John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality (Continuum Studies In American Philosophy) [Hardcover]

Joshua Rust (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0826485863 | ISBN-13: 978-0826485861

John Searle (1932-) is one of the most famous living American philosophers. A pupil of J. L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s, he is currently Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995 John Searle published "The Construction of Social Reality", a text which not only promises to disclose the institutional backdrop against which speech takes place, but initiate a new 'philosophy of society'. Since then "The Construction of Social Reality" has been subject to a flurry of criticism. While many of Searle's interlocutors share the sense that the text marks an important breakthrough, he has time and again accused critics of misunderstanding his claims. Despite Searle's characteristic crispness and clarity there remains some confusion, among both philosophers and sociologists, regarding the significance of his proposals. This book traces some of the high points of this dialogue, leveraging Searle's own clarifications to propose a new way of understanding the text. In particular, Joshua Rust looks to Max Weber in suggesting that Searle has articulated an ideal type. In locating The Construction of Social Reality under the umbrella of one of sociology's founding fathers, this book not only makes Searle's text more accessible to the readers in the social sciences, but presents Max Weber as a thinker worthy of philosophical reconsideration. Moreover, the recharacterization of Searle's claims in terms of the ideal type helps facilitate a comparison between Searle and other social theorists such as Talcott Parsons.

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Review

"'... among the best work I have read in social philosophy... Anyone interested in the nature and function of philosophy in the social sciences could take some valuable lessons from this book. The reader may discover that what she hoped or thought social philosophy could do is not what it does at all.' Eric Schwitzgebel, University of California, Riverside, CA"

About the Author

Joshua Rust was a student of John Searle's at Berkeley in the mid-1990s. He is currently at the University of California, Riverside, CA.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (January 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826485863
• ISBN-13: 978-0826485861
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,190,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Critique that Explains Social Facts, September 27, 2006

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This review is from: John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality (Continuum Studies In American Philosophy) (Hardcover)

John Searle And the Construction of Social Reality by Joshua Rust (Continuum Studies in American Philosophy: Continuum International Publishing Group) In 1995 John Searle published The Construction of Social Reality, a text which promises not only to disclose the institutional backdrop against which speech takes place, but also to initiate a new "philosophy of society." Since then The Construction of Social Reality has been subject to a flurry of criticism. While many of Searle's interlocutors share the sense that the text marks an important breakthrough, he has time and again accused critics of misunderstanding his claims. Despite Searle's characteristic crispness and clarity there remains some confusion, among both philosophers and sociologists, regarding the significance of his proposals.

This book traces some of the high points of this dialogue, leveraging Searle's own clarifications to propose a new way of understanding the text. In particular, Joshua Rust looks to Max Weber in suggesting that Searle has articulated an ideal type. In locating The Construction of Social Reality under the umbrella of one of sociology's founding fathers, this book not only makes Searle's text more accessible to readers in the social sciences, but also presents Max Weber as a thinker worthy of philosophical reconsideration. Moreover, the recharacterization of Searle's claims in terms of the ideal type helps facilitate a comparison between Searle and other social theorists such as Margaret Gilbert.

Excerpt: In 1996 Toy Biz, the manufacturer of Marvel Comic's popular X-men action figures, sued US Customs Service in the Court of International Trade. Toy Biz successfully argued that the play¬things should be classified as toys not dolls. According to Customs' classification, dolls purport to be human, toys do not. If the figures are not deemed to represent humans they would be subject to only a 6.8 per cent import duty instead of the higher 12 per cent for dolls.

On the one hand, the X-men seem human. The US government argued that the figures should be classified as humans, and thus dolls, because each character had a "distinctive individual person¬ality". As for their super-human traits, the defense argued that, for example, Wolverine, who has a set of one-foot-long retractable claws on each hand, is simply "a man with prosthetic hands". How¬ever, it must be conceded that the ability to manipulate fire, shape-shift, or control weather systems at will, sharply distinguishes the X-men from ordinary human beings. In January of 2003, Judge Judith Barzilay declared, following the plaintiff's argument, that the X-men figures appeared to be "nonhuman creatures" due to "their extraordinary and unnatural . . . powers". The figures were thus found to merit the reclassification sought by Toy Biz.

One fan laments that the reclassification "is almost unthinkable. . . . Marvel's super heroes are supposed to be as human as you or I. They live in New York. They have families and go to work. And now they're no longer human?" Indeed, since its inception in 1963 the comic book has tended to use the X-men, depicted as being almost universally feared and despised by those in the mainstream, to explicitly allegorize race relations. To those who follow the comic book, the reclassification from doll to toy--from human to non-human--is not without irony.

