This book addresses a single overriding question in contemporary philosophy: Given that we know from physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences that the universe consists entirely of mindless, meaningless physical particles in fields of force, and that these are organized into systems, how do we account for the human reality - the reality of mind, meaning, consciousness, intentionality, society, science, aesthetics, morality, and all of social organization including money, property, government, and marriage? The book features a discussion of the (...) problem of the freedom of the will as well as an account of the problems of political philosophy, particularly the notions of power and human rights. Originally written as lectures, the book includes in an appendix questions on the lectures and John Searle's replies. (shrink)

John R. Searle has made profoundly influential contributions to three areas of philosophy: philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of society. This volume gathers together in accessible form a selection of his essays in these areas. They range widely across social ontology, where Searle presents concise and informative statements of positions developed in more detail elsewhere; artificial intelligence and cognitive science, where Searle assesses the current state of the debate and develops his most recent thoughts; and philosophy (...) of language, where Searle connects ideas from various strands of his work in order to develop original answers to fundamental questions. There are also explorations of the limitations of phenomenological inquiry, the mind-body problem, and the nature and future of philosophy. This rich collection from one of America's leading contemporary philosophers will be valuable for all who are interested in these central philosophical questions. (shrink)

In his seminal article “How to Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’,” which was published in 1964, John R. Searle offered a counterexample to Hume’s law. Here, Searle reconstructs the historical context in which that article appeared, when the task of moral philosophers—especially in the Anglophone world—was supposed to be metaethics, which aims to describe the use of ethical terms and their logical behavior. Searle stands by the validity of his derivation, and in light of his subsequent philosophical developments—notably his social (...) class='Hi'>ontology and philosophy of action—he explains why his derivation is valid and why it is relevant, not only for metaethics but also for moral philosophy strictly understood. (shrink)

Part 1 of this exchange consists in a critique by Smith of Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality focusing on Searle’s use of the formula ‘X counts as Y in context C’. Smith argues that this formula works well for social objects such as dollar bills and presidents where the corresponding X terms (pieces of paper, human beings) are easy to identify. In cases such as debts and prices and money in a banks computers, however, the formula fails, (...) because these are cases of what he calls ‘free-standing Y terms’, since there is here no X which can count as the corresponding Y. In his response in Part 2, Searle argues that Smith’s critique rests on three misunderstandings: 1. in wrongly presupposing that Searle is trying to analyze the nature of what he calls “social objects”, rather than of social facts; 2. in thinking that the counts as formula is intended as a definition, rather than as a mere mnemonic; and 3. in neglecting the naturalism of Searle’s account. (shrink)

John R. Searle’s 1995 publication The Construction of Social Reality is the foundation of this collection of scholarly papers examining Searle's philosophical theories. Searle’s book sets out to reconstruct the ontology of the social sciences through an analysis of linguistic practices in the context of his celebrated work on intentionality. His book provided a stimulating account of institutional facts such as money and marriage and how they are created and replicated in everyday social life. The authors in (...) this collection provide a critical appraisal of these and other ideas presented in Searle’s original publication. The editors' introduction clearly outlines the main issues in the debate and provides a useful introduction to Searle's contributions to social science. (shrink)

John Searle has proposed one of the most influential contemporary accounts of social ontology. According to Searle, institutional facts are created by the collective assignment of a specific kind of function —status-function— to pre-existing objects. Thus, a piece of paper counts as money in a certain context because people collectively recognize it as money, and impose a status upon it, which in turn enables that piece of paper to deliver certain functions (means of payment, etc.). The first part of (...) this essay presents Searle’s theory of social ontology and summarizes his views on money. The second part centers on criticisms of his views and compares his theory with its main competitors, including the theories of Tuomela, Guala and Hindriks, and Smit, Buekens and Duplessis. The conclusion attempts to see what may remain of Searle’s theory after careful examination. (shrink)

The theory presented in John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality has a lot in common with the conventionalist view of institutions. Conventionalism, however, can explain how there can be institutional facts without pre-existing rules, and why people comply with institutional rules.

The theory presented in John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality has a lot in common with the conventionalist view of institutions. Conventionalism, however, can explain how there can be institutional facts without pre-existing rules, and why people comply with institutional rules.

