The question I raise is whether the basic features of mind, social categories, and society are unchanging or changing. Some understandings of ontology would seem to suggest that social ontology is a branch of metaphysics. However, as the history of concepts such as metaphysical and ontology indicate, our concepts and knowledge are historical. It is widely held that society is concept‐ and activity‐dependent. I examine critically two strands of social ontology in terms of their answers to this problematic: (1) John Searle’s theory of the construction of social reality and (2) critical realist theory of mind and society as interlaced emergent layers of reality. Apart from emergence in natural systems, there is also emergence beyond nature as consciousness, agency and society cannot be completely explained in terms of biological realities; but how and when did this emergence occur? We need an account of the emergent order of language, reflectively conscious mind, and institutions not only for its own sake, but also because the process whereby new objects and properties emerge may be on‐going, path‐dependent, diverse, and open‐ended. The main argument is that the object of study of social theorists is geo‐historically specific, liable to diversity within any given world‐historical epoch, and open to further changes and new forms of emergence in the future.

中文翻译：

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论社会本体论的历史性

我提出的问题是思想，社会类别和社会的基本特征是不变还是变化。对本体的一些理解似乎暗示了社会本体是形而上学的一个分支。但是，正如形而上学和本体论等概念的历史所表明的那样，我们的概念和知识是历史性的。人们普遍认为，社会依赖于概念和活动。我对社会本体论的两个方面进行了批判性的考察：（1）约翰·塞尔（John Searle）关于社会现实建构的理论；（2）作为现实的交错出现层的批判现实主义者的思想与社会理论。除了自然系统中的出现之外，自然界之外也出现了其他出现，因为意识，代理和社会无法完全用生物学的现实来解释。但是这种出现是如何发生的以及何时发生的呢？我们不仅需要考虑语言的出现顺序，具有反射意识的思想和制度，还需要说明其原因，还因为新的对象和属性出现的过程可能是持续的，路径依赖的，多样化的和开放的。结束了。主要论点是，社会理论家的研究对象是地理历史特定的，易于在任何给定的世界历史时代内发生变化，并有可能在未来发生进一步的变化和新的出现形式。