Anthropological Theory

Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
http://ant.sagepub.com
Vol 6(1): 81–88
10.1177/1463499606061738

Reality and social

construction
Reply to Friedman

John R. Searle
University of California, Berkeley, USA

Jonathan Friedman raises more questions in his provocative article than I can hope to
answer in the space of this reply. I will try to pick out what I think are some of his most
important themes and comment on them. I will do this, rather briefly, as a series of
numbered responses.

I. REALITY, SUBJECTIVITY, HISTORY, AND LANGUAGE:

EIGHT COMMENTS ON FRIEDMAN’S ARTICLE

External Realism as a Background presupposition

I proceed on the Background presupposition that there is a way the world is indepen-
dent of our representations of how it is. Given this Background presupposition, we
discover the real world of observer-independent phenomena, the world of nature, the
world described by physics and chemistry. All of this exists absolutely independently of
any observer. Friedman objects:

Natural phenomena may very well be independent of the observer, but once observed
and interpreted by human agents they become something different. At least this was
the problem of Kant and the foundation of Boasian anthropology as well as Gestalt
psychology. (p. 71)

I am rejecting Kantian idealism as well as any form of cultural or anthropological rela-

tivism about truth and reality. The real, observer-independent world does not give a
damn about us. Things such as hydrogen atoms and tectonic plates do not become some-
thing different ‘once observed and interpreted by human agents’. They remain the same
thing all along. In this respect they differ from money, property, government, marriage
and other social constructions.
There are famous cases where the act of observation alters the phenomena observed.
But in the sorts of cases I am discussing, as, for example, when I observe the Pacific
Ocean or the moon, there is no alteration in the phenomena. There is a standard mistake
that many philosophers make, and I hope Friedman is not making it. The actual verbal

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formulations with which we express our knowledge claims, and indeed the knowledge
claims themselves, are human constructions and subject to all of the limitations that
human beings bring to bear on the organization of their experiences. But from the fact
that the knowledge claims, and indeed even the categories in which they are stated, are
human constructions, it does not follow that the reality represented by these claims is a
human construction. We do indeed construct the sentences that we believe express our
best knowledge. But if we are right, the reality represented by those sentences is not itself
a human construction. Institutional reality is an exception to this general principle, and
that is the reason I find it so philosophically fascinating.

Observer dependence and observer independence

Friedman has some difficulty with the notion of observer dependence and observer
independence, and he wonders whether I am assuming that the same person is both
observer and constructor of a particular reality (pp. 71–2). For me, the notion of
‘observer’ is short for all of the forms of intentionality that human beings have in dealing
with their environment. So, when I say that the existence of money is observer relative,
by ‘observer’ I mean observer, user, possessor, buyer, seller, borrower and so on. I needed
a term which would summarize all the relevant forms of intentionality and I wanted to
make a clear distinction between those features of the world, like force, mass and
gravitational attraction, that are, so to speak, intentionality-independent features, and
those features that are intentionality dependent. I used the term ‘observer’ to cover the
whole variety of the forms of intentionality in question.
He points out that if we try to apply these distinctions to social phenomena, then:

It might be said that intentionality and consciousness are involved in the constitution
of such phenomena, but it is not clear why that should make such phenomena
observer dependent, not unless the same person is both observer and constructor of
a particular reality. (p. 72)

The answer to this is that the construction involves the participants in the institution,
and not the observer from outside. He is right to point out that my observations have
no effect on money, but without users of money, there is no money, whereas without
physicists, hydrogen atoms still have one electron. ‘Observer dependent’, in short, does
not name an epistemic category, but an ontological category.

Objectivity and subjectivity

He is puzzled about whether or not intentionality is ‘perfectly objective’. Here I think
my distinction between ontological objectivity and subjectivity on the one hand, and
epistemic objectivity and subjectivity on the other, may be useful. There is no question
that intentionality, real intrinsic intentionality, is ontologically subjective. It exists only
in human and animal agents. But from the fact that it is ontologically subjective it does
not follow that we cannot have completely objective knowledge about at least certain
forms of human intentionality. It is an objective fact, for example, that George Bush got
elected in the 2004 presidential election, even though many of the activities that consti-
tuted the election were ontologically subjective.

