ABSTRACT
Social ontology studies the nature of the elements of the social world, things such as universities, university presidents, artifacts, checks, and opera performances. Collective intentionality has seemed to many to be central to this project. For what these seemingly very different types of entities have in common is that they are roughly a product of people acting or deciding together. But describing the way in which the social world is constructed or built out of individuals and their attitudes is not straightforward. It is also not clear that there is a unique sense in which the vast diversity of social entities is constructed.
