitute the positions entered. It is through human persons drawing on these rights and obligations that they and relational social structures make direct contact. It is in this way that human persons become organised by community social relations. The result, when individual persons enter positions and so become relationally organised, is that person components are formed that possess the relational rights and obligations in question. These components usually also possess positional identities.

Community organising social relations qua matched right-obligation pairs are clearly a form of power-over (social) relation in that the exerciser of a right has power-over any party with a matched obligation (at least to the extent that this party is willing to comply with their obligations). These powers are deontic powers; rights and obligations can be referred to as, respectively, positive and negative deontic powers. They bear on the ways that any component so formed may (has a right) or ought or ought not (has an obligation) to act or engage. That is, these rights and obligations bear upon not the actions that can be undertaken, that the component participants have the physical capacity to undertake, but those actions that may be undertaken, that the components (whatever capacities are possessed) are, within the community, permitted and required to (or to not) undertake. The positioning order is a normative one. And deontic powers are clearly system and specifically community properties.

My concern here, to repeat, is the coming together of specifically human persons and community organising relations. But I note in passing that the rights and obligations that constitute non-person or object positions are subsets of those that constitute person positions. It is the case once more that a relational community component is formed when an entity is allocated to any such position, where such a component too has a positional identity typically. However, the constitutive rights and obligations in such scenarios are, of course, not accessed by position occupants but instead wielded by person components of the same community. They bear specifically on the uses or ways of operating that are allowed for, and/or required of, the object components formed by allocating entities to the object position and are thus included amongst the packages that constitute those person positions whose associated components have access to the object component in question.³

A further feature of the basic framework to outline here is that all community positions, and so positional components, are associated with functions. Indeed, such components can be said to possess the associated positional functions (just as person components possess the associated positional rights and obligations). Functions too are relational, being typically, in effect, built into the content of the rights and obligations that constitute the associated positions. They serve to orient associated component actions or uses to being supportive of a community’s characteristic or usual ways of working, or simply its survival. Functions, too, are both normative and system properties.⁴

I might also note, finally, that when a position to be occupied is itself novel (the package of rights and obligations that constitute it is newly assembled), occupancy of this position (unlike an additional occupancy of a pre-existing position) results in the constitution of a novel kind of component⁵. Such an occurrence entails some adjustment or extension of existing rights and obligations throughout the community, ensuring that pre-existing community components are, where appropriate, related to components associated with the new position.

2.2 Position nesting

The foregoing outline, then, indicates how, according to social positioning theory, human persons and social structures come together in a manner wherein human persons become relationally organised in the forming of community components. A slight elaboration or extension of this basic framework, relevant to the concerns of the current paper, involves incorporating the notion of position nesting. Here I am concerned with position nesting in human communities. In this context a position, P_N say, is said to nest another (narrower) position P_N+1 say, and/or be in turn itself nested in another (wider) position P_N−1, if P_N+1 consists of the collection of rights and obligations that constitutes P_N supplemented by a few more, and P_N consists of the collection of rights and obligations that constitutes P_N−1 supplemented by a few more. These ‘few more’ rights and obligations of any nested position are determined, typically, to be coherent with those of all nesting positions. My primary concern will be with nesting involving person positions.

A simple case of person position nesting arises where, in a community of ‘ordinary member’ components, a new or different position is constituted by way of adding a number of rights and obligations to those that constitute the position ‘ordinary member’. An example is a seminar or a workshop where, as well as the position of, say, seminar or workshop participant, that of chairperson is also created, with additional rights and obligations of a nature as to allow the positioned occupant to maintain an orderly discussion.⁶

Communities can themselves be (and most are) positioned to give rise to components of wider communities, and cases of person position nesting occur where this happens. Thus, if, say, a particular community is positioned (in the wider region or nation) to give rise to a university U, and in the process (or later) a smaller community is positioned in the first community to give rise to a component of it in the form of a sociology department S, then each person position in the smaller community S will be nested in a person position of the larger first community U. At a basic level there will likely be a position of the larger community called something like member of the university U to which all individuals coming into the university have access. If then, in the smaller community S there is a position called, say, teaching member of the sociology department S, it will be nested in the position of member of the university U. By similar reasoning (or via a similar set of positioning operations and relations), it can happen that a position called, say, member of the faculty board of sociology F, becomes nested in the position teaching member of the sociology department S, which in turn is nested in the position member of the university U.⁷

Such a set of nesting relations can be referred to as a (nesting) chain. Notice that where a component is formed by way of a position, P_i say, in the chain being occupied, there will necessarily correspond a set of components associated with each of the positions in the chain that nests P_i. So, if a component of the kind member of the faculty board of sociology is formed, then bound up with it will be a teaching member of the sociology department, a member of university U, and so on. Here, we might also talk of underpinning components in a chain. Being a member of the teaching staff of a sociology department underpins being a member of the department’s faculty board, etc.⁸

Ultimately, each such chain or set of underpinning person position components will bottom out in a human person. I shall refer to such a chain and the associated components as being anchored in a human person.⁹ Although any chain is anchored in one person only, any given person p will typically anchor various chains simultaneously as well as occupy (numerous) other positions that are not in any nesting chain.¹⁰

Before, though, I seek to assess the implications, if any, of this outline of the theory regarding properties of the human person and associated person components, I need to indicate, albeit still at a general level, something of how human persons and organising relations stand vis a vis the other. If human persons, generally speaking, access organising social structures by way of entering community positions, and if particular social structures are (as elsewhere argued over and again, e.g. Lawson, 1997, 2003) reproduced and/or transformed through human person activities in total, a feature I especially want to stress at this stage is that, although human persons and social structure depend in this way on each other, neither is reducible to the other. Each ‘confronts’ the other possessed, in this sense, of a degree of relative autonomy. Let me then briefly consider the (two) forms of irreducibility involved.

