A Central Problem of Contemporary Philosophy: Institutional Facts. John Searle's Point of View

Abstract

Nowadays society is a web of status functions, roles and power. People's main concerns no longer regard what Searle called brute facts, but rather the social acts and institutional facts, whose existence is observer-dependent. As Searle himself put it more than ten years ago, philosophy needs to break the recurring bifurcation of the mental and physical, as they are both part of the same single world. This theory, which is recurrent in most of his recent work and is at the foundations of his social ontology, is stated from an evolutionary perspective; whereas the philosophy of the 20th century revolved mainly around language and logic – both as methods and subjects – the 21st century will bring about a series of changes, namely the transmutation of focus towards social interactions.This paper aims to reflect John Searle's view regarding social institutions’ role and ontology and the reasons why this should be a subject of interest for contemporary philosophers.