Armin W. Schulz, "Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences" (Springer, 2025)

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 Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences (Springer, 2025), Armin Schulz 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. Schulz, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas, also uses this account to provide an explanation of what institutional corruption amounts to, and to analyze current debates between shareholder vs. stakeholder views of the function of a corporation. This book is available open access here Armin W. Schulz is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

You can listen to Armin W. Schulz, "Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences" (Springer, 2025) online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Armin W. Schulz, "Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences" (Springer, 2025) is an episode from New Books in Philosophy by New Books Network.

This episode is 65:06 long.

This episode was published on Sep 10, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from New Books in Philosophy when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.