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Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together
A groundbreaking new synthesis and theory of social institutions
Understanding Institutions proposes a new unified theory of social institutions that combines the best insights of philosophers and social scientists who have written on this topic. Francesco Guala presents a theory that combines the features of three influential views of as equilibria of strategic games, as regulative rules, and as constitutive rules.
Guala explains key institutions like money, private property, and marriage, and develops a much-needed unification of equilibrium- and rules-based approaches. Although he uses game theory concepts, the theory is presented in a simple, clear style that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars working in different fields. Outlining and discussing various implications of the unified theory, Guala addresses venerable issues such as reflexivity, realism, Verstehen, and fallibilism in the social sciences. He also critically analyses the theory of "looping effects" and "interactive kinds" defended by Ian Hacking, and asks whether it is possible to draw a demarcation between social and natural science using the criteria of causal and ontological dependence. Focusing on current debates about the definition of marriage, Guala shows how these abstract philosophical issues have important practical and political consequences.
Moving beyond specific cases to general models and principles, Understanding Institutions offers new perspectives on what institutions are, how they work, and what they can do for us.
Understanding Institutions proposes a new unified theory of social institutions that combines the best insights of philosophers and social scientists who have written on this topic. Francesco Guala presents a theory that combines the features of three influential views of as equilibria of strategic games, as regulative rules, and as constitutive rules.
Guala explains key institutions like money, private property, and marriage, and develops a much-needed unification of equilibrium- and rules-based approaches. Although he uses game theory concepts, the theory is presented in a simple, clear style that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars working in different fields. Outlining and discussing various implications of the unified theory, Guala addresses venerable issues such as reflexivity, realism, Verstehen, and fallibilism in the social sciences. He also critically analyses the theory of "looping effects" and "interactive kinds" defended by Ian Hacking, and asks whether it is possible to draw a demarcation between social and natural science using the criteria of causal and ontological dependence. Focusing on current debates about the definition of marriage, Guala shows how these abstract philosophical issues have important practical and political consequences.
Moving beyond specific cases to general models and principles, Understanding Institutions offers new perspectives on what institutions are, how they work, and what they can do for us.
- GenresPhilosophyScience
256 pages, Hardcover
Published July 12, 2016
10 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Francesco Guala
7 books4 followersFrancesco Guala is a philosopher of science working primarily on foundational issues of economics and social science, using theoretical and empirical methods. As of July 2012 he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Milan (Italy).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 3, 2023
While I am sympathetic to the idea that philosophy and social science should be more symbiotic, and while I do understand many of the complaints the author has with the contemporary literature in social ontology especially, I do also think that there is as much to complain about in Guala's own account as in others. It quite brutally ignores the German tradition, for one thing, which was always fluent in and conversant with its own social science tradition, which, admittedly, was one dominated by sociology - but so what? Further, the level of smoothing over the account goes for and the extent to which it ignores alternatives for "unification" across the disciplines Guala is interested in is also quite headscratch-inducing. The worst offence though, is the bandwagon-jumping on naturalism and realism. Guala's picture of the type-token distinction of institutions is, frankly, bloated. The class of coordination problems the "kind" an institution belongs to is not a well-defined set, to pretend it is I think ignores all the interesting questions.
The presentation is clear and the book reads well though, so nice, I guess.
The presentation is clear and the book reads well though, so nice, I guess.
Currently reading
July 13, 2018https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/understandin...
From NDPR this seems a very solid and good read. It is especially useful for bolstering the "realist" position in social ontology.
The following is extracted and (lightly) edited from the above NDPR book review:
This book unifies two of the main traditions (rule-based; long prevalent in sociology and anthropology and equilibrium-based theories, preferred by economists) on social ontology in opposition to a third (joint intentionality-based, dominant today).
Rule-based theories: institution as body of rules.
Equilibrium-based: institutions emerge as equilibria of cooperative interactions, modeled using the resources of game theory.
By treating rules as "symbolic markers that represent equilibria . . . and help the players use a particular coordination device" (p. 55), Guala offers an account of institutions that relies only on individualist conceptions of agency and intentionality, making joint intentionality-based superfluous.
The rules that form institutions are strategies in coordination games. (The three main examples of "institutions" in the book are marriage, money, and property.) Rules have the form of conditionals: if X then do Y. When we make a rule to strategically solve a coordination problem (e.g. "if we have made a pact, then cooperate"), a new strategic situation emerges. By conditioning action on situation (a signal, environmental feature, past patterns, etc.), rules create correlated equilibria. Guala calls this the "rules-in-equilibrium" account of institutions.
Contra Searle, constitutive rules are not necessary for understanding institutions. Constitutive rules typically have the form "X (a non-institutional characterization; e.g. a river) counts as Y (the institution; e.g. a border) in conditions C." Guala argues that constitutive rules introduce terms referring to the "actions" associated with a situation- the proper analysis should be "If C, then X is Y, and if Y then [do] Z" (p. 64). This way constitutive rules do not create new coordinating devices rather than new entities: By calling a river (X) "border" (Y), they make salient the correlated equilibrium created by the rules (if Y then do Z).
The resulting view is a form of realism about institutions- in the same tradition as Bicchieri's Grammar of Society (2005): institutions are real kinds independent of our beliefs about them and they support inductive inferences and generalizations.
