About this title: This short treatise looks at how we construct a social reality from our sense impressions; at how, for example, we construct a 'five-pound note' with all that implies in terms of value and social meaning, from the printed piece of paper we see and touch.
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780684831794ISBN:0684831791
Description: New. No dust jacket as issued. remainder mark on bottom. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 256 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Free Press, New York, NY
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780029280454ISBN:0029280451
Description: Never read. No underlines; excellent condition; dust jacket with little crease at edge and top; inside covers are wrinkled. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 241 p. Audience: General/trade. How can biological beasts (people) create a social reality? Author shows how everyday actions demonstrate a metaphysical complexity. Thought provoking book. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780684831794ISBN:0684831791
Description: New. Brand new. Just a bit of ever so slight shelf wear but it is new, crisp and unread! May have publishers remainder mark on the edge just to assure it is not returned to the store. Product Description: In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle argues that there are two kinds of facts--some that are independent of human observers, and some that require human agreement. read more
Edition: Number Line 10987654
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Free Press, Old Tappan, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780684831794ISBN:0684831791
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 9 X 6. Pages are firm, bright and clean. Binding firm and straight. Covers, spine, edges and corners very good. No conspicuous wear. 241 pages, conclusion, endnotes & indexed. If needed for reference, research, analysis, or just enjoyment this is the one. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780029280454ISBN:0029280451
Description: Very good in good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 241 p. Audience: General/trade. First printing stated. Previous owner's (organization) name stamped on back pasted down endpaper. Back board slightly bowed. Otherwise near fine book. Solid & straight. Pages clean with no writing or marks. Dust jacket scuffed and shows edge wear. Corners rubbed. No tears or chips. Not price-clipped. read more
Edition: First Edition / First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Free Press, New York
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780029280454ISBN:0029280451
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. 0029280451 xiv + 241 pp, acknowledgments, introduction, 9 chapters & conclusion, endnotes, names & subject index. 6.25" x 9.5" white half-cloth and black papered boards in black DJ (20 oz) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS LTD Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780140235906ISBN:0140235906
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 256 pages. (256 pages) presents a treatise that looks at how we construct a social reality from our sense impressions; at how, for example, we construct a 'five-pound note' with all that implies in terms of value and social meaning, from the printed piece of paper we see and touch. index (Paperback) read more
Description: Fine; Collectible. Collectible 1st Edition (1995 HC), 1st printing with 10 full numberline. Excellent condition. No writings/underlines/highlights. Pages are nice and clean. Minor shelfwear. Free deliver confirmation! Satisfaction guaranteed! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1995
ISBN-13:9780029280454ISBN:0029280451
Description: ISBN 0-02-928045-1. Hardback. First Printing. Very Good to Near Fine condition book in a Very Good to Near Fine condition dustjacket. Tight, bright, attractive copy with no markings to the book. read more
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Free Press
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780684831794ISBN:0684831791
Description: Very Good. 0684831791 Pub date: 1997. Condition: Very Good. Has some shelf wear highlighting, underlining & or writing. Great used condition. We are a tested and proven company with over 400, 000 satisfied customers since 1997. Choose expedited shipping for much faster deliver. read more
"How can ideas that depend upon the human mind be said to be true? Does there even exist such a thing as social facts? Many thinkers have doubted it, but only now has a philosopher taken the question up.
John Searle shows here how ontologically subjective concepts can be objective facts. Intentionality is key, but only collective intentionality makes social facts possible. Yet collective intentioality is exactly what libertarians deny - consider Margaret Thatcher, who tells us there are no societies, only individuals. What can Searle say to this without raising the specter of a Hegelian Absolute? His precise line of reasoning I leave for the book's readers to assess.
In any case, Searle links physical entities to social facts by describing those facts as labels of intentionality. Physical entities can "count as" (the intending consciousness) mental facts, such as paper rectangle that counts as money. And social objects (a dollar), at bottom, are simply placeholders for some activity (commerce).
