How aren't they fiction? Weren't you stressing their lack of correspondence with actual states of affairs? — bongo fury

Brute facts are facts that do not depend on human institutions, institutional facts are facts that depend on human institutions. That the material in my hand has the chemical composition it has does not depend on us, but that the material in my hand is money does. That the Sun is larger than the Earth does not depend on us, but that it is illegal to steal does.

Neither money nor the law is a fiction.

From the fact that a description can only be made relative to a set of linguistic categories, it does not follow that the facts/objects/states of affairs,/etc., described can only exist relative to a set of categories.

Ah, I see the issue. The problem is that it is not one. It is objecting to something which is no way follows from the acknowledgement that all facts are institutional facts: the idea - which is wrong - that such an acknowledgement implies that facts/objects/states of affairs/etc can only exist relative to a set of categories. That is, at no point is the existence (or nonexistence, for that matter) of such things, relative or absolute, ever in question at all. Or as I said to @Banno, neither realism nor antirealism is it stake at all.

To borrow a distinction from Stanley Cavell, at stake is not the fact of something's being so, but the fact of something's being so. These are two entirely separate issues. The issue of something's counting-as such instead of sich, has nothing to do, nothing at all, with it's existence of not. The issue itself is, as it were, existentially indifferent. Cavell: "providing a criterion for claiming that something is a goldfinch equally provides the basis for claiming that it's a stuffed goldfinch. The criteria (marks, features) are the same for something's being a goldfinch whether it is real, imagined, hallucinatory, stuffed, painted, or in any way phoney". But these criteria are inescapably institutional. They are also inescapable when making any and all factual claims.

So Searle is a pretty standard indirect realist. :up:

Humans are far too embedded in their social institutions for even the most ardent individualist — Banno

More assertions. I'm winning our game.

The game cannot continue if Sartre decides to exercise his radical freedom, regardless of what the majority say. — Banno

Wait, doesn't this contradict what you just said?

How could it possibly be that there are individuals that rebel against the social institutions they find themselves embedded? Would they be playing a different game? If so, with who if the rest of society finds themselves embedded within the old game?

That we are social animals is not the most comfortable thing. — Banno

Seems like something a sociopath might say. Oh, and it's another assertion.

If language is a game, who is the winner and who is the loser? If society is a game, who is the winner and who is the loser? If there are no winners and losers, then maybe, "game" is an inadequate term to use here.

This is the most relevant part of the quote:

But once we have fixed the meaning of such terms in our vocabulary by arbitrary definitions, it is no longer a matter of any kind of relativism or arbitrariness whether representation-independent features of the world satisfy those definitions, because the features of the world that satisfy or fail to satisfy the definitions exist independently of those or any other definitions.

A brute fact is a fact that does not depend on human institutions to satisfy our (arbitrary) definitions; an institutional fact is a fact that depends on human institutions to satisfy our (arbitrary) definitions.

Once we have fixed the meaning of the terms "gold" and "bishop", whether or not this is gold has nothing to do with us but whether or not it is a bishop does. That's all there is to Searle's distinction between brute and institutional facts. I don't really understand what is so objectionable about it. That we were the ones who decided what the terms "gold" and "bishop" mean, and that we are free to change their meaning, doesn't undermine this distinction.

Once we have fixed the meaning of the terms "gold" and "bishop", whether or not this is gold has nothing to do with us — Michael

Because this is about as straightfoward an example of a contradiction as one could imagine. This 'fixing' is not metaphysical. It is not an act that, once accomplished, like God's will, stands outside and beyond it's creation. Human agency maintains such fixing at each and every moment of conceptual employment. I cannot but repeat myself: if it is the case that, once we have fixed the meaning of "gold", whether or not this is gold has nothing to do with us, this "nothing to do with us" is maintained by no one other than - us.