In this short article, I will explore John Searle’s social ontology project from the perspective of social epistemology. The outcome of my analysis is that language is decisive for the collective acquisition and production of knowledge. I agree with Searle regarding the exposure of language as a central constitutive component of social forms of knowledge, a component that plays a significant role in the development of social epistemology.

John Searle has recently developed a theory of reasons for acting that intends to rescue the freedom of the will, endangered by causal determinism, whether physical or psychological. To achieve this purpose, Searle postulates a series of "gaps" that are supposed toendowthe self with free will. Reviewing key steps in Searle's argument, this article shows that such an undertaking cannot be successfully completed because of its solipsist premises. The author argues that reasons for acting do not have a subjective, I- (...) class='Hi'>ontology but a first-person plural, Weontology that better accounts for agency and responsibility. Key Words: free will • agency • reasons for acting • ontology. (shrink)

John Searle has recently developed a theory of reasons for acting that intends to rescue the freedom of the will, endangered by causal determinism, whether physical or psychological. To achieve this purpose, Searle postulates a series of “gaps” that are supposed toendowthe self with free will. Reviewing key steps in Searle's argument, this article shows that such an undertaking cannot be successfully completed because of its solipsist premises. The author argues that reasons for acting do not have a subjective, I- (...) class='Hi'>ontology but a first-person plural, Weontology that better accounts for agency and responsibility. (shrink)

John Searle’s theory of social ontology posits that there are indispensable normative components in the linguistic apparatuses termed status functions, collective intentionality, and collective recognition, all of which, he argues, make the social world. In this paper, I argue that these building blocks of Searle’s theory are caught in a petitio of constitutive circularity. Moreover, I note how Searle fails to observe language in reciprocal relation to the institutions which not only are shaped by it but also (...) shape language’s practical applications. According to Searle, social theorists that tried to show a connection between society, culture, and language all failed to see the constitutive role of language in the making of social reality. Consequently, I believe that Searle is himself guilty of a certain kind of blind presumption, and argue that Hegel’s philosophy of culture, which Searle dismisses as implausible, offers a more cohesive account of the normative transactions between human beings and their social world. (shrink)

Dewey’s social ontology could be characterized as a habit ontology, an ontology of habit qua second nature that offers us an account of intentionality, social statuses, institutions, and norms in terms of habituations. Such an account offers us a promising alternative to contemporary intentionalist and deontic approaches to social ontology such as Searle’s. Furthermore, it could be the basis of a social ontology better suited to explain both the maintenance and the transformation of social (...) reality. In the first part I will characterize Dewey’s model as a social ontology based on the notion of habit, and present it as an alternative to intentionalist approaches to social reality. In the second part I will argue that habit ontology offers us an account of social norms that is based on a peculiar understanding of the notion of ‘status’, and represents an alternative to deontic accounts. In the third part I will claim that Dewey’s notion of “public” offers us a dynamic understanding of social institutions and a ‘reactive’ notion of collective intentionality as an achievement rather than as a presupposition of social practices. In the final section I will summarize some advantages of the Deweyan over the Searlean social ontology concerning our understanding of acceptance, maintenance and transformation of statuses, and of the role played by the ‘background’. (shrink)

John Searle’s conception of institutional facts figures centrally in his latest works. It is defective for several reasons: (1) Searle’s argument for philosophical realism is inconsistent. (2) Searle’s conceptions of consciousness and collective intentionality are problematic. (3) The notion of normativity is indispensable in Searle’s system, but cannot be accounted for and makes wide parts of his theory superfluous. (4) It is not clear what entities might be regarded as institutional facts. These problems have a common (...) source: The philosophical basis of Searle’s theory, his combination of realism and physicalist monism, clashes with his thesis that both the 'first-person-ontology' and normativity are irreducible. (shrink)

John Searle’s conception of institutional facts figures centrally in his latest works. It is defective for several reasons: (1) Searle’s argument for philosophical realism is inconsistent. (2) Searle’s conceptions of consciousness and collective intentionality are problematic. (3) The notion of normativity is indispensable in Searle’s system, but cannot be accounted for and makes wide parts of his theory superfluous. (4) It is not clear what entities might be regarded as institutional facts. These problems have a common (...) source: The philosophical basis of Searle’s theory, his combination of realism and physicalist monism, clashes with his thesis that both the 'first-person-ontology' and normativity are irreducible. (shrink)

