Group Agents and Social Institutions: Beyond Tuomela's Social Ontology

Tuomela’s work on group agents and social institutionsis very rich and insightful. Although I agree with most of it, two features puzzle me: Tuomela’s ontological individualism, and Tuomela’s stance about constitutive rules. Insofar as ontological individualism is concerned, Tuomela’s claims about group agents seem to support ontological collectivism rather than the individualism that he defends. It remains unclear whether Tuomela appreciates that the mind-dependence of group agents as such does not rule out their existence (thesis 1). Furthermore, their causal efficacy supports their reality (thesis 2).
Tuomela believes that the notion of a constitutive rule can illuminate the enabling role of institutions. I have argued against this that regulative rules suffice for this purpose (thesis 3). Constitutive rules are important but mainly because they lay bare an ontology that regulative rules leave implicit (thesis 4). Finally, I have argued that what is enabled by collectively accepted rules, whether they be regulative or constitutive, is to be explicated in terms of the function of institutions, which is – as Tuomela argues – to facilitate or enhance coordination and cooperation.