Money as an Institution and Money as an Object
Keywords:
money, social ontology, institutions, folk ontologyAbstract
The folk conception of money as an object is not a promising starting point to develop general, explanatory metaphysical accounts of the social world. A theory of institutions as rules in equilibrium is more consistent with scientific theories of money, is able to shed light on the folk view, and side-steps some unnecessary puzzles.
References
Aoki, M. 2011. “Institutions as Cognitive Media between Strategic Interactions and Individual Beliefs.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 79: 20–34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2011.01.025.
Aydinonat, N. E. 2012. “Explaining the Origin of Money: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” In New Approaches to Monetary Theory, edited by H. Ganßmann, 58–78. London: Routledge.
Baker, L. R. 2007. The Metaphysics of Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511487545
Chalmers, D., D. Manley, and R. Wasserman, eds. 2009. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D. 2013. “Kind of Things – Towards a Bestiary of the Manifest Image.” In Scientific Metaphysics, edited by D. Ross, J. Ladyman, and H. Kincaid, 96–107. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696499.003.0005
Denzau, A. T., and D. C. North. 1994. “Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions.” Kyklos 47: 3–31. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805813.002
Ereshefsky, M., and T. Reydon. 2015. “Scientific Kinds.” Philosophical Studies 172: 969–86, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0301-4.
Frasser, C., and G. Guzmán. 2020. “What Do We Call Money? An Appraisal of the Money or Non-money View.” Journal of Institutional Economics 16: 25–40, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1744137419000419.
Gambetta, D. 1992. La Mafia Siciliana: Un’industria Della Protezione Privata. Turin: Einaudi. (Engl. Transl. The Sicilian Mafia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Goldberg, D. 2005. “Famous Myths of “Fiat Money”.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 37: 957–67, https://doi.org/10.1353/mcb.2005.0052.
Greif, A., and C. Kingston. 2011. “Institutions: Rules or Equilibria?” In Political Economy of Institutions, Democracy and Voting, edited by N. Schofield, and G. Caballero, 13–43. Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19519-8_2
Guala, F. 2016. Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400880911
Guala, F., and F. Hindriks. 2015. “A Unified Social Ontology.” The Philosophical Quarterly 65: 177–201, https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqu072.
Hausman, D. M. 1998. “Problems with Realism in Economics.” Economics and Philosophy 14: 185–213, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266267100003837.
Hawley, K. 2017. “Social Mereology.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 3: 395–411, https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2017.33.
Heine, B., and T. Kuteva. 2007. The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hindriks, F. 2012. “But Where is the University?” Dialectica 66: 93–113, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-8361.2012.01289.x.
Hindriks, F., and F. Guala. 2015. “Institutions, Rules, and Equilibria: A Unified Theory.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 459–80, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1744137414000496.
Hodgson, G. M. 2006. “What Are institutions?” Journal of Economic Issues 15: 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.2006.11506879.
Hodgson, G. M. 2019. “Taxonomic Definitions in Social Science, with Firms, Markets and Institutions as Case Studies.” Journal of Institutional Economics 15: 207–33, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1744137418000334.
Kelemen, D., and E. Rosset. 2009. “The Human Function of Compunction: Teleological Explanation in Adults.” Cognition 111: 138–43, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.001.
Kelemen, D., J. Rottman, and R. Seston. 2013. “Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 142: 1074–83, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030399.
Knight, J. 1992. Institutions and Social Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511528170
Kocherlakota, N. R. 1998. “Money is Memory.” Journal of Economic Theory 81: 232–51, https://doi.org/10.1006/jeth.1997.2357.
Korman, D. Z. 2020. “The Metaphysics of Establishments.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98: 434–48, https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2019.1622140.
Ladyman, J., and D. Ross. 2007. Every Thing Must Go. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276196.001.0001
Lagos, R., G. Rocheteau, and R. Wright. 2017. “Liquidity: A New Monetarist Perspective.” Journal of Economic Literature 55: 371–440, https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20141195.
Maki, U. 1998. “Aspects of Realism about Economics.” Theoria 13: 301–19.
Maki, U. 2020. “Reflections on the Ontology of Money.” Journal of Social Ontology 6: 245–63. https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2020-0063
Mantzavinos, C. 2001. Individuals, Institutions, and Markets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139175302
North, D. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808678
Nosal, E., and G. Rocheteau. 2011. Money, Payments, and Liquidity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262016285.001.0001
Noyes, A., and F. C. Keil. 2019. “Collective Recognition and Function in Concepts of Institutional Social Groups.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 149: 1344–59. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000711
Parsons, T. 1935. “The Place of Ultimate Values in Sociological Theory.” International Journal of Ethics 45: 282–316, https://doi.org/10.1086/208233.
Peacock, M. 2013. Introducing Money. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203578445
Pettit, P. 1996. “Functional Explanation and Virtual Selection.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47: 291–302, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/47.2.291.
Ritchie, K. 2015. “The Metaphysics of Social Groups.” Philosophy Compass 10: 310–21, https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12213.
Rose, D., and J. Schaffer. 2017. “Folk Mereology is Teleological.” Noûs 51: 238–70, https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12123.
Rose, D., J. Schaffer, and K. Tobia. 2018. “Folk Teleology Drives Persistence Judgments.” Synthese 108: 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01974-0
Ross, A. 1957. “Tu-tu.” Harvard Law Review 70: 812–25, https://doi.org/10.2307/1337744.
Ross, D., J. Ladyman, and H. Kincaid, eds. 2013. Scientific Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696499.001.0001
Seabright, P. 2010. The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400834785
Searle, J. R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press.
Searle, J. R. 2010. Making the Social World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195396171.001.0001
Simons, P. 2013. “Metaphysics in Analytic Philosophy.” In Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy, 710–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.013.0015
Smit, J. P., F. Buekens, and S. du Plessis. 2011. “What is Money? An Alternative to Searle’s Institutional Facts.” Economics and Philosophy 27: 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0266267110000441.
Smit, J. P., F. Buekens, and S. du Plessis. 2014. “Developing the Incentivized Action View of Institutional Reality.” Synthese 191: 1813–30, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0370-5.
Smit, J. P., F. Buekens, and S. du Plessis. 2016. “Cigarettes, Dollars and Bitcoins – An Essay on the Ontology of Money.” Journal of Institutional Economics 12: 327–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1744137415000405.
Smith, B., and J. Searle. 2003. “The Construction of Social Reality: An Exchange.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 62: 285–309, https://doi.org/10.1111/1536-7150.t01-1-00012.
Stalnaker, R. 1989. “On What’s in the Head.” Philosophical Perspectives 3: 287–316, https://doi.org/10.2307/2214271.
Strohmaier, D. 2019. “Group Membership and Parthood.” Journal of Social Ontology 4: 121–35, https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2018-0016.
Thomasson, A. L. 2019. “The Ontology of Social Groups.” Synthese 196: 4829–45, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1185-y.
Wilhelm, I. 2020. “The Stage Theory of Groups.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2019.1699587.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
