Kobe Philosophy Seminar Series (13): Enacted institutions: from Masahiko Aoki to Francisco Varela(2025年11月6日（木））

As part of his comparative institutional analysis, Masahiko Aoki famously pioneered a conception of institutions that bridges the gap between the rule-following approach, still standard in economics due to D. North and O. Williamson, and a more heterodox game-theoretic conception. According to the former, institutions are top-down rules imposed on and constraining the behaviors of individuals and collectives. The latter, on the other hand, sees institutions as bottom-up, spontaneously generated behavioral patterns (formally modeled as the state of Nash equilibrium in repetitive games). Aoki’s conceptual bridge between these two views is cognitive in nature. First, in his 2001 paper, he used the concept of shared beliefs. Later, in 2011, he used the broader concept of "cognitive media." These media are "public representations" that enable individuals to coordinate their beliefs and expectations regarding the behaviors of others when picking their strategies in societal games. I will argue that, while the concept of "cognitive medium" rightly elicits some fundamental and necessary conditions for the emergence of institutions, the concept should be further enriched. What is missing from the picture is that all collective behaviors modelled as societal games assume a domain or space in which they can be exacuted (played), and most crucially, this domain can result from behaving (playing) itself. This creative or productive aspect of societal games will be fleshed out using the concept of enactment, which was introduced by Francisco Varela and his collaborators within the broader framework of the embodied mind paradigm. My talk will attempt to combine these two sources of insight, with some additional links also to phenomenology and ecological psychology.

イベント詳細
開催日時：2025年11月6日（木）17時00分～18時30分
開催場所：神戸大学人文学研究科 B134
参加費　：なし

事前登録：不要
演者：Konrad Werner (University of Warsaw)

問い合わせ先
神戸大学人文学研究科准教授　新川拓哉(niikawa@ferret.kobe-u.ac.jp)

主催　JSPS科研費課題番号24H00808（意識経験のナラティブを取得・分析する方法論の構築とその応用）

共催　倫理創成プロジェクト

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