Are Institutions Created by Collective Acceptance?

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Frederick
Keyword(s):  
Collective Acceptance

Declarations and Status Functions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
Recent Claim

Chapter 12 evaluates, in the light of the analysis of status functions in previous chapters, a recent claim by Searle that all institutional facts, and so all status functions, are created by declarative speech acts. An example of a declaration is an employer saying “You’re fired” to an employee and thereby making it the case that he is fired. The chapter argues that while declarations are often used, given background conventions in a community, to impose status functions on objects, they are not necessary, and that more generally the idea that status functions are imposed by representing that object as having them is mistaken, in the light of the earlier analysis of collective acceptance as a matter of members of a community having appropriate we-intentions or conditional we-intentions directed at the relevant things.

Status Functions and Conventions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Coordination Problem ◽  
Dependent Function ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
Relevant Notion

Chapter 9 argues first that the assignment of a status function to an object or type of object for use on repeated occasions constitutes a convention. The relevant notion of convention is that of collective acceptance by a group of a solution to a coordination problem. This is contrasted with David Lewis’s account of convention. Next, it provides an analysis of collective acceptance as a matter of members of a group having either appropriately interlocking we-intentions directed at particular objects or appropriately interlocking conditional we-intentions directed at objects or types of objects. Finally, it explains, in light of this, in what sense a status function is an intention dependent function, that is, a function that cannot be performed by an object having it unintentionally.

scholarly journals ‘Economic property rights’ as ‘nonsense upon stilts’: a comment on Hodgson

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL H. COLE
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Category Mistake ◽  
Institutional Fact ◽  
The World ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
The Right

AbstractHodgson's (2015) critique of extra-legal ‘property rights’ – in this case, so-called ‘economic property rights’ – is right on target. This Comment contributes two further points to his critique. First, the notion of ‘economic property rights’ is based on what Gilbert Ryle (1949) referred to as a ‘category mistake’, conflating physical possession, which is a brute fact about the world, with the right or entitlement to possession, which is a social or institutional fact that cannot exist in the absence of some social contract, convention, covenant, or agreement. The very notion of a non-institutional ‘right’ is oxymoronic. Second, the fact that property is an institutional fact does not mean it must exist with the structure of a ‘state’ (as Bentham suggested). Rather, institutions like ‘property rights’ only require some community, however large or small, operating with what Searle (1995; 2005) calls collective intentionality and collective acceptance, according to shared ‘rules of recognition’ (Hart, 1997).

scholarly journals Stories affording new pathways: bridging the divide between aged and disability care

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 819-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Dawson ◽  
Christopher Sykes ◽  
Peter McLean ◽  
Michael Zanko ◽  
Heather Marciano
Keyword(s):  
Stages Of Change ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
Aged Care ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Action Research Approach ◽  
Collective Acceptance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the early stages of change and the way that stories can open up forms of collaborative dialogue and creative thinking among divergent stakeholders on known but “intractable” problems by enabling multiple voices to be heard in the co-construction of future possibilities for change. The empirical focus is on a project undertaken by two organizations located in Australia. The organizations – AAC, a large aged care provider and Southern Disability Services, a disability support service – collaborated with the researchers in identifying and re-characterizing the nature of the problem in the process of storying new pathways for tackling the transitioning needs of people with intellectual disabilities into aged care services. Design/methodology/approach – An action research approach was used in conducting interviews in the case organizations to ascertain the key dimensions of the presenting problem and to identify change options, this was followed by an ethnographic study of a Pilot Project used to trial the provision of disability day service programmes within an aged care setting. Findings – A key finding of the study centres on the importance of stories at the early stages of change in widening the arena of innovative opportunities, in facilitating collective acceptance of new ideas and in initiating action to resolve problems. The paper demonstrates how stories are used not only in retrospective sensemaking of existing problems but also in giving prospective sense to the possibilities for resolving protracted problems through innovative solutions that in turn facilitates a level of collective acceptance and commitment to opening up new pathways for change. Originality/value – The paper focuses on problem characterization during the early stages of change and bring to the fore the often hidden notion of time in utilizing concepts from a range of literatures in examining temporality, stories and sensemaking in a context in which future possibilities are made sense of in the present through restorying experiences and events from the past. On a practical and policy front, the paper demonstrates the power of stories to mobilize commitment and action and presents material for rethinking change possibilities in the delivery of aged and disability care.

scholarly journals London Yearly Meeting’s Response to the Richmond Declaration, 1887: A Case Study in the Avoidance of Religious Schism

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-278
Author(s):  
Paul G. W. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Wide Range ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
Religious Schism

London Yearly Meeting’s response to the Richmond Declaration of 1887 was neutral in that it neither endorsed nor rejected it. The Declaration was seen by British Friends in a variety of ways. These included it being viewed as either an affirmation or not of existing Quaker beliefs, a document that was more relevant to the American Quaker context, a useful statement of beliefs or an attempt to impose a creed. While failure to accept the Declaration has been interpreted as a move towards supporting an emerging liberal Quakerism, the decision to also not reject it has often been overlooked. An evaluation of the discussions about the Declaration that took place at the Yearly Meeting in London, May 1888, and which were reported in the Quaker journals The British Friend and The Friend (London), highlights the wide range of views that were held. It is proposed that the complex set of relationships that existed between different groups within London Yearly Meeting and the role played by key individuals determined a nuanced response to the Declaration which was sufficiently acceptable to all sides. Paradoxically, this unity was founded upon a collective acceptance of theological discordance within London Yearly Meeting. Consequently, schism was avoided as evangelical, conservative and liberal Quaker narratives were able to coexist alongside a non-committal response to the Declaration.

scholarly journals Neutrality and relative acceptability in judgment aggregation

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Zoi Terzopoulou ◽  
Ulle Endriss
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Judgment Aggregation ◽  
Aggregation Rule ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
Special Case

AbstractOne of the fundamental normative principles in social choice theory is that of neutrality. In the context of judgment aggregation, neutrality is encoded in the form of an axiom expressing that, when two possible judgments enjoy the same support amongst the individuals, then either both or neither of them should be accepted. This is a reasonable requirement in many scenarios. However, we argue that for scenarios in which individuals are asked to pass judgment on very diverse kinds of propositions, a notion of relative acceptability is better suited. We capture this notion by a new axiom that hinges on a binary “acceptability” relation A between propositions: if a given coalition accepting a proposition p entails the collective acceptance of p, then the same should be true for every other proposition q related to p via A. Intuitively, pAq means that p is at least as acceptable as q. Classical neutrality is then a special case where all propositions are equally acceptable. We show that our new axiom allows us to circumvent a classical impossibility theorem in judgment aggregation for certain scenarios of practical interest. Also, we offer a precise characterisation of all scenarios that are safe, in the sense that any aggregation rule respecting the relative acceptability between propositions will always return logically consistent outcomes.

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