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I propose defining a 'corporation' as 'a framework around an idea that seeks to continue to exist given parameters.' This definition seems to encompass all human creations, from self to language to nations to individual thoughts, this post, or society. How does this perspective align with or challenge existing philosophical understandings of human constructs, social structures, and the nature of ideas? I think it provides a powerful lens to examine human creations and determine whether they do or do not align with their fundamental incentive of maintaining their existence for longer amounts of time. To me, it looks like the corporation as we know it is explicitly the framework that everything else created by humans is implicitly.

Edit: And obviously we are just copying ourselves as humans and what everything else is in our own creations, just those are not our creations, nor might they be anything else's--just ours are definitely our creations, there's nothing we can say about the other question of course. It's why we get the whole 'made in His image' clearly.

I like thinking of them as 'fictitious humans', and I feel like it would be accurate to do so.

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  • What really can this artificial 'corporation' bring about in philosophy of which a big part is natural? In monotheism everything finite as God's creation has already been incorporated into his Kingdom perhaps with all required invisible taxes and annual fees as his regulated plan for a possibly better taxing structure, and one goal of such a plan could easily be speculated as your 'continue to exist given parameters' made in his image. OTOH we have many things infinite in nature in philosophy such as abstract categories which don't seem to need to worry about their continual existence...
    – Double Knot
    Commented Jul 3 at 22:31
  • it seems to me that your view of corporation is very similar to the dawkinsian 'meme' as a fundamental unit of culture?
    – Kaia
    Commented Jul 4 at 0:23

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You can define anything however you want. All nonstandard definitions do is change what language you are speaking.

However, you'll need another nonstandard definition for "seek" if you want it to be a verb that a framework can even be argued to do; and yet another nonstandard definition for "framework" if you want it to even arguably include all human creations.

Without such definitions, your definition doesn't align with anything, even to contradict anthing, because it doesn't mean anything.

Under standard definitions for the words used to define it, the definition you have given for corporation is self contradictory or meaningless, as in: "A corporation is a colorless green idea sleeping furiously."

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  • I don't think you are accurate in your assertions. I could define anything any way I see fit, however, your notion of what corporation could be defined as in no way accurately represents what a corporation is. The present definition of a corporation is in regard to what they look like, how they appear as we know them--it does not speak to what they are fundamentally--it isn't as broad and as specific as possible. Of course the framework itself is not seeking, but it is structured to last for longer amounts of time, it is why it is structured in the first place.
    – Corporate Entity
    Commented Jul 4 at 16:57
  • Then it's by definition a framework which seeks and seeks not, which is a contradiction, as I said.
    – g s
    Commented Jul 4 at 17:04
  • Okay we can be pedantic, a framework around an idea that is structured to maintain its existence given parameters. Instead of getting hung up on non-issues, you could have possibly engaged with the question that was originally posed in good faith and looked beyond what was explicitly said and instead to what is meant.
    – Corporate Entity
    Commented Jul 4 at 17:07
  • But also, if you think about what a word is doing by being there, it isn't doing a "structured to maintain its existence," there's more a seeking there than anything else, to me. Even if it can't actually seek in the manner we think of some thing seeking--it is still sitting there waiting to be witnessed by some other entity that can somehow view it and have it convey meaning to them.
    – Corporate Entity
    Commented Jul 4 at 17:15
  • Something can be structured to seek to maintain its own existence without it itself having any capacity to seek by its own will. It can be structured to seek as if it had a will to do so in a certain way merely by the nature of its structure, so I think I stand by my original definition. And why do we need to redefine framework? Is not every thing created by humans feelings and notions of what /is/ incorporated together to form what could be from those "what is"? You can look at any thing created by humans and dissect the notions that led it to be in how it is, find the echoes of self @g
    – Corporate Entity
    Commented Jul 4 at 18:24

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