A Critique of Hindriks’ Restructuring Searle’s Making the Social World

Self Cite

John Searle’s social ontology distinguishes between linguistic and non-linguistic institutional facts. He argues that every instance of the latter is created by declarative speech acts, while the former are exceptions to this far-reaching claim: linguistic phenomena are autonomous, their meaning is “built in,” and this is necessary, Searle argues, to avoid “infinite regress.” In this essay I analyze Searle’s arguments for this linguistic exceptionalism and reveal its flaws. My method is to follow Searle’s argument closely and comprehensively so as to avoid, insofar as is possible, a selective reading of his argument in my favor. Against Searle’s position, I argue that linguistic phenomena are not exceptions to his general theory of institutional facts, for they too always require supplementary representations in order to exist. Language itself is analogous to all other institutions and infinite regress turns out to be unavoidable.

Section: Searle's Social Realitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critique of Searle’s Linguistic Exceptionalism

Lobo

2021

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“…In short, it does not manage to make sense of (2) in the contradiction. Critics like Nicholas Fotion (2011), Frank Hindriks (2013), and Gregory Lobo (2015) bring up this concern. Hindriks’s objection is that the status function account of human rights implies that human rights only exist if they are collectively recognized, and hence, it is flawed since we clearly wish to say that human rights exist even if they are not recognized: “.…”

Section: The Objection: Status Functions Cannot Exist Without Collmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Raimo Tuomela (2011) raises the crucial issue of institutional facts that can exist without collective recognition (so-called ”derived institutional facts,” for example, recessions), but he does not discuss human rights in this context. Frank Hindriks (2013) criticizes the status function account of human rights for not being able to say that human rights can exist even if not recognized, and Gregory Lobo (2015) agrees with this point.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

A Critique of the Status Function Account of Human Rights

Burman

2018

This contradiction ”1. The universal right to free speech did not exist before the European Enlightenment, at which time it came into existence. 2. The universal right to free speech has always existed, but this right was recognized only at the time of the European Enlightenment.” (Searle) draws on two common and conflicting intuitions: The human right to free speech exists because institutions, or the law, says so. In contrast, the human right to free speech can exist independently of institutions—these institutions simply recognize a right we already have. John Searle argues that his status function account of human rights can preserve both intuitions by showing that the inconsistency between (1) and (2) is merely apparent. I argue that this solution works for tokens of human rights but not for types, while the contradiction concerns types. Hence, the status function account of human rights fails to preserve both intuitions.

“…And there is ample reason to refrain from doing so, as this notion is confusing. Why use the term if, as Lobo (2015) notes, strictly speaking Status Function Declarations are not declarations (Searle 2010, 13)? It raises questions about when a declaration was made, even though, as Lobo rightly points out, Searle takes these to be beside the point.…”

Section: Against Status Functions and Status Function Declarationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing Searle’s Making the Social World

Hindriks

2015

Hindriks argued that Searle's theory of institutions suffers from a number of problems pertaining to the notions of constitutive rule, status function, Status Function Declaration, deontic power, and human right. Lobo argues that these criticisms are not sufficiently charitable. In response, it is argued here that the problems that were identified earlier are sufficiently severe to call for substantial revisions of the theory.