On Searle and the collapse of civilization

Rodrigo González-Fernández

doi:10.4067/s0717-554x2020000300255

Abstract

This article addresses a neglected problem in Searle’s social ontology, namely, how human civilization may collapse. In the first section, I provide the theoretical framework. In the second section, I offer the key elements to understanding Searle’s ontology as well as his philosophy of society, emphasizing the role of constitutive rules and deontic powers. In the third section I examine how they improve trust and cooperation. Global and local natural disasters are distinguished in the fourth section, because the former is sufficient to undermine pacts, promises, constitutive rules and deontic powers, while the latter is neither sufficient nor necessary. In the fifth and final section, I put forward an argument via a thought experiment that allows us to anticipate what would occur if people did not keep promises and pacts, on the one hand, and did not respect constitutive rules and deontic powers, on the other hand. Such events, I argue, would result in the collapse of civilization.

Highlights

Searle has proposed a theory that explains the structure of human civilization, as we know it
I explored the under examined question of how to understand the conditions under which civilization could come apart using the tools of Searlean analytics
I focused on the case of natural disasters, because I am interested in the continuity that holds between the natural and social world, and how the one can affect the other in the question not of social construction but social deconstruction/collapse

Summary

Introduction

Searle has proposed a theory that explains the structure of human civilization, as we know it. The hypothesis that I will formulate considers the role that pacts, promises, status functions, constitutive rules and deontic powers play in the making of the social world. Against this background, I hypothesize what would occur if, for example, a global natural disaster occurred without destroying the Earth. In the fifth and final section, I introduce an alternative thought experiment from which I conclude that, if people did not keep promises and solemn pacts, and did not respect constitutive rules and deontic powers, institutions would disappear. In other words, the conditions described by the new thought experiment evince how the social world could be un-made

The ABC of social ontology

Findings

Conclusion