Social scientists know John R. Searle largely for his speech act theory. Following Wittgenstein’s fundamental insight that words do not picture anything and J. L. Austin’s subsequent work on what words do, Searle managed to define an exhaustive set of five speech acts. These were to become the backbone of much research into interpersonal communication. Searle achieved this feat by reducing human communication to individual actions, leaving out the people who engaged such actions as well as the dialogical processes by which speech acquires the meanings Searle theorized.
In his latest book, one could say, he did it again - but this time to a far more complex area of human being: social reality. Like a magician, Searle makes things appear simply by abstracting a few elements from the complex fabric of social life and presenting a logical and hence partial analysis of these. His book is well written, avoids technical jargon, and gives plausible examples. Regrettably, it ends with a defense of Searle’s branch of realism, dismissing his opponents with a few simple arguments, as if his construction of social reality was a mere side product en route to this defense.
Let me walk you through some of Searle’s carefully developed distinctions.
Chapter One presents what he calls building blocks. Architectural metaphors are appropriate for Searle as he builds logical concepts upon logical concepts - ultimately on a realist foundations. From an analysis of what typically happens in a restaurant, Searle concludes that social reality is weightless and invisible and not reducible to physics (although visible facts undoubtedly are involved). To Searle, social reality is also observer-relative, that is, it cannot exist without human participation. His counter example is Mt. Everest whose existence, he claims, does in no way depend on the existence of humans. Most consequential is Searle’s claim that social reality serves assigned functions. The function of a screw driver, he argues, is not intrinsic to its materiality, but assigned by someone. To capture this idea, and on his preferred level of generality, he provides us with the formula "X counts as Y in the context of C" and frames most of his conceptualizations in these terms. Accordingly, not only does that flat-ended stem with a handle count as a screw driver in the context of screws in need of fastening or loosening, but so does Bill Clinton count as US President in such context as signing a bill into law or giving a State of the Union address. Moreover, objects can become representations by virtue of being assigned the function of standing for something other than themselves. This formula seems to do it all!
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