1.1 Introduction

Humans are social beings of a peculiar sort. It is not just the case that we live in groups of conspecifics—many social animals, including honeybees, chipmunks, and ducks, do that too. It is also not just the case that we depend on others’ help and support to navigate the world around us—this is again something that is shared by many other organisms, from slime molds to chimpanzees. What makes us humans peculiar social animals is that our interpersonal relations are psychologically and normatively structured—and that in a dynamic manner.Footnote 1 We make our way through world by keeping track of what others are thinking (what their goals and motivations are, what they are feeling, and what they believe to be the case about their environment) and by what their place is in society (what they ought to do, given the social roles that they occupy) (Whiten and Byrne 1997; Sterelny 2003, 2012, 2021; Tomasello 2021, 2022). In short: we humans are peculiar for being psychological and normative social beings.

For present purposes, it is especially the latter part of this that is central: the fact that we live in normatively structured social environments. While the psychological and normative parts of human social living interact in many complex ways, they still deserve to be given separate treatments (for more on the psychological side of human social living, see e.g. Sterelny 2003; Spaulding 2018; Gopnik 1996; Spelke 2022; Schulz 2025). In this spirit, the focus of this book is specifically on the fact that we humans live in normatively structured social environments. Of course, this does not mean that the psychological aspects of distinctively human sociality will be completely ignored (see e.g. Chap. 6), but the focus will be on the “external” aspects of human social living, not the “internal” psychological ones.

Now, there can be many sources of human social normativity, from moral imperatives and religious commandments to the demands of tool manufacture (Nichols 2004; Stanford 2018; Kumar and Campbell 2022; Birch 2021). However, for present purposes, it is not necessary to distinguish these sources of social normativity further: what matters here is just that there are these social commandments—norms—that prescribe how we are meant to act in a different circumstances. It is furthermore the case that these norms are widely thought to be central to the existence of social institutions. Since this notion is fundamental to the rest of the book, it is important to pause here and consider the nature of social institutions in more detail.

1.2 Social Institutions

There are three main conceptions of social institutions that have been defended in the social scientific and philosophical literature (see e.g. Guala 2016; Guala and Hindriks 2015; Bicchieri 2006; Miller 2010; North 1990).Footnote 2 While a detailed discussion of all of these is beyond the scope of this book, a few clarificatory remarks are in order here to place the rest of the book on a solid foundation. (Indeed, the rest of the book can also be seen as an extended argument for the power of the common, rule-based view of social institutions—though much of what follows can, if suitably adjusted, also be made to work with at least some of the alternative approaches.)

On the theoretically most basic approach towards social institutions, they are just behavioral patterns in equilibrium (Lewis 1969; Guala and Hindriks 2015; Guala 2016; Bicchieri 2006; Schotter 2008). As agents engage in social interactions, the outcomes of these interactions depend on what all the agents are doing. Now, as is well-known, these kinds of strategic interactions are in equilibrium when the players’ actions are best responses to each other: given what the other players are doing, no player has an incentive to deviate from their chosen strategy. In the present context, this matters, as these equilibria can then be seen as social institutions. So, there is a social institution to drive on the left in Australia and on the right in the US, as, given that everyone else in Australia drives on the left, it is my best response to also drive on the left (and vice-versa for the US).

While there many compelling aspects of this approach towards social institutions, the main flaw that it faces is that it is overly thin. On this approach, all equilibria turn out to be social institutions, and all social institutions turn out to be equilibria. However, from a social scientific point of view, we often want to distinguish these. For example, if I am an engaged in a one-shot interaction with just one other person—say, we are walking towards each other in the park and are trying not to hit each other—there is no need to invoke a highly local, one-time social institution that governs the behavior of the two of us that day in this specific spot in the park. On the other hand, there is reason to invoke social institutions even in case where agents are not engaged in strategic games: for example, we may want to appeal to the existence of a social institution when noticing that a significant number of the people attending a heavy metal concert are wearing black leather clothes—even though we may also note that these clothing choices are not best responses to each other (say, because choosing which clothes to wear is not a strategic interaction). Hence, this approach towards social institutions will not be central in what follows.

On the other extreme is the teleological approach towards social institutions: this one is theoretically extremely rich. On this conception, a social institution is (typically though not necessarily) an organization—a structured set of social roles—dedicated to achieving a collective end (perhaps in a specific manner), where this structure is underwritten by social norms (Miller 2010, 2017).Footnote 3 This is called a “teleological” approach towards social institutions, as it builds the function of a social institution into the characterization of its nature.