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The logical structure of society

I turn to the problem about the use of the word ‘logic’. For me it is not a metaphor.
When Jacob refers to ‘the logic of living systems’, I think he means ‘logic’ metaphori-
cally. But that is not the way I am using the term. My point is that where institutional
reality is concerned, the very thoughts that are constitutive of that reality have proposi-
tional contents with logical relations. If I am right that collective intentionality is consti-
tutive of institutional reality, then we ought to be able to state what exactly is the
propositional content and the psychological mode of the intentionality in question. And
of course, for individual cases such as the United States government, or baseball games,
or a faculty cocktail party, it is easy enough to do this. My question is: Are there general
forms of the logical structures of institutional reality? I make some strong claims to the
effect that there are. My two most general formulae are intended to capture important
aspects of these logical structures: X counts as Y in context C, and We accept (S has power
[S does A]).
When I use the word ‘logical’ here, I am not using it in any laudatory sense. I am not
saying that society is logical as opposed to illogical, but rather that the domain of propo-
sitional contents is essential to the ontology of social existence, especially in its insti-
tutional forms. The point is not that human beings behave logically or rationally, but
rather that they operate in a domain where logical structures and the corresponding
manifestations of rationality and irrationality are constitutive of the domain in question.
So, for example, a declaration of war may be stupid, illogical, and irrational; all the same,
there is a propositional content to that declaration and thus a logical structure. The
logical structure of declaring war is different from the logical structure of getting
married, for example; and, of course, in a particular case declaring war and getting
married may be rational or irrational, and in that sense logical or illogical. I am trying
to lay bare that propositional content and how it relates to thousands of other such
propositional contents. In the case of declaring war, the propositional content in
question is that the existing state of affairs between our two countries now counts as a
state of warfare; and, more importantly, because it is a state of warfare, all sorts of other
deontic powers come into play. We accept that such and such people on our side now
have certain rights to do things such as advance on enemy territory, bomb enemy cities
and so on, which they would not have had the right to do if we were not in a state of
war.

Collective intentionality and history

Professor Friedman has doubts about my notion of collective intentionality. He says,
‘Durkheim’s social fact as constraint seems more accurate than any form of collective
intentionality. The latter concept erases real history as well, by assuming that institutions
are simply created on the spot’ (pp. 73–4). If this criticism were valid it would be a very
serious objection to my whole approach, but I do not think it is valid. Durkheim’s ‘social
fact’ suffers from, among other defects, failing to recognize the empowering and enabling
property of human institutions. He sees social facts as essentially negative ‘constraints’,
and that is inadequate for reasons that I explained in my response to Gross. Further-
more, as I am construing the notion of collective intentionality and the other concep-
tual apparatuses that I use, such as the assignment of function and deontic powers, these
concepts do not ‘erase real history by assuming that institutions are simply created on

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the spot’. I make no such assumption. But I am struck by the fact that institutions with
entirely different histories can have similar logical structures. For example, the history
of money in the United States is quite different from its history in other parts of the
world. All the same, when I go into a bank in a foreign country I can exchange our
money for their money. When I go to remote countries I can buy things with money
and sell things for money. There appears to be a common logical structure that can be
described independently of the peculiarities of the individual histories in question.
Friedman here raises a question that comes up elsewhere in these discussions, and that
is that I seem to be neglecting the historical component. I intend no such neglect. I think
that, for example, to understand slavery in the United States you have to understand its
peculiar history. But I am trying to provide us with the tools within which that history
can be intelligibly described. There is no opposition between the historical approach and
the analytical approach. They are complementary to each other and, indeed, unless we
have our analytic categories right to begin with, we cannot hope to give an intelligent
account of the histories in question.

Institutional reality and the imaginary

I found his remarks about the imaginary to be suggestive and provocative. In a sense,
there is an element of the imaginary in all institutional reality. That is why we have to
use such expressions as ‘counts as’, because of course it is not money in virtue of its
structure, he is not president in virtue of his structure, but rather, we count it as money,
we count him as president. Friedman is surely right about this, but I am puzzled that he
says that these ‘imaginary’ cases are not symbolic. It seems to me that if you go through
the steps you will find that symbolism is essential. For example, it requires, in some sense,
imagination to construe a material object as money, because the perceived material
properties are not sufficient to constitute monetary properties. But to imagine the
monetary properties you need to be able to symbolize them. Perceptual imagery is not
enough by itself.