The doll status of the X-men figures is a good example of what John Searle, in The Construction of Social Reality (CSR), calls an insti¬tutional fact. The rules that constitute institutional facts can be characterized according to the formula, "X counts as Y in context C," where X is a brute fact and Y is an institutional fact. In this manuscript I will refer to the "X counts as Y in C" formula as the "constitutive formula". Searle intends the formula to convey the sense in which an institutional fact Y is embodied or manifest in, but cannot be reduced to, a brute fact X. Using Searle's for¬mula, playthings that purport to be human (X) count as dolls (Y) within the jurisdiction of US Customs (C), and those that do not purport to be human (X) count as toys (Y). It also underscores the sense in which institutional facts can be traced back to our col¬lective acceptances. Moreover, institutional facts often implicate certain rights and obligations (they have a "status-function"), so that the reclassification of the X-men gives Toy Biz the right to pay the lower import duty.

Another example of an institutional fact is the wooden tally. Developed economies need a means to track debt. In medieval Europe one common means was the wooden tally. This consisted of a hazelwood stick on which was inscribed the date, the amount owed, as well as the debtor's name. The stick, along with this infor¬mation, was split into two pieces, starting at about two inches from the bottom. The longer half the "stock"was retained by the creditor, whereas the shorter half--the "stub" was kept by the debtor. If there was any question as to the size of the debt, the two halves could be put back together again. This helped guard against the possibility of fraud. When the debt was repaid the tally would then be destroyed. The stub (X) counts as an indi¬cation that I owe money to a creditor (Y) in medieval Europe (C). However, outside this context the stub (X) is not in itself an indi¬cation of debt-owed (Y).

Dolls, wooden tallies, or--Searle's archetypical example money, cannot be reduced to the physical properties that underlie them: "a dollar" is not just the paper and ink out of which it is phy¬sically constituted. Nevertheless a dollar must be constructed of something, be it green paper and ink or metal. In claiming that all institutional facts--the US Customs' distinction between toys and dolls, indications of debt, money, language, marriage, football games--can be characterized according to the constitutive for¬mula, Searle is claiming that an institutional fact Y is always founded on some brute fact X.

My intention is not to disagree with Searle on this point. It may be the case, as Searle contends, that for any institutional fact there is some constitutive, underlying brute fact to which I can point. Others dispute this and argue that some institutional facts do not seem to have a basis in some brute fact X.2 My princi¬pal aim, however, is not to falsify Searle's account by way of counterexamples.

My concern runs somewhat deeper: disagreement presupposes that I am in the first place clear about what Searle is trying to convey with the constitutive formula. I am not clear.

Nor is Searle particularly helpful when it comes to the framing of his own insights. The constitutive formula is a crucial part of the answer to the questions Searle asks himself at the beginning of his book: "How are institutional facts possible? And what exactly is the structure of such facts?" (CSR, p. 2) But while Searle deter¬mines the structure of institutional facts to be "X counts as Y in C," what does he mean when he asks about how these facts are possible? Is he providing a foundational ontology of social reality, as Bertrand Russell's atomism attempted to identify the logical structure of brute reality? Or is he proffering a kind of mnemonic by which inquiry into institutional reality might proceed? Even though it is clear that Searle has said something interesting and important, there remain metaphilosophical questions about the significance of those claims.

Chapter 1 Searle's Institutional Atomisms

It is clear that the constitutive formula tells us something interest¬ing about the nature of institutional reality. But there remains a question as to how it is interesting. Which puzzle does Searle intend to solve in asking the question, how are institutional facts possible? There may be an analogy between Searle's project and that of the atomists. Perhaps Searle's formula outlines the most general contours of institutional reality in somewhat the same way the atomists attempted to use logic to lay bare the structure of brute reality. This chapter fleshes out the comparison, noting points where the analogy breaks down. The almost stifling self-consciousness with which the atomists formulated the doctrine of philosophical analysis gives us a portrait of how we might under¬stand the significance of the constitutive formula as an answer to Searle's own question.

Chapter 2 First Criticism of Institutional Atomism

The analogy between Searle and the atomists allows me to mar¬shal part of an extensive body of criticism, originally directed against the atomists, against institutional analysis. I appeal to an argument originally advanced by John Wisdom and J.O. Urmson, who claim that there are principled reasons to think that it is impossible to complete the analysis of a given institution. I advance this argument by looking at difficulties that arise in attempting to characterize the institution of money.

Chapter 3 Second Criticism of Institutional Atomism

I argue that Searle, even by his own terms, has no basis by which to uphold the constitutive formula as the logical structure of institu¬tional reality.

If these criticisms are convincing, we are again in the position of needing to ask what Searle hopes to have accomplished when heasserts that "X counts as Y in C". How else might we understand the constitutive formula if not by means of an analogy with the atomists? Using groundwork established in Chapter 4, I take up this question in Chapters 5 and 6. Suggesting that Searle has advanced an ideal type, I will argue that he can avoid these objections.

Chapter 4 Kuhn, Weber, and Instruments of Inquiry

In Chapter 4 I set aside explicit discussion of Searle's view in order to present Max Weber's concept of the ideal type. I use Kuhn's notion of a paradigm... Read more ›