The joint buildout of social and ontological facts is the basis of institutions, and here again, fact implies function. A government is an institutional fact; more importantly, it is a function or activity. The upshot is that power grows out of organizations, not individuals.
Social and institutional facts, the author further explains, are true when a "sufficient number" of people in a community treat them as facts. Again, an institution, say a bank, is an ontologically subjective concept. But its acceptance by the people who use it makes it epistemically objective.
As to the individual, we learn nothing. Searle doesn't tell us what a "sufficient" number is, or what the status of an institution's opponents or dropouts is. Searle finds it amusing that the individual can be thought of as possessing inherent rights. Does that invalidate the power of whatever institutions recognize or enable that concept? Here the discussion stops, perhaps awaiting another book. Meantime, The Unconscious Civilization is a short read I recommend to fill the gap.
Searle does address a related problem, the aforementioned Hegelian idealism, public enemy number one of the individual according to so many. And here Searle has a lot to say. The book, in fact, contains two parts. The exploration of the institution ends the first part. The second part is a defense of both realism and the correspondence theory of truth. Although seemingly superfluous - after all, Searle has already taken care to tie epistemology to a physical ontology - this part is a solid work in its own right. Readers will enjoy the careful perusal of the philosophy in the second part.
The book is not easy. Despite the touchy-feely book cover, this is neither anthropology nor sociology. It is philosophy. But the discussion is structured with an elegance that fans of the subject will appreciate after having their ears boxed by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I'm glad to give it a good rating. For those who haven't thought much about how philosophy relates to social matters, this book is a good way to expand one's horizons."
"In this book, Searle's project is to give an account of the existence of social phenomena in a one-world ontology; that is, an ontology that presupposes naturalism. His project is descriptive insofar as he attempts to explain how social fact (y) is derived from or constructed "on top" of brute facts (x's). Facts about social institutions (such as money or marriage) are objectively true in a world constituted by atoms and fields of force for the following reason: Institutions and other conventions are constituted by collective beliefs that confer status and powers on objects and events. They are mind-dependent yet objective because locutions such as "Dollars are legal tender in the U.S." or "John and Dawn are married" are said to be "true" or "false."
Searle begins by making a number of conceptual distinctions, which will serve as the tools for constructing the required mechanisms that generate social ontology. One such distinction concerns features of the world. There are those that are intrinsic features of the world and those that are extrinsic or observer relative features of the world. Intrinsic features are agent independent. For instance, mountains and molecules are, according to Searle, things that exist independently of our representations of them. It is true of the object I'm sitting on that it has a certain mass and chemical composition; that it is made partly of wood, the cells of which are composed of cellulose fibers, and so forth. All such features are intrinsic, claims Searle. Observer relative features are agent dependent. For instance, it is true of a certain object, which consists of various intrinsic features, that it is also a screwdriver. To describe something as a screwdriver is to specify a feature of the object that is observer or agent relative. Screwdrivers are not things you find intrinsically in the world, even though there are objects that are screwdrivers. Searle makes a further distinction the objective and subjective, which are then further divided into those that are epistemic and those that are ontological. The epistemic concerns predicates of judgments. There are subjective epistemic judgments " Rembrandt is a better artist than Reubens." There also are objective epistemic judgments "Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam during the year 1632." The ontological concerns predicates of entities. There are subjective ontological predicates such as pains, and there are objective ontological predicates such as mountains. All these distinctions serve as the basic toolkit that Searle uses to carve up what he takes to be social ontology.
One of the interesting arguments Searle employs is his function argument. Searle argues that, unlike causes, functions are intensional, not extensional; functions are observer relative and, hence, are not intrinsic features of the world. His argument against intrinsic functionality is analogous to the argument against the substitutivity of terms in referentially opaque contexts.
Consider Leibniz's Law:
Fa
a=b
Therefore
Fb
The substitution of co-referential terms does not affect the truth-value of the sentence as a whole. Now consider the following invalid instantiation:
Wolfgang believes that Hesperus is Hesperus Hesperus is Phosphorus Therefore Wolfgang believes that Hesperus is Phosphorus.