2.3 Positional irreducibility

The first form of irreducibility has been already noted. It is simply that, for each entity or element that comes to occupy a position, the component constituted out of it (through positioning) is more than, and in this sense is irreducible to, the original element itself. This form of irreducibility stems from the fact that when any totality is constituted, it necessarily consists of something more than the base elements used in its formation. That is, the totality is more than the elements considered independently of the way they are organised. If the bricks and blocks of wood and panes of glass used to make a particular house were randomly rearranged it is very unlikely that the outcome would be, or possess the familiar properties of, a house. The specific organisation matters. Organising relations are a part of the house. The house is more than the bare elements merely aggregated. And this is the same as saying that each element used in constructing the house is relationally organised to give rise to a (relational) component that is irreducible to that element. If say, a pane of glass (perhaps in a wooden frame) is organised to form a particular component of this house that is one of its windows, this window of the house stands in a particular relation to the house’s roof, to an inside room, and so on.

In a parallel fashion any component of a human community formed by way of an element occupying a position has relational properties not possessed by the element out of which it is formed. This is so whether the immediate position occupant is already a relational component of some sort, or an anchoring entity such as a person or indeed a material object such as a piece of gold. President Barak Obama qua a component of the US system of government possessed relational powers that ex-president Barak Obama does not. And a community’s money formed by positioning a precious metal like gold or an item like bank debt has relational properties not possessed by the gold or the debt (see Lawson, 2016B, 2018A, 2018B, 2019A, 2019B, 2022A, 2022B).

If this sort of irreducibility might be labelled downward irreducibility, the second sort expresses the non-possibility of reductions in the opposite ‘upward’ direction. Here the point is that a position occupant cannot be reduced to, in the sense now of determined by, the social structure through which it is organised. In the case of person components specifically, a particular component associated with a given position need not (and the occupant of the position may be such that the corresponding component is not able to) conform to the rights and obligations constitutive of the position, where doing so will usually be essential to its function being realised.

The point here is that the deontic powers and relations (rights and obligations) that are fundamental to the organisation of social reality, constitute, as earlier noted, a normative, not a deterministic, order. So those persons that gain access to packages of rights and obligations that constitute person positions are not bound always to comply with all or any particular subset, and on occasion may not even be able to access or make use of those with which they are associated. For a number of reasons, then, person components, just like object components, can, on occasion at least, be viewed as mal-functioning or being dysfunctional or, in the case of human person components specifically, purposefully obstructive of position functionality.

Thus, some occupants of person positions may simply be too young to be capable of accessing positional rights and obligations. Mary Stewart (Mary Queen of Scots) was positioned monarch of Scotland at the age of 6 days (with the country ruled by regents until she became an adult).

In addition, various adult person occupants may, temporarily or permanently, be also unable to access or make use of at least some of the rights and obligations that constitute a position occupied directly or at least anchored. For example, person anchors may be temporarily indisposed, as when one anchoring a professional footballer sustains an injury, or one anchoring a teacher or student has a debilitating virus, etc. Where in contrast, a disability is permanent a representative may have to act on an occupant’s behalf, just as representatives can do for non-person occupants of person positions (such as corporations¹¹). There will be cases, too, where anchoring persons either never were especially competent or perhaps have lost competency over time, and (some of) the components they anchor are unable to fulfil their position functions despite these persons remaining anchors.

Furthermore, and certainly of no less significance, there are, of course, cases where person anchors are so minded that the components they anchor, qua components, intentionally break (or fail to meet) their obligations; they act in ways that by design diverge from any that could be interpreted as consistent with realising their functions Of course, there are also cases where such components not only fail to, or actively resist and oppose keeping to, positional obligations but seek even to transform or otherwise undermine them.¹²

I might note, too, that for any person p, some associated components may act in line with their associated rights and obligations whilst others, even within the same chain (formed through their occupying nested positions), do not. A citizen of C anchored in p may fulfil all the rights and obligations of being a citizen of C, but underpin other component(s), say that of being a partner of some sort, where, qua this partner, he or she, etc., proves to be unreliable in the sense of continually breaking agreed obligations to the other partner(s).

So, in sum, a person p may be the basis, or anchor, of numerous (person) components at one and the same time, where each component will possess relational properties not possessed by p itself or indeed by any other component that underpins it, just as all underpinning and anchoring entities are not reducible to the components they underpin or anchor.

And significantly, the two forms of irreducibility identified have numerous layers. An individual p will typically anchor very many positions and give rise to a large number of community components simultaneously. But any such specific component, Y say, will be irreducible to its anchor person p as well as to any other components formed out of p that in turn (directly or indirectly) underpin Y, whilst any anchoring person p will always have powers of her or his, etc., own. At the same time, the functions possessed by a component at any level, Y say, may or may not be fully realised on specific occasions that Y is active, depending on the actions of components out of which Y has been formed and ultimately on the capacities and orientations and decisions etc., of the person p that anchors the specific chain involved.

So, the human person never disappears within, or into, or departs from, the social positioning process, and nor is this person the sole determinant of all that happens. Organising community structures and human agency, if always dependent each on the other, each retain a degree of relative autonomy.

2.4 Distinguishing the community’s human entities

If all human community components, then, are ultimately anchored in some human persons, it is, however, entities that are in part at least community-relationally constituted (i.e. are relationally constituted via processes of community positioning¹³) that do the interacting. Indeed, it is evident that any participant in an interaction at any point can only be that entity formed as a unity of a person and all the components that the person in question at that moment anchors. It comprises a unity, of many in one, all located at the same place at any given point in time. Clearly, this entity requires some elaboration.

I shall refer to any such entity as a human multicomponent, or simply as a multicomponent where it is evident that the anchoring entity is a human person. In so doing I stress that each multicomponent always involves only a single human person, one located in a multitude of community relations and anchoring a cluster of different community components simultaneously.

This multicomponent is clearly a core subject matter for social theory, being key to understanding the human activities on which the social world in large part turns. Before considering it further, however, I need to determine something (more) about the nature of the human person that in significant part anchors the social edifice.¹⁴ For the capacities possessed by human persons will clearly bear on the nature of the multicomponents they anchor and so the way multicomponent interactions can and do occur.

