Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
- The bishop always stays on the same coloured squares.
- This laptop belongs to me
- Zelenskyy is Ukraine's President.
These statements are true. Yet they are true not in virtue of a "state of affairs" in the world; they are not true for the sort of reasons that
- The bishop is made of wood
- The laptop has a keyboard
- Zelenskyy is human
are true. They are also not true a priori, self-evidently, by assumption or by intuition. (Reply to T Clark)
They are true because of the role that each plays in a wider activity: chess; property; and Ukrainian government. Outside of those social activities, these facts have no life. Outside of those social activities, they do not become false, so much as nonsense.
We might call the activities institutions, and hence call our target statements institutional facts.
They are ubiquitous. Your spouse, your driver's licence, the money in your account, the job you have, the club you belong to, the school your children attend - all only exist as a result of such institutional facts.
And they are deontic. Each implies an obligation. Someone might move the bishop along a row, but it would no longer be a Bishop. To play Chess you are obliged to move only diagonally. I can do as I wish with my laptop, in a way that is distinct from you doing what you wish with my laptop. An officer in the service of the Ukrainian government is obliged to follow instructions from Zelenskyy in a way that they are not so obligated by any other Ukrainian.
I wish to consider such institutional facts, making use in the main of the more recent writings of John R. Searle.
There is much of interest here.
Contents:
How to do things with words
Promising
Five types of speech acts
Propositional content
Intentionality
Consciousness
Collective intentionality
Status Function
Institutions
Language
Deontology
Freedom
Power
A few links:
General articles:
Social Institutions
Collective Intentionality
Britannica
Mary Midgley expresses some reservations concerning philosophical overuse of the words "game" and "institution", in The Game Game.
Next: How to do things with words
Comments (334)
So much for "Hume's Guillotine" ...
The presumption here will be that we do things with words. Words are not just names used to passively set out how things are. We make statements, we ask questions, we give commands - much more than just saying something, our utterances are acts.
Consider:
These are not mere descriptions. They are what Austin called performative utterances. Each makes something the case; that the couple are married, the ship named, the ownership of the watch passed on and the bet offered, if not accepted.
Notice that such utterances are not either true or false; if they misfire, it is in some other way than by truth value.
Searle studied with J. L. Austin.
Next: Promising
"I promise to meet with you next Tuesday."
With that very utterance, the promise is made, and the obligation created. Uttering the sentence "I promise to meet with you next Tuesday" counts as placing myself under the obligation to meet with you next Tuesday.
Promises are an example of a type of performative utterance that makes something the case. Searle posits that the general form of such utterances is "X counts as Y in C", were C is the circumstances of the utterance. The notion extends beyond utterances. Further examples would be:
That one ought keep one's promises is, on this account, not the result of some virtue on the part of the promiser, not an agreement between the promiser and the promisee, not something one is obliged to do because of the negative consequences that would ensue if folk broke their promises, not the result of convention or expectation, but simply what is done in uttering the word of a promise in suitable circumstances.
There is more on this at How to Derive "ought" from "is" and Promises as Speech Acts.
Quoting 180 Proof
Indeed. A better analysis of the is/ought problem is found in sorting out the direction of fit of "is-" and "ought-" statements. The salient thing about commit statements such as those discussed here is that they commit one to bringing about a state of affairs. They have the word-to-word direction of fit, the same direction of fit as "ought-" statements.
Next: Five types of speech acts
All these sentences imply their own truth-apt corresponding statements. For instance "I now pronounce you husband and wife" means "you two are married" and that statement can be true/false.
Just an enquiry - but isn't "the bishop is made of wood" institutional too by virtue of the institutional fact that "that's the kind of thing 'wood' is". We institutionally collect certain material types and group them, then name those groups. That's not done for us, it's not some state of affairs that these materials ought to be grouped and have a single name and that name ought to be 'wood'. It is our institutions of object categorisation and language that have done that, no?
To put it another way. If Zelensky being president is an institutional fact, is the Queen bee being the Queen bee an institutional fact by virtue of the the institution of bees, or does it cease to be such because we're not bees and are just reporting the fact (that one of these bees is the breeding one)? Would an alien report on Zelensky's role as a fact of nature (these humans have acted such as for us to give this man this label)?
Spoilers.
But for our purposes now, the queen is not a "queen" in virtue of some act of commission, in the way Zelenskyy is. She is Queen because of biology, not because of a social activity. But we do use the word "queen" to talk about her as a result of the social activity of language.
Not sure I understand this. It's exposition is coming later though? I'm happy to wait.
Quoting Banno
Well, yes, but hence my example of aliens. Would they not have some cause to look at us and say "allocating presidents is the kind of thing this species does - it's in their biology"
Truth is, I'm not sure I do either, which is part of why I am writing this. For now the point might be that the aliens would presumably agree that allocating presidents is done using language.
Ah, yes. Meaning they could no less make a separate study of 'human speech acts' than we can. Or than we can make a separate study of 'bee social status acts' (as opposed to just bee biology as a whole). That makes sense (to me at least).
So we do indeed have quite a wide category of institutional facts sensu lato, but because we're embedded in some of them (language, object recognition) and not in others (marriage law, electoral rules) they can have quite meaningful sub-categories.
Maybe going on too much of a tangent to what you wanted to explore, but it does perhaps leave moral obligations in something of a no-man's land. There's obviously a considerable non-embeddedness in social mores, but a lot of moral obligation arises out of a rather deeper, more visceral sensation, far more (I imagine) like the bee gets when responding to the pheromones which make the queen-bee the queen-bee?
Anyway, don't let my rambling disrupt you. I'll look forward to your next scheduled instalment.
The essay above, 'How to Derive "ought" from "is"', was pretty controversial for a while. There's moral implications, but small steps.
Thanks for your interest.
I'm pretty sure I've read it, but I'm having another look at it over the morning tea.
Chess, ownership of property and the Ukrainian government are not states of affairs in the world?
Quoting Banno
Then we agree that there are natural facts and facts invented by humans. As the inventor of certain states-of-affairs like democracy, we determine the nature of those states-of-affairs and the relationship between those states-of-affairs and the scribbles we use to refer to them. Different languages use different scribbles and sounds to refer to the same state-of-affairs - natural or social (I could argue that social states-of-affairs are natural states-of-affairs but that is for another thread).
Quoting Banno
Not following the rules of playing chess means that playing chess is no longer the state-of-affairs. The same can be said about someone stealing your laptop and revolting against the Ukrainian president - all states-of-affairs.
Quoting Banno
Uses and acts are manifestations of our goals. What is our goal in using scribbles and sounds? What is our goal in acting in ways that produce scribbles and sounds? If your goal is not to refer to some state-of-affairs then what are you saying?
You have to account for the short-cuts that we make with language use. Giving commands is basically a reference to someone's wants and needs (their goals). A command isn't about the person being commanded, but about the one making the command, as the one being commanded can ignore the command.
.
An object becoming a bishop or a combination of letters becoming a word are historical events
A combination of letters or a piece on a chess board don't have intrinsic meaning, but have been given a meaning at some time in the past during a performative act.
The inventor of chess (simplifying history) in a performative act said that a piece having a rounded top with slit cut into it would be named a "bishop" and could only move diagonally. If, perchance, a piece on the chess board does not move diagonally, then it is not a bishop.
Language has developed in a series of performative acts, such that the combination of letters "p-r-o-m-i-s-e" means that that the person who has used it is obliged to carry out what they said they would do. If, perchance, the person does not carry out what they said they would do, then whatever word they used was not a promise - even if they had used the word "promise".
The situation for the subsequent user of language or player of chess is different.
The statement "the Bishop moves diagonally" is true, part of the "state of affairs" of the world, is an institutional fact, is part of a collective intentionality and is constative.
The statement "I ought to move the bishop diagonally" is incorrect use of language, as bishops must be moved diagonally.