Because this is about as straightfoward an example of a contradiction as one could imagine. This 'fixing' is not metaphysical. It is not an act that, once accomplished, like God's will, stands outside and beyond it's creation. Human agency maintains such fixing at each and every moment of conceptual employment. I cannot but repeat myself: if it is the case that, once we have fixed the meaning of "gold", whether or not this is gold has nothing to do with us, this "nothing to do with us" is maintained by no one other than - us. — Streetlight

But this isn't relevant to Searle's distinction. That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" isn't that we determine whether or not this is gold. To say otherwise it to commit a use-mention error.

That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" isn't that we determine whether or not this is gold. — Michael

That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" is that we determine whether or not this is gold. Being so, not being so. A fact nonetheless.

That we are what maintain the meaning of the term "gold" is that we determine whether or not this is gold. — Streetlight

That's a use-mention error. If by "gold" we mean "an element with 79 protons" then my statement that "that we are what maintain the meaning of the term 'gold' isn't that we determine whether or not this is gold" is to be understood as the statement "that we are what maintain the meaning of the term 'gold' isn't that we determine whether or not this is an element with 79 protons."

And that's true. Whether or not something is an element with 79 protons has nothing to do with what we mean by "gold".

Whether or not something is an element with 79 protons has nothing to do with what we mean by "gold". — Michael

Yet it depends on what we mean by element, or protons, or number for that matter. It's instituions all the way down. And up, for that matter, insofar as many of these terms reciporcally implicate each other in their respective definitions.

Yet it depends on what we mean by element, or protons, or number for that matter. — Streetlight

There's nothing special about the words "element", "proton", or "79" such that they behave any differently to the word "gold". Just as it's a use-mention error to argue that whether or not something is gold depends on what we mean by "gold" (as shown above) it would be a use-mention error to argue that whether or not something is an element, a proton, or 79 depends on what we mean by "element", "proton", or "79".

Words (often) refer to extra-linguistic things, and the nature and behaviour of those things does not depend on our language. Those things are brute facts.

Words (often) refer to extra-linguistic things, and the nature and behaviour of those things does not depend on our language. — Michael

Which is why it is a good thing that nothing I have said argues this.

Which is why it is a good thing that nothing I have said argues this. — Streetlight

Then it's not clear what you're arguing. Because it seems to be that you're arguing that all facts are institutional facts, which would then mean that those extra-linguistic things whose nature and behaviour does not depend on our language are either institutional facts or not facts at all.

That the material in my hand has the chemical composition it has does not depend on us, but that the material in my hand is money does. That the Sun is larger than the Earth does not depend on us, but that it is illegal to steal does.

Neither money nor the law is a fiction. — Michael

Are there institutional facts about immaterial or imaginary things? Or is that what would make them fictions?

which would then mean that those extra-linguistic things whose nature and behaviour does not depend on our language are either institutional facts or not facts at all. — Michael

The latter of course: facts are not themselves "things". We attribute facts to the world, but the attribution is, precisely, ours. I see a stone; I walk over a floor; but I neither see a fact nor walk upon one (this is not exactly true: perception is conceptual - cf. the duck-rabbit - but we'll put that to one side, other than to gesture at the implication that perception is institutional). Language is ideal through and though; its 'references' are, through and through, nothing but linguistic effects. There is an inescapable grammar of facts, and all grammar is a matter of human institution. The immediate objection would be that this is a thoroughgoing anti-realism: but realism doesn't depend a lick upon how we speak or think about the world, the latter being utterly, completely indifferent to the former.

The latter of course: facts are not themselves "things". We attribute facts to the world, but the attribution is, precisely, ours. I see a stone; I walk over a floor; but I neither see a fact nor walk upon one (this is not exactly true: perception is conceptual, but we'll put that to one side). — Streetlight

You don't walk over a fact, but walking over a floor is a fact, and is so even if we don't think or talk about it. It's an extra-linguistic activity, one referred to using the phrase "I walked over the floor."