Again, there is much to recommend in this account—specifically, the appeal to social norms avoids the overly broad implications of the equilibrium account. Still, the account also faces some major difficulties; unsurprisingly, these are the flipside of the equilibrium account. In particular, the account can be harder to apply and work with, as it requires a very rich philosophical tapestry to even get off the ground. To determine whether something is a social institution, and if so, of what kind, we need to determine its structure, roles, collective ends, actions, and functions. These are all contested philosophical notions—thus making progress in the social sciences dependent on the resolution of these philosophical questions. However, in practice, it seems that there is more agreement on what social institutions there are—from social media to golf clubs—than on the identification of the appropriate collective ends, roles, activities, and functions.Footnote 4

In between these two accounts is the most common characterization of social institutions: the one that sees social institutions as rules that structure human interactions and which set out the kinds of behaviors that, in a given type of situation, members of the society are expected to—and expect others to—engage in (see also Parsons 1951; North 1990; Searle 1995). Social institutions, in this standard social scientific sense, comprise a vast array of familiar aspects of contemporary social living, from the structure of the government (e.g., representative democracy) and the economy (e.g., free enterprise) to that of the family (e.g., polyandry) and religion (e.g., Hinduism). Note that it need not be obvious why social institution N prescribes behavior B in situation S. (This will become crucially important again momentarily.) Similarly, it is not presumed that the behavior prescribed by the institution is morally obligatory: institutionally-based norms are not necessarily moral norms.

The benefit of this account is that it avoids the pitfalls of either of the previous two types of accounts: it goes beyond seeing institutions as mere behavioral equilibria, but it is not so rich as to require the application of a major philosophical framework. For this reason, this is the account that will be the central in what follows.Footnote 5 While there is of course more that could be said about this account, this is all that is needed here—the rest of the book can be seen as an extended attempt to spell out its promises further. In short: for present purposes, it is key to note that social institutions should be seen to dictate the norms of behavior for a given society. Hence, making sense of how and why people act in the ways that they do thus depends on understanding these institutions.Footnote 6

1.3 The Function of Social Institutions: Some Historical Remarks

Given their importance to human thought and action, it is unsurprising that much work in the social sciences is centered on social institutions (see e.g. Guala 2016). For example, there is much work done on which political and economic institutions are conducive to high economic growth and stable societies (see e.g. Acemoglu et al. 2001; Robinson et al. 2005) and on which religious institutions underpin a liberalist free market society (Henrich 2020; Weber 1958).

However, this does not mean that an appeal to social institutions is necessarily easy. Which social institutions are there in a given society? Why are these institutions part of this society? Which of these institutions are key parts of this society, and which are peripheral ones that come and go out of existence quickly? Why do the institutions prescribe the behaviors that they do? It is not obvious how to answer these questions. Given the importance of the appeal to social institutions in social analysis, though, doing so is very important: to really understand why people do what they do, it is important to understand why the institutions in their society are the way that they are.Footnote 7

One major way of answering these questions is by appeal to the function of social institutions: we want to know what social institutions are for. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the appeal to the function of social institutions is about as old as the social sciences themselves, and continues to be very important (see e.g. Durkheim 1915 [1971]; Malinowski 1922; Elster 1979; Bigelow 1998; Pettit 1996; Booth 2003; Holmwood 2005; Potts et al. 2016). So, for example, functionalist perspectives have been a key element of the analysis of rituals: such rituals—e.g. harvest festivals—have been seen as being for increasing the cohesion of the society by integrating its members and relieving internal tensions (Eisenstadt 1990; Fallding 1963).

This, though, does not mean that this appeal is not also very controversial. In particular, assigning functions to social institutions is not straightforward. In one of the earliest treatments of this issue, Durkheim (1915 [1971]) saw societies as akin to superorganisms, and the function of the social institutions as whatever features contribute to this organism being “healthy” and persisting over time. While Durkheim’s own relationship with explicitly “functionalist” analysis was complex, his treatment was historically extremely influential in the social sciences (Pope 1975). Unsurprisingly, therefore, the literature on Durkheimian social analysis is large; fortunately, a detailed treatment is not necessary here. For present purposes, it is sufficient to note two points.