As the statement "I promise to move the bishop diagonally" refers to a future event, it is nether true nor false and therefore performative.
However, that I made the statement ""I promise to move the bishop diagonally" is either true or false, and is therefore constative.
Summary
A word in language or a piece on a chess board have a meaning because they have been given a meaning in the past in a performative act. If a piece on a chess board does not move diagonally then it is not a Bishop. If a combination of letters does not result in what the speaker said they would do, then it is not a promise.
As Searle said "One can begin to answer this question by saying that for me to state such an institutional fact is already to invoke the constitutive rules of the institution".
Interpreting Searle, we naturally assume that we live in a social group that shares fundamental beliefs. In such a social institution, if someone has made a promise then this commits me to a view about what they ought to do, because if I had no committent to a view about what they ought to do, then that person had not made a promise - even if they had used the word "promise".
So we've established that there are more things to be done with words than just make statements. Searle claims that there are five distinct types of speech act. These are:
Assertive speech acts serve to set out how things are, and so the words of the act are modified to match the what is the case. Assertives have a truth value. when they misfire, we say they are false.
Directives have the reverse direction of fit. When an order is issued, the commander is telling the subordinate to make it so; the direction of fit is such that the world is to be made to fit the words. A directive might misfire because it is issued by someone without authority, or because the state of affairs is already the case or is impossible. When an order misfires, it is not false.
Commissives commit the speaker to making some state of affairs the case. Hence they have the same direction of fit as directives, they commit to changing the world to match the words. Again, a misfire will be insincere or impossible, but not false. They differ in that while directives apply to others, commissives apply to oneself.
Expressives set out how one feels, or one's attitude or intent and so on about some state of affairs. They differ from assertives in that they do not set out the state of affairs but the attitude. Their direction of fit is the same as an assertive, the words match what is the case. We may call a misfire here false, but in a somewhat different sense to assertives - the falsehood is usually insincerity.
Declarations make something the case. "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth", in the appropriate circumstances, makes to the case that the ship is now the Queen Elizabeth. The direction of fit here is twofold; a declaration sets out how things are, yet how things are changes to match the declaration.
There is much detailed analysis of each of these in Searle's writing, mostly in his book Speech Acts. While there are issues with details, the list of speech acts at least provides the beginnings of a nomenclature, an indication of the variety of acts, and shows how they vary by direction of fit and application.
Next: Propositional content
Are these directives? ("entertain this thought in your head"). But this is an order that has no force. It is an activity the listener may take up, at their choice. Are they declarations? The speaker is declaring a suppositional reality into existence? Or do we really need a separate category?
After thinking about it, by Searle's scheme there must be a missing category:
There are assertives, and inward assertives, which are expressives.
There are directives, and inward directives, which are commissives.
But that leaves declarations as the odd man out. Mustn't there be corresponding category of inward declarations?
There is, and it is precisely: suppositions. Declarations declare something into existence in the world, suppositions declare something into existence in the mind.
Direction of fit is about whether the words are changed to match the world, or the world changes to match the word. So the assertion "the cat is inside" is taken as a group of words intended to be arranged to match the world, but the suggestion "put the cat outside" is taken as intending that the world be arranged to match the words.
"Inward" might be taken as private, which would be an error; in both the cases above, the words are public, shared.
Rather than working with inward an d outward, Searle works with intentional states, which is where my posts are headed.
An inward declaration would make no sense in the same way a private rule would make no sense. A declaration is a public event, creates a public rule.
Quoting Banno
I think there's a sense in which they're assertions too. All stories might be preceded by the unspoken "in the story...", and so it becomes a declaration about a fictitious story. It is false that 'in the Lord of the Rings' Aragorn takes the ring to Mordor.
There's a crossover with previous declarations. It's the same as "I name this ship QE2" being a declaration. From then "this ship is called QE2" becomes an assertion.
Speech acts are, one way or another, about how things are. In philosophical terminology, how things are is set out in a proposition, so a philosopher would say that speech acts have propositional content.
Consider the proposition: The cat is outside. This proposition can be used in a range of speech acts, so:
Each of these has the same propositional content, but varies as to the speech act performed; as to what Austin called the illocutionary force of the utterance.
Speech acts are innumerably varied, so there are variations and exceptions to this. A question, for example, need not have as its content a complete proposition - that's rather the point. So "Where is the cat?" is a directive, seeking a response that completes the proposition "the cat is..." with "inside" or "outside" or something else. But generally speaking, and in many cases, the illocutionary force and the targeted propositional content can be presented as
where F is the force and p the propositional content.
The point of the exercise is to seperate the content from the force, so we can now ask about the nature of the illocutionary force involved in each speech act.
Next: Intentionality
I think it was decided to keep it seperate, rather than suggest that two acts were being performed at once. It's clearer.
Assertives and Expressives are quite similar. The difference is that assertives assert about the outer world, expressives assert about the inner world of the speaker.
Similarly, a Directive and a Commissive are quite similar. Directives direct out, at someone other than the speaker, while a Commissive directs in, to the speaker himself.
And in the same way, I propose that Declaratives by fiat create an external reality, in the world, while Suppositions by fiat create an internal reality, in the minds of the listeners.
Every speech act is public, that goes without saying (leaving aside self talk). The distinction is, what is the domain of this rule? Where does it happen? Declarations happen in the world: a naming assigns a name to a being or object. Suppositions on the other hand, happen purely in the mind, of the listener and speaker.
Makes sense, thanks.
Quoting hypericin
I see the distinction, but it's less clear with something like "the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference is ?" This doesn't apply to any object in the external world (unless you want to posit the existence of perfect circles), but it declares rather than supposes.
This is neither declaration nor supposition. It is an assertion, of a geometric fact. Not an expressive, because geometry, like the physical world, is something external to the speaker.
Minds, listeners and speakers are not in the world?
It seems to me that every speech act is an assertion because every speech act about some state of affairs, which include mental states like feelings, wants and needs.
Dualistic thinking is what creates the unneccsessary complexity of Banno's own assertions that there is some difference in how scribbles and utterances are used ither than asserting something to be the case. All language use asserts something to be the case.
Quoting Isaac
Just as every command can be preceded by, "I want...". A command refers to the demanding party's wants. The person being commanded can refuse the command, so the actual command couldnt have been used to make someone do something. Its use only displays what the person making the command wants.
What, that we refer to the ratio with the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet? That's a geometric fact?
I'm afraid I don't see the relevance. Searle is not saying "this is how it must be", he's giving a (hopefully useful) account. A counterargument would be that it wasn't useful, not that alternative accounts are also plausible.
Directives are saying something about the state of affairs of the wants and needs of the person using sonecscribbles or sounds.
Commissives are saying something about a future state of affairs where the user of the scribbles or sounds will be helpful.
Expressives are similarcto directives in that they are scribbles that refer one's feelings of guilt, gratitude, and happiness for someone's success - all states of affairs in the world.
Directives are like assertions in asserting what is the case in the world, which can be mental or physical states.
Minds and their states are not separate from the world and can be talked about just like every other state of the world.
Then Searle is not talking about language-use in the world. Hes talking about his own feelings about language-use.
So is this thread about language-use or Searle's feelings or views of language use? Is there any relationship between the two?
If scribble-use was not useful then the scribble-use is meaningless.
Of course he's talking about language use in the world. I could classify my books by author, subject, publication date, or binding colour. The choice is entirely mine, but the classification remains of the actual books and in each case I can be wrong about a particular book's placement within the scheme.
Searle is modeling actual language use, but his is not the only possible model.
From a position of Indirect Realism, in that I cannot perceive the external world as it really is and Husserl's phenomenology, where phenomena through the senses are the primary experience, I can write and think about Institutional facts - my driver's licence, the money in my account, the job I once had, the club I might have belonged to - but only metaphorically, as figures of speech that are not literally applicable.
