scholarly journals The Contract of Language: John Searle's Philosophy of Society

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-112
Author(s):  
Michiel Leezenberg
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Social World ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Institutional Facts ◽  
The Social

AbstractIn Making the Social World, John Searle develops what he calls a "philosophy of society", which explores the ontological status and logical structure of institutional facts like universities and baseball games. This philosophy of society crucially depends on Searle's earlier work in the philosophy of language and mind. In this review, I discuss some aspects of Searle's theory of institutional facts as structured in terms of declaratives that are most relevant to working linguists, like the relation of language to other social institutions, the emergence of normativity in language, the articulation of (legitimate and illegitimate) power in language usage, and the question of whether there should be any restrictions on the allegedly universal human right to free speech.

A Critique of the Status Function Account of Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 463-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åsa Burman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Law

This contradiction ”1. The universal right to free speech did not exist before the European Enlightenment, at which time it came into existence. 2. The universal right to free speech has always existed, but this right was recognized only at the time of the European Enlightenment.” (Searle) draws on two common and conflicting intuitions: The human right to free speech exists because institutions, or the law, says so. In contrast, the human right to free speech can exist independently of institutions—these institutions simply recognize a right we already have. John Searle argues that his status function account of human rights can preserve both intuitions by showing that the inconsistency between (1) and (2) is merely apparent. I argue that this solution works for tokens of human rights but not for types, while the contradiction concerns types. Hence, the status function account of human rights fails to preserve both intuitions.

scholarly journals Top-down causation and social structures

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Elder-Vass
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Level Structure ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
Social Entities

Top-down causation has been implicit in many sociological accounts of social structure and its influence on social events, but the social sciences have struggled to provide a coherent account of top-down causation itself. This paper summarizes a critical realist view of causation and emergence, shows how it supports a plausible account of top-down causation and then applies this account to the social world. The argument is illustrated by an examination of the concept of a norm circle , a kind of social entity that, it is argued, is causally responsible for the influence of normative social institutions. Nevertheless, social entities are structured rather differently from ordinary material ones, with the result that the compositional level structure of reality implicit in the concept of top-down causation has some limitations in the social world. The paper closes by considering what might be involved in examining how top-down causation can be shown to be at work in the social domain.

scholarly journals John Maynard Keynes Between Old and New Institutionalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-39
Author(s):  
Carolina Miranda Cavalcante ◽  
Emmanoel De Oliveira Boff
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Social World ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
Thorstein Veblen ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Douglass North

The article considers the possible compatibility (in epistemological and ontological terms) of the conceptions of convention and institutions in the thought of John Maynard Keynes, Thorstein Veblen and Douglass North. We argue, first, that while Veblen suggests an approach to institutions based on instincts, North sustains an approach to institutions based on rational choice, which implies distinct conceptions about institutions and the social world. We then present Keynes's ontological commitments and the epistemological implications of his ontology. We conclude that there is a background ontological compatibility between Keynes and the late North in that both accept that the socioeconomic world is fundamentally uncertain and non-ergodic; also that Keynes is epistemologically closer to North than Veblen in studying the economy as a market system embedded in social institutions; and finally that Keynes's treatment of individual action is closer to Veblen’s than North’s, in that both Keynes and Veblen see human action as based on instincts and not only on rationality.

scholarly journals Beyond Supervenience and Construction

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
David-Hillel Ruben
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Social World ◽  
John Searle ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Two Alternatives

AbstractI assume that identity theories and reductive strategies generally about the relationship between both the physical and the mental and the non-social and the social fail and I remind the reader why this is so. The mind cannot be reduced to body and the social (and this includes social action) cannot be reduced to what goes on in the minds of individuals and to their non-social actions, even when physical environment is added to the allegedly reducing base. I canvass two alternatives: supervenience and constructivism. My discussion of supervenience is by way of a survey of the work of others. Supervenience turns out to be too ‘brute’ a relation to account for the mind-body or the nonsocial-social relationships (I explain the idea of ‘brute’ in the paper). Supervenience is essentially a co-variance relation and even if the social were to supervene on the nonsocial, or the mental on the physical, supervenience leaves that co-variance inexplicable and mysterious. I ask whether constructivist solutions could explain the co-variance between levels any better (I look specifically at the work of John Searle) and I raise some issues with regard to the ability of constructivism to explain these relationships. Searle sees the institutional and social world through the perspective of various levels, in ways similar to the way in which the reductionist and the supervenience theorists did. My main argument is to offer an analogue problem for constructivism that was raised for supervenience. I conclude that constructivism could escape the problem of ‘brute’ co-variation between levels only by adopting a thoroughgoing irrealist perspective on the institutional and social.

scholarly journals Understanding Institutions without Collective Acceptance?

