The Construction of Social Reality

by John Rogers Searle

Book Overview

This short treatise looks at how we construct a social reality from our sense impressions; at how, for example, we construct a 'five-pound note' with all that implies in terms of value and social meaning, from the printed piece of paper we see and touch.

In The Construction of Social Reality, eminent philosopher John Searle examines the structure of social reality (or those portions of the world that are facts only by human agreement,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684831791
• ISBN13: 9780684831794
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Another Gem from Searle

John Searle is a great philosopher and a keen performance artist. Whether writing or lecturing, he likes to roll up his sleeves, speak plainly, define terms, make distinctions, expose sloppy thinking, clear up conceptual tangles, get to the bottomline -- and show how smart he is at every step of the way. Searle doesn't see philosophical puzzles as things to marinate in and examine from a dozen different angles. He sees them as problems to solve, once and for all, like a scientist proving a theory or a lawyer arguing a case. He would probably be insufferable if he didn't make so much sense. (I took undergraduate classes from him at Berkeley. He lectures exactly the way he writes.) "The Construction of Social Reality" is a typical Searle masterpiece. In it, he sets forth and answers the question, How can facts about social institutions (such as money or marriage) be objectively true in a world made up of atoms and fields of force? His answer is simple but far-reaching: institutions, he says, are constituted by collective beliefs that confer status and powers on physical objects (such as currency notes) or physical events (such as the words, "I do"). They are thus mind-dependent but still objective, in the sense that statements such as "Dollars are legal tender in the U.S." or "John and Dawn are married" can be said to be "true" or "false." However, when beliefs die out, change, or are rejected, the institutions they constituted come to an end. The Russian monarchy no longer exists because no one believes in it any more. Searle unpacks this basic idea in intricate detail in fewer than 200 pages. "The Construction of Social Reality" is lucid, well-argued and subversive: if Searle is right, then our deepest institutions (including property) are constituted by convention and sustained by habit, with no role whatsoever for God, Nature, or Morality except as reinforcing myths. No one could read this book without having his or her view of institutions deepened and perhaps transformed. Maybe Searle hasn't had the last word on social ontology, but he has definitely made a lasting contribution to the literature on the subject. Highly recommended.

Searle: Primus Inter Pares

John Searle is a philosopher's philosopher. He's also scrupulously honest to a fault. When reading him, one never has to stop and wonder whether he really believes what he's saying. The present work, "The Construction of Social Reality" (CSR)" is no exception. Lucid, cogent, packed with insights, CSR is vintage Searle--a thinker who just seems to get better and better with age. Nowadays one can no more ignore Searle than could a medieval thinker ignore Aristotle, or a modern thinker ignore Kant. When I begin writing on any philosophical subject, I always check to see whether Searle is close by. CSR offers the most perspicuous account of "social facts" or "institutional facts" of any work I know of, except, perhaps, Chapter 5 of Searle's earlier work, "Intentionality." I would recommend that anyone interested in the subject read that chapter together with CSR. The focus of Chapter 5 is "the Background." Searle develops this notion at great length in CSR, especially in Chapter 6. (The great strength of CSR is the logical progression of topics from one chapter to the next.) The idea of the Background has been around at least since Husserl and Heidegger, and is a key element in Heidegger's analysis in "Being and Time." To be sure, Searle does not slavishly follow Heidegger; the two thinkers have very different takes on what intentionality is. (An especially lucid analysis of the difference between Searle and Heidegger can be found in Hubert Dreyfus' classic introduction to Heidegger, "Being-In-The-World.") But anyone who has had second thoughts about running headlong into the thicket of Heideggerian prose can hardly do better than start with Searle. After all, when we're doing philosophy, it's always a good idea to understand the problem we're trying to solve, and the questions we're trying to answer. And Heidegger doesn't make it easy to do this. Searle does. Not that Searle is perfect. Like most philosophers, he doesn't always resist the urge to engage in speculative metaphysics. This he does early on in CSR. For example, he writes: "Since our investigation is ontological, i.e., about how social facts exist, we need to figure out how social reality fits into our overall ontology, i.e., how the existence of social facts relates to other things that exist. We will have to make some substantive presuppositions about how the world is in fact in order that we can even pose the questions we are trying to answer. We will be talking about how social reality fits into a larger ontology, but in order to do that, we will have to describe some of the features of that larger ontology." (CSR, 5-6.) Yes, we do have to make presuppositions. But here is one point on which Searle and Heidegger differ; and I'm inclined to side with Heidegger. We don't really have to get clear on what our presuppositions are; and, in fact, it's doubtful that we ever do. When we think we do, we invariably get entangled in a speculative venture. The whole f

Social Construction without the Ideology

This book is another one of Searle's rigorous and complex effort at philosophizing, and yet one of his most readable. I think we are indebted to his research assistant for the clarity of locution and punctuation -- two areas where Searle can be vulnerable. This book also uses many concepts discussed at length in two of his other books: "Speech Acts" and "Intentionality." Having read these two other books, while definitely helpful, is not necessary, as Searle is kind enough to describe his meanings and references as he goes along. And he goes along at quite a rapid clip. This is, moreover, one of those books one cannot afford to skip a sentence without serious impairment of further understanding. With these caveats in mind, I highly recommend this tour of Searle's defense of naive realism in modern analytic terms. He is highly analytic, and builds quite a fortress that he is pained to defend against criticisms of circularity. Nowhere is this charge more appropriate than in his defense of language as simultaneously being an "institutional" and "brute" fact. Each reader will have to decide whether or not he succeeds, but, if he has failed, it is not for a lack of effort. Of all Searle's books, this is the one I enjoyed the most. Searle is an excellent analytic philosopher, but a grammarian he's not. His lack of grammatical discipline usually interferes with his philosophizing and frequently plagues his other works, but is completely remedied in this book. It's not an "elegant" work, by any means, but it is clear, concise, and comprehensible. His arguments are thoroughly explained, developed, and explored, so that even a novice could follow his impeccable logic. And, there are an abundance of arguments, new linguistic devices, and formulations and reformulation of his ideas to sustain his central motif: Objective reality is objectively real. This is a great display of analytic thoroughness, coupled with a generous amplification of his ideas. A truly "fun" read.

Searle does get it!

I'm afraid it's the reviewer from Paris who just doesn't get it. Searle quite clearly acknowledges that the concept of "mountain" in mind-dependent or socially constructed. However what he is at pains to point out is that the entity which our concept "mountain" describes is mind-independent.This is a beautifully written book, lucid, clear with a light flowing prose style - so different from many of the writings it critiques. You don't necessarily have to agree with Searle to admire this book - what is so admirable is that he states his position with such clarity that there is at least scope for rational agreement/disagreement.

Great Book

Searle demonstrates once again why he is one of our best thinkers. Confronting head-on the postmodern claim that reality and truth are social constructs, Searle demolishes (deconstructs?) this claim and illustrates just how foolish and unexamined it is. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the ideas that have taken the humanities and higher education to a new nadir--which should be everyone. This is a great book.