 Collective acceptance accounts and, for that matter teleological accounts, of social action in general, and of social institutions in particular, fall within the rationalist, individualist, philosophy of action tradition that has its roots in Aristotle, Hume and Kant and is associated with contemporary analytic philosophers of social action such as Michael Bratman (1987), John Searle (1995), and Raimo Tuomela (2002). However, this way of proceeding also has a place outside philosophy, in sociological theory. Broadly speaking, it is the starting point for the voluntaristic theory of social action associated with the likes of Georg Simmel (1971), Max Weber (1949), (the early) Talcott Parsons (1968) and Alfred Schutz (Schutz and Parsons 1978). For example, the following idea in relation to social action is expressed by Parsons (1968: 229): 