Mimetic Constitutive Rules

Abstract

This paper deals with the question of how constitutive rules in Searle’s sense can be subject to definite constraints, or boundaries. Three kinds of boundaries to institutional constitution are here identified: ontological, structural, and pragmatic. All these kinds of boundaries to some extent depend on the context of the broader social practice for which rule-constituted institutions are created. Further, the paper introduces a fourth kind of boundaries, called “mimetic”, which limit the process of institutional constitution according to a pre-existing social or natural reality that the institution is meant to imitate.