The 3 Ingredients to Hot Summer Fun…

In the last post concerning Searle’s account of The Construction of Social Reality, we considered the example of a screwdriver. We saw that the ontologically objective features of this object are merely the metal and plastic. We saw that without the functionality which is attributed to it by us, subjectively in an ontological sense, it would not even be a screwdriver, but merely a object made of plastic and metal. However, we do think of this object as being more than simply an object for screwing in things; the object is really a screwdriver even if we don’t recognize it as such. In this post we will consider the three basic building blocks which are necessary for turning a simple object into a screwdriver in an epistemically objective sense.

“There is no evidence for that”

In many debates, especially those which have been popularized, one frequently hears the assertion, “There is no evidence for that.” In this post I will consider this response and how it lends itself to abuse, especially in the public sphere. In order to illustrate this abuse, I will provide a number of examples from current debates as to how this line is (mis)appropriated. I will then proceed to discuss the proper use of this line in relation to the burdens of proof and rejoinder.

Reducing the Subjective to the Objective: Searle

In the last post we discussed the differences between objective/subjective features in ontological and subjective matters. In this post we will proceed with Searle’s account of The Construction of Social Reality by considering how objects can acquire both ontologically objective as well as ontologically subjective features. We will also see that ontologically subjective features can in principle be reduced to ontologically objective features in the natural world.