The 12th biennal collective intentionality conference — july 13–25, 2020
Institutions, Generic Agency, and the Agent-Exclusion Problem
Kirk Ludwig argues that institutions “obviously do not constitute in any ordinary sense a thinking being” (Ludwig 2017, 233). Michael Bratman agrees, but raises the possibility of a more “generic” conception of agency under which institutions might fall (Bratman 2018). I rely on enactivist theories of mind, in addition to work in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of law, to flesh out a version of Bratman’s provocative suggestion. A biologist claims that a sphex wasp digs a burrow for the purpose of laying her eggs. The claim is not that the wasp did so intentionally or deliberately, so it is natural to assume that the intentional idiom is what Ludwig calls a “convenience of language.” However, given that “the notion of agency can itself be understood variously,” philosopher of biology Samir Okasha argues that the biologist is best construed as gesturing at a modality of agency which is weaker than full-blown intentional agency but nevertheless captures “a real pattern in nature” (Okasha 2018, 11, 32). If there are well-defined criteria by which relatively simple organisms count as non-intentional, intelligent agents, then those same criteria might reveal a sense in which an institution could also qualify as an agent. I conclude by arguing that Dworkin’s law as integrity might be a candidate for intelligent agency of this kind.
Joshua Rust
Stetson University
Professor
Main research topics
social ontology, enactivism, philosophy of law, Max Weber
Favorite quote
"The animate form of our living body is thus the place of intersection for numerous emergent patterns of selfhood and coupling. ... In [Francisco] Varela’s image, our organism is a meshwork of 'selfless selves,' and we are and live this meshwork" (Evan Thompson 2007, 49).
https://stetson.academia.edu/JoshuaRustDiscussion
8 thoughts on “Institutions, Generic Agency, and the Agent-Exclusion Problem”
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Hi Josh, can’t attend the session unfortunately, but enjoyed your talk! I agree that an institution is not a thinking being, but it organizes such beings, so why can’t it be a plural agent, consisting of subjects who constitute it by taking practical and theoretical positions from the point of view of the institution? It’s also true that sometimes such an agent may be ‘thin’ in the sense that it takes only very few positions, but I don’t think that means it can’t function, because in the minds of those who constitute the institutions, those positions functions against the background of their general understanding of the world. I am a bit skeptical about the appeal to biology, isn’t this about advanced culture rather than about biology, to put it crudely?
Josh, thanks for the talk. I’ll try to make the session. Quick question. There are a number of different distinctions that can be drawn among systems and we might use ‘agent’ with modifiers to draw some of them. Suppose we grant that you’ve characterized a notion of ‘agent’ that might apply to institutions qua organizations. What theoretical role does that notion play in our understanding of how institutions work? That is, why is it important to distinguish between heteronomous and autonomous institutions in your sense?
One upshot that I didn’t mention during the discussion is that this account of institutions can help us make sense of difficult cases of institutional identity over time. If artifacts are individuated by their function, then an artifact that does X at t1 and an artifact that does Y at t2 are different artifacts. But if agents are self-individuating, and some institutions are agents, then we can make sense of how an institution that does X at t1 and Y at t2 are nevertheless the same institution (e.g., Elizabeth I vs. Elizabeth II are stages of the Crown, despite having very different functions and powers): they are genidentically related in virtue of being causally related in the right way (here I assume that only agents can bear the genidentity relation).
Thank, Josh. I think there are interesting questions about institutional identity over time but I think we can approach it in an ontologically deflationary way. We can ask when is one group of people at one time the same institution as another group of people at another time. We need not think that the institution at any time is anything over and above the people realizing it at that time. Then we can spell out criteria that take into account whether the institutions have the same origin and whether one can trace out a certain sort of history from the original to the present that explains it evolution internal to its organizational structure.
Hi Joshua, thank you for the interesting talk!
Since you went to all this trouble, to try to bring together evolutionary biology, social ontology and jurisprudence, I was wondering why Niklas Luhmann didn’t come up at all in your discussion – he took many of the ideas from Maturana and Varela’s 1972 book ‘Autopoiesis and Cognition’, combined them with Parson’s System’s Theory and applied them in the 80’s and 90’s brilliantly and originally on almost everything social, – from the legal system, the educational system, religion, to society itself, and evolved a novel and original sociological theory in doing so. Maybe his general approach does not satisfy you – after all, he abstracts away from the individual and looks at ‘communication’ as the fundamental unit of analysis, and so action-theoretical considerations lose somewhat in significance, but, in case you are not familiar with his work, it is definitely worth looking into. Just an idea!
