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This book includes ten original essays that critically examine central themes of John Searle’s ontology of society, as well as a new essay by Searle that summarizes and further develops his work in that area. The critical essays are grouped into three parts. Part I (Aspects of Collective Intentionality) examines the account of collective intention and action underlying Searle’s analysis of social and institutional facts, with special emphasis on how that account relates to the dispute between individualism and anti-individualism in the analysis of social behaviour, and to the opposition between internalism and externalism in the analysis of intentionality. Part II (From Intentions to Institutions: Development and Evolution) scrutinizes the ontogenetic and phylogenetic credentials of Searle’s view that, unlike other kinds of social facts, institutional facts are uniquely human, and develops original suggestions concerning their place in human evolution and development. Part III (Aspects of Institutional Reality) focuses on Searle’s claim that institutional facts owe their existence to the collective acceptance of constitutive rules whose effect is the creation of deontic powers, and examines central issues relevant to its assessment (among others, the status of the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules, the significance of the distinction between brute and deontic powers, and the issue of the logical derivability of normative from descriptive propositions, and the import of the difference between moral and non-moral normative principles). Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle’s work on the ontology of society, and to suggest new approaches to fundamental questions in that research area.
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INTENTIONAL ACTS AND INSTITUTIONAL FACTS ESSAYS ON JOHN SEARLE’S SOCIAL ONTOLOGY THEORY AND DECISION LIBRARY General Editor: Julian Nida-Rümelin (Munich) Series A: Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences Series B: Mathematical and Statistical Methods Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research SERIES A: PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES VOLUME 41 Assistant Editor: Thomas Schmidt (Göttingen) Editorial Board: Raymond Boudon (Paris), Mario Bunge (Montréal), Isaac Levi (New York), Richard V. Mattessich (Vancouver), Bertrand Munier (Cachan), Amartya K. Sen (Cambridge), Brian Skyrms (Irvine), Wolfgang Spohn (Konstanz) Scope: This series deals with the foundations, the general methodology and the criteria, goals and purpose of the social sciences. The emphasis in the Series A will be on well-argued, thoroughly analytical rather than advanced mathematical treatments. In this context, particular attention will be paid to game and decision theory and general philosophical topics from mathematics, psychology and economics, such as game theory, voting and welfare theory, with applications to political science, sociology, law and ethics. The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume. INTENTIONAL ACTS AND INSTITUTIONAL FACTS Essays on John Searle’s Social Ontology Edited by SAVAS L. TSOHATZIDIS Professor of General Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-4020-6103-5 (HB) ISBN 978-1-4020-6104-2 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2007 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, w