My starting point here is that human persons are regularly observed to be highly successful in their accessing, supporting, and coping with community organising structures. Indeed, it is unlikely that social structures would be reproduced or endure as they do if human persons did not continually draw upon them in a successful, certainly in a competent and compliant manner. Here, then, I seek to determine something of the sorts of properties that human persons possess that enable them to be as successful as they are observed to be. This success will indeed be largely down to the human person. For, although it is a feature of social positioning theory that social constitution depends solely on position occupancy, that is, that a community component is formed wherever, and simply because, a relevant position is occupied, it is always the case that the nature and capacities of any position occupant bear fundamentally on whether, and if so how successfully, a component formed out of it is able to perform qua a component and, in particular, whether it is able to realise an associated component function.

So, in sum, there are two (interrelated) human entities (at least) to consider here, namely the human multicomponent that engages in human interactions, and the human person in which the multicomponent is always anchored, focussing on those human person properties, inclinations and capacities, etc., upon which the exercising and enactment of all component powers always ultimately depend. Both types of entity warrant understanding in themselves; and both need to be so understood before I can address at all adequately the nature and possibilities of human community interactions. I briefly consider each of these entities in turn, starting with the human person.

3. The human person

3.1 Introductory observations

The human person that successfully inhabits and indeed in large part anchors the social world is clearly a complex kind of being. Equally clearly, this always in (community) relations, relation-dependent, but never relationally determined, entity conforms neither to the fixed, typically rationalistic, atom of modern economics nor to the social-cultural dupe of much post-structuralist inspired social theorising. What, though, is there to say about the nature of such an entity? In particular, what might be inferred in light of the way human persons are found to cope with social structures?

Although it is hopefully already clear, I stress that in pursuing this sort of question I am not supposing that properties of the human person can be simply and straightforwardly read off from insights into the nature of social structures. I have emphasised that neither organising structure nor human agency can be reduced to the other. Nor I might stress, am I supposing that all human beings are everywhere identical, of course. Indeed, far from it; each is unique in so many ways. This is an accepted given. But there are commonalities as well. And, as just noted, I am starting out from an a posteriori recognition or observation that, whatever our differences, most of us, most of the time, are able to, and do regularly, negotiate successfully the kinds of social structures that everywhere characterise human communities. This suggests that, at some level, despite our many differences, we nevertheless hold in common the sorts of capacities or dispositions or whatever that render such successful negotiating activities possible.¹⁵ My aim is simply to explore whether the natures of the activities in question, along with relevant additional observations, allow (fallible) insights to be gleaned as to the sorts of capacities etc., that human persons possess that are responsible for this successful activity.¹⁶

Human persons no doubt possess common properties additional to any that are required to draw on, or otherwise make use of, relational organising structures. With human persons always in fact being embodied beings there are (bodily) powers or properties possessed that are enacted in an environment that is far wider than the social organisational, some of which will be common to us all. Even so, the sorts of features with which I am here particularly concerned will be essential to any adequate understanding of human persons as they have evolved to be. Any insights obtained, as I say, should provide an understanding of human persons and their capabilities even in conditions when they are not operating successfully, as well as in any novel situations as may arise, but especially in understanding how the community participants they anchor are able to interact.

I focus, then, on the social-structural anchoring aspects of the human person especially. However, if, as noted, my starting point is a recognition that human community participants mostly participate successfully in all forms of human community life, I need at this point to distinguish two aspects to this. The first is a generalised competence or ability to so participate given the (processual and structurally complex) nature of community relational organisation. The second is a widespread very significant degree of observance of, or willingness to go along with, (merely normative) structures in the face of many reasons for actual non- or minimal compliance. Both aspects, warrant a degree of elaboration as well as explaining. I consider each aspect in turn.

3.2 Competent action within continuous social change and relational complexity

In a world organised by the sorts of community relations elaborated in social positioning theory, the observed continuous and largely successful navigation of these relational structures suggests, first of all, that human persons must (at some point in the individual development of each) come to possess an ability (one that is fallible and no doubt non-uniform) to grasp or apprehend these sorts of relations sufficiently to act competently within and through them. In particular, it must be the case that most human persons are able to grasp community components directly as components, as the relational entities that they are (as particular cathedrals, sets of traffic lights, the US President, and professor X) rather than being limited to recognising only the items that occupy the corresponding positions. I shall refer to this simply as the capacity of (relational) apprehension.

But as well as being able to grasp the relationality of human community life the human person must be able (and is observed) to do so in, and generally to cope with, conditions of continuous change and significant complexity. For although organisational social structure as theorised in social positioning theory (constitutes a normative order that) can facilitate a significant degree of continuity and stability where it is adhered to, everything that is social changes whilst there is usually a potentially bewildering array of relational structures having a potential bearing. Let me briefly elaborate.

Social structure is continually being reproduced and/or transformed through the sum total of human person actions, both serving as the (typically unacknowledged) condition of these actions and constituting their (largely unintended and poorly understood) product. So, along with everything else social, community positions of the sort described in social positioning theory (and so aspects of the multicomponents themselves that are anchored in human persons but formed though position occupancy) are always and everywhere in transformative process.

And complexity too is pervasive, not least because each person occupies a multitude of positions simultaneously and so is always facing a wide range of component deontic powers or relations, some of which may even be mutually conflicting. In fact, even where obligations are not inherently incompatible, different personal concerns, needs, realised capabilities and personal considerations of whatever sort can still result in different obligations underpinning competing demands on resources and time (say of work versus family commitments). The point here is that social structures do not somehow mechanically push or pull (compliant) persons in relevant (if different) directions but must always be mediated to have an impact at all.

Human persons, though, are found to be able not only continually to cope with the processual and complex nature of relational community life but also to form and pursue plans conditioned by the features and even evaluate uses made of community relations over time. Those entering positions as occupants are widely observed to make positional choices and commitments, often on a long-term basis, and somehow to be able successfully to maintain those commitments throughout. This is especially so with positions bound up with specialist career paths or with the forming of traditional families in many communities and the like. In effect, occupants of such positions are able to formulate, concern themselves with, and actually achieve the goals of, long-term projects involving significant investments of their time and effort, in some instances for a lifetime, often involving a significant amount of monitoring and adjustment.