First, there is no question that the view has some questionable metaphysical presuppositions—in particular, the ideas that societies are actually superorganisms or that we can explain causes by their effects. This has led to a backlash among social scientists and philosophers (especially logical positivists) (Rosenberg 2012; Hempel and Oppenheim 1948). On the other hand, though, aspects of the view have been refined and taken up in the literature; key among these is the idea that the function of social institutions should be seen as their contribution to the persistence of a wider social system. Importantly, this need not require that effects explain their causes—though it does require some kind of feedback mechanism. This is an important point to which I return in in more detail in Chaps. 2 and 3. Interestingly, also, the idea that social functionalism can profit from adopting insights from biology is important—and something that is a key part of the account defended in this book (see Chap. 3). However, it remains the case that, while Durkheim’s views have laid the foundation for functionalist analysis in the social sciences, they are not the final formulation of this kind of analysis.

Indeed, several other accounts of social functionalism have been formulated and have come to be very influential in their own right. While discussing these accounts in more detail is the aim of Chap. 2, it is useful to note here that these alternative accounts have also been shown to face some challenges. For example, appealing to the history of a social institution is often tricky, as many social institutions lack such a history (Elster 1979; Kincaid 1990; Pettit 1996; Bigelow 1998). More generally, it is just not clear exactly what it implies when it is said that social institution N has function F. Despite much effort in addressing this issue, many open questions here are still remaining.Footnote 8

This is important to note here, as this book seeks to make progress on exactly this point. It provides a novel answer to the question of what the function of a social institution is and goes on to justify this answer as being an improvement over the major existing treatments. However, from the get-go, it is important to understand three aspects of the nature of the project of this book.

1.4 A New Social Science of Institutional Purpose: The Methodology of the Book

What follows in the rest of the book is a philosophical, principled look at the theory of social functionalism. The goal is not to place the different versions of social functionalism into their historical context, follow their development over time, or consider how the different forms of social functionalism have historically responded to each other (for an analysis like that, see e.g. Bigelow 1998; Holmwood 2005). Rather, the goal is to look at archetypal versions of these theories and consider their structural strengths and weakness. The goal thus an assessment of the merits of the theories as such.

Second, however, the account of functionalism defended here is still focused on the social realm. There is a lot of philosophical concerning functionalism in general—concerning applications in biology, cognitive science, and medicine, to name a few (see e.g. Allen et al. 1998; Ariew et al. 2002; Cummins 1975; Garson 2012; Lombrozo and Carey 2006; Piccinini and Garson 2014). While, as the rest of the book makes clear, much of this work is an important influence on and building block for the account here laid out, the goal in what follows is restricted to questions of the functions of social institutions specifically. Similarly, while the arguments to follow may also have implications for functional ascriptions in other contexts—e.g. in biology or cognitive science—spelling this out is not part of the present project.

Third, it is important to emphasize that the book takes a broadly “scientific” approach towards the question of the function of the social institutions. There is no question that this is a controversial decision; indeed, many scholars see no value in such an approach, and instead favor a “hermeneutical” approach that emphasizes a personal, historicist, narrative, understanding-focused take on social questions (see e.g. Agar 2021; Taylor 1971; Giddens 1984). On the latter perspective, social analysis should be centered on—among other things—how the participants of a social institution understand the institutions they are part: what these institutions mean for and to them. Trying to ground social analysis on the functions of social institutions—especially where these function are spelled out in non-meaning-based, “objective” ways, as is done here—is thus the very opposite of this hermeneutical approach.

Now, given the long and very contentious history of the “Methodenstreit” in its many guises, there is little hope that there is an argument that could be presented in this chapter or the book as a whole that would settle this dispute in ways that would satisfy defenders of the hermeneutical approach. However, what is possible is to at least make the disagreement explicit and thus to make the theoretical choice points clear. Indeed, doing this is the aim of the rest of the book: the book aims to show what the social scientific perspective on social functionalism can do. That is, the book as a whole tries to underwrite the contention that it is possible to formulate a compelling, scientifically-grounded view of social function. While this may not convince those who have fully made up their mind about these issues, it should be of relevance to those approaching these questions at least with an open mind that allows for the possibility that a scientifically-grounded, empiricist view of social functionalism may have something to offer to the social sciences.