Searle's intentionality refers to content in the mind not object in the external world
For Searle, the representational properties of a mental state are inherent in the nature of the mental state itself, whether or not it is actually related to some extra-mental object
or state of affairs. Intentionality of a mental state describes its content, not the object.
The consequence is that Speech Acts must be part of a private language
Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations argued that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent, yet, if my only certain knowledge is with these phenomena, whilst only having a belief in any external world the other side of them, then any speech act I take part in can only be directed at the phenomenal interface between what I know for certain and what I can only believe.
What would it mean for you to be wrong if there are many possible models?
Quoting Isaac
Is Searle's model wrong? How would we know?
The distinctions Banno, by way of Searle, is making are useless when you understand that all language use is about a state-of-affairs (mental and physical states) in the world.
Quoting Banno
You seem to be using the idea of a truth maker. .
The problems associated with correspondence theory can't be separated from that idea.
The words, alone, don't make something the case (except perhaps in the case of the bet). Anyone may pronounce someone husband and wife, or name a ship something, or say they bequeath something to someone, and no marriage will result, nor would a ship be named, or a watch bequeathed. The officiant at the marriage must be authorized to marry others, the person naming the ship must be authorized to do so, the bequest must be enforceable under the law.
Between models, utility, within models, it depends on the model. Usually they have criteria for correctness within them.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I find it useful, so no. I strongly suspect it wouldn't have made it this far is everybody thought it was useless, but in academia, stranger things have happened...
Quoting Harry Hindu
It's not a matter of 'understanding that...'. You're just presenting a different model, and it's not for you to say what I, or others, find useful.
Intentionality is just a philosophical term for the way in which ones mind is directed towards something. So one might believe that the cat is outside; doubt that the cat is inside; hope that the dog is not with the cat...
Notice the similarity in structure to that of speech acts? There's the same propositional content. We might represent an intentional state as
in a way closely analogous to the analysis of speech acts given above.
Further, the same notion of direction of fit can be applied to intentional states. That you believe the cat to be outside has a mind-to-world direction of fit; that you hope the cat is inside has a world-to-mind direction of fit.
Each intentional state is dependent on other intentional states. So wanting to go to the shops is dependent on believing that there are shops to go to, on desiring milk and bread, on hoping that the shop has not sold out of bread, and so on. There are myriad things taken for granted in any intentional state - that the shop has not disappeared since last time you were there, that the ground is solid enough for you to walk on, that there is money in your account. These are termed the network and the background by Searle. The distinction is not firm, but roughly the network is other intentional states and the background is how the world must be for the intentional state to make sense.
Intentional states then have some propositional content, a direction of fit, and background conditions that must be the case. Together these form the satisfaction conditions of the intentional state - roughly the conditions within which the intentional state occurs and makes sense.
Next: Consciousness
I'm happy for you to do so. It seems to me that such an "inward" declaration would be private, and subject to the fate of the beetle, but that might change as it plays out.
I don't think so. The comment you quoted is about the context on which the institutional fact occurs, not about what makes the fact true.
Indeed, hence the formulation Searle uses is "X counts as Y in C" where C is the context, and includes the network and background mentioned above.
Again, these speech acts are very much public and form part of what has been called a "form of life". The purpose here is to add detail to that form of life.
Thanks for your comment.
I'm not sure what it means for a fact to "occur."
This is important. The institutional facts don't only care about what is said, but also about where, when and by whom it is said. For example:
Quoting Isaac
The novel is both an artifact: the book you're actually reading, and an institutional context. The production of the artifact side excludes readers, but involves authors and editors (and printers, and literary agents, and beta readers...). The reading process itself is often solitary (though there might be a public reading), but the reception side has stuff like reviews, criticisism, fan fiction, fandom conversation... It's one huge institutional context. So it's declarative for an author to write the story, but assertive after the fact to say that Aragon doesn't take the ring to Mordor. You can construe the novel - the artifact - as a speech act, because at the time and pace of the reading the artifact is all there is on the other side of the reading. But the novel is itself a product of many different speech acts (drafts, author-side edits, manuscripts, publishing-side continutiy edits, publishing-side copy edits... would type setting or printing still count as speech acts, or are they "only" reproductions? Hmm....) It'd be imprecise, if not entirely wrong, to assume a novel represents only the speech act of the author whose name is on the cover. (It's even more obvious if you're reading a translation.)
Basically, it's not only the content of the speech act that's bounded by the instituational context, but also the participant roles of the people involved in the production and reception of the speech act, and if words get written down you produce something that moves through space time indipendently from the originator and can be modified by anyone. Which is how we get, say, intellectual property laws. Institutional contexts connect to other institutional contexts. You need to be very clear what you're talking about.
A sentence like "It is false that 'in the Lord of the Rings' Aragorn takes the ring to Mordor," is most likely assertive about the novel. The words in the novel themselves are declarative; without that declarative act, no such assertion would be possible. We attribute the speech act consituted by the novel to the author (Tolkien), but that attribution is itself institionally bound, and elides, for example, the backstage roles taken by editors and printers, all of which might introduce changes along the way to the finished product. Often, for example, translators would like more public credit. (Topical, here: I've read Searls Speech Acts in a German translation, but I couldn't tell you the name of the translator without checking. I can read and understand the original English - the German translation was just easier to buy. So how would I compare the versions?)
If you're looking at institional context, you'll need to consider who says what to whom in what sort of situation, and some of the interesting questions to ask are stuff like what counts as a successful communication, and why?
Part of the reason for setting out Searle's account in some detail is the complexity of the relation between speech acts, intentionality, background and institutional facts. Searle's grand scheme is to trace institutional facts back to our biology; such an account will be nuanced.
Searle's approach to intentionality differs markedly from that of other philosophers who have discussed the topic. In particular, consciousness and direction of fit are central to his account.
While many if not most philosophers who discuss intentionality see desires and beliefs as central, for Searle it seems that the mental consists in conscious states, that are directed and hence intentional. The mind changes to match the world in perceptions, memories and beliefs, while the world is changed to match mind in actions, intentions and desires. It is not desires and beliefs that are central but cognition and volition.
Further, in addition to direction of fit, Searle can now add direction of causation. In, for example, perception, the mind changes to match the way the world is, but the direction of causation is from the world to the mind - the things in the world cause the seeing, touching, smelling. In raising your arm, it is the state of mind that causes the action in the world.
The use of the word "cause" here will doubtless raise some ire, generally because of the considerable philosophical baggage the terms carries around with it. While Searle does think of these causes as quite physical, and I am inclined to agree with him, this is not I think central to the target of this thread - institutional facts; I think we can move on by agreeing that in some way we are influenced by the world, and are in some way able to make our mark upon it.
In other words, I'm concerned here with institutional facts rather than Searle's notion of consciousness. But that doesn't mean we can't discuss both.
We are hopefully now in a position to discuss collective intentionality.
See also Is intentionality exhibited by all mental phenomena?
Next: Collective intentionality
Interested to see where this goes in terms of cooperation, our shared obligations and putative moral systems. But maybe I'm jumping the gun?
The question is, will Searle's account hold together that far?
Being directed is being affected by what directs one’s attention. This interest in the matter, as a function of expectation on the one hand and what affects me on the other is what desire is. Intention and desire should thus be seen as co-determinative. But this is Husserl’s notion of intentionality, not Searle’s. Searle’s form
of realism doesnt allow him to properly integrate the affective and the cognitive.
Quoting Banno
Mind and world should not be spilt apart this way. Perception, memory and belief are equal parts expectation and what appears, while actions and desires are just as much constrained by the world they modify as they are changes of that world. Intentionality is the structure subtending all these modes of experience.
Yep.
If we take ? to mean the number, which people generally do, your quote is a assertion of a geometric fact:
"the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference is 3.14159..."
