Do We Really Need the Concept of Convention

Abstract

Summary: What is the real explanatory value of the concept of convention, used as it is to account for the coordination of action? Distinguishing between a technical and a common-sense view of convention, the author recognizes the relevance of phenomena highlighted by the theoreticians of convention, hut doubts that the concept they propose has a very broad explanatory value, it appears rather as a crutch made necessary by an all-too-cognitivist treatment of the problems of coordinating action. As an alternative, he proposes a line of thought inspired by recent developments in social phenomenology.