Internality of Actions and of Points of View: Reply to Buekens, Bauwens, and Cossaer

In this reply to Buekens, Bauwer, and Cossaer’ comments to my “Acting Within and Outside an Institution” I first raise some doubts on the idea that all institutions can be described as solutions to problems of coordination, rather describing them as systems of constitutive rules embedded in practices that serve social needs. On this basis, I maintain that the metaphor of chess is particularly helpful in describing social institutions. Then, I explain why I think that the pragmatics of institutional actions described in my previous paper is better described in terms of illocutionary force rather than perlocutionary e ects. Finally, in order to meet the objection that Hart’s distinction between internal and external point of view is orthogonal to my phenomenology, I distinguish between internality/externality of actions and of points of view and I explain how they are connected.