Of course, for most occupants there are occasions to weigh up experiences and question whether particular position occupancies have proven over time to be worthwhile and/or whether it is the moment for a (significant) change. The point, though, is that despite the complex and ever-changing conditions in which human persons find themselves most are found to be able not merely to cope with it all, but both plan and evaluate competently, and carry projects through, even as all around is transformed.

These observations in total entail that at the very least each human person can individuate her- or himself, etc., from others including the social context and over time. Specifically, in order to make plans and act on them or make evaluative assessments of experiences, the human person is seemingly able both to imagine her- or himself, etc., as that same self in the future as well as to look back to her- or himself at an earlier date and recognise her- or himself as the same distinct and continuing person.

But in addition, competent action in the face of the ever-changing and competing if often conflicting demands, conditions, or concerns, etc., requires that each human person has the capacity not just to plan and evaluate but to undertake continuous acts of reflection, juggling, monitoring, adapting, thinking aloud and weighing up (involving, amongst other things, an internal conversation—see especially Archer, 2003¹⁷). Proceeding competently requires of participants that each is able to reflect on actions in context and weigh them in the light of possessed interests, needs or concerns (with the result that even when a number of persons act in similar social circumstances, including occupying the same position, they usually find reasons to act in their ‘own’ ways at least to an extent).

In short, the observation that community participants by and large act competently in the sorts of conditions emphasised in social positioning theory, reveals the human person to be an enduring, individuating, purposeful sort of being, possessing various concerns and capabilities, etc., committed to relatively long-term projects, and with the capacity to distinguish herself or himself, etc., and to consider that self and (changing) social contexts in relation to each other along with abilities to juggle, assess and reassess whilst going along.

Of course, every human physical body is itself in a state of continuous transformation. So, if the noted sorts of capacities lie at the level of a human person, it appears that they must take the form of a set of emergent properties of the person, one consistent with the ongoing and continuous transformations of the physical body (from which they are emergent).¹⁸ So, the capacities in question are presumably bound up instead with a dependent but emergent realm, and specifically that of mental states or consciousness.

Indeed, the assessment that the human person possesses the sort of capacities described conforms to the view that each human person more fundamentally possesses something like a self-consciousness or a first person (I, we) ‘viewing’¹⁹ capacity or perspective, along with, and closely bound up with, (not just sentience but) intentionality, the mental capacity to be about (directed at, represent, or to stand for, etc.) things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is manifest in the making or holding of beliefs, thoughts, regrets, preferences, representations, plans, apprehensions, and so on, where such features are essential for purposeful action.

Further, to be able to imagine oneself in the future or to assess one’s own past actions, etc., necessitates being able to form a concept of oneself. It is to be able to think such thoughts as ‘I was wrong to suppose that I could achieve X’, or ‘I will seek to ensure that I will Y’. In both cases the ‘I’ that follows the word ‘that’ is, or presupposes, a concept of oneself, of the self, that is, of an embodied person, on which the first ‘I’, the subject, is focused.²⁰ And to determine whether to enter or exit positions, or how to act in either case, requires, as noted, an ability to imagine oneself in relation to different contexts and these contexts in relation to oneself, and so consider one’s concerns or goals in relation to each, and to determine which to pursue and how.

3.3 A first person perspective

It is, then, something like a set of mental or inner properties or capacities such as these (a first person ‘viewing’ or perceiving capacity and perspective, intentionality, and an ability to conceptualise oneself as oneself, to form a concept of self, including the ability to consider oneself in different contexts in determining courses of action), I suggest, that must be possessed of human persons if (as they are observed to do) they are to act competently within the sorts of relational structures defended in social positioning theory.

To systematise the set of capacities just outlined I use the label or expression first person perspective. This is a term I borrow from Lynne Rudder Baker (2000, 2013) who uses it to express collectively just the sorts of features identified above, as a core component of her somewhat similar constitution view of the person. And indeed, although the conception I have outlined is rather different from most currently found in modern social science disciplines like economics,²¹ there is a more philosophically oriented literature that runs along similar lines (albeit with most contributions providing a fuller elaboration than is feasible here). Baker’s (2000, 2013) theory is an interesting and insightful example. Another, of course, is Margaret Archer’s (2000, 2003, 2007, 2019A, 2019B) account of the human person advanced as part of her morphogenic approach.²² In significant part, too, a similar sort of account was advanced 400 years ago by John Locke.²³

Notably, in these alternative accounts, a first person perspective of the sort elaborated is taken to be not merely an essential feature of the human person specifically, but the defining feature of person per se. In other words, person is considered to be a kind in itself, where the human person is interpreted as merely one form.²⁴ This is not an issue I can reasonably consider here where my focus is accounting for specifically human community participants and their activities. Of course, it warrants emphasis that even if the essential and distinguishing feature of personhood per se is the first person perspective, each person will always be an embodied being of some form. Here, with the focus on specifically human personhood, the relevant body is that of the human animal, the biological human being.²⁵

As a final point here, if the possession of a first person perspective, so understood, accounts for continuity over time and the ability to individuate, and so is regarded with reason as essential to being a (human) person per se, then possessing a particular and unique one is essential to being a particular (human) person, p say.

3.4 Relational compliance despite unfavourable conditions

Competence of a sort required to apprehend social relational entities and to negotiate complex and ever-changing organising structures is not yet sufficient, though, to account for the sorts of community activities of drawing on such structures everywhere observed. For in a social system with a communities-based normative order such that participants can, qua separate, relatively autonomous, entities, decide whether or not to go along with some or all positional obligations, the observation of almost total compliance, everywhere and over time, sufficient indeed for social structures to be continually reproduced, must also be indicative of features of human persons; it too is something to explain.

According to the conception sponsored by social positioning theory, of course, human community participants, qua participants, are constitutively interrelated with each other in ways whereby the well-being of each human person that accepts to be a form of community participant depends inescapably on the actions and manner of acting of others. Specifically, it depends on other related community participants being largely trustworthy in the sense of being compliant with their positional obligations, whether as motorists on highways, preparers of foods or medicines, consultants, retailers, transporters of passengers, teachers and so on. Getting involved and developing concerns is rendered feasible for each individual participant only where others can be relied upon to develop theirs in line with accepted rights and in particular obligations. Moreover, given the all-pervasive nature of community organising structures, all persons know at some level that their actions qua particular community components always impinge on the well-being of other persons involved.

