Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization [Hardcover]

Making the Social World is a thorough explication of John Searle's theory of how status functions create our social reality.

Searle is refreshing because, unlike other philosophers, his ideas make sense even after you put away the text. Other philosophers weave a web of coherence that makes sense while they shape the alternatives of your thought through clever rhetoric. Searle is a clever writer, but he also makes sense when you apply his theories to your everyday life. For example, postmodern theory makes a lot of sense when the text you are reading limits the constraints of your thinking, but when you step outside of the text and just live you find it to be insufficient for explaining life as it is lived. Searle's discussions on duties, obligations, direction of fit, status functions, etc are easily understandable because they actually exist in the way you experience the world. These are not counter-intuitive ideas, but rather they are ideas that fit.

I also highly recommend listening to Searle's Philosophy 138 podcast from his Berkeley lectures. Listening to this course enabled me to unpack the dense and precise ideas found in Making the Social World. I found this book to be even more robust than the arguments put forth in The Construction of Social Reality. Obviously, Searle has listened to the criticisms of that work and responded with a stronger theory.

This is a work worthy to be read, considered, and applied to other texts and one's own lived experience. I highly recommend Making the Social World.

"How is it possible that we can have factual objective knowledge of a reality that is created by subjective opinions? One of the reasons I find that questions so fascinating is that it is part of a much larger question: How can we give an account of ourselves, with our peculiar human traits - as mindful, rational, speech-act performing, free-will having, social, political human beings - in a world that we know independently consist of mindless, meaningless, physical particles? How can we account for our social and mental existence in a realm of brute physical facts? In answering that question, we have to avoid postulating different ontological realms, a mental and a physical, or worse yet, a mental, a physical, and a social. We are just talking about one reality, and we have to explain how the human reality fits into that one reality." - This is how John Searle begins Making the Social World which is an extension and revision of work he began in The Construction of Social Reality.

The beauty of Searle's argument (and the beauty of philosophy in general) is that everything is connected to everything else; yet, in this book Searle does a great job at being parsimonious. This book is short where it could have been much, much longer and I applaud Searle for cutting out all the excessive qualifiers and unnecessary rhetoric. However, I think Searle intended to have a more general audience, but with some concepts such as ontology, deontology, epistemology, intentionality (basic philosophical jargon) he might have skimped a little too much. He does provide basic explanations, but the casual reader may feel a little lost, but this is not a huge issue I believe. Basically, Searle spends the first 60 or so pages of this book simply setting the stage for his argument and once he gets rolling he speeds through clearly and powerfully. The over-arching goal is to move from individual awareness or consciousness (intentionality) in order to see how we get a shared intentionality. Searle does this well.

I am already an admirer of Searle's "Biological Naturalism" (Wikipedia it) and think that this book is a nice extension of Searle's previous and copious body of work. He does an excellent job of explaining his case and fighting off detractors: "Let us constantly remind ourselves that 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. Human social reality is not just about people and objects, it is about people's activities and about power relations that not only govern but constitute those activities." In sum, he does a brilliant job of describing how "human reality fits into that one reality."

Here are a few books that relate to Searle's work or are specifically mentioned in this book: Power (The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 3), Power: A Radical View, Inventing Human Rights: A History, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression, Why We Cooperate (Boston Review Books).

Published in 2010, `Making the Social World' is John Searle's most recent work in the area of social philosophy. For those unfamiliar with the author, Searle is a leading contemporary analytic philosopher, who has made important contributions in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of the mind and the philosophy of society. The following thoughts are offered for potential readers.

From my perspective, this small text is a helpful contribution to the philosophy of society. Searle puts forth an articulate and interesting theory regarding the origin and nature of Institutional facts (e.g. money, countries and summer vacations). A wide ranging thinker Searle effortlessly blends a range of relevant notions from various areas of study.

While generally a solid work it has a few drawbacks. With regard to structure, the placement of an appendix at the outset of the book is awkward. The appendix is largely a response to criticism of his earlier text 'The Construction of Social Reality', and, while not uninteresting this type of internecine academic discussion is most naturally placed at the end of a book. As is, it gives the book a clumsy feel, especially for readers unfamiliar with the previous text. The discussion of human rights is probably the least compelling part of Searle's argument. The categorization of human rights as just another institutional fact, while consistent with naturalism does not feel quite right. The traditional view that agents possess inherent rights as the result of being human seems more convincing. As a socially defined fact human rights seem no more significant than the rules of a hockey game (not entirely unimportant up hear in Canada I should add). Searle's framing of human rights as a post-enlightenment phenomenon also seems off the mark. The Western human rights tradition is often understood to be rooted in Judaism and Christianity. And, while Searle has little sympathy for religion, his dismissal of theistically-based human rights is superficial to the point of being silly.

Overall, while a little disappointing, it is still a worthwhile read for those interested in linguistic and social philosophy. I recommended reading it in conjunction with the related course available via itunesu UC Berkley/philosophy. While this is not the text used in the course; it covers the same material. Searle is an animated speaker and many of his in-class digressions breathe life into his ideas, ideas which can seem dry in print.