Non-intentional systemic realities

Friedman points out that there are lots of facts about institutions which are in no sense
intended, and the participants in the institutions may not even recognize them or
become conscious of them. He gives the very good example of business cycles as such a
case. I think this is a very important point and I intend to emphasize it more than I have
in the past. Any institutional structure will, so to speak, produce systematic fallouts. The
structure will produce epistemically objective facts that were not intended by the original
creators or users. Once we have the set of institutional facts that create an economy, then
the business cycle is something that happens. You do not need an extra imposition of
status functions in order to create a business cycle; it is a consequence of the status
functions you have already created. Now, this feature is indeed pervasive in institutional
facts. So, for example, we discover that left-handed batters do better against right-handed
pitchers and right-handed batters do better against left-handed pitchers. This is not part
of the rules of baseball; it is not the result of collective intentionality; it just happens
once the structure is created. It works like the business cycle. Various people have called
my attention to this important point, and I am certainly grateful to Friedman for
suggesting the excellent example of the business cycle.

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Actually, there are at least three different levels of acceptance involved. First, the
system of constitutive rules (such as the rules of baseball or the structure of the economic
system) has to be collectively accepted or the institutional processes cannot take place.
Second, there are specific outcomes of a type which are envisioned by the rules but not
in each specific token case determined by the rules (such as the facts that Boston won
the World Series and Bill Gates has a lot of money). The acceptance of the rules commits
the participants to accepting the existence of these outcomes. Third, there are outcomes
not envisioned by the rules but which just happen once the rules come into play (left-
handed batters do better against right-handed pitchers and the American economy
undergoes business cycles). It does not matter if the participants accept these, they just
happen, given the acceptance of the system and the processes that acceptance generates.

Language and reality

Friedman raises some general questions about the relation of language and reality. He is
worried about my objections to Rosaldo, because they appeal to general properties of
language and he asks, ‘What are these general properties?’ Well, I have tried to explain
some of them in Speech Acts (Searle, 1969), Expression and Meaning (Searle, 1979), and
Intentionality (Searle, 1983). The point is that there are certain possibilities of linguistic
representation that are in the very nature of the activity of representing. They have
nothing to do with the various culturally distinct ways in which these representations
occur.
He asks, ‘If I define things do they become such? If I call you a hamburger are you
then a hamburger? What is accepted and why? The problem with speech acts is that
they are totally dependent on a non-linguistic context of acceptance and the latter
context does not obey the laws of language’ (p. 76). I think there is a certain amount
of confusion in this characterization. The point is that the creation of words and their
meanings in our language is done by us and is to that extent arbitrary. So, the word
‘hamburger’ is introduced into our language with a certain definition, but once intro-
duced it has certain objectively ascertainable truth conditions. Given the meaning of
the word ‘hamburger’, it is definitely the case that you are not a hamburger and neither
am I. The creation of language is a matter of the creation of certain conventions. But
once those conventions have been adopted, it then becomes an objective matter of fact
whether or not certain objects fit those conventional definitions. It is an objective fact
that the thing I ate at McDonald’s was a hamburger; it is an equally objective fact that
I am not a hamburger.

II. CONCENTRATING THE ARGUMENT

In the last few pages of his article, Friedman ‘concentrate[s] the argument’ (p. 77). I will
respond briefly to his concentrated statements.
1. ‘To say that there are constitutive rules of institutions is not a description of the
way the latter are actually produced’ (p. 77). His point is that the evolution of insti-
tutions is in part the result of the way they are embedded in larger social contexts. He
is absolutely right about this. I am describing logical structures, not their histories or
their relations to larger social contexts. I think we get a deeper understanding of both
history and social context if we understand the logical structure of institutions. A full
understanding of specific institutions, such as private property in the United States and

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family structures in industrial societies, requires an understanding of their historical

evolution in relation to specific social contexts. I do not present the logical structure as
the whole story about institutions but as an essential part of the story.
2. He emphasizes again the historical character of the development of deontic
properties. Think of the evolution of monarchies. He says, ‘Powers are not merely
attributed and then exist, they emerge in quite a different way which cannot be
separated from historical interactions’ (p. 78). I entirely agree with that, as he suggests
I would, but I do not see that it is a drawback to the analysis of logical structure that
any given logical structure will have a history.
3. He applies his approach to the problem of money, saying, ‘The only explanation
of the power of money can be sought in its historical emergence in the position that it
has attained’ (p. 78). I would modify that by saying ‘the only historical explanation’. But
in addition to the historical explanation, there is a synchronic description of the struc-
ture and deontic powers of money. We have to understand those powers to understand
what the history has led us to. The analogy with language is obvious. One can do a
description of the current syntactical, semantic and phonological structure of English
without discussing the history of English, but one can also do a history of how English
got into its present state. These are not competing analyses; rather, they are attempts to
answer two different and importantly related questions.
In this connection, he raises the question of the relationship between money and
credit cards. Credit cards are not a form of money. Having a credit card enables the user
to borrow money from the issuer of the card, and on the basis of that borrowing, the
holder of the card can then pay for objects with the borrowed money, without actually
using his own money. Credit cards literally give you ‘credit’. It is a common mistake,
one I have made myself, to say that plastic credit cards are a form of money. They are
not. They function in a way that is similar to money, but the underlying logical
structure is different.
4. He raises the question of whether or not God is a social construct. There is a tech-
nical name for people who think that God is a social construct. They are called ‘atheists’.
That is, the whole conception of God, at least in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim mono-
theistic civilization, is precisely that God is a supernatural being and not a social
construct. Of course, once people have that belief they make all kinds of other social
constructs – they elect somebody as Pope, for example. But it is wrong to say that within
monotheistic religious traditions God is understood as a social construct.
5. He returns to the question of the imaginary, and I find the concept of the imagin-
ation suggestive and I hope he will work it out in more detail. He says institutions such
as money and corporations