The fact of such dependency, however, does not in itself somehow guarantee that we all choose to act in line with our positional obligations or even proceed always, or at all, with others in mind. Structural obligations require reflexive mediation to impact, and as stressed throughout it is always within our physical powers not to comply (even when physically able to comply). That we usually do comply remains something to be explained.

In fact, most human persons qua participants can be observed typically not only to comply, but in doing so to go out of their way to cooperate with and help others. Indeed, compliance with social structures is mostly undertaken as a way of life, as a matter, more or less, of course, so much so that exceptions often take us aback (with an explanation often demanded, or apologies offered). Most of the time, most of us carry through obligations in a manner consistent with accepting a basic level of concern and respect for all others. We mostly trust that others will adhere to their obligations, and in turn we, most of us, most of the time, show ourselves to be trustworthy in adhering to our own. And we act in this fashion, it is worth emphasising, even in, and despite the current pervasiveness of, conditions in which survival, let alone thinking of others, is often difficult²⁶ and in the face of a prevailing ideology that (in the name often of ‘freedom’) emphasises self-centredness and personal greed before all else.²⁷ The fact that most persons, in their day-to-day activities, nevertheless mostly act without hesitation in ways that are supportive, considerate, and so caring of others, is, in these circumstances especially, quite remarkable and must, I suggest, be recognised as highly revealing of who we really are²⁸ (see Lawson, 2015C, 2019A, chapter 8).

And who it is that we really are (that we carry on like this), I suggest, is inherently moral beings fundamentally oriented to, and concerned for the well-being of, all. We look out for others in most that we do. And, specifically, we mostly stick to our positional obligations, precisely because we are aware that, and how, others depend on us doing so, and we are concerned for their welfare. Ultimately, at some level we will the flourishing of all in our differences (see e.g. Lawson, 2015C, 2019A; Martins, 2017; Ragkousis, 2023A); we have a disposition to do so, in effect a disposition to care (Lawson, 2015C). Adhering to the organisational relations of human communities as a typical orientation is one (very significant) manifestation of this.

This notion of care, of course, is a complex one, expressing a much-studied subject-matter of various disciplines and literatures, identified in many ways, carrying various inflections which, in some combination or other, span features that seemingly bear upon and condition most that we do.²⁹ It covers an orientation and inclination, first, simply willingly to enter into being, including social being, to be bothered to do so, to treat it as mattering; second, to form, or hold and pursue, (specific) concerns; and third of solicitude, cooperation, and ultimately of both willing and assisting the well-being of (seemingly ultimately all living) forms of being, especially of other human persons. These three inflections might, if cautiously interpreted, be summarised respectively as orientations or inclinations to care to, care about and care for.³⁰

These orientations or inclinations are each essential for human life in communities. Given, though, my current focus on determining the conditions for generalised compliance with normative structures in situations where there is much that militates against doing so, it is care as an inclination towards solicitude, as a force driving towards achieving a situation of generalised human flourishing, that I especially emphasise here.

In referring to care or caring as a disposition, in this context, I mean to express a capacity seemingly perpetually exercised, that, under the aspect in focus, underpins a tendency continually in play to this end, albeit one that, because of countervailing contextual factors, is not always fully actualised in specific activities. No doubt the disposition is non-uniform across persons, and countervailing or offsetting influences can sometimes be significant. But the overwhelming evidence, as I have elsewhere argued at length (see e.g. Lawson, 2015C, 2019A), is of the tendency in question repeatedly showing through, as ever prodding most of us along, or pulling us back towards, a path consistent with facilitating generalised flourishing. It is the disposition underpinning this tendency that is always reorienting us towards acting in ways that support the well-being of all, that, as with the corresponding figure of Goethe’s Faust, I am calling care.

Clearly a more comprehensive account of these matters is warranted (not least of those additional factors that support compliance³¹ as well as those that countervail the disposition to care³²), but this is not something I can (or I think I need to) pursue in the current paper (but see Lawson, 2015C, 2019A, chapter 8). Here I am primarily emphasising that it is no small matter that human persons everywhere stick much of the time to their positional obligations, and I am suggesting that this can be viewed as but one manifestation of the wider (continually operative) caring orientation or disposition that I believe is essential to who we really are. Its significance here is that it is a necessary condition for the reproduction of human community life and essential to the community anchoring activities of each human person.

So, to take stock, the human person, I am suggesting, is at base a human being, with a human body, the sort of animal that has biological capacities and needs and can interact with various other non-social beings, that also possesses in an essential way something like both a first person perspective and a disposition to care. It is these properties, I am suggesting, or others very much like them, that account for the widely encountered features of human person competence and compliance in drawing on community organising structures, requiring capacities of individuation and continuity in the face of transformative social processes, along with orientations of considerateness, support and cooperation in doing so, these caring orientations being continually maintained in the face of, and despite, countervailing pressures and incentives to do otherwise. The overall conception advanced, I might note, is clearly a form of emergent powers materialism.

With this conception to hand, I now turn to consider the nature of the human multicomponent that is anchored in the human person, before moving to examine the nature of community interactions in which this entity continually engages. If general features of human structures allow that some inferences or insights be had concerning general properties of the human person, an interesting issue is whether these insights allow us more clearly to understand in a general manner the nature of community activities. In particular, are we better able to understand multi participant interactions of a complex sort, and especially those where the activities in evidence conform less straightforwardly or in intricate ways to generalised norms of practice, but where the capacities and dispositions uncovered can be expected to remain in play?

4. The human social individual and human interactions

4.1 The multicomponent

The human multicomponent, to recall, is a unity of a human person and typically very many different, relationally constituted, components anchored in the (moving) terrain of the human person. These components are properties of various communities so that the multicomponent is not then (as the term itself could perhaps suggest) an entity that possesses its own (internally related) components. Rather it is one that is formed as a composite of (often unrelated) components reflecting the fact that the anchoring person is typically multiply positioned in ways that transcend specific community boundaries.