As Searle says:

But it does not follow that facts are somehow essentially linguistic, that they have the notion of statement somehow built into them. On the contrary, on the account I have given they are precisely not linguistic (except, of course, for the small but important class of linguistic facts) because the whole point of having the notion of "fact" is to have a notion for that which stands outside the statement but which makes it true, or in virtue of which it is true, if it is true.

If, as you seem to have accepted, our words often refer to extra-linguistic things, and if, as Searle argues, a fact is that thing which makes a true statement true, then if something that refers to an extra-linguistic thing is true then the fact is extra-linguistic.

but walking over a floor is a fact — Michael

That I walked over a floor, is (or is not) something extra-linguistic, but that I walked over a floor is not itself something given in the state of things. One might say something like: the extension of a fact is extra-lingusitic; the intension (not to be confused with intention) of a fact is not. Facts are double-headed in this way. Inseparably so. Until you get this distinction you will continually miss what is at stake. Facts, insofar as they are facts, must be "prepared" one way or another (which is just to say they must count-as such and such). And those countings-as are always institutional.

Our words do not "lock on to our metal representations" because if this were granted, then there could be no such thing as our representations; there could only be your representations and my representations. There could be no agreement, no correction of those mental models because there would be nothing else but those models. — Banno

It works out because we belong to the same institution.

The game of chess has its own tiny reality, with driving goals, rules, a playing field, etc. The bishop and the rook both know the board and play according to the rules or the game will lose order and degenerate into chaos. Take a big mental step backwards. We have our own teeny-tiny reality with drives, rules, a playing field, etc. Like the bishop and the rook, we can’t say anything about what is beyond our teeny-tiny reality.

I think Searle might have been better at sexually harassing his students than he was at philosophy.

Language

Searle gives an account of language that is somewhat distinct from the account of other institutions. First, a few methodological restrictions. For Searle, language is an extension of biology; an adequate account will show how language is an "outgrowth" of biological processes. That is, the account is to be naturalistic. Language also has special features that enable other institutions and institutional facts.

The components of language are discrete; word and sentences. Language is compositional; the order is important. Language is generative; the discrete units can be iterated to produce innumerable examples. Together these comprise the syntax or grammar of a language.

That discreteness of language parallels the discreetness of conscious experience. We see plants, and hills and chairs and sky, not coloured patches; hunger, pain and so on have seperate instances, distinguished by their circumstances.

There is a parallel structure between intentional states and speech acts, such that both have a propositional content and a direction of fit. Recall that "propositional content" is a here broad term that includes both reference/predicate and reference alone; "I like vanilla" does not have a complete proposition as its content.

Two of the five possible speech acts have a notable capability that is not found in intentional states. Commissive and declarative speech acts "create reality". A promise creates an obligation: that I promised to come to see you implies I ought come to see you, and that you were pronounced husband and wife implies that you are now husband and wife, in, of course, the appropriate circumstances.

Searle proceeds to define speaker meaning in terms of the conditions of satisfaction, firstly of the intent of the speaker, and secondly of the utterance. The speaker is in some intentional state, with some conditions of satisfaction, and produces some illocution with further conditions of satisfaction. An utterance with meaning has conditions of satisfaction for conditions of satisfaction. The example he uses is a comparison between someone making an utterance with the intent of just making a sound: practicing saying "Il Pleut"; and actually informing someone that it is raining using French. The second case is satisfied by making a noise, as in the first; but in addition has the satisfaction condition of perform the act of making an assertion. Hence, speaker meaning.

Satisfaction conditions are used here in the place of intentions, presumably to guard against the various ways in which the act might misfire.

Searle takes the repeatability of such an illocution as grounds for invoking the notion of conventional meaning.That repeatability is found in our using the same sounds or symbols for the same sort of thing - roughly, word. Finally we add conventions for structuring the utterances, especially iteration. This gives the three components of language listed above: that it is discreet, compositional and generative.

