Liverpool Cardano Philosophy Hub: The Ontology of Money

A session delivered as part of the project "Liverpool Cardano Philosophy Hub"

Liverpool Cardano Philosophy Hub was a Fund 8 Project Catalyst project exploring key blockchain concepts through the lens of philosophy. This session looked at the ontology of money - in other words, what money means - and examined whether cryptocurrency adheres to it, or subverts it.

You can see the slides used in the session, and some links for further reading.

NOTE: Subsequent sessions appear under December 2023.

Slides

Further reading

Books

• The Reality of Money: The Metaphysics of Financial Value Eyja M. Brynjarsdottir, 2020
• The Ontology and Function of Money: The Philosophical Fundamentals of Monetary Institutions Leonidas Zelmanovitz, 2015

Articles

• Reflections on the Ontology of Money: Uskali Mäki, Journal of Social Ontology
• Should Bitcoin Be Classified as Money? Asya Passinsky, Journal of Social Ontology
• John Searle’s ontology of money, and its critics, Louis Larue, 2022 - later published in Joseph Tinguely (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan (2024)
• Two Questions on the Ontology of Money: An Imaginary Dialogue between John Rogers Searle and Maurizio Ferraris Angela Condello, 2018
• From Babylon to Bitcoin: some philosophical reflections on the ontology of money Dean Rickles, 2023
• The Philosophy of Bitcoin and the Question of Money Simon Butler, 2022 Interesting take on whether Bitcoin solves the problem of the state’s involvement in money.

Videos

• The Political Significance of the Ontology of Money The Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement at Dartmouth (ICE)

Other

• Artist Ailie Rutherford’s crypto knitting circles project on feminist economics, and her People’s Bank of Govanhills

A fictional reading list

We experimentally asked ChatGPT to cite some relevant published articles on this topic - and, as is its wont, it hallucinated a set of articles that do not actually exist. We're listing them here because a) some of the authors exist, and so do some of the publications, and they're interesting and worth a Google; and b) perhaps someone will be inspired to write one of the articles in this imaginary bibliography.

The Ontology of Money: Coinage and the Grammar of Monetary Functions Alain Marciano and Jérôme Blanc Journal of Economic Methodology, 2019.

The Metaphysics of Money: An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Institutions David Skarbek Journal of Institutional Economics, 2016.

The Metaphysical Status of Money Charles Griswold The Journal of Value Inquiry, 2018.

The Ontology of Money and the Ontology of Value Andreas Antonopoulos Philosophy & Technology, 2013.

The Ontology of Money Michael J. Inwood European Journal of Philosophy, 2004

The Ontology of Money: From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies Simon Glendinning Journal of Philosophy, 202).

The Social Ontology of Money Philip Pettit Economics and Philosophy, 2007.