Create to rule. Essays on constitutive rules

This book is a monograph on constitutive rules. Its eight chapters embody studies on the topic written by the author over the last ten years. The «essence» of constitutive rules, their demarcation from other kinds of rules, their structure, function and «point» are the guiding topics, as is the internal diversification and classification within the class of constitutive rules, assumed to form a well-delimited class. Searle’s work is frequently made reference to, but no less that of a few lesser-known Italian and other non-Anglophone students of constitutive rules – some of whom were more attentive to detail than Searle. Searle’s pseudo-copula «counts as» is given special attention. The studies in this book go, too, into substantial issues of the ontology and epistemology of constitutive rules, their pragmatics and their utility. The main idea, which emerges in various configurations in these studies, is that constitutive rules are useful in that they enable us to reach some of our (generically) preexisting ends, defined by nature or history, in a variety of substantially novel ways, which make these ends (specifically) novel, too. Activities created and ruled by constitutive rules are not autotelic (as it may sometimes seem), it is argued, because they are indulged in for the sake of a goal not exhaustively defined by the rules themselves, yet this goal must be reached in this rule-defined particular way – this is the main «charm» of such activities (a person who has the desire to win in chess will, typically, not be just as happy if he wins in golf or elephant polo). Also, the rôle of constitutive rules in social reality, all culture and civilisation, is brought to the fore. The book employs many examples (from law, games, religion, poetry and others) meant to make, as the author hopes, abstract strands of thought easier to follow.