Ideology is commonly defined along functional, epistemic, and genetic dimensions. This article advances a reasonably unified account that specifies how they connect and locates the mechanisms at work. I frame the account along a recent distinction between anchoring and grounding, endorse an etiological reading of functional explanations, and draw on current work about the epistemology of delusion, looping effects, and structuring causes to explain how ideologies originate, reproduce, and possibly collapse. This eventually allows articulating how the legitimating function of ideologies relates to the constitutive and causal role they play when embedded into the facts they are originally designed to anchor.

意识形态通常是在功能，认知和遗传维度上定义的。本文介绍了一个合理的统一帐户，该帐户指定了它们如何连接以及如何找到起作用的机制。我根据最近在锚定和接地之间的区别来阐述这一观点，赞同对功能性解释的病因学解读，并利用有关错觉，循环效应和结构化原因的认识论的最新研究成果来解释意识形态是如何产生，再现和可能崩溃的。最终，这可以阐明意识形态的合法功能如何将其嵌入到最初旨在锚定的事实中时发挥的构成和因果作用。