Abstract
The main goal of this paper is to revisit, synthesize, and critique John R. Searle’s thinking over time concerning social ontology and what it means for something to be a social construction. Primarily, I undertake this task by elucidating and problematizing aspects of John R. Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality (herein, CSR) (1995), though attention is paid to his later and corollary works. Certainly, there are many other philosophers who attend to analyzing the very meaning of social ontology or social constructionism considered as a program and many other philosophers who concern themselves with what it means to say that something is socially constructed. I focus largely on CSR because it remains both immensely influential and because it represents one of the earliest attempts by an analytic philosopher to provide an analysis of the very meaning of what it means to say that “X is a social construction” or what “social ontology/social constructionism” entails. Although much of what follows constitutes a revisitation of the crucial elements of CSR, what is novel about my analysis is that I synthesize and organize the main aspects of Searle’s thinking through time in a single article. I also draw attention to others’ concerns and amendments to his positions and offer my own novel objections and possible improvements to his corpus. This is no small feat: Many details, as well as others’ appraisals, amendments, and so forth must be overlooked for this endeavor to be possible at all. This being so, I do my best to point readers in directions to follow for further exploration or arguments against Searle’s views as I proceed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I address what it means to say that rules can be applied collectively throughout the remainder of this paper.
The bare capacity for collective intentionality is what Searle calls a Background capacity. The capacity for collective intentionality is not itself intentional. It is not itself characterized by any particular aboutness and it is not volitional.
Searle is explicit that his account of the Background resembles Bourdieu’s account of “habitus” (Searle 1995, 132).
A careful exposition of the Background is found in the sixth chapter of Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality (1995). To elucidate the function of the Background, consider another of Searle’s examples:
Consider the skilled professional playing baseball. After he hits the ball he runs to first base. Now if we ask, Why does he do that? we can say: He wants to get a hit; he wants to get on first base; he wants to do that because he wants to score runs; and he wants to score runs so that his team can win. But what role do the rules of baseball play in this explanation? Do we also want to say that he wants to follow the rules of baseball? That seems a little odd; that is more appropriate to the beginner. Unless there is some dispute, the rules of baseball don’t concern the expert at all; he is too far advanced to be worried about the rules of baseball. (Searle 1995, 137)
Searle does not use the language of bona fide collective intentionality since he restricts his definition of collective intentionality to cases where the content of the rule “we collectively agree that…” in fact matches or is consistent with others’ use of the rule.
This addendum is also addressed by Thomasson (2003) in her discussion of individuals’ and communities’ metaphysical and epistemological relation to “foreign” individuals’ and communities’ social kinds. For Thomasson (2003), our relation to another community’s social kinds mirrors each of our relations to natural kinds.
Here, one might ask Searle whether I am really obligated to address Sandy, this year’s “Miss Alameda County,” as “Sandy, Miss Alameda County.” It would be polite, perhaps, to address Sandy as such, but the notion of my being remiss in simply calling her “Sandy” seems too strong. The notion of being remiss in not referring to Sandy as “Miss Alameda County” seems awkward or absurd precisely, it seems, because the title brings with it such weak deontic power.
I acknowledge that some may not view this as an “enablement,” but rather a symptom of sexism. Women often get into nightclubs for free in order to encourage more men to pay to enter in order to be in close proximity to women, and in turn, to hopefully generate more money for the club.
Thomasson (2003) attributes the objection to Mark Lance, who raised it in an APA discussion, but has not himself written on the topic.
I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to focus more heavily on this line of critique.
I thank the same anonymous referee for pressing me to focus more heavily on this line of critique.
I thank the same anonymous referee for pressing me to focus more heavily on this line of analysis.
See Ásta (2013) “The Social Construction of Human Kinds,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. 28(4). pp. 716 − 32.
References
Ásta (2013) The Social Construction of Human Kinds. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 28(4):716–732
Dunn K (2008) “Interrogating White Male Privilege,” Eds. Parpart, J.L. and Zalewski, M., Rethinking the Man Question: Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations. Zed Books. pp. 47–69
Hacking I (1999) The Social Construction of what? Harvard University Press
Haslanger S (2012) Resisting reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford University Press
Ian Hacking (2004) Historical Ontology. Harvard University Press
Khalidi MA (2010) Interactive kinds. Br J Philos Sci 61:335–360
Khalidi MA (2015) “Three Kinds of Social Kinds,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 90. pp. 96–112
Mallon R (2004) Passing, traveling and reality: Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics of Race. Noûs 38(4):643–677
Root M (2000) “How We Divide the World,” Philosophy of Science. Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. pp. 628 – 39
Rust J (2006) John Searle and the construction of Social reality (Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy). Continuum
Searle JR (1992) Collective intentions and actions. In: Cohen P, Morgan J, Pollack M (eds) Intentions in Communications. The MIT Press, pp 401–416
Searle JR (1995) The construction of social reality. The Free Press
Searle JR (2008) Philosophy in a New Century: selected Essays. Cambridge University Press
Searle JR (2010) Making the Social World: the structure of human civilization. Oxford University Press
Tyler Burge (1979) “Individualism and the mental”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4(1):73–122
Taylor PC (2007) “Race Problems, Unknown Publics, Paralysis, and Faith,” Eds. Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N. Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. State University of New York Press. pp. 135–52
Thomasson AL (2003) Realism and human kinds. Philos Phenomenol Res lxvii(3):580–609
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Klassen, A. Revisiting, Synthesizing, and Critiquing Searle on Social Construction. glob. Philosophy 33, 41 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-023-09690-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-023-09690-2