Armin W. Schulz, "Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences" (Springer, 2025)
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What is presentist social functionalism and why does it matter?
Welcome to the new books network.
Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise and Sarah Tyson. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Armin Schultz, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas. His new book Presentist Social Functionalism Bringing Contemporary Biology to the Social Sciences is just out from Springer and available open access. Humans live in richly normatively structured social environments. There are ways of doing things that are appropriate, and we are aware of what these ways are.
For many social scientists, social institutions are sets of rules about how to act. though theories differ about what the rules are, how they are established and maintained, and what makes some social institutions stable through social change, and others more transient. In his new book, Schultz defends a version of the general view that social institutions have functions, drawing on a concept of function from evolutionary biology. On his view, the function of a social institution is not a matter of its history, but those features that explain its ability to survive and thrive in the here and now. He also uses this account to provide an explanation of what institutional corruption amounts to and to analyze current debates between shareholder versus stakeholder views of the function of a corporation.
Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Armin Schultz. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Well, thank you. Um, I'm excited to talk about presentist social functionalism, uh bringing contemporary biology to the social sciences. Uh before we get to Yeah. Before we get to the um the the book itself. Um, tell us a bit about yourself, you know, how you got into philosophy, um, how the you know, the book came about.
Yeah. Um great. So um I think like with many people it's uh it's uh due to a lot a lot of coincidences. It is sort of what one one sort of falls into it a little bit. Um I um I had never done philosophy or economics in high school before. Um uh but um I'd like to think about I was sort of interested in thinking about things and and how things hang together in the sort of sellers type type sense. I was just I was inter And think about stuff. And I thought philosophy does that. So um I applied to I went to uh undergrad in Britain, and there you have to apply to a degree. So you don't you don't get to sort of explore different subjects. I you have to apply to do a certain course. And but I thought philosophy sounds sort of the kind of thing that I like and it's very broad and it's sort of applicable to lots of different things.
Um and economics similarly seemed seemed kinda like philosophy this to think about how um different like how people allocate resources in a sort of very abstract sense it sounded like philosophy just kind of a little bit more applied. I thought that's that's great. I get a little bit more applied, but it's all sort of just sort of how stuff hangs together. That sounds like the kind of thing I would like to do. So I enrolled in in that degree and that I was sort of kinda lucky 'cause it turned out I was right. Like I really loved it and And um so I I did it and then I um did my undergrad at LIC and then finished and then I wanted to do more of it. So I enrolled into in a grad program and full program also at the LIC.
Um and was sort of thinking more about this, the foundations of economics. You know, uh they use particularly models of decision making and they often justify those models by thinking about the consequences that the decisions that people make sort of have in and often these consequences are sort of in monetary terms, like if you make decisions in these ways and you can be Dutch booked, you can you you you're guaranteed to lose money. And I was sort of dissatisfied because I thought
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is presentist social functionalism and why does it matter?
0:01–7:26
2
How did Armin Schulz’s academic path lead to the development of this theory?
7:26–15:23
3
Why do traditional, history‑based accounts of social‑institution function fall short?
15:23–23:03
4
How does the presentist approach define the function of a social institution?
23:03–31:34
5
What examples show the difference between transient and resilient institutions?
31:34–39:15
6
How does presentist functionalism address corporations and the shareholder‑vs‑stakeholder debate?
39:15–47:54
7
How does the theory explain institutional corruption?
47:54–56:09
8
What research projects is Schulz pursuing after this book?
56:09–1:02:38
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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