5/2/2016

John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization Oxford University Press, 224pp

John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization Oxford University Press,
224pp. $24.95

The question John Searle asks himself is a familiar one: how does the natural world of mindless,
meaningless physical particles give rise to minded, free, rational, social and political human beings? The
constraints Searle works under in setting about this question are also familiar. We are to avoid multiple
ontologies, ghosts in the machine, unmoved movers and the like, and see all the causal processes that
affect us as special instances of the kinds of causal processes that affect everything. Searle refuses to call
this monism, because that accepts the metaphysical ontologizing that we are out to reject and replace
(p. 4). I am not sure what this means. It sounds rather reminiscent of the late Richard Rorty, but he would
surely have rejected the naturalist program itself. One thing it might mean is that when it comes to
societies and their members, there is no one-way trafc. If we say that individuals make societies, we can
also say that societies make individuals: I and my thoughts are as much creatures of the English language
as the English language is a creature of people like me. But Searle accepts only the direction of
explanation from small to big. It is society and social ontology that interests him, and it is to be explained
by the collective doings of individual agents.
Searles basic thought is that human beings, uniquely, can together create what he calls status
functions: the kinds of powers that we grant to certain things:

Examples are pretty much everywhere: a piece of private property, the president of the United States, a
twenty dollar bill, and a professor in a university are all people or objects that are able to perform certain
functions in virtue of the fact that they have a collectively recognized status that enables them to perform
those functions in a way they could not do without the collective recognition of the status.

The functions in question are deontic powers: rights, duties, obligations, requirements permissions,
authorizations, entitlements and so on. They typically belong to an institutional world, and the institutions
are themselves constituted by rules determining the deontic powers of people and things within them,
whether they be Presidents, coins, or pieces on a chessboard.

So the question becomes one of how together we erect this world of institutions and
corresponding deontic powers. And Searle has a characteristically forthright answer: by declaration.
These are speech acts with the amazing power of making something be the case just by saying that it is,
as when you make it the case that you promise, just by saying I promise. Searles strong claim is that
institutions and corresponding deontic powers are all of them created by this amazing power. They do not
all require specic speech acts, but they are all of them cases where we collectively create a reality by
representing that reality as created. And even in cases where speech acts are not directly involved Searle
thinks the representation of the created reality will involve specically linguistic powers: language, if not
the prime mover, is at least one level below the kinds of institution created by status function
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John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization Oxford University Press, 224pp

declarations. It is therefore essentially different from the games or other institutions with which
philosophers, including Searle himself in younger days, have compared it. Meanings are necessary, but
not sufcient, to generate status function declarations. As for language itself, Searle repeats his wellknown view that biologically extruded intentionality is, as it were, the unmoved mover which puts into
motion the whole possibility of linguistic communication, representation of the natural world, and
creation of the social deontic world.
Searle has a famously uncompromising style, and this book instances it. Perhaps unfairly, I found
myself comparing reading it to listening to the monotone of a street preacher. Each point is shouted with
equal force; most are said to be crucial, critical, fundamental and so forth. Much terminology is
introduced, although not to ll evident gaps: I did not nd that my understanding of rationality in action
was much improved by acquaintance with four notions a total reason, a motivator, an effector, and a
constitutor, but fortunately these and others have a short half-life within the book itself.
Sometimes the mountains labour and bring forth something not much larger than a mouse. Here is
a salient example. Suppose we enter on a joint enterprise. Together we are to shift a rock, carry a cofn,
or row a boat. I cannot perform the task solely by myself, and neither can you. In Searles pleasantly oldfashioned example we set about getting a manual-shift car with a at battery to start, by means of my
pushing and you letting in the clutch at the right moment. I will only push provided I expect you to let in
the clutchand if you don't let in the clutch, I will stop pushing and be very annoyed at the waste of
effort. Here is Searle's account, in what he bills as his canonical notation for representing the structure of
intentionality:

ia collective B by means of singular A (this ia causes: A car moves, causes: B engine starts). In
English this is to be read as: I have a collective intention-in-action B, in which I do my part by
performing my singular act A, and the content of the intention is that, in that context, this intentionin-action causes it to be the case, as A, that the car moves which, in that context, causes it to be the
case that B, the engine starts. Notice furthermore that the free variables "B" and "A" are bound inside
the bracket by the verb phrases "car moves" and "engine starts" that follow the respective letters.