If we are talking about the use of the symbol itself, that is also an assertion of convention:
"the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference is denoted by ?"
Exactly. Yet your claim was that such assertions refer to objects in the external world.
Quoting hypericin
This one doesn't. Ratios in perfect circles don't exist in the external world, they're a mathematical artefact, yet here they are being christened by a declarative, not a supposition.
Hmmm. I would have thought that, being a model, it would be wrong in that it does not represent what is being modeled, therefore it becomes useless as such. In what way can Searle's model of language be used so that we may test how well the model represents the actual state-of-affairs?
Quoting Isaac
Searle is modeling language using language? Is an actual car a model of a car, or is it just a car? Seems like circular reasoning to me.
Quoting Isaac
So you wouldn't be interested in knowing why your models are not useful to others? If they are not useful to others, then why would it be useful to you? Use is a manifestation of our goals. So if it is useful to you, but not useful to others, then you and others must have different goals, and therefore you would be talking past others.
"External world" is not what I want. Rather, external to the speaker.
My point is that there is a clear external-to-the-speaker/internal-to-the-speaker distinction between assertiives/expressives, and directives/comissives.
So then there should be another, internal to the speaker, corresponding category to declaratives.
But the idea of a ratio within a perfect circle is not external to the speaker. There are no perfect circles, the concept is entirely internal (but shared). Which seems of the same sort as "suppose there's a big green dragon..." Which evokes something in the mind of both the speaker and the listener.
More so if the speaker says something like "we'll call him George". An entirely fictitious entity is undergoing a declarative christening.
I'm pursuing thus because I think it's going to be relevant later with language rules, but I may be completely off track.
I don't think so. Whatever your theoretical model of what geometric truths are, that is independent of the speech act being performed. Geometry is taught at school, assertively, it is something students must absorb from without. Even if you declare that geometry is purely mental (I disagree, but I guess it is possible to argue), this theory does not intersect with the nature of the assertive speech acts which communicate it.
This same distinction has a lot bearing on our discussion of knowledge: the theoretical status of truth does not intersect with the everyday usage of the concept.
How so? I mean, it seems to me to intersect in the manner of christening of terms at the very least. You've not supported your assertion.
Quoting hypericin
Yes, you asserted that without argument too.
Well, yeah. But you've yet to demonstrate that it doesn't represent what it models, you've only shown that it's possible to model language in other ways (as about a state-of-affairs (mental and physical states) in the world.)
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't see why. I can model a car with cars, I could build a model of a brick out of bricks...
Quoting Harry Hindu
Well, it depends who those others are. I mean there are 7 billion people on the planet, I can't possibly give consideration to the interest of all of them. For me, personally, I restrict my interest to how useful others in my field find my models. I suspect Searle does too.
Suppose we conclude the external world is illusory. Berkeley was right, esse est percepi. Would Searle then be obligated to re-write his theory of speech acts, so that all assertives are in fact emissives?
You can't play football on your own.
And if you send 36 players onto a field, with each trying to kick the ball between the goal posts, but that does not amount to a game of football.
But 18 people trying together to kick the ball between the posts, with another 18 trying together to stop them - there's the makings of a game.
So it is clear that there is a difference between "I am trying to kick a goal" and "We are trying to kick a goal". Collective intent is not simply the concatenation or addition of individual intents. Collective intent is shared; collective intentionality is shared.
Searle introduced the term in his paper "Collective intentions and actions". The argument there is that collective intentions are not reducible to individual intentions and beliefs, and yet happen in an individual's mind. There is no supernatural linking of minds here, just the intent to work as a group.
Briefly and dogmatically, Searle contends that
Next: Status Function
Suppose you are selling tea, and a customer offers to trade a blank piece of paper for a cuppa; You would presumably refuse; but if that piece of paper is a $5 note you might accept. In what exactly does the difference between these two pieces of paper lie?
The difference is in the status of the note in relation to our shared intentional attitudes. It is our collective attitude that gives some pieces of paper a special role. The paper counts as $5; it has a status function.
Again, it is not my intention alone that makes the paper a note; it is our intention, together with all the background paraphernalia of banks and credit and so on, that makes it a fact that the note is worth $5.
Or consider your car. You exchanged funds for it, signed the appropriate paper, have suitable documentation; and as a result you may within certain guidelines do with the car as you please. If someone else takes the car without your say so, then you have certain rights and may make a claim against them.
That is, you own the car. And you do so as a consequence of our collective intent, that certain things count as your property under specified circumstances. Your ownership is a status function. And it exists because of our collective intent.
That the bishop stays on the same colour is a result of its status as a bishop. Where it to move down a file, it would cease to count as a bishop. That Zelenskyy is Ukraine's President is status function; he counts as President as a result of our shared intentionality.
A status function is created by a declaration similar to
Money counts as legal tender in our economy; This piece counts as a bishop in chess; Zelenskyy counts as the Ukraine's president in Ukrainian government.
A status function requires collective intentionality; and it is had not as a result of some physical structure, but as a result of our collectively imposing and recognising that status.
You might notice the relation to declarative utterances. A declarative makes something the case by declaring it to be so. Recall that declaratives are curious in having two directions of fit: a declaration sets out how things are, yet how things are changes to match the declaration.
Next: Institutions
To take what I assume are 'non-institutional' facts:
Quoting Banno
That that piece of wood is a bishop, or that that thing is a laptop, or that humans are these kinds of things - these are just as much 'institutional' as "This laptop belongs to me", etc, no? That is, for anything to count as something is to always introduce a degree of 'institution' that cannot be so easily set off from 'non-institutional' facts. To "count-as" (judgements) is simply always 'institutional' by virtue of being judgements at all.
But to the degree that there is something that seems to distinguish the first set of examples from the second, I don't think its the presence of absence of 'sociality'. It seems to me to be what we can take for granted or not, given the (relatively stable) forms of life which we have. That we don't (generally) put into question what is (read: "counts as") human, is because we are not under attack by shape-shifting aliens which make line hard to demarcate (for example). But this doesn't mean that such judgments cannot ever come into question, and which would rely on the explicit introduction of 'institutions' to adjudicate.
(Searle in general like to make these very dumb distinctions that basically turn empirical contingencies into transcendental distinctions. He is a very bad philosopher. He similarly fucked up Austin and it's not surprising to see this repeated here).
It's not clear what you are claiming here. A piece of wood will be a piece of wood regardless of what we say about it. That is counts as "a piece of wood" - that we use those words to talk about it - I understand that Searle would agree indeed an institutional fact. So are you here just denying realism?
Quoting StreetlightX
Again, this is unclear to me. Do you think you could play chess without pieces that count as bishops? What could it mean to take it for granted that this was a bishop? Isn't that just to grant the special status that Searle is talking about?
Quoting StreetlightX
Sure. Again, I don't see that Searle would deny this, nor that it runs counter to his account.
It won't do simply to assert that he is a bad philosopher. Doing so would be bad philosophy.
To be sure, there are issues to consider here. I don't see that you have raised them. See for example the discussion with Tony Lawson, who while accepting much of Searle's ontology, remains critical.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309139894_Some_Critical_Issues_in_Social_Ontology_Reply_to_John_Searle
Interesting thread and posts, thanks.
Does Searle develop arguments for this point above? It seems debatable. For instance, if one of the teams doesn't want to play the other one, there's no collective intention to play. So it seems that individual intentions can aggregate into collective ones.
See the entry in SEP:
Quoting https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collective-intentionality/
The point is that it's 'counting as' all the way down. This isn't denying realism because the world is quite indifferent to what we say about it, and nothing about how we speak about the world has any bearing on its being as it is (Devitt). But insofar as there is always a 'how', all facts are institutional facts. It is just the case that some things make those 'institutions' more keenly felt than others. But those 'some things' are totally contingent and do not lend themselves to the kind of (faux-)principled distinction that Searle would like to draw.
