Abstract
Nowadays, it is widely recognized that constitutive rules play a key role in social ontology. They are considered the primary source of meaning for every rule-based activity. But what can ensure the persistence of such activities? The most common proposed solution is to rely on social acceptance, and even though this is certainly part of the story, it is nonetheless not sufficient to explain what happens in breakdown situations. We need to embed into the system something that would preserve it from destruction. Our claim is that for this purpose, an arbitral function is needed. Intuitively, an arbitral function is a mechanism which is—at least partially—extra-contextual, and it is introduced to solve possible or actual impasses. This function may equally well be played by an intentional agent (like a referee in a football game) or by an extra-contextual rule (as the 50-move rule in chess). Our contribution aims to introduce the novel concept of arbitral function and show that it is widespread in institutional reality and it is essential in every institution. Finally, if constitutive rules determine that a certain activity counts as a valid element of an institution, then arbitral functions ensure that this activity persists by preventing impasses.
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Notes
- 1.
Probably such a match would not be considered valid according to the criteria of most national federations, but it is still a football match under many respects, differently from a match where the players use their hands.
- 2.
In the past, some variants of the game used to assign the victory to the player who had caused the stalemate, some the other way round (see Murray 1913).
- 3.
Logically, this is expressed by the formula R if P and Q, where we cannot have P and Q true and R false at the same time.
- 4.
It is interesting to notice that not all instances of discursive dilemma can be solved with the conclusion-based procedure, as it is in the present case, which does not allow to then decide on the premises (having decided to increase the taxes does not suggest anything on what to do then with the various expenses). This means that the criterion to choose between premise-based and conclusion-based procedures is strictly dependent on the particular dilemma for which the agents are voting.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
We cannot avoid to notice that the goal of Lewis’ research is language and thus meaning, but in his case it moves from a regulative dimension. This leads us to think that there is a point where regulative and constitutive dimensions could meet, even though the route to the singling out of that point seems still to have to be explored in social ontology; in this regard, see Marmor (2007).
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Bottazzi, E., Ferrario, R. (2013). Arbitral Functions and Constitutive Rules. In: Schmitz, M., Kobow, B., Schmid, H. (eds) The Background of Social Reality. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5600-7_12
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