Intentional Acts and Institutional Facts: Essays on John Searle's Social Ontology (Theory and Decision Library / Series A: Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences, Vol. 41)

"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, and 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."--Jacket 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. [Publisher] Savas L. Tsohatzidis John Searle is famous for his contributions to two fields with long and dist- guished traditions within analytic philosophy—the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind—, but his interests and achievements extend beyond these fields. From the early 1990s he has added to his research agenda a theme that was not only largely new to his philosophical preoccupations, but also largely absent from the concerns of analytic philosophy as a whole: the syst- atic examination of the mode of being of a particular kind of facts, institutional facts, that appear to be no less objectively knowable than ordinary physical facts, yet seem to be essentially dependent for their existence on the subjectivity of human minds (to recall one of his favourite examples, one can know that something is a piece of paper as objectively as one can know that it is a twenty-dollar bill, but something's being a piece of paper does not depend on anyone's taking it to be a piece of paper, whereas its being a twenty-dollar bill crucially depends on a lot of people taking it to be a twenty-dollar bill). Searle's attempt to give a systematic account of the combination of epistemic objectivity and ontological subjectivity that, in his view, characterizes institutional facts has led to a full-blown theory that he presented in his 1995 book, The Construction of Social Reality, and further developed in his 2001 book, Rationality in Action. Contents......Page 6 Contributors......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 Social Ontology: The Problem and Steps toward a Solution......Page 20 PART I: ASPECTS OF COLLECTIVE INTENTIONALITY......Page 38 Searle and Collective Intentions......Page 39 Foundations of Social Reality in Collective Intentional Behavior......Page 57 Joint Action: The Individual Strikes Back......Page 80 Collective Speech Acts......Page 100 PART II: FROM INTENTIONS TO INSTITUTIONS: DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION......Page 118 The Ontogeny of Social Ontology: Steps to Shared Intentionality and Status Functions......Page 119 Social Reality and Institutional Facts: Sociality Within and Without Intentionality......Page 144 PART III: ASPECTS OF INSTITUTIONAL REALITY......Page 159 The Varieties of Normativity: An Essay on Social Ontology......Page 160 A Behavioural Critique of Searle's Theory of Institutions......Page 177 Searle versus Durkheim......Page 192 Searle's Derivation of Promissory Obligation......Page 204 D......Page 219 M......Page 220 U......Page 221 Z......Page 222 Ten original essays examine the central themes of John Searles ontology of society. Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays contribute to a deeper understanding of Searles work. Moreover, these essays open the door to new approaches to addressing fundamental questions about social phenomena. This book also features a new essay by Searle himself that summarizes and further develops his work.