How to Study Institutions

How to Study Institutions Institutions are more than intellectual structures, but their impact is only explainable from this perspective. They set conditions for the formulation of problems and standards for acceptable solutions to them. In their capacity as intellectual structures, they regulate life. They determine such things as how one does or does not get married, or the nature of education, or how one does or does not do business, and so forth. But it is obvious that institutions are not merely intellectual structures. Actions are steered by institutions and may be deemed part and parcel of them but actions also have emotional and psychological dimensions, which are not reducible to rational problem-solving. Adherents to religions will often not deem their commitments to be a product of the wish to be rational or to solve some specific problem, but as due to some other, deeper, more metaphysical feeling or intuition. This is to be expected, since even rationality is intimately connected with feelings. Humans may have very highly developed and deep emotional attachments to institutions as a way of guaranteeing rational practice. Popper’s theory that humans have an innate desire to belong to a closed society and that this is contrary to reason may be modified to the view that all individuals have attachments to institutions in order to preserve rationality. And this is no different for open or closed societies. Such attachments are just as necessary for open societies as for closed ones. But, even though institutions have various aspects, the problem of how they steer events can only be solved from the point of view of their ability to help or to hinder individuals to solve problems. Only from this point of view can we take account of how rational thought and action steer events. And this is the basis of all social scientific explanation. Even when we explain events, if we can, as due to non-rational or irrational behavior, we need to explain how this differs from rational behavior and the nature of the breakdown of rationality, as Weber and Popper explained. We can only solve the problem of how institutions steer events by looking at how institutions set frameworks for solving problems, because, when individuals cease to use specific institutions to solve problems, these institutions cease to have any ability to steer events. The more, for example, individuals decide to live together without getting married, the less influence the institution of marriage will have on events. The more people use religious institutions to solve problems the greater their influence and strength is. Social scientific explanations of how institutions steer events are only possible to the degree that individuals use them to solve problems. And, when this is not possible, no explanation whatsoever is

possible: we are left with viewing social events as mere combinations of masses of individual behavior. This may perhaps occur when, for example, mass hysteria sets in. But then the results will not be foreseeable or capable of being understood in any detail whatsoever. In order to explain how institutions steer events by setting the problem structures of problems which individuals seek to solve, we need to look at how institutions enable or hinder the ability of individuals to solve problems; and to do this we need to identify standards whose impact we wish to study. We will need to use normative theories to identify which problem-solving capabilities we want to descriptively investigate. And we need to recognize the imperfections of problem structures which institutions set. Which institutional standards of rationality should social scientists study? Institutions embody standards of rationality which enable us to explain how they steer events by steering problem-solving activity. A central task for the social sciences is, then, the examination of how the standards institutions set help or hinder individuals to solve problems. We are faced with the task of identifying such standards. In this regard we may choose to study broad standards of rationality, or general standards of how to solve problems which demand consistency or consistency with science or with religion. And we may also examine more detailed standards for this or that, for paying bills, or for safety. We may seek general theories about how institutions enable or hinder problem-solving and/or we might seek to gain knowledge about this or that rather narrowly formulated problem. We may use general theories to appraise individual problem-solving activities and the study of these activities to appraise our more general theories. As Agassi and, following him, Hattiangadi have suggested, rationality is piecemeal and involves using various techniques. Standards of rationality apply to the choice of problems, the nature of criticism and the desiderata for solutions. But such standards may be designed quite generally or for specific tasks. On the view proposed here there is no sharp division between general standards of rationality (or strategies of rationality), on the one hand, and standards and/or strategies which are used to solve specific problems, on the other hand. We may use standards of one level of generality to form standards or criticize standards at another level. The standards for applied science or technology need not be the same and neither need be the same as standards for theoretical science. In one context we may want adventurous attempts to find new theories and in another area we may want security. Standards may be designed for all sciences, say, that no theory may be contradictory or that all theories should, if possible, be testable. But they may also be more specific, say, that in technology, one should demand that proposals be consistent with well-corroborated theories, that is, theories which have been tested to see whether possible unwelcome consequences might arise from their use.