Customer Reviews

The Construction of Social Reality

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm afraid it's the reviewer from Paris who just doesn't get it. Searle quite clearly acknowledges that the concept of "mountain" in mind-dependent or socially constructed. However what he is at pains to point out is that the entity which our concept "mountain" describes is mind-independent.

This is a beautifully written book, lucid, clear with a light flowing prose style - so different from many of the writings it critiques. You don't necessarily have to agree with Searle to admire this book - what is so admirable is that he states his position with such clarity that there is at least scope for rational agreement/disagreement.

This book is another one of Searle's rigorous and complex effort at philosophizing, and yet one of his most readable. I think we are indebted to his research assistant for the clarity of locution and punctuation -- two areas where Searle can be vulnerable. This book also uses many concepts discussed at length in two of his other books: "Speech Acts" and "Intentionality." Having read these two other books, while definitely helpful, is not necessary, as Searle is kind enough to describe his meanings and references as he goes along. And he goes along at quite a rapid clip. This is, moreover, one of those books one cannot afford to skip a sentence without serious impairment of further understanding.

With these caveats in mind, I highly recommend this tour of Searle's defense of naive realism in modern analytic terms. He is highly analytic, and builds quite a fortress that he is pained to defend against criticisms of circularity. Nowhere is this charge more appropriate than in his defense of language as simultaneously being an "institutional" and "brute" fact. Each reader will have to decide whether or not he succeeds, but, if he has failed, it is not for a lack of effort.

Of all Searle's books, this is the one I enjoyed the most. Searle is an excellent analytic philosopher, but a grammarian he's not. His lack of grammatical discipline usually interferes with his philosophizing and frequently plagues his other works, but is completely remedied in this book. It's not an "elegant" work, by any means, but it is clear, concise, and comprehensible. His arguments are thoroughly explained, developed, and explored, so that even a novice could follow his impeccable logic. And, there are an abundance of arguments, new linguistic devices, and formulations and reformulation of his ideas to sustain his central motif: Objective reality is objectively real.

This is a great display of analytic thoroughness, coupled with a generous amplification of his ideas. A truly "fun" read.

This is an impressive work by the lucid John Searle. This work is relatively brief but contains Searle's insightful treatment of both social reality and a cogent defense of realism, the idea that there is a reality independent of human construction. This book repays careful reading. Not because it is difficult to understand, to the contrary, Searle is a very clear writer with a real talent for presenting useful examples. Rather, Searle's arguments are simple but often have substantial implications whose importance emerges only on reflection. In this book, Searle describes the likely underpinnings of social, as opposed to physical reality. He develops very interesting analyses of how these two spheres differ and how we differ in our relation to them. He shows also the relationship between them. Searle's treatment of social constructionism is particularly powerful and demonstrates the implicit contradictions and sterility of this faddish ideology. Searle is particularly concerned with maintaining a high level of rational discourse in intellectual life. His work is a model in this respect.

John Searle is a philosopher's philosopher. He's also scrupulously honest to a fault. When reading him, one never has to stop and wonder whether he really believes what he's saying. The present work, "The Construction of Social Reality" (CSR)" is no exception. Lucid, cogent, packed with insights, CSR is vintage Searle--a thinker who just seems to get better and better with age. Nowadays one can no more ignore Searle than could a medieval thinker ignore Aristotle, or a modern thinker ignore Kant. When I begin writing on any philosophical subject, I always check to see whether Searle is close by.

CSR offers the most perspicuous account of "social facts" or "institutional facts" of any work I know of, except, perhaps, Chapter 5 of Searle's earlier work, "Intentionality." I would recommend that anyone interested in the subject read that chapter together with CSR. The focus of Chapter 5 is "the Background." Searle develops this notion at great length in CSR, especially in Chapter 6. (The great strength of CSR is the logical progression of topics from one chapter to the next.) The idea of the Background has been around at least since Husserl and Heidegger, and is a key element in Heidegger's analysis in "Being and Time." To be sure, Searle does not slavishly follow Heidegger; the two thinkers have very different takes on what intentionality is. (An especially lucid analysis of the difference between Searle and Heidegger can be found in Hubert Dreyfus' classic introduction to Heidegger, "Being-In-The-World.") But anyone who has had second thoughts about running headlong into the thicket of Heideggerian prose can hardly do better than start with Searle. After all, when we're doing philosophy, it's always a good idea to understand the problem we're trying to solve, and the questions we're trying to answer. And Heidegger doesn't make it easy to do this. Searle does.

