Institutions and Deontic Powers: Some Comments on the Tuomela-Searle Debate

In this talk I will analyze Tuomela’s theory of institutions and the most recent debate with Searle over the issue of whether institutions conceptually involve the creation and distribution of deontic powers. By way of analyzing Tuomela and Searle’s reciprocal criticisms, I conclude that Tuomela does not give us sufficient reasons to give up Searle’s thesis that institutions always involve deontic powers, but I also argue that it is necessary to go beyond Searle’s recent speech act-centered explanation of human sociality. More specifically, moving along the lines of Di Lorenzo’s view of constitutive rules as built into the logical and pragmatic structure of human activities, and making use of Searle’s hypothesis of the Background, I will argue in the final section that the deep roots of deontology can be found in our preintentional and reciprocal taking each other as potentially cooperative agents.