This book includes ten original essays that critically examine central themes of John Searle’s ontology of society, as well as a new essay by Searle that summarizes and further develops his work in that area. The critical essays are grouped into three parts. Part I (Aspects of Collective Intentionality) examines the account of collective intention and action underlying Searle’s analysis of social and institutional facts, with special emphasis on how that account relates to the dispute between individualism (...) and anti-individualism in the analysis of social behaviour, and to the opposition between internalism and externalism in the analysis of intentionality. Part II (From Intentions to Institutions: Development and Evolution) scrutinizes the ontogenetic and phylogenetic credentials of Searle’s view that, unlike other kinds of social facts, institutional facts are uniquely human, and develops original suggestions concerning their place in human evolution and development. Part III (Aspects of Institutional Reality) focuses on Searle’s claim that institutional facts owe their existence to the collective acceptance of constitutive rules whose effect is the creation of deontic powers, and examines central issues relevant to its assessment (among others, the status of the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules, the significance of the distinction between brute and deontic powers, the issue of the logical derivability of normative from descriptive propositions, and the import of the difference between moral and non-moral normative principles). Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle’s work on the ontology of society, and to suggest new approaches to fundamental questions in that research area. (shrink)

In his book Making the Social World, John Searle gives voice to an aspiration that is very popular in social ontology. This aspiration consists in the notion that social objects can be reduced to physical objects. From this perspective, social objects are nothing more than physical objects on which we impose functions that are merely subjective and therefore external to them. Now, my paper has two objectives. In the first part, I want to show that Searle’s account entails (...) some sort of interpretationism that gets into difficulties once we reflect on his essential notion of imposition. In the second part of my paper, I want to sketch a Wittgensteinian point of view that allows us to describe our relation to social objects without being committed to the flawed model of interpretationism and to its metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

This paper puts Searle’s social ontology together with an understanding of the human person as inclined openly toward the truth. Institutions and their deontology are constituted by collective Declarative beliefs, guaranteeing mind-world adequation. As this paper argues, often they are constituted also by collective Assertive beliefs that justify (rather than validate intrainstitutionally) institutional facts. A special type of Status Function-creating ‘Assertive Declarative’ belief is introduced, described, and used to shore up Searle’s account against two objections: that, as (...) based on collective acceptance, Searlean social ontology cannot make sense of dissenters, and that it, as its deontology is all game-like, implies a legal positivism and thus cannot make proper sense of the moral import of sociopolitical institutions. This change is necessary to deepen social ontology’s understanding of human societies and to accurately describe many social, religious, and political institutions as constituted from the perspectives of participants and dissidents. (shrink)

This book is a systematic analysis of John R. Searle's philosophy of mind. Searle's view of mind, as a set of subjective and biologically embodied processes, can account for our being part of nature qua mindful beings. This model finds support in neuroscience and offers reliable solutions to the problems of consciousness, mental causation, and the self.

The article discusses the relationship between John Searle’s doctrine of naturalism and various forms of materialism and dualism. It is argued that despite Searle’s protestations, his doctrine is not substantially differ- ent from the epiphenomenalistic property dualism, except for the admis- sion, in his later works, of the existence of an irreducible non-Humean self. In particular, his recognition that consciousness is unique in having an irreducible first-person ontology makes his disavowal of property du- alism purely verbalistic. As (...) for epiphenomenalism, Searle’s explanation of how consciousness can be efficacious without violating the causal clo- sure of the physical, by analogy with the causal efficacy of the higher level properties of physical objects that are supervenient on the microphysical, confuses causality and constitution (causal and constitutive superve- nience). It is also argued that Searle’s recognition of the existence of an irreducible non-Humean self that is responsible for decision-making sits badly both with his (property dualistic) view that conscious mental states are irreducibly first-personal states of the brain (rather than of the self) and with his (epiphenomenalistic) view that consciousness has no causal power in addition to that of the underlying neurobiology. (shrink)