Hope I can make it to the Q and A- thanks again for your talk and the presentation!
Thanks for your comment Dimitrios! Yes Luhmann is really good. The problem I have with Luhmann is that he explicates the closure characteristic of autopoietic systems in terms of *communication,* rather than in terms of intake and outtake matter and energy. He does this because he doesn’t think that formal institutional structures require matter and energy in the way that organisms do. Thus, Luhmann’s theory is *analogous* to Maturana and Varela’s, but not a strict application of it. I, however, see a tighter link. Institutions are groups that are constituted by people, and people do require matter and energy. Of course institutions are not metabolic systems, but are comparable to neurological systems which depend on, concern, and constrain the metabolic systems of their constituents.
Hi,
thanks for the interesting talk!
I think you are unto something by distinguishing notions of agency more finely. That said, I wonder whether the biology-oriented account you draw on might pose problems. The biological intelligent agents such as wasps are the results of evolutionary processes. Typically, we understand their goals and purposes in this evoluationary context. (I don’t know what role evolution plays in Okasha’s theory.) One might worry that institutional agents do not figure in similar evoluationary processes (although that has also been suggested) and therefore do not fit the same picture. The first of your three concerns goes into that direction. Interestingly you do not use the word evolution there, even though the notions of fitness and reproduction you use are evolutionary notions. I wonder whether you might avoid some of the problems by drawing more on cognitive science instead of philosophy of biology. My hope would be that this could strengthen your proposal.
I am also a bit unclear on your notion of artefacts. My tendency is to think of all groups, including organisations, as artefacts, but you seem to have a narrower understanding. Is there a specific theory of artefacts you endorse?
Anyway, thanks for the talk and I hope we can catch up in one of the online socials!
David,
Thank you so much for watching my video and for your reply! Despite drawing heavily from the philosophy of biology, you are right to point out that my talk makes scant mention of natural selection. Of course, such processes are extremely relevant to the engendering of cooperation and other more specific cultural traits, such as generalized trust, that transform an aggregate of individuals into a Stable Social Group. For example, both inclusive fitness theory (Hamilton 1964; Dawkins 1976) and multilevel selection theory (Price 1970; Sober and Wilson 1999) equivalently describe conditions under which cooperative traits might be selected for. But my topic concerns the transition from a Stable Social Group (a multi-agent system) to an Integrated Social Group (a multi-agent agent), and there are good reasons for thinking that evolution by natural selection is a less salient factor when it comes to this transition.
First, because Darwinian individuals are a precondition for evolution by natural selection, natural selection could not itself explain the arising of individuality or agency. It rather presupposes it. Of course, once such an individual arises, evolutionary processes can profoundly affect that individual’s nature. Otherwise put, autopoietic systems—systems organized around their own maintenance and perpetuation—are subject to natural selection but cannot themselves be explained by it (Deacon 2013, 428).
Second, natural selection requires variation in a population of such individuals (in addition to heredity and differences in reproductive success). But since our topic concerns the origins of individuality at the group-level, while in principle such a population of individuals could compete, I have argued that it remains unclear if there exists even one such Integrated Group, much less a population with sufficient variation to jumpstart an evolutionary process. Thus, my thesis is to be sharply distinguished from that of Geoffrey Hodgson’s, who thinks that naturally selective mechanisms are ubiquitous in the social sphere: “the Darwinian mode of explanation is essential in accounting for the origins and dynamics of families, firms and social institutions” (Hodgson and Knudsen 2008, 66; see also Hodgson 2004). Hodgson presupposes that families, firms, and social institutions are paradigm Darwinian individuals; however, if Darwinian individual historically self-individuate themselves, then I have advanced considerations which suggests that most, if not all , institutions are not such individuals (they might, however, be marginal individuals, in Godfrey-Smith’s sense (Godfrey-Smith 2009)). Of course, we discriminate better and worse heteronomous institutions, but the selective mechanisms are more comparable to the artificial rather than natural selection.
I’m still very much trying to figure out this stuff so it is quite possible that I’m confused on this matter.