Well, presuming realism, no, since at the base the bishop is a piece of wood; that's what realism holds, that there are things that are the case even if unsaid. So yes, what we say about the wood has no bearing on the wood; the institutional facts start when we decide that "this counts as wood".
I must say, it seems to me that you have grabbed hold of the least interesting part of the argument.
And you think what we call wood is a theological given? Or that the role of a bishop is too? Word use is a human institution. It cannot be otherwise.
Quoting Banno
Of the existence of a class of facts called 'institutional facts' as distinct from not-institutional facts? Surely this would be the heart of the matter.
This is what I was getting at right back on the first page when I wrote...
Quoting Isaac
I gotb the impression @Banno, that you were amenable to such an interpretation?
Amenable, but uninterested perhaps?
Neither I nor Searle, as I understand him, would suggest otherwise.
The bishop is made of wood
The laptop has a keyboard
Zelenskyy is human
Yes, but we could agree to visit the Taj Mahal together, in which case it seems that my intention and yours have coalesced into a collective intention. And then, if you change your (individual) mind, or I change my (individual) mind, this would affect the collective intention.
There could be nuances. Let's say that Nancy and Bob are in an organized trip to India, and Bob gets romantically interested in Nancy but not vice versa. Nancy really wants to visit the Taj Mahal. Bob doesn't really care for Mogol architecture but wants to spend time with Nancy, so he proposes that they see it together and she agrees. Do they share a collective intention?
A realist would say that the bishop is made of wood, regardless of how we might present that using our social institutions.
But frankly, the last thing I would like to see here is the thread degenerate into yet another bloody discussion of realism.
I don't understand your position. You agree that word use is a human institution. And then you go on to exclude a class of said uses on the basis of a commitment to realism. One of these cannot hold. Which one is it?
The point is that what you - and Searle - would like to restrict to a class of facts holds for all facts, in fact all language use, and that the distinction between 'intuitional' and 'non-institutional' is arbitrary and unrigorous.
Your objection is that you think this somehow threatens realism. As if realism turns even slightly on how we use words. You have forgotten your Devittian lesson. Such I suppose is what happens when one listens to someone like Searle. Realism has nothing to do with any of this and is in no way threatened by recognizing the institutional ground of all facts.
But we're not obligated by God to group all the products of trees into one grouping are we? Maybe the material from Oak is not the same thing as the material from Beech. There need be no such thing as 'wood'. It's an institutional fact that there is.
Consider a group of Harvard Business School students on graduation day.
In one possible world, they each individually decide to go out into the world and make as much money as possible, for the good of humanity.
In the other, they meet and agree to go out into the world and make as much money as possible, for the good of humanity.
Are these two different? Well, it seems that in the first, each says "I am going out to get rich". In the second, "We are going out to get rich". We-intentionality is different to I-intentionality.
Then let's use a simpler example; "this is iron" and "this is a bishop."
In the case of the former we're describing an object's chemical composition, in the case of the latter we're describing an object's role in a game. An object's chemical composition doesn't depend on human institutions; the atoms that make it up are what they are regardless of what we think or say or do. But an object's role in a game very much depends on us.
No, we're assigning an institutional grouping to the entire collection of sensory data the object has (the realism part - we're assuming there is definitely an object with the properties our senses seem to detect). Is an object with 26 protons and 27 neutrons still iron? We've just decided it is. It could have been otherwise. We call it an isotope of iron rather than give it some completely new name.
So saying "this is iron" is saying that this is the sort of thing iron is. What sort of thing is and isn't iron is an institutional fact. We decide what criteria we want to use to determine membership of that class of materials.
I agree that how we use words is an institutional fact, but whether or not an object satisfies the meaning of those words might not be. The word "bishop" refers to the role an object plays in a game, which is an institutional fact. The word "iron" refers to the chemical composition of an object, which isn't an institutional fact.
Of course we can turn lead into gold just by deciding that it's gold. We only need say that the definition of gold is now anything with between 79 and 82 protons. Voilà, lead is now gold.
By "turning lead into gold" I mean changing the chemical composition of an object such that it goes from satisfying what we currently mean by "lead" to satisfying what we currently mean by "gold".
Mmhm.
Notice the deontic element here! The obligation that is attributed to 'institutional facts'.
The number of protons in a given sample has not changed.
That number of protons is a basic fact, not an institutional fact. That we use the words "number", "proton" "82", and that we put these together to represent the number of protons in the atoms in the sample - these are institutional facts.
And presumably what counts as a proton - the criteria by which we decide - can be seen under the same electron microscope that sees the protons?
Look, that's the trick. 'Non-institutional facts' look or seem non-institutional to the degree that we can continually put the 'institution' at one remove from the fact. But at some point you will always hit the bedrock of things-counting-as-things, whose only guarantee will be nothing other than human institutions. At some point, you will hit the bedrock of obligation, beyond which the spade can only be turned and say - "this doesn't satisfy what I meant"!
Well no, a electron microscope is not how it is done; but the protons could not care less. That's the point.
And the uncaringness is mutual. We use words as we want to. Sometimes, we let (and want!) how things are guide our use of words. Sometimes we do not. In both cases, it is up to us. 'Us' as an institution, that is.
Come on, you know this. Think back to coloured squares.
I get that. There needs to be an agreement about our intentions, for them to be considered 'common'.
I don't think it needs to be this complicated. There's just the common sense understanding that something is a bishop if we use it as such in a game of chess but that something being magnetic is a brute fact of physics. We can't just decide to use a non-magnetic material as a magnetic material, and changing the meaning of the word "magnetic" isn't going to get a piece of wood to stick to my fridge door.
But this has no bearing - none - on the fact that what counts as magnetic or not ultimately bears on human institutions. Once we fix our understanding of magnetic material as we have, it is of course the case that "we can't just decide to use a non-magnetic material as a magnetic material". But this is downstream from said (institutional) fixing.
Exactly! There are political stakes to this, and this 'not being very complicated' suddenly gets very complicated once say, transphobes decide that 'you can't just decide to be a woman' because you "can't argue with genes". Or in this case, protons.
Of course not. We also need to change the meaning of the word 'stick'!
Physical constraints apply to bishops too. We cannot, no matter our assignation, claim an object larger than the square on our chessboard is a bishop. It could not function as one, no matter how much we define it as such. If we say "bishops move diagonally on a chess board" then something which, by it's physical properties, cannot so move cannot be a bishop.
Likewise with gold. If we define gold as something with 79 protons then something which physically cannot meet those requirements cannot be gold.
Neither the bishop nor gold are more or less constrained by reality than the other once defined.
And this has no bearing on the distinction Searle makes between institutional and non-institutional facts. Human institutions might determine the meaning of the words "lead", "gold", "stone", and "bishop", but given the meaning of these words we can just decide that a stone is a bishop but can't just decide that lead is gold, or alchemists could have just re-written the dictionary to create the philosophers' stone.
We can't though. See above.
We don't need the piece to be on the board. We could just have a piece of paper attached to the piece and write the position on it.
Only if our definition of "bishop" allows such a move. Not if it doesn't. Our definition of 'gold' is highly specific and doesn't allow for leeway, our definition of 'bishop' is wide and so does allow a lot of leeway. This makes them of different scale, not if different type.
We could not claim an amorphous gas was a bishop, it's physical properties mean it cannot carry out the function of one.
Whereas an object's size, shape, and chemical composition aren't things that human institutions impose on an object (even if the words used to talk about them are); they're innate characteristics of the object that have nothing to do with what we think or say about them.
Being a pane of glass and being a window are two very different things. The former a non-institutional fact, the latter an institutional fact. It's a perfectly understandable distinction.
Exactly. Neither is gold 'gold' by virtue of its innate properties. It's 'gold' by virtue of some of its innate properties matching the criteria we decided for what constitutes 'gold'.
