Fouls, Fumbles, and the Fate of Agents: Constitutivism and Imperfection

Abstract

According to the legal-grammatical picture of constitutivism, the constitutive standards of a kind x carry an existential threat: abiding by them is necessary for being an x at all. But this seems to leave no room for defective x’s—the bad-x problem. A functional model escapes this problem, yet it fits structural rational agency poorly. I argue that a suitably complex legal-grammatical model—one attentive to how legal enterprises are materially realized—makes room for genuinely internal violations: intelligible fouls, correctable from a dynamic kernel of perfect compliance. The existential threat survives, yet genuine defect finds a place within it.