However, with a particular human person being included as an essential part of any multicomponent, being indeed its identifying feature (through changes in its relational makeup), and with each human person being an entity that can both individuate at any point in time and reidentify over time, the same can now be reasonably said of any multicomponent. I shall, then, also refer to a multicomponent as an individual and specifically as a human social individual.³³ In so doing I take it as understood that the multi-relational entity so designated is very far from the isolated atom of some conceptions of (ontological) individualism. The term individual here does, though, signify that each such entity in question is a singular, a concrete singularity (that not merely is anchored in a unique human person but possesses its own unique multiple relational, if frequently changing, makeup). In short, the multicomponent is a historically constituted human social individual chacterised by (though not reducible to) an ensemble of (historically specific) social relations.

If then, it is apparent that it is these human multicomponents that engage in community interactions, a question that warrants being addressed is how particular interactions are determined or even possible. For very clearly, the nature of the human person elaborated is such that, no matter how competent, purposeful, continuity facilitating, or caring each may mostly be, it will always be the case that not all components anchored in any one can be activated at the same time. Even if the conception elaborated leads us to expect that each multicomponent will, most of the time, seek to interact in line with its numerous component rights and obligations where relevant, that is in line with its being an entity that is multiply internally related to other entities, it is not clear a priori which package(s) of rights and obligations will be drawn on at any moment. Moreover, some component actions associated with a given person, at least in specific contexts, may even be mutually incompatible. So, for each multicomponent, any interaction with others at a particular point in time will involve a subset of components and component powers being activated at most. Yet each such subset is anchored in the relevant human person, so that features of the latter, such as a first person perspective and a caring disposition, will be in play whatever the scenario.

Given the nature of each multicomponent, the core factors determining those powers that are enacted in any particular interaction, that determine the sorts of engagements that occur, I suggest, will be, or certainly include, the following. The first is the nature and context of interactions and in particular the sorts of relations that constitute those parties that, for whatever reason, a multicomponent comes across or encounters. The second is the anchoring person and in particular this person’s inclinations (or not) to so engage, or intentions regarding how precisely to do so, within such interaction possibilities as emerge. Of course, person actions occur at numerous levels of consciousness, not just the discursive (see Lawson, 1997, chapter 13). But even when carried out on a practical or tacit level it remains intentional; the person always acts. Let me elaborate with an illustration.

4.2 Community interactions

Suppose a multicomponent M is alone in a car in the UK driving to a café to get some breakfast. At that moment M is manifest as a motorist on a UK highway and interacting with other multicomponents as a motorist. So, the community context of action and interaction is the highway or road system. And the fact that M is positionally constituted as a motorist (in terms of the rights and obligations that make up the position) determines how M is related to any other multicomponent with which M does, or may, interact in that context. M faces out to others as a particular motorist. So, person p that anchors M has activated the component of a motorist (along with any other components that being a motorist presupposes) in virtue of entering in a car (say) onto a road, that is into the community context of action and interaction constituted by the UK highway system.

Imagine, further, that a second multicomponent, N say, anchored in person q, interacts with M on the highway. Perhaps they interact at a roundabout, with N emerging from M’s right on the roundabout, as M arrives there. In such a situation, at least in the UK, N has right of way matched to M’s obligation to give way to all motorists such as N arriving from M’s right. Clearly, the individuals or multicomponents M and N are here facing and interacting with each other as community components of the form motorist. Of course, not all motorists comply with their obligations or exercise their rights even on highway roundabouts; the anchoring persons involved always have a say in how things turn out. But still most driving most of the time is undertaken with sufficient care that accidents etc. are (prima facie surprisingly) rare. As N approaches M from the latter’s right, N trusts that M will wait patiently and not at the last minute try and squeeze recklessly in front.

Suppose yet further that M and N both in due course arrive in turn at the same café to which M has been heading. On arrival M chooses a seat outside in the sun, and sits down, with p thereby activating the café-community component of customer.³⁴ Included amongst the components of which N is made up, however, is that of waiter or waitress at this café, and q now activates this component. So, (in not recognising each other as previously interacting motorists) it is as customer and waiter/waitress respectively that M and N now face up to each other as N approaches M to take M’s order. That is, M and N are once more interacting, but here the community context of action and interaction is no longer the highway system but a café-community, and the manner in which M and N interact depends on the positional relationships connecting them (the matched rights and obligations pairs structuring that interaction) as well as mutual care in the form of trust and trustworthiness (N typically will trust that at the end of M’s stay at the café, M will seek to discharge her or his debt before leaving, using an acceptable means of payment; whilst M in turn will trust that the order made will arrive and be safe to consume, etc.³⁵).

Of course, any two interacting multicomponents M and N may manifest as two or more pairs of activated, internally related, community components at the same time, where these pairs will typically be unrelated (in the sense of being matched components of different subcommunities). Thus, M and N may manifest as, say, partners and also as, respectively, a recently appointed lecturer and a PhD student in the same university department, perhaps even engaged in writing a research paper together (as well as perhaps to be married). Where this is so, and given the caring disposition of human participants, we might expect that the interactions of M and N draw upon not all the rights and obligations associated with the components activated, but only that subset of each matched pair of rights and obligations that are consistent with both sets of components (if there are any). In writing and researching together, for example, M qua lecturer is unlikely to pull rank. Put differently if we think of each pair of matched community components as determining a field of (normative) interaction possibilities, then the actual interactions of M and N may have the appearance of interference patterns within the fields of matched component interaction possibilities, as behaviours consistent with both sets of matched components are amplified whilst any contradictory behaviours are more or less avoided altogether.