Not that Searle is perfect. Like most philosophers, he doesn't always resist the urge to engage in speculative metaphysics. This he does early on in CSR. For example, he writes: "Since our investigation is ontological, i.e., about how social facts exist, we need to figure out how social reality fits into our overall ontology, i.e., how the existence of social facts relates to other things that exist. We will have to make some substantive presuppositions about how the world is in fact in order that we can even pose the questions we are trying to answer. We will be talking about how social reality fits into a larger ontology, but in order to do that, we will have to describe some of the features of that larger ontology." (CSR, 5-6.)

Yes, we do have to make presuppositions. But here is one point on which Searle and Heidegger differ; and I'm inclined to side with Heidegger. We don't really have to get clear on what our presuppositions are; and, in fact, it's doubtful that we ever do. When we think we do, we invariably get entangled in a speculative venture. The whole foundationalist notion that we must begin with "clear and distinct ideas" rings a bit archaic nowadays. Searle tries to achieve clarity by accepting as incontrovertible axioms which, for him, mark out the boundaries of any human cognitive enterprise. Listen to Searle: "The truth is, for us, most of our metaphysics is derived from physics (including the other natural sciences). Many features of the contemporary natural science conception of reality are still in dispute and still problematic . . . But two features of our conception of reality are not up for grabs. They are not, so to speak, optional for us as citizens of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. It is a condition of your being an educated person in our era that you are apprised of these two theories: the atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary theory of biology." (CSR, 6.)

It is true that an educated person must be "apprised" of these two theories. It doesn't follow however, that one give them the foundational significance which Searle claims for them. What matters is not our metaphysics, but our presuppositions. And, as Heidegger would insist, we can't get clear about them by appealing to science. In fact, science is not interested in our "conception of reality" or the ultimate origins of things. If our presuppositions get in the way of our ability to do science, we may have to change them in part. But this doesn't mean that we have to draw a picture of ultimate reality in its totality in order to proceed with science. Again, this is just not something that scientists care about. I submit that Searle's analysis of institutional facts can go forward whether he's a committed naturalist or a believer in divine revelation.

But then, again, none of this matters to a reader who wants to know about how social reality is put together. And for that, this is the definitive source. Searle long ago earned his status as primus inter pares in the philosophical community. Whether he's as much a thinker for everyone else is less certain. In an age when muddled thinking is deemed virtuous, and most people have learned all they know about philosophy from Oprah Winfrey, one must probably conclude that Searle will always be at home among his own. He'll never been invited to appear on a daytime talk show. To his credit, I'm confident he wouldn't accept the invitation. I wish I could give CSR ten stars instead of five.

Aidan McDowell

John Searle is a great philosopher and a keen performance artist. Whether writing or lecturing, he likes to roll up his sleeves, speak plainly, define terms, make distinctions, expose sloppy thinking, clear up conceptual tangles, get to the bottomline -- and show how smart he is at every step of the way. Searle doesn't see philosophical puzzles as things to marinate in and examine from a dozen different angles. He sees them as problems to solve, once and for all, like a scientist proving a theory or a lawyer arguing a case. He would probably be insufferable if he didn't make so much sense. (I took undergraduate classes from him at Berkeley. He lectures exactly the way he writes.)

"The Construction of Social Reality" is a typical Searle masterpiece. In it, he sets forth and answers the question, How can facts about social institutions (such as money or marriage) be objectively true in a world made up of atoms and fields of force? His answer is simple but far-reaching: institutions, he says, are constituted by collective beliefs that confer status and powers on physical objects (such as currency notes) or physical events (such as the words, "I do"). They are thus mind-dependent but still objective, in the sense that statements such as "Dollars are legal tender in the U.S." or "John and Dawn are married" can be said to be "true" or "false." However, when beliefs die out, change, or are rejected, the institutions they constituted come to an end. The Russian monarchy no longer exists because no one believes in it any more. Searle unpacks this basic idea in intricate detail in fewer than 200 pages.

