In an earlier post I briefly listed the six apparent features of social reality which were in need of explanation. In this post I will attempt to provide at least partial explanation for those six features.
1. The first feature was the peculiar fact in that institutional facts, Y, are defined as those objects, X, which are collectively accepted as Y. Thus, defining institutional facts seems to be self-referential and possibly meaningless. Such, however, is not the case according to Searle:
“The word ‘money’ marks one node in a whole network of practices, the practices of owning, buying, selling, earning, paying for services, paying off debts, etc. As long as the object is regarded as having that role in the practices, we do not actually need the word ‘money’ in the definition of money, so there is no circularity or infinite regress. The word ‘money’ functions as a placeholder for the linguistic articulation of all these practices. To believe that something is money, one does not actually need the word ‘money.’ It is sufficient that one believes that the entities in question are media of exchange, repositories of value, payment for debts, salaries for services rendered, etc. And what goes for money goes for other institutional notions such as marriage, property, and speech acts such as promising, stating, ordering, etc.”
In other words, there is a difference between being a metaphysical constituent and being a definitional constituent. Our collectively accepting that something is money does, in fact make that something money, does not mean that money will necessarily be defined as ‘what is believed to be money.’ The word money simply is a linguistic placeholder for all the uses which we have for money.
One can see how this relates to Searle’s own cluster theory of names as well as Strawson’s theory of linguistic meaning as potential use, though this claim will soon be qualified.
2. The creation of institutional facts, sometimes, but certainly not always, involves the use of performative utterances wherein an action is actually accomplished by the mere stating of it being done. This is accomplished by the same structure of constitutive rules which govern other institutional facts, wherein the X term, which is simply the speech act of stating that the Y term is hereby in effect, ‘counts as’ putting Y in effect. Of course in such instances, the X term as well as the context C will usually have to be relatively specific.
But what about situation wherein the X value differs slightly from culture to culture? If meaning is use, use in such cases being defined in terms of X, does the meaning of Y vary accordingly? Perhaps the best way of dealing with this problem in order to salvage the theory of meaning as potential use is to maintain that meaning is use of the Y term in all contexts except those usages which constitute an X. This qualifier would only function, it would seem, in cases where X involves performative utterances.
3. The third feature of social facts involves the logical priority of brute facts, objects with an ontologically objective existence, over institutional facts, whose existence is ontologically subjective. This can easily be explained by the fact that since Y facts supervene on X facts, institutional facts must supervene on something. There are many instances when institutional facts do supervene on other institutional facts, but these in turn must supervene on something as well, and so no until the process bottoms out in brute facts.
“The analysis of the structure of institutional facts reveals that they are logically dependent on brute facts. To suppose that all facts are institutional would produce an infinite regress or circularity in the account on institutional facts. In order that some facts to be institutional, there must be some other facts that are brute.”
I’m not entirely convinced by this response on Searle’s part. If institutional facts can emerge due to entirely false theories, why cannot a web of near self-referentiality be constructed based on a false understanding of what are taken to be brute facts after which the validity of the brute fact is then recognized as false leaving behind a system of total self-referentiality? Perhaps it is possible for such a self-referential system to exist and maybe not. Searle does deal with this question later on in his book, so I will postpone judgment for now.
4. The fact that there are always systematic relations between institutional facts and other facts in the world, be they brute or institutional in nature, is that institutional facts are designed for this very purpose. All functionality, including status functions, is defined, we saw, in terms of some sort of purposes, goals and values. These necessarily include other objects in the world. This is also why words such as ‘money’ merely serve as place holders for the potential roles which such Y terms play in relation to other objects.
5. These relations between objects due to functionality are also the reason behind the primacy of social acts over social objects. Social objects such as money, government, universities and so on are of no interest to us aside from the functions which they play, functions that necessarily involve social acts.
“The imposition of status-functions on … objects creates a level of description of the object where it is an institutional object… The object is no different; rather, a new status with an accompanying function has been assigned to an old object … but that function is manifested only in actual transactions; hence our interest is not in the object but in the processes and events where the functions are manifested.”
In this we can see a major difference between objects with and ontologically objective existence and those with an ontologically subjective existence. The former wear out with use, whereas the latter reinforces itself with use.
6. The linguistic nature of institutional facts will be the subject of the next post.
