Searle's Work Research Articles

A sociological formalization of Searle's social ontology

AbstractJohn Searle's theory of social reality is among the most influential accounts in the history of philosophy. His theory also implicates concepts and issues of foundational interest to sociologists, including social structure, institutional differentiation and the relationship between linguistic performativity and institutional reality. Despite this overlap with sociological theory, and despite some sustained attention from sociologists (e.g., Lukes, ), no formal theoretical model of Searle's work exists within sociology. This paper reviews the core concepts of Searle's theory before concisely describing and then formally modelling their propositional structure. Though the overlap of Searle's approach with classical and contemporary sociological theory is discussed throughout, the paper concludes with a specific argument about his proper assimilation into sociological theory vis‐à‐vis Durkheim, Bourdieu and Giddens.

Rationality and the language of decision making

PurposeThe purpose is to show the importance of language in economic activity and encourage economists to pay more attention to language than hitherto.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines John Searle's work and consider its implications for economic theory. It discusses Searle's “background” and its role in the explanation of intentional phenomena. It analyses the implications of the background for the notion of rule‐following and illustrates the role the background plays in decision making by examining conversation‐analytical studies of decisions involving responses to invitations.FindingsSearle offers a novel interpretation of rules which contrasts to that found in economic theory. The decisions I examine manifest a “preference structure” independent of the preferences of individuals. These can be called “background preferences”. Personal and background preference rankings can conflict with each other. This leads to a possible interpretation of the phenomenon “weakness of will”. The paper concludes with remarks on why language is a neglected phenomenon in economic theory.Originality/valueSearle's work is slowly coming to the attention of a few economists. However, most contributions to the debate so far are at a very general level and do not tackle concrete issues of economic theory. By looking empirically at decision making, this paper shows the relevance of Searle to an issue at the heart of economic theory.

Commentary on Searle's ‘Social ontology: Some basic principles’

In response to Searle's article on social ontology, this commentary focuses on the relation between the concept of culture and Searle's work on institutions. Issues concerning the super-organic property of culture and collectivities, the fusion between ideas and social agreement found in institutions, and the relation of values to institutions are discussed. The constructs culture, society, and personality are deconstructed, revealing the high degree of overlap in the referents of these terms. Finally, a definitional reformulation of these three constructs is presented, treating each as a different kind of process.

Virginia Woolf: Translation and 'Iterability'

After a brief comparison of the foundational texts of translation in Scripture and in Greek tragedy, the article surveys scenes of translation in the novels and essays of Virginia Woolf. A second section discusses those scenes in terms of Derrida's 'iterability'. The term, which was developed in his discussion of John R. Searle's work on performative speech, introduces the idea that the mark creates a context independent of author and intention. Using Woolf's terms, the article adapts 'iterability' to translation. In "The Years and Between the Acts" certain passages shed their Greek context and demonstrate new historical potentiality.

Memory, diaspora and spiced bodies in motion: Berni Searle's art1

Memory scholarship appears either deceptively simple or unnecessarily complicated especially when one has to negotiate a way through varieties of memory which parade under headings as diverse as “common”, “deep”, “collective”, “cultural”, “countermemory”, “rememory” and “postmemory”. When this corpus is coloured by processes coming out of enslavement, it links with diasporic consciousness. Recent theorisations of diaspora converge on the politics of home(lessness), migration and displacement. This paper analyses a selection of Berni Searle's work, from the Bloedlyne (1999), Colour Me (2000) and Discoloured (2001) series, for what it reveals about home, dislocation, and process. The article explores how an attentive reading of Searle's work reveals concentric material, physical and conceptual routes which link with overlapping diasporas signalled by her reliance on African/Asian slave iconographies. She suggests a troubled combination of rupture and continuation through her resistance to typically flat colonialist mapping projects. Using her body, spices and a range of other “mundane domestic” items, Searle's work comments on alternative knowledge production under conditions shaped by the racist narratives of colonialism, slavery and apartheid. Given that Blackwomen's bodies, spice and colouredness are overinscribed in systems of slave and colonial signification, these sites become useful media to explore the slipperiness of epistemic activity. Berni Searle's work tackles the recognition that “one of the legacies of knowledge that we who were once the objects of that clinical gaze find it difficult to transcend it”, (Chude‐Sokei 1997, 2) not through a mere observation and comment on this as fact but through a destabilising process. The paper will demonstrate the manner in which these installations suggest new ground for thinking through how this project might be approached conceptually.

