What is the Hallé?

Abstract

I address what I call ‘the number issue’, which is raised by our ordinary talk and beliefs about certain social groups and institutions, and I take the Hallé orchestra as my example. The number issue is that of whether the Hallé is one individual or several individuals. I observe that if one holds that it is one individual, one faces an accusation of metaphysical extravagance. The bulk of the paper examines the difficulty of reconciling the view that the Hallé is several individuals with two prima facie plausible theses about the manner of its persistence through time. The paper is structured around some remarks made by Peter Simons about groups, and the Hallé in particular, in his Parts.