The principle of substitutivity is applied illicitly here, and Searle thinks that substitutability in function contexts, likewise, yields invalidity. The following schema, therefore, is invalid:
A's function is to X X-ing = Y-ing Therefore A's function is to Y
Searle claims that arguments for intrinsic functionality fail to capture the ordinary notion of function. So, Searle's function argument serves as a premise for the overall argument that either one's account fits with substitutivity and is, therefore, observer relative, or one must redefine the sense in which the term "function" is being used.
Among the notion of a function, Searle distinguishes the following kinds: Agentive and nonagentive. Agentive functions are those that are agent dependent; e.g., chairs, screwdrivers, paperweights. Nonagentive functions are those that are agent independent; e.g., pumping hearts.
Searle's project also includes giving an account of collective intentionality, which involves cooperative behavior and shared intentional states. Searle spells out an interesting negative account of "we intentions" but leaves much to be desired if you are looking for a full treatment of this fascinating aspect of ontology.
Another aspect of his ontological toolkit is the notion of constitutive rules and regulative rules. Regulative rules are antecedent to the phenomena of which they regulate: "Drive on the right-hand side of the road." Constitutive rules, however, determine the phenomena of which they govern: "Playing chess is constituted in part by acting in accord with the rules." Constitutive rules have the form: "X counts as Y in context C."
Searle's project is an interesting one, though not a novel one; and it is noteworthy that he does not greatly refer to those who have engaged in projects similar to his, such as Heidegger, Foucault, or Merleu Ponty; or for that matter his contemporaries such as Ian Hacking and Sally Haslanger. There are a number of problems with Searle's account. One of which is his vague use of 'brute fact'. You get the sense that Searle knows that if he presses this concept for all it's worth, he'll end up with something like a Kantian "thing-in-itself;" but Searle trys to avoid being committed to this (it doesn't rub well with naïve realism). Further difficulties arise when Searle's notion of a 'backround' is cached out. Again, Searle seems to be committing himself to more than his toolkit allows for. There also is not a strong position on the way in which our concept use plays into the construction of various social entities, and how this concept use and construction is related to collective intentionality.
Regarding collective intentionality, Searle claims that cooperative intention constrains one's individual intention. I think his argument for this (which I'm not giving here) has many problems, but as is the case with most philosophical arguments that don't quite succeed,it is interesting, and yeilds plenty of further argumentative fruit.
All in all the book is well worth reading, and I've hardly said anything that should dissuade anyone from reading it. It would have been nice, however, if Searle had dealt with some of the more interesting and difficult issues that arise from his project, which people like Hacking and Haslanger and Elgin have dealt with."
"Searle's explanation of social and institutional facts (e.g. money, marriage, war) is very interesting and a valuable introduction to concepts we all know are there but don't quite know how to think about.
This exposition ended after chapter six. Chapters seven, eight and nine are a defense External Realism (the view that there is a world independent of conscious representation) and the Correspondence Theory of Truth (the view that for a statement to be true it must correspond to some 'fact' in the world). In my opinion, these discussions might have been interesting, but they were ultimately irrelevant--they did not connect with the earlier chapters.
There can be no doubt that External Realism is assumed in linguistic practices and institutional/social practices more generally, but from this fact alone it does not follow that External Realism is actually true--the assumption of ER could simply be a pragmatic practice.
I am not saying that I disagree with ER, but simply that Searle should not have bothered defending it because it does not bear on his initial thesis. In my opinion, Searle should have simply said "I will assume ER to be true...""
"Searle has taken on an extremely interesting subject, how the objects of our social life come to be. What is the nature (or ontology) of money, weddings, court proceedings, state lines, war, and other "social facts" compared to "brute facts" such as the temperature outside, the composition of the computer you now use, and the number of fingers on your hand? This book clearly spells out an External Realist position on the basic constructs of the world we inhabit, whether socially constructed or found in nature. At the end of the book he offers a brief but competent defense of realism and critique of anti-realism."
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