We decided all matter with 79 protons shall be 'gold'.
As it is with the bishop we decided all objects moved only diagonally on a chess board in the game of chess shall be 'bishops'
And that this is so, is entirely in our power to decide. Again: we let ourselves - or rather our concepts - be constained by how things are.
Use–mention distinction.
There's a difference between saying "gold is (not) gold by virtue of its innate properties" and saying "gold is (not) named 'gold' by virtue of its innate properties."
I'm saying the former. You're saying the latter. The latter has no bearing on Searle's distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts.
It's not (always) in our power to decide. A starving family can't just make food out of dirt by changing the meaning of the words "food" or "dirt" or thinking about the world differently or whatever.
But that family can play chess with dirt. They can have pawns and bishops from whatever they have available.
That you think this constitutes an objection speaks to some kind of miscommunication here. Nothing about this contradicts the fact that how things count as things is entirely up to us. That you think it does leaves me puzzled. You clearly think I mean something other than I do. But what, I am not sure.
And as I said, I don't dispute that how things count as things is entirely up to us. I dispute that this has anything to do with Searle's distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts.
We decide what the word "food" means, but given what it means we can't just decide what stuff is food. That's the use-mention distinction.
Yes.
And?
That rat poison will kill me if I drink it is a non-institutional fact.
Not that I would, but I can.
You can disagree with it, but you will be wrong if it is rat poison and does constitute a killing. That we can change the meaning of a word isn't that words don't currently mean what they do.
Given what we currently mean by "rat poison", that something is rat poison isn't something that is decided by human institutions; it's something that's decided by its chemical composition. Whereas given what we currently mean by "bishop", that something is a bishop is decided by human institutions; I can put a stone on a chess board in the appropriate place and declare it to be a bishop.
Yes. Listen, if you have to begin each line with 'given X', then the whole point is that I will not give you X.
And that's why your arguments against Searle are misplaced. His distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts, and which things are institutional and non-institutional facts, is one that holds within the framework of an existing language with existing rules and existing meanings that he will accept is a human institution.
"If you agree with me, then it follows that you will agree with me".
B. Dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'. There are no brute facts.
Aside from dismissing the one I happen to disagree with today as nonsense, I can't see any way yet of deciding between A and B that does not beg the question.
If we decide to change the definition of gold, then the ring in front of me ceases to be called 'gold' but it retains some of it's properties (same number of protons, same hardness...). Not all of them though. It can no longer be traded on the gold exchange. It will no longer be placed under the heading 'gold rings' in the jewellers. It will no longer be sought after by dragons in Norse mythology.
Likewise, if I say of this stone "it's a Bishop" it retains some of it's properties (still silicate, still heavy), but other of it's properties change (moving it a certain way will result in my chess-playing companion losing his Queen).
In each case declaring "this stuff is X" has left many properties of the stuff intact (mostly the physical ones) and changed others (mostly how it is treated in our communities).
You're trying to make a change of type out of a change of scale.
Declaring an object to be a 'bishop' leaves all it's physical properties intact (but we weren't bothered about those) and changes how we treat it (very significantly).
Declaring some stuff to be 'gold' leaves all it's physical properties intact (and we are, this time very bothered about those) and changes how we treat it (but this time in only a very minor way - mostly we treat it according to its physical properties).
No difference in type has been shown, both leave some properties intact and change others. All that's different is how bothered we are for which changes have been effected.
This is where you're going wrong. It's not about changing the definition of words. Given what the words currently mean, human institutions can't just decide that lead is gold but can just decide that a stone is a bishop. That's all there is to it.
If players pick stone, that's not really a case of fiat because they're following an established custom. They can't pick mountains as chess pieces because they aren't movable.
They're restricted in chess as much as they are in science.
Yes, but it's still the case that the thing they've chosen is a bishop because that's how they've decided to use it. This contrasts with something like being magnetic which I can't just make happen by deciding that the piece of wood will stick to my fridge door.
Rhetoric, but that is very similar to what happened with 'square root of minus one'. It was as if people said - "We know that negative-one has no square root - but if we act, for the purpose of solving a particular problem, as if it does have a square root - if we just declare it to be so and stipulate how it operates in our arithmetic - then we can solve our problem." Other people got very frustrated and upset at this apparently arbitrary way of doing maths. They saw it as running against the whole idea that the world is what it is and we can't just redefine things when we find them inconvenient.
This is what I find odd about your replies. If the meaning of words change, then the meaning of words change. You seem to want reply: if the meaning of words change, then it will not be compatible with the old meaning of words. To which one can only reply: yes.
That human institutions determine the meaning of the words "lead" and "gold" isn't that human institutions determine whether or not lead is gold. To say otherwise is to collapse the use-mention distinction.
Right, but it's not an individual family that established the custom. The custom is the result of the buy-in of humans over many cultures for more than a thousand years.
The question is whether the concept of magnetism has its basis in a form of life that has similar restrictive power (from the family's POV).
That question can't be addressed from a POV within a form of life. It requires a POV outside or transcendent to our form of life.
It's easy to argue that we can't access such a transcendent position.
This is yet another 'given'. Another begging of the question.
Argentinian bishop sentenced to prison for sexual abuse despite pope’s defense
Fri 4 Mar 2022
A court in Argentina has sentenced a Roman Catholic bishop to four and a half years in prison for sexual abuse of two former seminarians in a major blow to Pope Francis, who had initially defended the bishop.
Gustavo Zanchetta, 57, was convicted on Friday of “simple, continued and aggravated sexual abuse”, with his offense aggravated by his role as a religious minster.
A court in the north-western town of Orán, where Zanchetta, 57, was bishop from 2013 to 2017, ordered his immediate detention.
But that's exactly what it does. One piece of gold differs from another in some ways but is similar in others, right? We decide what differences we're going to ignore and what similarities we're going to focus on when we decide to group some similar objects together and give them all the same name. If we change what it is we focus on, we change lead to gold, in no lesser way.
There's not two 'gold's (the name and the real substance), the name is all there is. Beyond that it's just a more or less heterogeneous soup of stuff.
Again, see the use-mention distinction.
We don't just have conversations in a vacuum. Our words refer to things. The word "gold" refers to a chemical element. We can change what the word "gold" means but we can't change the nature of the chemical element (by decree). Calling dirt "food" isn't going to help a starving family.
You're still not acknowledging the questionable status of universals and as such begging the question. I'm talking about cheese, not 'cheese'. Gold, not 'gold'. These universals are brought into being by our definition of them. They don't otherwise exist as anything more than a potential (some distinctions among an almost infinite choice of distinctions).
I have no idea what you mean. The real object(s) referred to by the words "gold" and "cheese" exist and have the properties they do regardless of what we say about them.
But why would you expect the latter to follow from the former?
Quoting Michael
And why would you expect it to?
Quoting StreetlightX
I don't expect it to.
Which is of course to say that this speaks to nothing about all facts being institutional facts.
I'm addressing @Isaac's non sequitur. I claimed that we can't turn lead into gold by decree. He responded by saying that we can change the meaning of "gold" such that it refers to what we currently mean by "lead". But that has nothing to do with what I mean when I said that we can't turn lead into gold. I'm not saying that we can't use the word "gold" to refer to lead; I'm saying that we can't change the chemical composition of lead to that of gold by declaring it to be different or by changing the meaning of a word.
But I can just declare that a stone is a bishop by saying so and using it as such. That's the distinction between an institutional and non-institutional fact.
Maybe it can be put this way: the distinction between an institutional and non-institutional fact, is itself, an institutional fact.
My point is that, if there was no referent to the word 'gold', the word would not be used very often. Words are symbolic, they code for something else than themselves.