Next: Deontology

Deontology

Searle claims that his account of language is such that deontology is internal to the performance of speech acts. SO when one makes an assertion, on is by that very act committing to the truth of what one is asserting; when one makes a promise, one is by that very act placing oneself under an obligation. This is a view at odds with the perhaps more common view that there is something needed in addition to the mere utterance of a set of words that makes it a commitment.

One can readily see how the deontology enters into the speech act by the parallel between the intention of the utterance and the corresponding speech act. The belief that it is raining sits along side the assertion"it is raining"; the commitment to seeing someone next Tuesday sits alongside the promise "I promise to see you next Tuesday".

Notice that the speech act is a public performance. It is not just the expression of a belief or of a desire; it represents those beliefs and desires in a way for which the speaker is accountable.

The ought is built into the is.

And of course since institutions and institutional facts are built on declarations which themselves involve a deontology, they have rights and obligations built in.

Further, there is a special pace for language implied by way declarations create institutional facts. Language is constitutive of our institutions, including their deontological powers. The power of the governors of a corporation to make decisions on its behalf is implicit - or explicit - in the declaration that brought the corporation into existence; The power of the President to implement legislation derives from the part played in the institution of being President. The power to dispose of your property as you wee fit is found in the very notion of "property".

And here we have the reason for our going along with the hallucination of institutional facts: they allow us to do so many things we could not otherwise do.

...the whole point of the creation of institutional reality is not to invest objects or people with some special status valuable in itself but to create and regulate power relationships between people — Searle, Making the Social World

Next: Freedom

This, to me, is much ado about nothing! :grin:

Freedom

Pivotal here is that it is incorrect to consider man as being in a "state of nature", and yet already having a language. To have a language is already to be embedded in a web of institutional facts. The notion that we might construct society by entering into social contracts assumes that people might have language and yet not already be embedded in such institutions. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and other social contract theorists stand at odds with this, although it might not be so antithetical for Locke, Rousseau and Rawls as for Hobbs.

We now have two ways of rationally accounting for our actions. In the first we might say that we desire such-and-such to be the case, and that we acted in order to achieve that desire. In the second, we act because we are under an obligation resulting from an institutional fact. In this last instance, no reference to a seperate desire is needed in order to provide a rational for one's actions. It is sufficient, when asked why one did such-and-such, to say that one had promised; or that one had been ordered. It is superfluous to add that one desires to keep one's promises, since promises are just the sort of things one is obliged to fulfil; or that one desires to do as ordered. since doing as one is ordered is part-and-parcel of being ordered. These deontic notions provide desire-independent reasons for action.

Searle points to what he calls the "gap" between deciding to act and acting. The gap is the sense in which we might have acted otherwise. We might act as The cartoon Sartre does, exercising our radical freedom not to follow the rules of the game. Searle argues that if we did not have this freedom, institutional facts would be impossible, that the deontic structure of language and our other institutions is dependent on our freedom to do otherwise than they prescribe. If one had no choice but to keep a promise or follow an order, their deontic structure would be irrelevant.

Hence when we construct social institutions we impose restrictions on ourselves in order to enable complex social interactions. One places oneself under an obligation to turn up to work by participating in the institution of being employed. Of course one remains free to ignore that obligation, but doing so breaks the institution, perhaps resulting in your unemployment.

Next: Power

Power

An agent has power if they are able to get someone else, the subject, to act in a way that they otherwise might not.

Power is commonly, but not exclusively, exercised using speech acts, and most obviously directives.

Searle proposes that power is exercised only when the agent intends to do so. This is perhaps more by way of a definitional separation of the term power from influence rather than an observation. that is, Searle would say that an agent who unintentionally gets a subject to do something they otherwise would not do, has exercised influence rather than power. This is an odd distinction, since it is obvious that some folk will have power in virtue of various institutional facts; it seems oddly particular.

The explicit nature of the institutional facts also implies that we are able to say who it is that is exercising a power and who it is that is the subject of that power.

