Abstract
AbstractThis paper pursues a naturalist endeavor in social ontology by arguing that the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account of institutions can help to advance the debate over the nature of social kinds. This account of institutions emerges from a growing number of works in economics that use game theory to study the role and the functioning of institutions in human societies. I intend to show how recent developments in the economic analysis of rules and institutions can help solve issues that are generally considered constitutive of any ontological inquiry. I argue that the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account of institutions can contribute to advancing the debate on an issue of particular importance, regarding the specific form of dependence characterizing the relation between institutions and individuals’ attitudes about them. I tackle this issue by taking Francesco Guala's claims about the nature of institutions made in his book “Understanding Institutions” as a point of departure. In particular, I reject Guala’s functionalism about institutions. On the basis of the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account, I claim that it is futile to search for constitutive features of general institutions (money, property rights, family…) and that the best we can have is a knowledge of what are the rules within a specific institution, which the agents consider to be essential in their institutional practice.
Highlights
IntroductionAs the field concerned with the nature of the social world and of social objects, social ontology is by all means in close relationship with social sciences
This paper pursues a naturalist endeavor in social ontology by arguing that the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account of institutions can help to advance the debate over the nature of social kinds
On the basis of the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account, I claim that it is futile to search for constitutive features of general institutions and that the best we can have is a knowledge of what are the rules within a specific institution, which the agents consider to be essential in their institutional practice
Summary
As the field concerned with the nature of the social world and of social objects, social ontology is by all means in close relationship with social sciences. From a ‘foundationalist’ perspective, social ontology is viewed as providing the metaphysical foundations on the basis of which sound scientific modeling and theorizing can be developed within the social sciences. The ‘naturalist’ perspective follows the broader lead of naturalism in philosophy, by postulating that ontological knowledge and scientific knowledge are essentially of the same kind and can be produced along essentially similar methods This view has notably been recently endorsed by economists and philosophers of economics, e.g. The overall contribution of the paper is twofold It pursues the project of building a naturalistic social ontology, as initiated by Hindriks and Guala (2015) and Smit et al (2011).
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