I gruppi in rete: una teoria olista, documentale e realista

The thesis explores the notion of ‘social group’ in the social ontology field. It starts from two core subjects that cannot be avoided dealing with groups, i.e. the holism-individualism debate and the collective intentionality approach. Highlighting the importance of getting some holistic elements and the non necessity of the collective intentionality in order to understand the birth of social groups, it develops a theory based on a realistic conception of groups able to comprehend a large number of their different kinds. Exploring the available theories on groups, the thesis goes on trying to distinguish their sociological realizations and applies the traditional categories to a new kind of groups, i.e. online groups distinguished by the presence of non-natural intelligence. In this way it can explore to what extent they can be defined ‘social’ and lay the foundations for more work to be done on the relation between responsibility and sociability.