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Key research themes
1. How are constitutive rules conceptually necessary for defining institutional and social practices?
This theme investigates the nature of constitutive rules that do not merely regulate but also create or define social and institutional practices, such as games, language, law, and assertion. Understanding the constitutive status and conceptual necessity of these rules illuminates how social reality and normative systems emerge from collective acceptance and rule-constitution, providing foundational insights into social ontology and philosophy of language.
Key finding: Fassio argues that the correctness standard is constitutive of belief because it expresses a conceptual necessity grounded in the concept of belief itself, providing a novel argument by exclusion that the norm of truthfulness... Read more
Key finding: The paper connects Searle's constitutive rules with Hart's internal point of view, showing that constitutive rules presuppose collective acceptance by subjects who adopt a normative stance, making institutional facts... Read more
Key finding: This work refines Searle's account by proposing that performing rule-constituted actions involves enacting or accepting rules rather than merely acting according to them. It shows that constitutive rules make possible new... Read more
Key finding: The paper argues that constitutive rules cannot be fully captured by logic conditionals or causal connectives but rather require understanding of supervenience relations between brute and institutional facts. It advances the... Read more
Key finding: By integrating Hart's and Searle's perspectives, the paper highlights the dependence of institutional reality on the internal point of view, i.e., the shared acceptance and normative engagement with constitutive rules by... Read more
2. What is the normative and explanatory role of constitutive rules in law and social institutions?
This theme addresses how constitutive rules underpin legal norms and social institutions by endowing actions with institutional status and normative force. It explores the constitutive conventions that function as coordination mechanisms and analyzes how constitutive rules create rule-constituted artifacts with emergent normative properties, shedding light on the legal internal point of view and the binding nature of social rules.
Key finding: Fabrizio criticizes reductionist accounts and defends constitutive rules as explanatorily indispensable because they provide a comprehensive account of social artifacts endowed with institutional statuses and emergent... Read more
Key finding: Marmor argues for a conventionalist account of Hart's rule of recognition by defending the constitutive character of legal rules as social conventions that create coordination mechanisms and normative frameworks. He explains... Read more
Key finding: This paper distinguishes regulative rules as a normative kind that is enacted or accepted by human activity and occupy a middle ground between orders and normative truths. By clarifying their propositional content and... Read more
Key finding: The authors argue that constitutive rules are 'in force' for participants iff they have working knowledge of the rules, intend and conform to core rules, and respect remaining rules by following idealized judgments. This... Read more
Key finding: Hart's internal point of view is linked to the acceptance and normative attitudes towards constitutive rules that establish the binding force of law and social institutions. This perspective underpins the normative structures... Read more
3. How do linguistic and social conventions relate to conventions, coordination, and common ground in social interactions?
This theme examines the nature of conventions as regularities of social behavior that enable coordination, focusing on distinctions between lawlike and enabling conventions, and the role of shared common ground in resolving ambiguities arising from sense conventions. This research informs the understanding of the foundational mechanisms enabling language use, social cooperation, and norm formation.
Key finding: The paper distinguishes between lawlike conventions, which require near-universal compliance and impose behavior (e.g., stopping at red lights), and enabling conventions, which are less rigid and provide candidate... Read more
Key finding: Marmor utilizes the Humean conception of conventions as mutual expectations that generate reasons for action based on others’ behavior. This conception explicates norms as coordination devices holding normative sway due to... Read more
Key finding: By situating regulative rules as normative contents in force via social acceptance, this work clarifies how social rules operate as coordination mechanisms distinct from mere orders or normative truths. This conceptualization... Read more