It may be that Searle is right that this paraphrases the original. He may even be right that the sentence said
to be in English is indeed so, although I must say that it is a rather strange and unfamiliar dialect of
English. Furthermore it is a dialect that we understand - how, exactly? Putting my hand on my heart I
should say that for all my grey hairs and many years' experience of fearsome bushwhacking through
tangled thickets of logic and philosophy of language, I myself understand it by supposing that it means
more or less that we are together trying to start the car by means of my pushing it and you letting in the
clutch, which is where we started.
Searle proudly claims that the great philosophers of the twentieth century didnt tackle the
questions of social ontology that concern him. I am not sure that is trueDavid Lewiss classic
Convention must come to mind, as well as numerous books on the evolution of co-operationbut in any
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John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization Oxford University Press, 224pp

case their predecessors certainly did. Here is David Hume talking of the emergence of cooperation,
convention, collective activity, and eventually the social-deontic normative statuses of promises, law,
money, and language itself, from habit, reciprocity and self-interest:

Thus, two men pull the oars of a boat by common convention for common interest, without any
promise or contract; thus gold and silver are made the measures of exchange; thus speech and words
and language are xed by human convention and agreement.
Whatever is advantageous to two or more persons, if all perform their part; but what loses all
advantage if only one perform, can arise from no other principle There would otherwise be no motive
for any one of them to enter into that scheme of conduct.

I do not want to pronounce that Hume is right against Searle that the case of conventions underlying
language are of the same kind as the others. But he is certainly right that conventions, together with
attached norms of conformity, can be slow growths arising in our lives together through recognition of the
mutual advantages to be gained by reciprocities, co-operations, and institutions. So, a priori, there is no
more difculty about linguistic conventions thus emerging than there is of conventions underlying
acceptance of law and government. Declaration is unnecessary: what we recognize, when we are thrown
into the social world, and what we declare for ourselves, are very different things. And I am sorry to say
that I also think Hume is right about the way to write about these things. At least, I fear I am going to
remember his image of the individual acts of justice together forming a vault, where each individual
stone would, of itself, fall to the ground; nor is the whole fabric supported but by the mutual assistance
and combination of its corresponding parts long after I have forgotten the detail of Searles canonical
notation for representing the structure of intentionality.
Searle believes that institutional realities and their associated status functions also provide a set or
space of practical reasons which are independent of desires, showing both Bernard Williams, in his attack
on external reasons, and Hume in his subordination of reason to passion or desire, are both in error. I
found this unconvincing: it would be strange if Book III, part 2, Section V of the Treatise (Of the
obligation of promises) conicted so sharply with the work of which it is a part. What may be true is that
an institutional fact, such as the fact that it is someones job to pick up the rubbish, gives them a reason to
do so, in the sense of opening them to criticism if they fail, regardless of whether they want to perform
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John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization Oxford University Press, 224pp

their job. But Humeans think that as well. What is not true is that because its your job has a
motivational efcacy regardless of whether you care about your job. But that takes us back to the
operation of belief and desire.
There are many things touched upon in this work about which I have not had space to comment.
The latter part of the book explores many political and social consequences that Searle sees as following
from his fundamental analysis. He dislikes rule-utilitarianism, argues that there is something special about
the right to free speech, and holds that consciousness, rationality, and freedom are intertwined elements in
the emergence of the social Leviathan. There is much here to chew over, for those with good teeth.

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