Recall that intentional states have propositional content, direction of fit, and background conditions that must be the case. Together these form the satisfaction conditions of the intentional state. These conditions apply as much to collective intentionality as to individual intentionality and hence of status functions. One consequence of there being institutional facts is that these institutional facts can form part of the background and hence of the satisfaction conditions of other intentional states; and hence institutional facts can form part of the background conditions of other institutional facts and status functions. Hence there is a power exerted by the background. The examples given are essentially mores, expected behaviours, in which anyone can exercise power over another - laughing at a man wearing a dress, and so on.

Government status functions involve a monopoly on the distribution of property and of violence. Hence their power derives from these. Arguably the monopoly on distribution of property is dependent on the monopoly on violence, but Searle does not go into detail.

Sovereignty tends to be assumed to be a transitive relation - if A has sovereignty over B, and B over C, then A has sovereignty over C. While this is true of autocratic societies it is not true of more complex societies in which checks on power are in place; the doctrine of the separation of the powers.

Political power consists in the status functions of governments, and hence is deontic, and derive from group intentionality and speech acts. That is, political authority could not have arisen without promises, orders, declarations and so on.

Since these status functions are dependent on collective intentionality, political institutions are dependent on the acquiescence of their subjects. Further, since status functions can provide desire-independent reasons for action, political power rests in part these.

Democracies are notable in that the shared acceptance of an election result, its deontic power, overrides the desire of one side or the other to achieve their goal through violence.

This, to me, is much ado about nothing! :grin: — Agent Smith

No, it's an attempt at finding scientistic 'fact' oriented foundations for realism.
Does science have such facts? Is general formalized language suitable for bridging metaphysical gaps between sciences we don't understand and formal real worlds? Should we also consider ordinary language, even the biologically natural language of bees in a hive?

Have you looked further in to Searle's derivation of social facts from mere language? As one of the few who followed the discussion I was looking forward to your opinion. It seems to me that the discussion of realism, which @Michael championed admirably, is not central to what I would like to take as the central idea in this thread, that much of our world consists in innovative use of language that makes true specifiable facts which would otherwise not exist.

How very convenient for you that your concepts exactly align with your politics. It's almost like these concepts are totally arbitray. — Streetlight

Would that it did.

Searle has derived his comfortable life in Berkley from linguistic first principles. Nothing in that renders his ideas false, nor arbitrary. The naive style of his social philosophy hides a powerful elucidation of the relations between language, ethics and society. Dismissing the man ought not be confused with dismissing the argument.

For Searle, language is an extension of biology; an adequate account will show how language is an "outgrowth" of biological processes. That is, the account is to be naturalistic. Language also has special features that enable other institutions and institutional facts. — Banno

The naturalistic account requires language to originate not in biological processes at a simpler more basic level of individuality of our physiology and psychology but in culture and society. We are not biologically born with a given language but only with potential to develop language acquisition skills at a later age in a social environment.

Languages do not arise from or generate institutions but are dynamically, changeably, interwoven and inseparable from institutions from the beginning, just as the rules of chess are inseparable from the game. Different languages are often required for different games, and those languages may not sensibly be melded into any single common language for our philosophical convenience by some universal translator.

While sociological facts arise from investigations into the chaos of nature, philosophical facts based on sociological facts merely paraphrase the already formal facts of the science. This is what I would call scientistic as opposed to naturalistic or scientific.

Well, that's a better post than your last. It remains a critique of naturalism, though, and only obliquely relevant to the topic here.

No, it's an attempt at finding scientistic 'fact' oriented foundations for realism.
Does science have such facts? Is general formalized language suitable for bridging metaphysical gaps between sciences we don't understand and formal real worlds? Should we also consider ordinary language, even the biologically natural language of bees in a hive? — magritte

Oh, I see. I've come across scientific realism - the position that science, in a sense, speaks the truth i.e. it accurately describes facts about the world or thereabouts.

As far as I'm concerned, science is, more or less, this: The world behaves as if it's made of (say) atoms, electrons, protons, etc.. I have a feeling many scientists will consider my position sacrilegious.