Taking Institutions Seriously: How Regime Analysis can be Relevant to Multilevel Environmental Governance

This article starts with the observation that in the study and practice of global environmental governance (GEG) institutions and organizations are often conflated. For regime theorists they are not the same thing and the argument is advanced that, despite its failings, the regime/institutional approach continues to have significant analytical advantages. However, the benefits of regime analysis can only be realized if it avoids becoming an arena for inter-governmental rational choice theorizing and takes institutions seriously. One way of doing this is to utilize John Searle's “general theory of institutional facts.” Searle's work provides the inspiration for a re-consideration of the bases, components, domain and explanation of global environmental regimes. It is argued that it could yield a new institutional approach which overcomes some of the problems of existing regime analyses in ways appropriate to the study of multilevel environmental governance.

Consciousness and language

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world? In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe comprises brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute physical particles in fields of force? The essays in this collection are all related to the broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. Gathering in an accessible manner essays available only in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular value to professionals and upper-level students in philosophy as well as to Searle's more extended audience in such fields as psychology and linguistics.

Some problems with the conception of the human subject in critical realism

The human subject plays a central role in the theory of social reality developed by Tony Lawson in his book Economics and Reality. This theory relies on an account of human cognitive functioning that distinguishes discursive from tacit knowledge. The present paper argues that Lawson's discussion of tacit knowledge in Economics and Reality is underdeveloped in that it leaves unexplored the notion of internalised knowledge. John Searle's work on mind, intentionality and the Background is reviewed and proposed as a solution to this problem.

Searle's Regimen for Rediscovering the Mind

Like Wittgenstein, John Searle believes that much of analytic philosophy—especially the philosophy of mind—is founded on confusion and falsehood. Unlike Wittgenstein, he does not consider this condition to be endemic to philosophy. As a result, Searle's dual goals inThe Rediscovery of the Mindare to rid the philosophy of mind of the fundamental confusions that plague it, and to set the field on the path toward genuine progress. Thus, the book opens with a chapter entitled “What's Wrong with the Philosophy of Mind?” and closes with “The Proper Study.” The text is a blend of old and new: Searle introduces several new ideas, the most important of which is his thesis of the unconscious, and incorporates them into theses that have figured prominently in his previous works. Even for those who will find little to agree with in this book,The Rediscovery of the Mindserves as a testament to the sheer scope and iconoclasm of Searle's work.

Blumberg on Moral Criticism

D. Blumbergi identifies three kinds of moral criticism: (i) of an individual for violating a moral practice in his society, (z) of a moral practice of a society but not of the individual who participates in it, and (3) of both an individual and the practice in accordance with which he acts ('practicepersonal' criticism) (p. 348). According to Mr. Blumberg, successful derivation of a conclusive 'ought'-statement from statements about socially-created obligations would show how moral criticisms of type i are justified. Moral criticisms of type z would still be allowed, but not those of type 3. I shall discuss the following points made by Blumberg: (A) Criticism of type i is 'the most common kind of moral judgment' (p. 356); (B) Searle dispensed 'with the conclusive aspect of the conclusion, and with it the finality of the derivation, when it began to seem unrealizable' (p. 356); (C) 'It is impossible to derive conclusive ought-statements embodying our traditional moral outlook from statements about sociallycreated obligations, . . .' (p. 355); (D) 'Either we surrender the attempt to derive a conclusive ought-statement from statements about sociallycreated obligations, or else we must surrender our right to make practicepersonal criticisms' (p. 357). Point A is indicative of the degree to which the essential structure of the problem lying behind Blumberg's paper is allowed to remain obscure. Point B is a sample of Blumberg's innuendo-filled remarks about Searle's work on institutional obligation. Points C and D (conclusions to sections II and III, respectively) are true and false, respectively, on the basis of fundamental distinctions given no attention by Blumberg.2 (A)-Criticism (commendation) of type i is non-fundamental3 and based on an inconsistency (consistency) between an action and an obligation. It is a claim that, given the moral practices of a society and the fact of x's obligation to observe them, x's non-conformity (conformity) is bad (good). Moreover, type i criticisms are not uniquely moral criticisms; they can be applied to any activity in so far as that activity is in violation of the rules by which it is constituted and/or regulated. The very fact that criticism of this type dominates everyday moral discourse indicates that fundamental moral issues already have been decided, that moral practices are indeed generally accepted rather than placed in question. Criticisms