In JR Searle's lecture at the Czech Academy of Sciences 2011 on visual perception, he said "I think the rejection of naive realism was the single greatest disaster that happened in philosophy after Descartes"
See www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PfWedgBWag (terrible sound quality)
Indirect Realism may be unsatisfactory but must be better than Naive Realism
Although I say that I believe in Indirect Realism, it is in a sense an unsatisfactory position as it does fly in the face of common sense, and as Searle said: "But the idea that you can't ever perceive the real world but only a picture in your mind that creates a disaster, because the question that arises is what is the relationship between the idea you do perceive or the sense datum of the impression that you do perceive and the real world, and there is no answer to that which is satisfactory once you make once you make the decisive move of rejecting Naive Realism"
Searle supports Naive Realism
Searle points out the major argument against Naive Realism is that the naive realist cannot account for hallucinations: "And the rejection says what really all you can ever see is this thing here, because the naive realist cannot account for hallucinations"
However, for Searle, such an argument against Naive Realism is based on a single fallacy, an ambiguity in the use of such words such as be aware of, be conscious of, to perceive.
Searle says that opponents of Naive Realism use this ambiguity in the concept of awareness to attack Naive Realism by pointing out the indistinguishability between the perception of an hallucination and the perception of a veridical situation.
Searle argues that awareness has in fact two senses. The first sense is intentionalistic, about objects and states of affairs in the world, for example, being aware of a cup. The second sense is constitutive, such that an awareness of something is identical to the awareness itself, for example, being aware of a headache.
Searle's position may be put into a diagram.
Several things follow from the diagram.
In Searle's terms, Institutional Facts are hallucinations
I see an object on a table. As it is a Brute Fact that it is a piece of wood, I may put it on the fire for warmth. As it is a Brute Fact that it has a weight, I may put it on my papers to stop them blowing away.
However, I declare in a performative act that it is a bishop and can only move diagonally. However, someone else could just as well declare that it is a castle and can only move perpendicularly.
Institutional Fact means that the nature of the object is not mind-independent, but rather, the nature of the object is dependent on what is in the mind of the observer of the object. So, when I observe an object, the fact that it is a bishop that moves diagonally, is not in the object itself as a Brute Fact, but is in my mind as an Institutional Fact.
Thinking about the object as a bishop is the same situation as thinking about an object that does not exist in a mind-independent world. In Searle's terms, this is an hallucination. And also in Searle's terms, an hallucination is a synonym for an Institutional Fact. Searle said that he has never experienced an hallucination, yet every time Searle experiences marriage, money, chess, government, he is experiencing, in his own terms, an hallucination.
Searle's Intentional Awareness has the same problem of those who oppose naive realism
As seen in the diagram, Searle's Intentional Awareness appears similar to Kant's position as set out in Jäsche Logic 9:33 “consciousness is really the representation that another representation is in me”. However, both approaches push the problem further back, in that in Intentional Awareness I am not able to be conscious of a representation, but I can be conscious of a representation of a representation.
The question is, if I can be conscious of a representation of a representation, then why cannot I be conscious of a representation. Otherwise one is led into an infinite regress of being conscious of a representation of a representation of a representation, etc, forever.
The central problem with Searle's proposal remains is that how do I know that I am being conscious of the representation of a representation rather than being conscious of a representation, as both of these are indistinguishable. This is the same problem Searle attacks, in that opponents of Naive Realism also argue that a veridical situation and an hallucinatory situation are also indistinguishable.
Language requires both Brute Facts and Institutional Facts
I observe a physical cup in the world, which is a brute fact. Next to this object I see another physical object, the letters CUP, which is another brute fact.
In my mind, I associate these two Brute Facts using a relation. As relations only exist in the mind, as argued by FH Bradley (the nemesis of external relations), then such as relation is an Institutional Fact.
Language, therefore, requires both Brute Facts in a mind-independent world and Institutional Facts in the mind.
Summary
Searle supports Naive Realism. He proposes a mechanism of Intentional Awareness and Constitutive Awareness in order to counter attacks on Naive Realism by those who point out that veridical and hallucinatory situations are indistinguishable within one's conscious state.
Yet his proposal arrives at the same problem, in that an Intentional awareness of a representation of a representation and a Constitutive awareness of a representation are also indistinguishable within one's conscious state.
I addressed this. The christening changes some of the properties of the object but not others. Christening a particular stone 'a bishop' changes some of its properties (the way we treat it) but not others (how heavy it is). Christening some things 'gold' changes some of its properties (the way we treat it) but not others (how heavy it is).
Probably for another discussion, but I think that the constitutive sense is the sense that gave rise to the disagreement between naive and indirect realists. That's why Locke drew a distinction between the primary and secondary qualities. The argument was over whether or not the external world resembles the world as it appears to us. The naive realists argued that it does and the indirect realists argued that it doesn't.
The intentional sense as often argued in modern times is something of a red herring. When I look at you in a mirror, am I looking at you or at your reflection? The direct realist argues that I'm looking at you and the indirect realist argues that I'm looking at your reflection. I don't see why we can't say both. They're just different ways of talking about it. I'm looking at you and I'm looking at your reflection (and I'm looking at a mirror) – despite the fact that you and your reflection (and the mirror) are different things.
Sure I did. You're not paying attention. Is Searle's use of language (his model of language) about language-use? Is language-use a state of affairs? If so, then his model is about a state-of-affairs. If not, then what it Searle saying (modeling)? What is he talking about? Yours and Banno's interpretation of Searle's model defeats itself.
Quoting Isaac
model: an example for imitation or emulation.
A model is not the real thing.
There's a difference between changing the meaning of the word "gold" such that it includes lead and deciding to use a stone as a bishop.
The criteria that qualifies something as gold (as the word "gold" is currently understood) is criteria that has nothing to do with human institutions and everything to do with its chemical composition.
The criteria that qualifies something as a bishop (as the word "bishop" is currently understood) is criteria that has to do with human institutions.
That's all there is to it. That we can change the meaning of the words "gold" and "bishop" (and even switch them) is irrelevant to the distinction Searle is making.
...because a human institution decided so.
Yes, which is beside the point. You continue to fail to understand the use-mention distinction.
"iron" is a four letter word but iron isn't a four letter word.
That "iron" refers to the element with 26 protons is a human decision but that iron has 26 protons isn't a human decision.
I don't think that we can say both.
I look at a rose and light of a wavelength of 700 nm travels from the rose to my eye. I look at a sunset and light of a wavelength of 700 nm travels from the sunset to my eye.
The Direct Realist would say that I have direct awareness of the external world.
If, as a Direct Realist would say, that I have a direct awareness of the external word, how does the Direct Realist know that the wavelength of 700nm entering the eye was caused by a rose or a sunset ?
Of course it is. That anything has 26 protons is a human decision. That we even bother looking at, let a lone counting the number of protons is a human decision. Iron doesn't even exist but for a human decision to group all things with 26 protons into one group. Otherwise there's just stuff.
Iron is a class of objects, not an object. Classes are human inventions with human criteria and humans bring them into existence by declaration, they neither exist nor have properties without humans.
Nor am I suggesting it is, but I can build a model of a car out of cars. these four cars represent the wheels, these two cars are the doors, this car is the engine...and so on. There's no problem with building a model using that which is being modelled.
I was thinking how language is unnecessary for we-intentionality. For example, my dog and I both have mental representations of ‘going for a walk’, though our respective mental models of ‘going for a walk’ may differ to some degree. I can have the intention to walk the dog and as I prepare for that activity there will be some point where Red (my dog) will recognize the cues and we will then have we-intentionality. So I guess the institution of walking that we share is represented by a sequence of events involving a leash, shoes, a hat, and other signs. The signs are representations with intention but not the thing represented so are fictional.
The stuff we refer to by the word "iron" exists even if we don't use the word "iron" to refer to them. And I'm saying that the things we refer to by the word "iron" have 26 protons, and will continue to have 26 protons even if we change the meaning of the word "iron". You still don't seem to understand the use-mention distinction.