have a semantic content that defines a specific set of relations between abstract
categories rather than actual people. There is no operation of the form X counts as
Y in condition C that can account for their existence because, except in special cases
of planned organizations, no such operation has ever occurred. (p. 79)

This characterization repeats an earlier misunderstanding of my view. ‘X counts as Y’ is

not intended to name a historical operation. Sometimes when we count a certain X as
Y it is a historical event, as when a president is elected. But the formula is not intended

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universally to name discrete historical events; rather, it describes a logical structure by

which we count certain things as having certain status functions.
There is an important distinction implicit in his account that I want to make fully
explicit. We need to distinguish between abstract status functions, where different people
might come to occupy exactly the same status function, from the assignment of status
functions to particular individuals on a case by case basis without a corresponding
abstract status which recurs in these assignments. Thus, for example, the status function
of being the president of the United States remains constant but the occupiers of that
status vary with elections. This differs from cases where a tribe simply counts someone
as their leader, simply accepts someone as having the status of the leader, without that
person being the occupant of a recurring abstract leadership position. In such a case the
person has the status function of leader, but there is no recurring, abstract, common
status function which can devolve from one person to another.
I like the invocation of imagination and it is certainly worth further development.
There are at least two levels of imagination involved in institutional reality. First, the
ground level, the X term, may not be real but imagined. Corporations and money
(without currency) are two such cases. We ‘imagine’ there is an entity that is the corpo-
ration or the money in my bank account. Second, as we move up the hierarchy of status
functions we have to be able to ‘imagine’ the next Y level, because there is nothing in
the X level that marks the presence of the Y status function. To get from ‘The object is
in my possession’ to ‘The object is my property’ you have to be able to imagine something
beyond possession, something invisible, a deontic power. Here language and symbolism
become absolutely necessary.
6. I think he is developing exactly this idea when he says that in social life, ‘the real
is the imaginary manifested, realized in actual social relations with physical coordinates’
(p. 79). One way to put this in my terminology would be to say that in institutional life,
one way institutional facts become real is by creating brute facts. Consider his compari-
son of ‘Monopoly and real life’ (p. 79). Suppose we decided to play Monopoly with real
hotels, real jails and so on, then it is no longer just a board game, because brute facts
could be altered at every throw of the dice. You could go to jail or take possession of a
house, for example. Actual Monopoly is ‘only a game’ and the buying, selling and
owning are all pretended, not real. One mark of its pretended status is that it does not
have consequences in real life. If I buy a hotel in the game of Monopoly, I do not the
next day thereby own a real hotel in the real world.
7. I did not understand his final point very well. He says, ‘Thus while the accumu-
lation of money capital dominates the economic process it also misrepresents the
properties of that process because it measures very different things’ (p. 79). But
economists would say, correctly in my view, that this is precisely one of the most useful
features of money: things of vastly different character – consumption goods, services,
and capital investments – can all be represented on the same numerical scale. This is not
an objection to the money economy, it is one of its great merits. Earlier in an equally
puzzling passage Friedman writes, ‘money is precisely a fetish that does not represent
something material but is simply a free-floating signifier, a signifier of property, of the
value of everything else on the market, not because it is defined as an equivalent of such
things, but because in Weber’s sense it is simply abstract wealth’ (p. 76). But money does
much more than signify. Rather the possessor of money is empowered. He has, for

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example, the power to acquire objects and employ people. To see both the power and
the merits of the institution of money one has only to try to imagine what it would be
like to return to a system of barter. The objection I would make to the economists, but
not to Friedman, is that they assume that everything can be measured on the money
scale. And, of course, that is not true.

References
Searle, John R. (1969) Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Searle, John R. (1979) Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, John R. (1983) Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

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