This paper critically reviews the principal elements of Searle’s proposed social ontology which is scattered in different books and papers. It discusses the philosophical and conceptual affinities between his philosophy of social reality and sociological theory, and proposes some solutions to dilemmas arising from the strong mentalism of his proposal, using tools from classical sociological theory and the sociology of knowledge. The main objective is to help lay the foundation for a comprehensive social ontology, whose structure is (...) supported by the complementarity between the proposed Searle's social ontology and sociological theory. Este artículo revisa de manera crítica los elementos fundamentales de la propuesta de ontología social de Searle que se encuentra diseminada en sus diversos libros y artículos, abordando analíticamente aquellos aspectos que dan cuenta de las afinidades filosóficas y conceptuales entre su filosofía de la realidad social y la teoría sociológica, utilizando herramientas provenientes de la teoría sociológica clásica y de la sociología del conocimiento. El objetivo principal es contribuir a sentar las basespara una ontología social comprensiva, cuya estructura esté sustentada por la complementariedad entre la propuesta de ontología social de Searle y la teoría sociológica. (shrink)

In his book The rediscovery of the mind John Searle claims that unconscious mental states (1) have first-person "aspectual shape", but (2) that their ontology is purely third-person. He attempts to eliminate the obvious inconsistency by arguing that the aspectual shape of unconscious mental states consists in their ability to cause conscious first-person states. However, I show that this attempted solution fails insofar as it covertly acknowledges that unconscious states lack the aspectual shape required for them to play a (...) role in psychological explanation. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the pivotal notion in John Searle's account of the unconscious, despite his representation of Freud's position, is found in Freud's work as part of a very similar view of the issues surrounding the concept of the unconscious. The pivotal notion in question consists in treating the concept of the unconscious as a vocabulary without ontological commitment which Searle claims we must do for the following reason: to reconcile what he considers to be the dualistic (...) concept of the unconscious with an ontology of the mental which recognises no states but conscious states and states of the neurophysiology with the capacity to cause them. The role of the concept in Searle's account is explained. Then his representation of Freud is challenged: firstly, by explicating how Freud accepted that the concept of the unconscious entailed no ontological commitment and, secondly, by showing how this fitted into his wider thinking on how the concept of the unconscious could be understood in terms of a vocabulary, leading ultimately to a justification of the concept of the unconscious in terms of explanatory power. On the basis of this exposition, Searle's charge of dualism against Freud is disputed. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the pivotal notion in John Searle's account of the unconscious, despite his representation of Freud's position, is found in Freud's work as part of a very similar view of the issues surrounding the concept of the unconscious. The pivotal notion in question consists in treating the concept of the unconscious as a vocabulary without ontological commitment which Searle claims we must do for the following reason: to reconcile what he considers to be the dualistic (...) concept of the unconscious with an ontology of the mental which recognises no states but conscious states and states of the neurophysiology with the capacity to cause them. The role of the concept in Searle's account is explained. Then his representation of Freud is challenged: firstly, by explicating how Freud accepted that the concept of the unconscious entailed no ontological commitment and, secondly, by showing how this fitted into his wider thinking on how the concept of the unconscious could be understood in terms of a vocabulary, leading ultimately to a justification of the concept of the unconscious in terms of explanatory power. On the basis of this exposition, Searle's charge of dualism against Freud is disputed. (shrink)

J. R. Searle’s general theory of social and institutional reality, as deployed in some of his recent work (The Construction of Social Reality, 1995; Social Ontology and the Philosophy of Society, 1998}, raises many deep and interesting problems. Four issues are taken up here: (1) Searle’s claim to the effect that collective intentionality is a primitive, irreducible form of intentionality; (2) his account of one of the most puzzling features of institutional concepts, their having a self-referential component; (...) (3) the question as to the point, or points, of having institutions; (4) Searle's claim to the effect that false beliefs on the part of the members of the relevant community are compatible with the existence of related institutional facts. It is argued that, under all four respects, Searle's theory proves to be hardly satisfactory. (shrink)

John Searle claims that social-scientific laws are impossible because social phenomena are physically open-ended. William Butchard and Robert D’Amico have recently argued that, by Searle’s own lights, money is a social phenomena that is physically closed. However, Butchard and D’Amico rely on a limited set of data in order to draw this conclusion, and fail to appreciate the implications of Searle’s theory of social ontology with regard to the physical open-endedness of money. Money is not physically open-ended (...) in the strong sense that Butchard and D’Amico require, and their argument for the possibility of social-scientific laws fails as a result. (shrink)

This lecture was originally given at the Einstein Forum in Berlin. It contains a summary of some of the themes in my book The Construction of Social Reality and continues the line of argument I presented there.

