Abstract

Institutions generate cooperative benefits that explain why they exist and persist. Therefore, their etiological function is to promote cooperation. The function of a particular institution, such as money or traffic regulations, is to solve one or more cooperation problems. We go on to argue that the teleological function of institutions is to secure values by means of norms. Values can also be used to redesign an institution and to promote social change. We argue, however, that an adequate theory of institutions should not be ‘moralized’ in that they should not be defined in terms of the values they are supposed to promote.

Details

Title
The functions of institutions: etiology and teleology
Author
Hindriks, Frank 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Guala, Francesco 2 

1  University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands 
2  University of Milan, Milan, Italy 
Pages
1-17
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Mar 2019
Publisher
Springer Nature B.V.
ISSN
00397857
e-ISSN
15730964
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02188-8
ProQuest document ID
2199612124
Copyright
Synthese is a copyright of Springer, (2019). All Rights Reserved., © 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.