社会唯名論と実在論

バークとバージェスの定義（1921）。

「社会＝似たような精神をもった個人の集合」と考えるギディングスやタルドは「社会唯名論」、「社会＝相互作用（個人の集まり以上のもの）」と捉えるジンメルとかスモールは「社会実在論」。後者ではプロセスが大切で、伝達が生じたプロセスでは、伝達がない場合とすでに現実的な「社会状態」は変化している（デューイ）。相互作用プロセスとその産物である意見が（個人の心の総和以上の）「社会意識」を構成する。

Those who thought the concept was real, and not the name of a mere collection of individuals, were realists. In this sense Tarde and Giddings and all those writers who think of society as a collection of actually or potentially like-minded persons would be nominalists, while other writers like Simmel, Ratzenhofer, and Small, who think of society in terms of interaction and social process may be called realists. They are realist, at any rate, in so far as they think of the members of a society as bound together in a system of mutual influences which has sufficient character to be described as a process.

デュルケームもこの見取り図だとジンメルやスモールと同様の「相互行為・実在論者」になる。

The thing that characterizes Durkheim and his followers is their insistence upon the fact that all cultural materials, and expressions, including language, science, religion, public opinion, and law, since they are the products of social intercourse and social interaction, are bound to have an objective, public, and social character such as no product of an individual mind either has or can have. Durkheim speaks of these mental products, individual and social, as representations. The characteristic product of the individual mind is the percept, or, as Durkheim describes it, the "individual representation." The percept is, and remains, a private and an individual matter. No one can reproduce, or communicate to another, subjective impressions or the mental imagery in the concrete form in which they come to the individual himself. My neighbor may be able to read my "thoughts" and understand the motives that impel me to action better than I understand myself, but he cannot reproduce the images, with just the fringes of sense and feeling with which they come to my mind.