Institutions as dispositions: Searle, Smith and the metaphysics of blind chess

Abstract

This paper addresses the question what the fundamental nature and mode of being of institutional reality is. Besides the recent debate with Tony Lawson, Barry Smith is also one of the relatively few authors to have explicitly challenged John Searle's social ontology on this metaphysical question, with Smith's realism requirement for institutions conflicting with Searle's requirement of a one‐world naturalism. This paper proposes that an account of institutions as powers or dispositions is not only congenial to Searle's general account, but can also satisfy both the realism and the one world requirements. Searle's worry that such a dispositional account is unable to account for the deontic nature of institutions is countered by an appeal to higher‐order powers as well as Searle's notion of the gap and desire‐independent reasons for action.

From Searle to Scotus and Back: Institutions, Powers, and Mary

“…The experience of any normal, conscious, free action contains within it the possibility of not performing that action, but doing something else instead (Searle 2001, 233 emphasis added) If the will is this particular two-way power, it would imply that the fundamental nature and mode of existence of human institutional reality is such, that it is permanently and necessarily in a peculiar state of being able to become manifest when it is not, or of disappearing when it is manifest. Such a powers-based account of institutional reality is developed more fully elsewhere (Bauwens 2018b).…”

“…Will we be free in heaven in any meaningful sense of being able to do otherwise if we no longer have the possibility to sin, i.e., to do otherwise than perfectly adhere to those standards? A response to that problem has been provided elsewhere (Bauwens 2017), using a Scotist account of freedom to resolve the dilemma. Very briefly, the proposal stresses the link between the human power to (co-)create with the divine power to create (ex nihilo) -and related to it, the human power to procreate as the highest kind of co-creation within the natural order.…”

“…Can Scotus, somewhat standing at the origin of the problem, also provide a solution? It is an exercise in philosophical theology that has also been developed elsewhere (Bauwens 2018a), but is here taken up from the specific perspective of social ontology.…”

Functionaries: Institutional Theory without Institutions

“…Put plainly, an institutional theory without institutions rejects a two-level ontology (Bauwens 2018;DeLanda 2006;Dépelteau 2008;Latour et al 2012;Schatzki 2016). This avoids the problems previously discussed and brings us much closer to Simmel's vision of a processual image of society:…”

Rule‐free regulation: Exploring regulation ‘without rules’ and apart from ‘deontic categories’

“…30 30 On deontology and deontic powers see Lobo (2015), Bauwens (2018), Martins (2018) and Stevanovic (2018). …”