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 608-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Mäkelä ◽  
Raul Hakli ◽  
S. M. Amadae
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Acceptance

Francesco Guala has written an important book proposing a new account of social institutions and criticizing existing ones. We focus on Guala’s critique of collective acceptance theories of institutions, widely discussed in the literature of collective intentionality. Guala argues that at least some of the collective acceptance theories commit their proponents to antinaturalist methodology of social science. What is at stake here is what kind of philosophizing is relevant for the social sciences. We argue that a Searlean version of collective acceptance theory can be defended against Guala’s critique and question the sufficiency of Guala’s account of the ontology of the social world.

A Defence of an ‘Immanentist’ Account of Social Form and Experience

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Durrheim
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Social Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Practices

In defence of South African discursive social psychology, this paper provides a brief account of social form and experience as immanent in discursive practices. Social order and social Institutions must be viewed as no more and no less than the sedimentation of coordinated human practices, and that any attempt to explain the ‘objectivity’ of the human made social world by recourse to biological or cultural essences is to entirely misunderstand its ontology. I argue that this immanentist perspective provides a more adequate account of the social psychology of social transformation, and steers clear of some potential political problems associated with cultural essentialism.

Epistemic Oppression and Epistemic Privilege

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda Fricker
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social World ◽  
Unfair Advantage ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Economic

[T]he dominated live in a world structured by others for their purposes — purposes that at the very least are not our own and that are in various degrees inimical to our development and even existence.We are perhaps used to the idea that there are various species of oppression: political, economic, or sexual, for instance. But where there is the phenomenon that Nancy Hartsock picks out in saying that the world is “structured” by the powerful to the detriment of the powerless, there is another species of oppression at work, one that has not been registered in mainstream epistemology: epistemic oppression. The word ‘structured’ may be read materially, so as to imply that social institutions and practices favour the powerful, or ontologically, so as to imply that the powerful somehow constitute the world. But for present purposes I am interested only in an epistemological reading, which implies that the powerful have some sort of unfair advantage in “structuring” our understandings of the social world. I will try to present an account of what this initially vague idea involves. I hope thereby to explain an exact sense in which the powerful can have a kind of epistemic advantage that means the powerless are epistemically oppressed.

STRATEGI MANAJEMEN KAS (CASH MANAGEMENT) DALAM RANGKA OPTIMALISASI DANA PADA YAYASAN INSAN MADANI SEJAHTERA (YIMS) TAHUN 2004-2009

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (02) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Yuli Anwar
Keyword(s):  
Management Strategy ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Health Economy ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
Cash Management ◽  
Private Institutions ◽  
Public Health Services ◽  
Caring Teachers ◽  
The Social

cash management strategy (cash management) in order to optimize the foundation fund civil insan prosper (yims) year 2004-2009. Cash management strategy (cash management) in order to optimize the funds on Madani Insan Sejahtera Foundation (Yims) include: revenue from the year 2004 amounting to Rp. 18,250,500.00 until 2009 to Rp. 559,454,000.00 or 300 times increase. Similarly, expenditure in the form of compensation, public health services, skills training, caring teachers and preachers, the economic empowerment of the ummah, qurban from 2004 amounting to Rp. 17,787,500.00 until 2009 to Rp. 559 005 100 is almost 300%. The channeling of funds up to 98% - 102% from 2004 to 2009. The remaining funds are used for operational reserves the foundation. The Foundation expects an increase in revenue from activities that are funded in accordance mission of the foundation is: (1) to provide services to the community through empowerment programs that integrate educational programs, health, economy and skills. (2) Being a liaison between the haves with the community through the distribution of funds can not afford the social, charity, infaq, shodaqoh and humanitarian funds. (3) Establish partnerships with both private institutions, government or other social institutions in reducing social problems in the community. Keywords : cash management 

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