It is hopefully clear, then, that, and how, contexts of interaction can bear significantly on the manner or form in which interacting multicomponents manifest at any point (on the set of components activated). It is also evident that the manifestations themselves in turn bear on the patterns of interaction that normally follow. For this reason, indeed, it may be thought warranted or at least convenient, that the manifestation of a multicomponent at any point (as its taking the form of a motorist, or whatever) be identified as a character in itself. If or where so, we might refer to it as a prosopon.³⁶ This term derives from the proposition ‘pro’ (προ) which means 'towards' and the noun 'ops' (ωψ) which means ‘appearance’. Although it is a term encountered in Greek theology and is often translated as person, face or mask, its original meaning, or that possessed since at least Homeric times, is a self-manifestation of the individual. This would be its intended meaning here (recognising that this self-manifestation usually depends on context and the individual’s relationship to those with whom there is an engagement or interaction).³⁷

But whatever terminology is adopted (when considering component activations), it is evident, though I stress it anyway, that the multicomponents that engage in interactions already exist prior to the interactions and continue to do so throughout (even if on occasions some of their features might be transformed in the process). So, too, do the human persons that anchor them, as do any deontic powers that become exercised or enacted during the processes, as well as the human person capacities and dispositions that are activated or enacted in the process. Of course, both the human agent and the various levels of social structure are in continual transformative process. But the entities involved are themselves at all times existent and in no way less determinate than the interactions that result.

The account of the nature of human actions and interactions that emerges, then, along with a conception of the entities and forms involved, are, if complex, nevertheless quite coherent and intelligible. Even so, I suspect that relevant aspects of the foregoing elaboration are easily misunderstood; or at least, and just as importantly, the significance of various aspects of the account may not be apparent. This is especially likely of the features emphasised in the preceding paragraph. Let me, then, consider very briefly a conception that is at odds with that paragraph, so that it is apparent that the emphases made in it are warranted and significant.

5. Interactionist social theorising

Clearly, the human social individual of the sort that is entailed by or fits with social positioning theory is rather different to the isolated (usually optimising) atom of much social theorising. The human social individual of social positioning theory is relational rather than isolated, and in process in a manner that involves being continually shaped by (changing) contexts, rather than fixed and determined independently of any context. Even so, and as just emphasised, the human social individual of social positioning theory has been found to be not determined by, or reducible to, the social structure (including) interactions with others; a degree of autonomy remains. This contrasts with other currently prominent accounts that, in similarly rejecting atomistic individualist conceptions of the sort earlier noted, do tend to deprive the person of any autonomy.

In particular, there are contributions that, in emphasising the productive contribution of interactions specifically, go as far as to deny the possibility that any entities involved could pre-exist their interactions, or at least to deny them any determinacy. That is, instead of assuming that pregiven individuals wholly determine the nature of their interactions, it is proposed instead that the latter effectively wholly determine the former.

As noted at the outset, a number of these are influenced by a reading of quantum mechanics specifically. Here I briefly consider Karen Barad’s (2007) ‘agential realist’ account of this nature, a contribution that has been especially influential on feminist theorising. As it happens, much, at least, of Barad’s assessment is easily interpreted as presupposing a perspective similar to that of social positioning theory, and so not something with which I would want to take issue. However, Barad herself would seemingly strongly resist any such suggested association or comparison. Certainly, many of her statements, taken at face value, do amount to a very different interactionist conception—though Barad prefers the term intra-actionist—and indeed are regularly so interpreted by sympathisers and critics alike. That is, they are easily and regularly understood as denying that any kind of individual or entity can exist, or anyway be determinate, prior to any human interaction. I cannot go into the issues involved at length but content myself with briefly noting some indicative statements or assessments.

A core term for Barad (in an account that, as I say, she presents as an agential realism) is, as just noted, intra-action. Barad defines this term by way of contrasting it with (her understanding of) the notion of interaction. She thus writes for example that:

[…] in contrast to the usual [notion of] ‘interaction’, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action (Barad, 2007, p. 33).

Clearly, it is easy, as I say, to suppose that Barad and I are getting at the same sorts of phenomena using different terminologies; and so perhaps her use of terms like ‘emerge’ might be interpreted as meaning something like ‘are activated’.³⁸ But this is certainly not how Barad is usually interpreted. And passages such as the following suggest that Barad herself does indeed intend to suggest that interactions cause entities to ‘come into existence’. Thus, Barad insists that:

‘individuals’ do not pre-exist as such but rather materialize in intra-action. That is, intra-action goes to the question of the making of differences, of ‘individuals’, rather than assuming their independent or prior existence (Barad, 2012, p. 77). Or: ‘Subjects and objects do not pre-exist as such but are constituted through, within, and as part of particular practices’ (Barad, 2007, p. 208).

In keeping with the suggested interpretation, furthermore, Barad insists that agency is not and indeed cannot be possessed, but rather is entirely a doing, a phenomenon of intra-action:

Crucially, agency is a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has. It cannot be designated as an attribute of subjects or objects (as they do not pre-exist as such). It is not an attribute whatsoever. Agency is ‘doing’ or ‘being’ in its intra-activity (Barad, 2007, p. 178; also see Barad, 1996, p. 183).

In all this, Barad, presenting herself as drawing explicitly on Niels Bohr, is seemingly minded primarily to treat all agents including those of the social entities as on par with a particular ‘standard’ or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum entities or objects associated with Bohr. For according to this theory, as physicist-philosopher Carlo Rovelli (2021) puts it,

the discovery of quantum mechanics, is the discovery that the properties of any entity are nothing other than the way in which that entity influences others. It exists only through its interactions (Rovelli, 2021, p. 69).

Suggesting that quantum theory applies at all levels including the ‘cultural’ (pp. 165–6) Rovelli (2021) elaborates suggesting that according to the theory:

‘individual objects are the way they interact’ (p. 69), ‘the properties of objects exist only in the moment of their interactions’ (p. 73), and ‘everything consists solely in the way that it affects something else’ (p. 70).

Indeed, Rovelli is clear in the view that

The best description of reality we have found is in terms of events that weave a web of interactions. ‘Entities’ are nothing other than ephemeral nodes in this web. Their properties are not determined until the moment of these interactions […] (p. 166).

And so on.

This does all seem implausible, of course, at least as a conception of social entities. If conceptualising human social individuals as a product of their interactions is assessed as being essential to conforming to a quantum conception, then where this assessment is accepted (whether or not it is correct) along with the goal of seeking quantum social theories, it serves as a constraint on the sort of conceptions of the social agent that can be entertained.

