Collective acceptance, social institutions, and social reality - Criticisms and Reconstructions

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 2003  by Raimo Tuomela

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However, in actual life we often have to get along with a weakened version of this performative. Thus, while the above kind of collective performative of the "standard" kind, viz., "We hereby agree that p," is sufficient for the creation of a new conceptual and social status for some entity, it is not necessary (cf. Section IV). What is necessary is that the group members think and act as if the above kind of performative had been authoritatively issued (by the group members or their authorized representatives). Accordingly, there should be functional equivalence (or "near-equivalence") with the linguistic case, so that the group members are disposed to think and act as if the above kind of speech act by the group members (or other authorities) had created the institution (or, more generally, social artifact) in question. Collective acceptance need not involve language use, although it must be linguistic in a broader, non-verbal sense.

Above we discussed collective acceptance in terms of seeing to it that s is premisible, where premisibility also was taken to cover intentionally acting on the premise (viz., the thought it expresses). This is basically we-mode acting, for here the reason for action is in part that s. However, in actual life it cannot be required that all group members or even their majority have accepted p in this we-mode sense, although behaviorally they will by and large have to act in the right way (e.g., use squirrel fur as money).

Once a proposition, s, has been collectively accepted, collective acceptance (which need not invariably be in a we-mode sense) can be regarded as a disposition to perform relevant collective social actions (viz., actions performed in part for the same social reason) concerning the accepted content s. The social reason here will be that s is the core content of a shared we-attitude, and that they are understood collectively to satisfy or uphold (as the case may be depending on the direction of fit of the attitude). It can be noted that in the case of constitutive institutional beliefs such as that squirrel fur is money (s), the direction of fit is world-to-language (contrary to normal beliefs). Thus the (mere) reason s for action is that squirrel fur is money and the social reason is that this is a we-belief in the group. The participants may be either collectively or privately committed to this kind of satisfaction and upholding activity. They must in this context mutually believe that they have collectively accepted s and understand what such collective acceptance is (and thus that they are committed to s).

As their social reason involves not only the idea of satisfying or upholding s but also the idea of doing this in part because the others also do it, we can see that collective acceptance involves reflection of social expectations. The participants must be aware of, or believe, not only that they themselves have accepted s but also that the others have similarly accepted s and in fact that the others also believe similarly of the others (and so on higher up in the belief hierarchy, at least in principle). The fuller cases thus must involve at least loop beliefs: each person should believe something not only about the others' beliefs but also about their beliefs concerning his belief and perhaps more.