"The Construction of Social Reality" is lucid, well-argued and subversive: if Searle is right, then our deepest institutions (including property) are constituted by convention and sustained by habit, with no role whatsoever for God, Nature, or Morality except as reinforcing myths. No one could read this book without having his or her view of institutions deepened and perhaps transformed. Maybe Searle hasn't had the last word on social ontology, but he has definitely made a lasting contribution to the literature on the subject. Highly recommended.

Searle demonstrates once again why he is one of our best thinkers. Confronting head-on the postmodern claim that reality and truth are social constructs, Searle demolishes (deconstructs?) this claim and illustrates just how foolish and unexamined it is. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the ideas that have taken the humanities and higher education to a new nadir--which should be everyone. This is a great book.

In this book Searle extends upon his argument in his essay "How to Derive Ought from Is", where he argued that the institutional fact of making a promise by definition places one under a moral obligation to fulfill it. I hoped that he would clarify his argument and answer objections (for example, that promises are only kept for the instrumental purpose of maintaining one's reputation). However, I was gravely disappointed because his analysis of institutional facts is self-consciously naturalistic. Under his analysis, an individual's obligation to keep a promise is analogous to, for example, a batter's obligation to stop batting after three strikes. Institutional facts are created by constitutive rules accepted by collective agreement, and the rights and obligations that individuals have are determined by those constitutive rules. This analysis, while normative, seems not only to add nothing to prove the existence of external reasons, but also has some rather problematic consequences for moral philosophy:

1. Rights exist only by virtue of collective agreement and convention. Individuals deserve, are entitled to, or are owed only what society grants them.
2. Obligations should only be followed if it serves some desire or purpose of the individual. While obligations may exist objectively as part of an institution, the individual's reason to fulfill the obligation is purely instrumental.

At the very least, the book is successful at answering emotivist arguments that normative statements are incoherent. Searle provides a very clear alternative: To say, "You ought to keep your promises," is to say, "There is an institution of promise-keeping, and within this institution to make a promise is to place yourself under an obligation to keep them." However, altogether I am unimpressed.

Nice book and make me think something I never thought about. It seems the great book and classic book are really cheap now. Is it because the consideration of more people need knowledge or the less people would like to read them?

John Searle is unique among today's Anglo-American philosophers for his understandable and breezy writing style. He tells you what he is going to tell you; tells you; and then tells you what he told you - almost as though he were briefing the Pentagon. Construction of Social Reality is a fine example.

Searle is a philosophical realist and has always made a compelling case for our living in a single world, part of it outside of us and part within us, part objective and part subjective, part ontologic and part epistemic. In this book, in fact, he reviews the various combinations quite neatly. (Searle, in the early chapters, also includes animals other than humans. Another positive!)

In trying to convince us that institutions are as real as the brute facts of existence and mind he stumbles. He is correct on one score; institutions are real. But Searle builds virtually his entire argument on the conception of collective intent, or collective intention (or intentionality). On the one hand, he dismisses a version of the collective conscious, or geist as Hegel supposes. He makes no argument, other than the concept does not make common sense - especially for a realist. On the other hand, he counters the "opposite" position, that each individual expresses collective intent as "I intend because I believe you intend." That is not the case either, he asserts. Instead he believes that "we intend" operates linguistically and innately - as an a priori mental function. Simply because each sentient being is distinct from each other does not necessarily mean that, through language, we cannot express "we intend." This is pretty much the argument upon which he builds the entire book.

First, Searle does not consider other intentional patterns, such as one individual asserts "I intend" at time t, and another asserts "I [too] intend" at time t+n. In fact, Searle, in his "we intend" (I hesitate to call it an argument, as his case is too shallow for that) conjecture, does not consider time at all, in particular atomicity - wherein events occur or are perceived "simultaneously" within some acceptable bound. I personally prefer the "sequential, but appearing simultaneous," approach to the creation of institutional rules and facts, but this is not the place to make an argument. There are many examples of institutions, great and small, that have been created by a single mind, and then many, more or less, instantly agreed. Thus, the appearance of "we intend." One can think of thousands of examples: Freud and psychoanalysis, George Halas and the National Football League, Marx and Communism, to name three.

It is a great loss indeed that Searle undermines his own case, as he is correct in asserting that institutions are real. In fact, his description of how names, functions, and rules are identified is clear, and his examples of money, baseball, football, and marriage are apt and entertaining.