This realism about institutions permits Guala to present a broadly Weberian account of the relationship between social change and the social sciences: If an institution facilitates coordination in a game with multiple equilibria, then ...there is typically an alternative arrangement to the current one, which means that it is open to reform. (p. 139)
Using the institutional terms introduced by constitutive rules to represent strategies permits human social sophistication in equilibrium. Institutions thus "causally" (i.e., contingently as opposed to ontologically) depend on mental representations.
Searle-like views subject institutions to collective acceptance, making institutions ontologically predicated on minds. It’s like agents bring borders into existence by designating a river as representing borders. But for Guala, the work could be done by agents’ beliefs like: "we are south of the river, so we may graze our cattle here" irrespective of any concrete geographical identification of a border or even an idea about a border. Agents may have false beliefs about borders while still following rules that maintain an equilibrium. Institutions are thus causally dependent on representations, yet may be systematically mis-represented (as true borders determined by the location of the river and not by the agents’ mental representations).
Since our beliefs may be false, self-reflection has no privileged access to the social world. The equilibrium currently maintained by a given set of institutional rules must be determined empirically.
Guala recognizes that the rule "if X, then do Y" has a deontic modality. However, "the question of the deontic power of institutions is whether one should conform to the rule in the first place" (p. 74). The relevant question of deontic power is not about the justification of such representations (expressing strategies in the form of rules), but their content.
He thus treats the issue of deontic power as a matter of moral or political justification. The ultimate choice of institutions is a moral or political matter, not scientific. The function of rules is formally represented as constraining action by imposing costs. (The formal representation effectively reduces that deontic content to calculating the costs of transgression.).
The account of institutions thus supports a rather traditional fact/value dichotomy as theory of institutions should not depend on taking sides on the nature of normativity. (Thus, contrary to its caveats, the book does take a stand on the character of normativity, and it does so without sustained argument for its position.)
From NDPR this seems a very solid and good read. It is especially useful for bolstering the "realist" position in social ontology.
The following is extracted and (lightly) edited from the above NDPR book review:
This book unifies two of the main traditions (rule-based; long prevalent in sociology and anthropology and equilibrium-based theories, preferred by economists) on social ontology in opposition to a third (joint intentionality-based, dominant today).
Rule-based theories: institution as body of rules.
Equilibrium-based: institutions emerge as equilibria of cooperative interactions, modeled using the resources of game theory.
By treating rules as "symbolic markers that represent equilibria . . . and help the players use a particular coordination device" (p. 55), Guala offers an account of institutions that relies only on individualist conceptions of agency and intentionality, making joint intentionality-based superfluous.
The rules that form institutions are strategies in coordination games. (The three main examples of "institutions" in the book are marriage, money, and property.) Rules have the form of conditionals: if X then do Y. When we make a rule to strategically solve a coordination problem (e.g. "if we have made a pact, then cooperate"), a new strategic situation emerges. By conditioning action on situation (a signal, environmental feature, past patterns, etc.), rules create correlated equilibria. Guala calls this the "rules-in-equilibrium" account of institutions.
Contra Searle, constitutive rules are not necessary for understanding institutions. Constitutive rules typically have the form "X (a non-institutional characterization; e.g. a river) counts as Y (the institution; e.g. a border) in conditions C." Guala argues that constitutive rules introduce terms referring to the "actions" associated with a situation- the proper analysis should be "If C, then X is Y, and if Y then [do] Z" (p. 64). This way constitutive rules do not create new coordinating devices rather than new entities: By calling a river (X) "border" (Y), they make salient the correlated equilibrium created by the rules (if Y then do Z).
The resulting view is a form of realism about institutions- in the same tradition as Bicchieri's Grammar of Society (2005): institutions are real kinds independent of our beliefs about them and they support inductive inferences and generalizations.
This realism about institutions permits Guala to present a broadly Weberian account of the relationship between social change and the social sciences: If an institution facilitates coordination in a game with multiple equilibria, then ...there is typically an alternative arrangement to the current one, which means that it is open to reform. (p. 139)
Using the institutional terms introduced by constitutive rules to represent strategies permits human social sophistication in equilibrium. Institutions thus "causally" (i.e., contingently as opposed to ontologically) depend on mental representations.
Searle-like views subject institutions to collective acceptance, making institutions ontologically predicated on minds. It’s like agents bring borders into existence by designating a river as representing borders. But for Guala, the work could be done by agents’ beliefs like: "we are south of the river, so we may graze our cattle here" irrespective of any concrete geographical identification of a border or even an idea about a border. Agents may have false beliefs about borders while still following rules that maintain an equilibrium. Institutions are thus causally dependent on representations, yet may be systematically mis-represented (as true borders determined by the location of the river and not by the agents’ mental representations).
Since our beliefs may be false, self-reflection has no privileged access to the social world. The equilibrium currently maintained by a given set of institutional rules must be determined empirically.
Guala recognizes that the rule "if X, then do Y" has a deontic modality. However, "the question of the deontic power of institutions is whether one should conform to the rule in the first place" (p. 74). The relevant question of deontic power is not about the justification of such representations (expressing strategies in the form of rules), but their content.
He thus treats the issue of deontic power as a matter of moral or political justification. The ultimate choice of institutions is a moral or political matter, not scientific. The function of rules is formally represented as constraining action by imposing costs. (The formal representation effectively reduces that deontic content to calculating the costs of transgression.).
The account of institutions thus supports a rather traditional fact/value dichotomy as theory of institutions should not depend on taking sides on the nature of normativity. (Thus, contrary to its caveats, the book does take a stand on the character of normativity, and it does so without sustained argument for its position.)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews