User talk:Soapiopath/CSR

The Construction of Social Reality is John Searle's philosophical account of social and institutional facts: those that require (and maintain) such human institutions as, say, the English language, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, or the National Football League. Its 228 pages are divided into nine chapters, but the main argument of the book is confined to the first five.

Thesis Summary
John R Searle's 1995 account of social reality is built on a taxonomy of facts developed from Elizabeth Anscombe's paper "On Brute Facts". Searle extends this to distinguish between Brute (ie Physical) Facts and several classes of Mental Facts, particularly:


 * Social Facts - those Mental Facts having collective intentionality, ie whose subject is WE, rather than I.


 * Institutional Facts - those Social Facts only made true by collective agreement (or, at least, acceptance). Equivalently, those Social Facts that are not explicable by physical causality.

Assumptions
Searle's overall thesis is built on five explicit assumptions. The first three of these are specific to his thesis in The Construction Of Social Reality (CSR); the other two are presumptions of his overall world-view generally. These last two are:


 * no 4) External Reality (ER), that there is a way the world is, before our attempts to represent or change it even begin.
 * no 5) The Correspondence Theory of Truth, that statements are true exactly when they correspond to the relevant facts.

The second of these is rather more controversial than the first, but much less so than his second specific assumption in CSR:


 * no 2) Collective Intentionality, that it does not violate Methodological Individualism for the subjects (ie possessors) of an intentional state to be a 'we' rather that an 'I', as in "We are playing chess". Searle asserts without argument that attempts to analyze "we believe.." as "I believe, and I believe that you believe..(etc)" either regress infinitely or are "subject to counterexamples" (p24).

Next to this, his first assumption in CSR is pretty banal, and his third is also easy to defend:


 * no 1) Symbolizability, that symbolic functions can be assigned to objects more-or-less arbitrarily. For example, in a chess diagram the Knight might be represented by a horse-head, or simply by the letter 'N'.
 * no 3) Constitutive Regulation, that (taken together) the rules of an activity-system might create rather than describe the activity. For example, the rules of chess were not invented to prevent accidental collisions between chess-pieces otherwise being moved around at whim; instead, the possibility of playing chess is created by agreeing the rules in the first place. (Compare Wittgenstein's: "A game is defined by the rules by which it is played.")

Assembly
These five assumptions fit together as follows:

Assumption 1 escapes physicality in the specific. Assumption 2 enables agreement about how physicality is to be escaped. Assumption 3 escapes physicality in the general, because laws may be synthetic rather than natural. Assumption 4 is seemingly presupposed by assumption 1 with 2, because, unlike hallucinations, objects must really exist before they can be treated as collectively-intentional symbols (unlike Macbeth's dagger, say). Assumption 5 (with 4) is stated explicitly because without them "my enterprise would at the very least need to be recast" (p199), which leaves open the possibility that a coherence-theorist could adopt Searle's thesis in some version.

With these assumptions, Searle can readily ground his context-dependent "counts as" relation. Collective intentionality fixes the context and applicability of constitutive rules-systems, within which arbitrary functions can be imposed on objects independent of their physical causal powers. For example, spoken languages are precisely such a collectively-intentional imposition of function (in this case, meanings) on arbitrary objects (syllable-sequences, say) irrespective of physics (eg pronunciation in some dialect-accent).

If this account of language is accepted, any speech-act analysis in the style/spirit of John Austin, Searle's tutor at Oxford and author of "How to Do Things with Words", will suffice to allow institutional facts to be created and modified with performatives like "I declare you man and wife", "I promise to pay the bearer on demand..", "This hearing is hereby adjourned", etc. 89.240.135.96 (talk) 15:16, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Technical Overview
In the first chapter, Searle exhibits and examines the three "Building Blocks of Social Reality" he will use in his complete account, culminating in his "General Theory of Institutional Facts" in chapters four and five. As he puts it, the "three I need" turn out to be (1) the Imposition of (Symbolic) Functions, (2) Collective ("we") Intentionality and (3) Constitutive (cf. Regulative) Rules. Two more might be added (4) External Realism and (5) The Correspondence Theory of Truth, because without them "my enterprise would at the very least need to be recast" (in Ch.9, p199).

In chapter two Searle presents six "puzzling" features of social reality and demands of himself that he give satisfactory accounts of all of them. The sixth feature is his need of and appeal to language; he devotes the entirety of the next, third chapter to considering this, but deals with the first five in one go, here. These are: (1) The Self-Referentiality of Many Social Concepts, (2) The Use of Performative Utterences [think 'hereby'] in the Creation of Institutional Facts, (3) The Logical Priority of Brute Facts over Institutional Facts, and then that there are (4) Systematic Relationships Among Institutional Facts, and, finally, the (5) Primacy of Social Acts over Social Objects, of Processes over Products.

Searle's "General Theory of Institutional Facts" in the fourth and fifth chapters is buttressed by a reprise of his twin-thesis of the Network and Background in the sixth, drawing on his earlier work "The Rediscovery of the Mind" (1992). Searle describes the last three of his nine chapters as "philosophical housekeeping", and they are inessential to the main argument of the book; in a way chapter six also has something of this character: in it Searle "tries to locate the explanatory force of the constitutive rules of human institutions.." given that people frequently do not know the rules. The gist of his answer draws an analogy with evolutionary biology: people evolve dispositions to behave in accordance with such rules by a process of corrective feedback. In simple cases this might amount to learning the rules but more complex rules-sets like, say, Congressional laws, are not in general learnt by non-specialists; hence Searle must clarify exactly what kind of causal relations do underlie his account of rule-following behaviour.

Chapters seven and eight defend External Realism, the view that the world exists entirely independently of representations in the minds of observers. The final chapter defends the correspondence theory of truth, that statements are true or false by virtue of facts to which they do or do not correspond. An appendix to that chapter attempts to refute the infamous, somewhat technical 'slingshot' argument; oddly, Searle attributes its name not to the ingenious reciprocity of its logical structure but rather to such a "little David" reputedly having slain "such huge Goliaths as modal logic and the correspondence theory." (p221) -92.9.169.17 (talk) 08:09, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Chapter List

 * 1 The Building Blocks of Social Reality
 * 2 Creating Institutional Facts
 * 3 Language and Social Reality
 * (ch's 4&5) The General Theory of Institutional Facts
 * 4 I: Iteration, Interaction, and Logical Structure
 * 5 II: Creation, Maintenance, and the Hierarchy
 * 6 Background Abilities and the Explanation of Social Phenomena
 * (ch's 7&8) Does the Real World Exist?
 * 7 I: Attacks on Realism
 * 8 II: Could There Be a Proof of External Realism?
 * 9 Truth and Correspondence
 * (appendix to ch.9) The Slingshot Argument

-Soapiopath (talk) 22:08, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Chapter One: The Building Blocks of Social Reality
Searle opens the first chapter by drawing what he evidently feels is a clean distinction between what he calls "brute" and "institutional" facts. He readily admits that, of course, both kinds of fact require the institution of some language in order to state them at all, but in the latter case the fact itself depends on institutional reality too; for example, that some slip of paper in his wallet is a dollar bill, as opposed merely to its being made of cellulose.

No sooner has he drawn attention to this distinction than something "curious" happens (p2): "Many people [..] have argued that all of reality is somehow a human creation, that there are no brute facts, but only facts dependent on the human mind." Searle thinks there is a human-mind-independent reality, and that brute truths as stated are true precisely because they correspond to brute facts. He announces that he will defend these claims in chapters seven, eight and nine, and that for the first six chapters he will presuppose them. Moving on, he singles-out the three "building blocks" (Symbolization, Collective Intentionality, and Constitutive Rules) that he will combine to give a satisfactory account of social reality.

By symbolization, Searle means 'imposing' functions on objects. Crucial is that the function is inessential to the object's nature and cannot be derived from the most painstaking study of it. No physical inspection of a dime (the US coin worth ten cents) will establish that it is legal tender in the USA but not in France, for example. The function of being money in certain contexts can only have been imposed from without.

Such functions are imposed, thinks Searle, by collective intentionality, this being the content of certain beliefs held in common. That commonality goes importantly beyond their being widely-held: it is intrinsic to the belief itself that it is held commonly. Such beliefs begin "We believe.." and are not reducible to "I believe, and you believe, and he believes, and she believes, etc". Believing that a banknote is legal tender within a certain territory does not amount to having many separate beliefs that innumerable people one has never met, and of whom one has little or no knowledge, all share a similar conviction. "I don't think my head is big enough to accomodate so many beliefs," Searle says in his later "Mind, Language, and Society" (1999). The advantage of "We believe.." is that the 'We' can be left vague: it's us, whoever we are.

Finally, Searle defends the idea that plenty of rule-sets do more than regulate: they constitute. The ever-succinct Wittgenstein observed that "a game is defined by the rules by which it is played." Such rules are constitutive rather than regulative because they create the activity: without the rules the activity wouldn't exist, like a game no-one remembers how to play. This contrasts with rules that regulate pre-existing activities, like "drive on the right-hand side of the road".

If constitutive rule-sets can be imposed by collective intentionality on arbitrary objects, thinks Searle, you can create social realities. Nothing in this conflicts with the brute fact of the existence of those objects in external reality: indeed, imposing symbolic functions presupposes such facts. -92.9.169.17 (talk) 08:50, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

=Extended contents (by subheadings)=

1. The Building Blocks of Social Reality The Metaphysical Burden of Social Reality The Invisible Structure of Social Reality Fundamental Ontology Objectivity and Our Comtemporary World View The Distinction Between Intrinsic and Observer-Relative Features of the World The Assignment of Function Collective Intentionality Constitutive Rules and the Distinction Between Brute and Institutional Facts

2. Creating Institutional Facts Some Apparent Features of Social Reality 1. The Self-Referentiality of Many Social Concepts 2. The Use of Performative Utterences in the Creation of Institutional Facts 3. The Logical Priority of Brute Facts over Institutional Facts 4. Systematic Relationships Among Institutional Facts 5. The Primacy of Social Acts over Social Objects, of Processes over Products 6. The Linguistic Component of Many Institutional Facts From Collective Intentionality to Institutional Facts: The Example of Money Constitutive Rules: X counts as Y in C Why Self-Referentiality Does Not Result in Circularity The Use of Performative Utterances in the Creation of Institutional Facts The Logical Priority of Brute Facts over Institutional Facts Systematic Relations and the Primacy of the Act over the Object 3. Language and Social Reality Language-Dependent Thoughts and Language-Dependent Facts Why Are Any Thoughts Language Dependent? Games and Institutional Reality Does Language Require Language? Other Functions of Language in Institutional Facts

4&5. The General Theory of Institutional Facts I: Iteration, Interaction, and Logical Structure Generalizing the Analysis The structure "X counts as Y in C" can be iterated There can be interlocking systems of such iterated structures operating through time Codification Some of the Issues at Stake in the Analysis Some Types of Imposition of Status-Functions 1. Symbolic Powers: The Creation of Meaning 2. Deontic Powers: The Creation of Rights and Obligations 3. Honor: Status for Its Own Sake 4. Procedural Steps on the Way to Power and Honor The Logical Structure of Conventional Power Conclusion II: Creation, Maintenance, and the Hierarchy The Creation and Maintenance of Institutional Facts The Creation of Institutional Facts The Continued Existence of Institutional Facts Status Indicators The Hierarchy of Facts: From Brute to Institutional Figure 5.1: Hierarchical Taxonomy of (Certain Types of) Facts Facts: Brute Physical Facts vs Mental Facts Mental Facts: Intentional vs Nonintentional Intentional Facts: Singular vs Collective (=Social) Facts Social Facts: Functional vs Nonfunctional Functional Social Facts: Agentive vs Nonagentive Agentive Functional Facts: Causal vs Status-Functional (=Institutional) Facts Institutional Facts: Linguistic vs Nonlinguistic Institutional Facts and the Background of Capacities

6. Background Abilities and the Explanation of Social Phenomena Constitutive Rules and Causation What Is the Background and How Does It Work? First, the Background enables linguistic interpretation to take place Second, the Background enables perceptual interpretation to take place Third, the Background structures consciousness Fourth, temporally extended sequences of experiences come to us with a narrative or dramatic shape (They come to us under "dramatic" categories) Fifth, each of us has a set of motivational dispositions, and these will condition the structure of our experiences Sixth, the Background facilitates certain kinds of readiness Seventh, the Background disposes me to certain sorts of behaviour Background Causation 1. Rules are never self-interpreting 2. Rules are never exhaustive 3. In many situations, we just know what to do, we just know how to deal with the situation (We do not apply the rules consciously or unconsciously)

7&8. Does the Real World Exist? I: Attacks on Realism II: Could There Be a Proof of External Realism 9. Truth and Correspondence (inc Appendix: the Slingshot Argument)

=DISCUSSION=

Comments
This formats really badly in naive wiki. Soapiopath (talk) 21:00, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

The opening paragraph suggested a necessary interdependence between institutional facts and institutions, but by Searle's lights any noncausal social fact (like the eroded wall that is still treated as a barrier) is institutional by definition, institution or no. You don't need a Department of Walls for it to count as an institutional fact. 92.28.167.174 (talk) 08:35, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Quotations
"It is generally [..] the case that agentive functions require continuous intentionality on the past of users for their maintenance whereas nonagentive functions continue without any effort on our part." (p20-1)

"Sometimes the agentive function is that of standing for or representing something else." (p21)

"..manifest functions are agentive and latent functions are nonagentive." (p22)

Quotes from chapter three (p59-78)
"..the move from X to Y is eo ipso a linguistic move." (p63)

"The fact that today is Tuesday the 26th October is not an institutional fact because [..] no new status-function is carried by the label." (p65)

"..the three essential features of linguistic symbols [that they symbolize something else, conventionally and publicly]" (p66)

"..no prelinguistic way of formulating [..] agreement." (p69)

"..a strange result. I am not entirely comfortable with it.." (p74)

"..such complex systems [..] are languages." (p77)

Quotes relevent to this chapter
"Status functions require language or at least a language-like capacity for symbolization" (p134 of his later "Mind, Language and Society") -Soapiopath (talk) 11:43, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Quotes from chapter four (p79-112)
"What sort of facts can we create simply by collective agreement [and] what are the possibilities and limitations of institutional facts?" (p90)

Aside: To me, a very interesting - and significant - feature of social reality is its radical contingency. Searle cites the example of the collapse of communism in 1989 to show how quickly a colossal chunk of social reality can cease to exist by an act of collective disbelief. This was only possible because it was maintained by collective belief in the first place. Back in the sixties the Brotherhood of Eternal Love advocated using LSD - despite its dangers - because it could "undo twenty years of government conditioning in the space of an afternoon." That could not happen in the case of "conditioning" in the ordinary sense: younger LSD users did not forget how to talk, for example. I believe that the intrinsic contingency of social reality provides at least part of the explanation. -Soap 92.9.173.92 (talk) 00:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Quotes from chapter five (p113-126)
"The most common device for status indication is the written signature." (p119)

"except for special cases.. the creation of institutional facts is typically a matter of natural evolution.." (p125) -92.9.169.17 (talk) 08:09, 15 July 2015 (UTC)