There are other profound difficulties. In describing his theory of the "logical construction" of social reality, Searle uses what he refers to as "iteration," with a feeble presentation of symbolic logic. In fact, what he is describing is the well-worn and well-understood theory of logical types, proposed by Russell and used in the social sciences, notably by Gregory Bateson, to explain the ever-rising tree of abstraction. Either Searle is unaware of this work, or he must believe that it is inappropriate or simply wrong. In any case, he never mentions it. (He also fails to cite references to "the evening star" expression, which resonates as far back as Parmenides and as recently as Karl Pooper - and many other logicians. He cannot be unaware of this tradition, yet he writes: "there is an expression" [the evening star] ... it has a sense and meaning" as though he were breaking new ground in linguistics and the philosophy of language.)

Another troubling point is this: Searle believes (again he has no sustainable argument) that processes precede the objects they [eventually] correlate with. He devotes an entire
heading (in Chapter 2) to it: "Systematic Relations and the Primacy of the Act over the Object." His answer to why there is this primacy is simply "that the `objects' are really designed to serve agentive functions and have little interest for us otherwise... they are just placeholders of activities [his italics]." This suggestion discards thousands of years of mathematics and its role in philosophy. If we are to presume that human thinking is most exquisitely captured by our mathematics (thus space vessels we launch into outer space contain mathematical symbols in the hopes that other sentient species might understand us), then we cannot avoid what has been proven: that objects are bound by the operations under which they are closed. In fact, there are no placeholders. Processes (to use Searle's word) and objects are intrinsic to one another. Each inheres within the other.
Despite the leap from static mathematical relations to real world activities and objects, I find this to be a far more convincing explanation. This, not just because of its pedigree, but because it also raises the issue of bounded time - as I discussed above under collective intent: What is - in fact - atomic and what is not? Here again Searle does not raise the temporal issue at all. For example, how long are his "placeholder objects" placeholders? A millisecond? A thousand years? Just long enough?

Searle is at his most creative in Chapter 6: "Background Abilities and the Explanation of Social Phenomena." Here he will not truck with previous work, specifically by "Chomsky or Fodor and not even Freud" on consciousness and the unconscious. Instead, he proposes "an alternate form of presentation." Hoping to close in on neurophysiology, he suggests how intentionality is born, speculating upon "states," "functions," and so on, revisiting [uncredited but for his own] work on the will, motivation, learning, and the boundaries between the individual alert mind and the phylogenetic, historical mind.

It is at this point that I more clearly understood Searle's objective. Put broadly, How can we infer the reality of social institutions and their behavior from the metaphors of mind? The question, the objective, suddenly struck me as unimportant. Do Searle's meta-states and pre-intentional background and dispositions and tendencies represent a closed mapping of mental abstraction to brain function and organization? Is it an accurate mapping? Can it be verified? The answer to all is very probably No. But even if the answer were Yes, the answer is meaningless. The question is equivalent to looking for the lost wedding ring only under the street lamp of consciousness, which is of course Searle's field.

Given that the ontology of our institutions and societies have evolved into highly artificial, complex hives of isolation, a fruitful line of questioning would seem to run more towards moral inquiry than brain chemistry. Yes, we live in a world of natural and artificial phenomena. All are real. But, it seems to me, the decisive issue is why mankind, which has evolved to attain a far greater degree of free will than any other being on the planet, persists in creating such a plethora of artificiality, to the point that we are undermining the very world we live in? Why do human beings - perhaps because we know we are living under a death sentence? - try to find solace, not just in groups, but in the fervent pursuit of machines, numbers, religions, money, and acquisitions?
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A final comment or two on the book. Chapters 7 through 9 are an add-n, as Searle mentions in the Introduction. As a kind of coda, he replays his view of realism and correspondence theory. While this message could stand to be reread, it did not need to be rewritten; and it upsets the balance of the book. Also, given the number of terms Searle introduces in the book, the index is meager and not particularly helpful.

The author's premise in this book is "Man is an irrational animal." This is a fascinating claim, although it had drawn some undeserved criticism. My only problem is the de Manian/Davidsonian twist he takes in the final chapter (read it and you will see!). But it is still everything you would expect from a top-notch philosopher and sociologist of knowledge.