Three Ways of Misunderstanding the Power of Rules

Abstract

Certain rules do not merely regulate social behaviors: they make social behaviors possible. That idea forms part of the philosophy of social science mainstream. It dates back at least to John Rawls’ distinction between rules derived from past experience and rules of a practice, and possibly long before. This chapter distinguishes and questions three ways of construing constitutive rules:

1. Constitutive rules are often thought to regulate some behaviors that would not be possible without them. This chapter claims, however, that it is true in a sense of all rules.

2. Constitutive rules alone, it is said, can confer statuses, rights, and duties, thus “creating” our social world. This chapter argues that most rules, including rules that do not look constitutive at all, logically imply statuses, rights, and duties. However, no rule creates these things in a causal sense.

3. The constitutive rules of a social practice can be seen as necessary to its definition, in such a way that the practice would be inconceivable without its rules. Such necessary rules, however, cannot be identified with certainty, as institutions change through time and space in ways that defy prediction.

The chapter concludes that philosophy of social science would fare better without the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules.