Vojtěch Zachník

University of Hradec Králové
  •  23
    The paper presents a novel view of social norms that reflects the importance of different agent types, their specific motivations and roles. How one identifies with a role and behavioral options available to the agent is crucial for the sustainability of the social norms. The analysis of a simple case of social norm is suggested as a default model for analysis, and then the classification of subjects, enforcers, and audience is introduced. This triangular typology of agents is extended by introd…Read more
  • Institutional Violations, Costs and Attitudes
    Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 53 (2). 2023.
    The paper proposes an alternative approach to the ontology of social institutions by systematizing various normative institutional influences and identifying processes that distinguish between conforming and violating behaviour. The prevailing – cost-based model – suggests that an agent's conformity to a specific institutional rule can be represented by a single measure – cost. The model is limited in its explanatory potential since it accounts for varieties of institutional behaviour in terms o…Read more
  •  226
    Disobedient Institutional Behavior
    Journal of Social Ontology 8 (1): 94-117. 2022.
    The paper aims to explain different cases of disobedient institutional behavior using the attitude-based model. The issue of how to analyze and capture the faces of disobedience in a simple model is approached in three steps: first, misbehavior is defined as a certain lack in normative attitudes; second, these attitudes are distinguished in terms of normative acceptance and normative guidance; and third, combinations of these attitudes represent basic types of disobedience: opposing, transgressing …Read more
  •  179
    Epistemic Foundations of Salience-Based Coordination
    Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 4 (28): 819-844. 2021.
    This paper aims to assess current theoretical findings on the origin of coordination by salience and suggests a way to clarify the existing framework. The main concern is to reveal how different coordination mechanisms rely on specific epistemic aspects of reasoning. The paper highlights the fact that basic epistemic assumptions of theories diverge in a way that makes them essentially distinctive. Consequently, recommendations and predictions of the traditional views of coordination by salience …Read more
  •  36
    When and why Conventions cannot Be Social Institutions
    Philosophia 48 (3): 1235-1254. 2020.
    The paper focuses on the issue of compatibility of social institution and convention. At first, it introduces the modest account of conventionality building on five distinctive features – interdependence, arbitrariness, mind-independence, spontaneity, and normative-neutrality – which constitute conventional behaviour, then it presents the two major theories of social institutions that explain them in terms of rules, or equilibria. The argument is that conventions cover a wide-ranging area and ca…Read more
  •  34
    The Minimalistic Definition of Conventions: One Step beyond Millikan’s Approach
    Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 22 (3): 378-394. 2015.
    The study proposes a new approach towards a social phenomenon called convention and submits a minimalistic definition of convention, which provides a promising basis for future analysis unburdened by contra-Lewisian objections. The definition itself, based on the insights of Ruth Millikan in the study Language Conventions Made Simple, represents a simple and efficient means of delimiting essential components of conventional behaviour (stripped of most of the controversial issues from previous de…Read more