Fourth and finally, though, while the defense of presentist social functionalism is principled-philosophical and not sociological-historical, this does not imply that it is constrained to highly abstract considerations only. On the contrary, the book is a deeply application-focused treatment of social functionalism. In fact, this application focus is a two-way street. On the one hand, by focusing the critical assessment and defense of social functionalism—in the new version laid out in what follows—on a few specific sets of cases (the function of corporations, system corruption, and the function of artefacts), an overly abstract treatment of this new version of functionalism is avoided. The strengths and weaknesses of the different forms of social functionalism come out best in the context of specific applications, and this book avails itself of this fact. On the other hand, it is also the case that the look at specific applications points strengths and weaknesses of different accounts of social functionalism that would otherwise be overlooked. That is to say, it is not just the case that the applications illustrate the critical assessment of different views of social functionalism. Rather, it is also the case that these applications are integral components of this kind of assessment.

1.5 The Structure of the Book

With this in mind, the rest of the book is structured as follows. In Chap. 2, I present the main existing ways of spelling out the function of social institutions: (a) historical social functionalism, (b) structural functionalism, (c) Pettit’s recent virtual social functionalism, and (d) intentionalist social functionalism. In each case, the chapter then presents, updates, and analyzes the most compelling objections to these traditional forms of social functionalism. The upshot of the chapter is the conclusion that a new approach to the topic of the function of social institutions is needed.

Chapter 3 then develops the new account of social functionalism that is at the heart of the book: presentist social functionalism. In particular, the chapter argues that social functionalism should be based on the actual bio-cultural selective or sorting pressures on the institution as it is now. The chapter shows how this idea can be deepened and underwritten with recent insights from evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology. It also considers a number of the key objections to this kind of view that have been or could be proposed, and shows why they fail to be compelling. In this way, the chapter lays the theoretical and argumentative ground for the further, application-focused development of presentist social functionalism.

Chapter 4 begins this further development and defense of presentist social functionalism by considering a widely discussed question about an important contemporary social institution: namely, the question of the function of corporations. As is well known, two main answers to the question of what corporations are for have been proposed in the literature: the shareholder-value theory and the stakeholder-value theory. The chapter lays out these two views, and then argues that an appeal to presentist social functionalism shows that the terms of this debate are too constrained. In particular, by applying presentist social functionalism to this debate, it becomes clear that there are further possible functions of corporations that have not even been considered in the literature, and that existing studies of this question have looked at the wrong data, and thus fail to be able to resolve it. This chapter thus shows the practical applicability and fruitfulness of presentist social functionalism—especially compared to its rivals.

Chapter 5 considers systemic corruption. Corruption is widely recognized to be a major social problem, but its characterization continues to be very controversial. Indeed, it is now commonly noted that what is being corrupted need not be an individual person at all but can be an entire social institution. This kind of institutional corruption has, especially in the last few years, come to be seen as ever more central and important. In this chapter, I advocate for a novel theory of this phenomenon, according to which it is the result of an individual or collective agent acting in ways that prevent a social institution from partially or fully fulfilling its function. In turn, the function of a social institution is spelled out in line with presentist social functionalism. The chapter shows that this new theory of institutional corruption is a useful addition to the literature, as it situates the study of this phenomenon in a wider functionalist approach toward the social sciences and does justice to the complexity of institutional corruption—both when it comes to its inherent nature and its moral evaluation. In this way, this chapter shows how presentist social functionalism can be the basis for new developments in adjacent fields, and unify them with existing work in the social sciences.

Chapter 6 (co-written with Clint Hurshman) begins by noting that assigning functions to artifacts and technologies is crucially important for a number of different reasons: in particular, it can explain how and why artifacts are used in the ways that they are, which artifacts are stable parts of society. In turn, this can help justify social policies and interventions. However, how to assign functions to artifacts is not yet fully clear. The most popular attempt to do so appeals to the intentions of the designer of the artifact—though others have tried to do so by appeal to the history of use of the artifact. However, in this chapter, we show that neither of these theories is fully compelling, and that a better account of artifact function can obtained by applying a variant of presentist social functionalism to this case. We lay out this presentist theory of artifact functions and apply it to two examples of controversial artifact functions: off-label uses of pharmaceuticals, and policy responses to ChatGPT and other large-language models. In this way, the chapter expands the criticism of alternative theories of social functionalism by considering the intentionalist account in more detail, and makes the wide reach of presentist social functionalism clearer.

Chapter 7 summarizes the overall argument of the book, draws out some general themes, and points in the direction of further work on this topic. The chapter also emphasizes the methodological innovations of the book as a whole: in particular, it shows how the book brings together cutting-edge work in biological sciences with that in the social sciences in an application-focused context.