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In-Depth Information
About (proposi-
tional attitudes)
Agents
Type
I
IND
:
i
vs
j
Beliefs, desires,
judgments,. . .
Contradiction
II
GRP
:
9i
1
;:::i
m
in
G
,
i
1
vs ...vs
i
m
Beliefs, desires,
judgments,. . .
Contradiction
III
SAG
: sag vs sag'
Beliefs, desires,
judgments,. . .
Contradiction
IV
SAG
: sag vs sag
Beliefs, desires,
judgments,. . .
Social
contradiction
(I) classifies conflicts between individuals (including the conflict of an individual
with him/herself) that may be about any propositional attitude. (II) classifies
conflicts within groups that are reducible to conflicts among members of the
group. In this case, the group is not viewed as a social agentive group and the
conflict within the group can be reduced to conflicts between subsets of individuals.
As an example, take an auction in which a number of agents make their bids for
getting a certain item and only one of them can win the item. (III) classifies
conflicts between different groups each of them viewed as social agentive groups,
for example two different parliaments of different states voting two incompatible
policies. Finally, (IV) classifies the case of social contradictions that are exemplified
by SCT paradoxes. From the point of view of our ontological analysis, (III) can be
reduced to (I): namely conflict between two different social agentive groups can be
modeled as conflict between different individual agents, that is, it can be modeled
by using the notion of contradiction between propositional attitudes of two different
agents. Moreover, our modeling shows that the type of conflict that is defined in
(II) is actually a conflict between individuals: again, it can be modeled by means
of the notion of contradiction between a number of individual attitudes. The notion
of social contradiction is required only to model the conflict of the social agentive
group with itself, namely the group conflict that is non-reducible to any conflict
between any member of the group.
2.6
Conclusion and Future Work
We have developed the first conceptual elements to provide an ontological analysis
of group conflicts. We have used the methodology of SCT in order to mathematically
understand a number of types of conflicts and to define the concept of social
contradiction. We have introduced some fundamental elements of an ontological
analysis of conflicts by spelling out the required concepts of propositional attitude,
conflict as contradiction, and social agentive group. In particular, we have argued
that the concept of social agentive group is necessary in order to understand the
type of group conflict that is involved in social paradoxes. We plan to provide a
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