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 51, Issue 6, Page 555-573, December 2021. John Searle’s social ontology distinguishes between linguistic and non-linguistic institutional facts. He argues that every instance of the latter is created by declarative speech acts, while the former are exceptions to this far-reaching claim: linguistic phenomena are autonomous, their meaning is “built in,” and this is necessary, Searle argues, to avoid “infinite regress.” In this essay I analyze Searle’s arguments for this linguistic exceptionalism and (...) reveal its flaws. My method is to follow Searle’s argument closely and comprehensively so as to avoid, insofar as is possible, a selective reading of his argument in my favor. Against Searle’s position, I argue that linguistic phenomena are not exceptions to his general theory of institutional facts, for they too always require supplementary representations in order to exist. Language itself is analogous to all other institutions and infinite regress turns out to be unavoidable. (shrink)

Most philosophers agree that libertarian freedom and the ontology most naturally associated with it is not easily harmonized with epistemically robust versions of naturalism. And while he continues to remain a bit skeptical of such harmonizations efforts, John Searle has recently proffered hope for such reconciliation and the general contours to which any such attempt must conform. I state Searle’s views, criticize each step in his argument, and conclude that his attempt at a rapprochement is a failure.

Vít Gvoždiak published a reconciliatory analysis of Searle’s social ontology with semiotics in Gvoždiak (2012). Without prior knowledge of his paper, an analysis of the same subject appeared in Msimang (2014). Even though Searle’s social ontology is a common point of reference in the formulation of semiotics in these papers, it also serves as a point of departure in their understanding of semiotics and its development. The semiotic theory expressed in Gvoždiak (2012) is an inherently linguistic (...) (speech act centred) theory, whereas the semiotic theory presented in Msimang (2014) tends more towards a general theory of communicative systems in which social ontology, which follows from speech act theory, is an interesting part. It is my purpose in this note to contrast the two positions of semiotic theory as they appear in the aforementioned papers in reference to their appropriation of Searle’s social ontology. (shrink)

The starting point of the following inquiry addresses John Searle’s and Ian Hacking’s most prominent critique of contemporary “constructionism” in the 1990s. It is stimulated by the astonishing fact that neither Hacking nor Searle take into account Peter Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s classical essay and sociological masterpiece The Social Construction of Reality in their contributions. Critically revisiting Searle’s and Hacking’s critique on the so-called constructivist approach, the article demonstrates that both authors have failed to put forth a sociologically (...) valid understanding of the approach in question. The following analysis aims to deconstruct the conceptualizations offered by Searle and Hacking, and to reconstruct and defend the original sense of the term “social construction” as most prominently introduced by Berger and Luckmann to sociology, and social sciences in general. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts and Expression and Meaning developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, though third (...) in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

John Searle's Speech Acts and Expression and Meaning developed a highly original and influential approach to the study of language. But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, though third (...) in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem. (shrink)

Contemporary political theory is fractured in its account of ontology and methods. One prominent fault line is between empirical and normative theory – the former usually called ‘philosophy of social science’, or ‘social-science methodology’, and not ‘theory’ at all. A second fault line exists between analytical and post-modern political theory. These fractures prevent political researchers who engage with the same substantive issues, such as the right of same-sex couples to marry, from speaking to one another in a common language. (...) This paper's first section discusses the history of the fact-value divide in political studies: a history that led to the contemporary state of the discipline. The second section argues that Searle's philosophy provides tools that can bridge this divide. The third section raises normative objections that limit the extent to which one can accept Searle's theory as a fully general account of social and political reality. Although limited in scope, Searle's argument should be welcomed as an attempt to provide a common set of important tools for political researchers on all sides of these debates. (shrink)

"Neuroscience and Philosophy" begins with an excerpt from "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience," in which Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker question the ...