In contrast, social positioning theory is not so constrained. It rejects not only the traditional notion that social human individuals or agents wholly determine their interactions, but also the equally implausible idea that individual agents are somehow produced by, or at least rendered determinate by, these interactions.³⁹ Social positioning theory, rather, is derived with the aim of producing a conception of social reality that is (not necessarily in conformity with formulations found successful in other domains, but) explanatorily powerful or empirically adequate with respect to the phenomena of the social domain. Certainly, it seems more plausible, and explanatorily sound, than the new materialist, essentially post-structuralist, alternative considered.⁴⁰

I do acknowledge that there are various insights that are broached in the noted statements by Barad and others. But I can discern none that are not shared with social positioning theory or relevant specific conceptions that it sponsors. Thus, all such accounts stress that human persons never do exist in isolation but are always beings-in-relations; and that all entities and structures involved in interactions are affected by, reproduced and/or transformed through, them, etc. It is just that for the social positioning theory and associated conceptions, various entities, certainly in the social realm, are co-responsible for daily interactions even where, and, where so, as, they are reproduced and/or transformed through them.

In short, although the relational powers of the multicomponent individual of social positioning theory may be activated and enacted through the onset of specific interactions, the relations, the components and their powers, the position occupants (out of which the interacting components are formed) and their capacities and dispositions, along with the social individuals themselves, all exist prior to any such interactions. A thoroughgoing depth realism is at all stages preserved.

6. Final comments and conclusion

Social positioning theory, being of the nature of a (social) philosophical (or general) ontology, is most clearly of use to substantive (or highly concrete) analysis (such as modern academic economics) when employed as a ground clearing device, not least as a means for resolving social theory’s most enduring general puzzles and problems⁴¹ (see Lawson, 2019A, 2022B). The continual treating of the human person, in substantive theorising, as some version of an isolated atom is a case in point.⁴²

It is often feasible, though, for a philosophical ontology to be utilised further in underpinning or sponsoring projects in scientific ontology, that is, those concerned with the natures of specific items (like, in the social realm, the natures of money, the corporation, technology or gender). In this regard a philosophical ontology may at least provide a conception or framework to which scientific-ontological assessments or theories can conform or otherwise relate or be oriented (see Lawson, 2015D).

There is, however, no unique way of going about developing such scientific-ontological assessments or theories, and it will always be the case that additional empirical and other claims are involved (albeit far less than figure in substantive analyses) that are not merely (like all claims) fallible and contestable, but perhaps contested even by those that currently commit to the philosophical ontology so employed; and the same applies to any inferences drawn.

The attempt here to theorise the human entity employing social positioning theory constitutes in effect such an endeavour in social scientific ontology. And (as noted in footnote 16) its results may indeed be so contested.⁴³ For not only are traditional (non-relational, non-processual) accounts of the nature of the human individual rejected here as quite unsustainable, with clearly highly contestable assessments made in developing an alternative, but also it has been found necessary to identify various different human characters or forms. As a result, the whole scenario of community interactions is rendered somewhat more complex as well as context dependent (if also, to my mind, significantly more interesting). So, there is certainly scope for disagreement even where social positioning theory is accepted. Even so, I do suspect that any formulation based on its acceptance will run along lines that, in general terms at least, are not too dissimilar to the conception defended here.

In any case, I am led to the view that it is warranted that we recognise not only the human person but also the multicomponent, a human social individual comprised of a unity of all the relational community components anchored by any given human person along with this anchoring person. The complexity of the typical multicomponent is such that not all components of which it is comprised can be activated simultaneously; and the specific components that are in fact activated at any point depend largely on the sorts of contexts and the others with which the multicomponent comes to interact. It is this specific set activated at any point that along with its anchoring human person that will be determining of the patterns of interactions as occur (and for this reason might be separately identified, I have suggested as a prosopon).

It is a feature of the conception defended, however, that whatever the component activations that occur in community interactions (or manner in which they are described) they presuppose the prior and continuing existence of the associated multicomponents under all their relational aspects, anchored in equally pre-existent human persons. So, in contrast to various currently prominent competing accounts of the human social individual, the conception sustained posits a relativisation not of being or existence but rather of activations of particular states of being. Clearly, the account of the multicomponent (or human person-in-relations or human social individual) and of human community interactions defended may be complex in its details but, I repeat, however, there is nothing especially strange, counterintuitive, or unintelligible about it.

As to the human person specifically, I have argued that in place of the isolated, seemingly positionless, self-centred, usually greedy, all-knowing, merely calculating, typically ‘optimising’, and mostly short sighted and narrow-minded, atom of traditional theorising, a (multiply) relationally positioned, relationally competent, relation- and process-attuned, and yet relatively autonomous, self-conceptualising, reflexive and project forming, as well as essentially other-oriented, caring, concerned, giving, cooperative and supportive, though fallible and indeed often misguided and misled, human entity can with advantage move centre stage. The sorts of features noted have been systematised by way of developing a conception of the human person as possessing (something like) a first person perspective and a disposition to care.

I might add, finally, that if the account defended is at all correct, it also bears clear consequences relating to projects and strategies for social change, especially those of an emancipatory nature (see e.g. Lawson, 2015C, 2019A, chapter 8). For if social reality is as presented, projects of meaningful change will certainly include transforming or replacing the positional relations that provide, and set limits to, the opportunities we all (currently differentially) face, and so with removing obstacles to doing so. So specifically emancipatory projects will include removing those particular obstacles (not least any misinformation and disinformation generating, and/or ignorance inducing and/or sustaining, and/or alienating, factors) that impede our seeking to ensure both that non-oppressive, and non-discriminatory, generally well-being facilitating, opportunities (rights and obligations) everywhere prevail, and also, where it is meaningful, that all positions, not least those of significant opportunity, are accessible to everyone. In other words, a fundamental focus will be on the sorts of social transformations that ensure that community positional relations prevail that are of a sort as to facilitate the flourishing (in our differences) of us all.⁴⁴

For helpful comments on an earlier draft, or on ideas and arguments contained in it, I am grateful to Phil Faulkner, Clive Lawson, Nuno Martins, Stephen Pratten, Antonis Ragkousis, Roy Rotheim, Jochen Runde, Yannick Slade-Caffarel, Erik van Kesteren, William Waller and two referees of the Journal.

Footnotes

Bibliography