Quoting Isaac
When I eat a banana I don't eat a class of objects. A banana isn't a class of objects; it's a fruit. Iron isn't a class of objects; it's a chemical element with 26 protons.
When I use the word "iron" I might be referring to members of a class, but I nonetheless am referring to the members of the class, not the class.
That seems fine to me. That shared intent explains the usefulness of a dog as a hunting and farming tool.
But you and your dog can't collectively intend to go for a walk next Tuesday.
We need language to have Monday, Tuesday...
But Status Functions allow this. We collectively "declare" today Wednesday, and repeat this each week, resulting in the social fact of week days, which you and I can use to make plans, but which are unavailable to Fido.
Thank you for that summary, which goes to the point of assuming realism as a background upon which this discussion sits. You have presented a pretty clear account of how realism works for Searle.
I'd add that the realism he sets out is pretty much that of Austin in Sense and Sensibilia. Those around us arguing about this issue would do well to re-read that text.
I hadn't payed attention to the description of social facts as hallucinations, but I now see its value. I would point out that if they are hallucinations, they are more than a Folie à deux - we all share in the hallucination of property, of weekdays, of English, of taxes... There is something in the notion of society as a form of mass hysteria!
Cheers.
Notice that "dogs have four legs" and "That dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'" are both true.
The first is what Searle would call a brute fact. That brute fact is represented using the institutional facts of our referring to legs with "legs"... So, yes, Street, it is "all counting-as, all facts, everywhere, all the time"; and yet dogs still have four legs. We can do this because we can understand a rule not just by interpreting it (using more words), but also by implementing it (taking the dog for a walk) - Philosophical Investigations §201, again.
So, Cuthbert, you may agree that it does not follow from "that dogs having four legs depends on what we decide to call 'dog' and 'leg'", that dogs do not have four legs.
Anyway, from experience we know that neither this post, nor any other, will stop the wrangling. The odd thing is that despite the argument, @Isaac will agree that we cannot feed people by declaring dirt to be bread. I do not think there is a substantive difference of opinion here.
There's more to say on Searle's ideas. it's good to see some applications dropping in to the discussion.
Quoting Isaac
I think you can both be right, depending on whether we believe the world exists -- or beings exist -- even without human beings. Provided I'm understanding you both accurately.
Michael, I take you as saying "the being to which I refer when I say the word 'x' persists regardless of what I call it." So that blob of "stuff" over there that I'm pointing to is still what it is, no matter what symbols or sounds we create to refer to it. I think in the real world of everyday experience, of course this is true. That thing coming towards me at 80 kph is still going to kill me, whether I call it a "truck" or not.
Issac, I tend to sway more towards the position of "classes are human invention" as well. It all comes from the human mind, ultimately. To me this echos Kant. "Gold" doesn't exist any more than Ursa Major does.
I think you are right. I'm pretty sure that the problem is to do with direction of fit; that the status function of "gold" is dependent on the bi-directionality of declarative utterances.
So we can say that our use of the word "gold" has a direction of fit such that the word use is modified to match the world - it is an institutional fact that "gold" refers to gold; but also, our use of the word "gold" has a world-to-word direction of fit; the world is such that we can usefully divide the gold stuff from the non-gold stuff.
Another example: "the cup is on the table" is true; and it requires both that we make the declaration that "cup" refers to the cup - changing the use of the word to match the world; and that we can divide the world up into cups and non-cups - changing the world to match the words we use.
The realism discussion is one side saying it's word-to-world, while the other insists it is world-to-word; and they are both correct.
Meanwhile, @StreetlightX keeps saying we could divide it all up quite differently, and he is right about that, too.
We refer to all things with 26 protons as "iron", so in your proposition {the things we refer to by the word "iron"} is tautologous with {all things with 26 protons} so by substitution, your proposition is [s]the things we refer to by the word "iron"[/s] all things with 26 protons have 26 protons. True, but trivially true. It doesn't tell us anything non tautological. The non-trivial fact in this is the we choose proton number to group elements where we could have chosen otherwise, and had we chosen otherwise "iron" would not even exist. As such iron (the class of metals, not the word "iron") is a human institutional fact, we declared that there shall be a class, determined by proton number, even before we named it "iron", the class itself (the thing being named) did not exist prior to our declaring it to.
Quoting Michael
I don't see how, you'd say "some iron", or "an example of iron", or "that iron". You'd have to indicate in some way the actual member other than by the word "iron", the word alone is insufficient to identify the object entirely because it identifies only a class of objects. You could say "this object" (pointing) has 26 protons, but that's just a matter of belief based of trust in the institution that told you it was iron and told you all iron has 26 protons - it's not as if you looked. You're trusting (quite rightly) the human institutions behind that classification and naming process. If, on some weird science day the object, on investigation, turns out to have 26-and-a-half protons, something we'd previously thought impossible, we have to make an institutional decision as to whether it was iron, or not. up to that point, it's just 'stuff'. Once made, "all iron has 26 protons" is no longer true, not by virtue of us changing to what we apply the word "iron", but by us changing what iron is as a class (it now includes substances with 26-and-a-half protons, substances which didn't previously even have a class name).
It was for this reason that Ramsey was inclined to say (a little tongue in cheek) that there are no facts, only events. A fairly extreme position on the status of universals, but one I've a lot of sympathy with.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Banno
I think if we accept classes as human inventions, then the 'correctness' of a word-to-world fit depends largely on how existent the properties upon which the classes are founded actually are.
Say I could divide my book collection by author, by title or by publication year. I decide on author and create the class {all books by Wittgenstein}. The class is my invention, but its still a world-to-word fit because all the books are authored by someone and those in my class are authored by Wittgenstein.
But say I choose to divide my book collection by 'feel' and I create the class {books that make me feel happy}. Now we're perhaps a little more leery of saying this is a world-to-word fit, after all, how would we know that a book's being in the class {books that make me happy} isn't itself a reason why that book might make me happy (priming effect). We might be moving to a word-to-world fit.
So essentially, I see the problem as one of deciding to what extent our divvying up of the world affects the way we perceive potential members of sets - the extent to which the existence of the sets themselves has any determining influence over the decision about what objects are members of it. This problem, I think, goes all the way from active inference in perception (within my wheelhouse), to all the 'spooky' stuff in QM (none of which I understand, other than to know it's not a simple matter to say "this electron is...")
This by way of trying to see how you view both.
Private Facts and Public Facts
I see an object. There are brute facts that it is made of wood, has a weight and is larger at its base than its top.
I declare in a performatory act that "this piece is a bishop and can only move diagonally". The fact that this piece is a bishop and not a castle is a Private Fact for me. Someone else could equally have said "this piece is a castle and can only move perpendicularly". The fact that this piece is a castle and not a bishop is a Private Fact for the other person.
However, we could have both declared that this piece is a bishop, and the fact that this piece is a bishop for both of us becomes a Public Fact, ie, an Institutional Fact (assuming that we are both important figures in society).
But note that the piece becoming a bishop as a Public Fact, an Insitutional Fact, only happened after the declarations had been made
The apparent paradox "this statement is a lie"
Consider the paradox "this statement is a lie. We can then compare the statement "this piece is a bishop" with "this statement is a lie". The fact that this piece is a bishop only happened after the performative declaration, ie, the piece was not a bishop before the declaration. The fact that this statement is a lie only happened after the performative declaration, ie, the statement was not a lie before the declaration.
On the first reading, the statement "this statement is a lie" is a paradox of self-reference, in that the statement seems to have one meaning that is paradoxically self-contradictory. However, the statement "this statement is a lie" has in fact two different independent meanings. The first meaning is before he conclusion of the performatory act. The second meaning is after the conclusion of the performatory act.
IE, as these two independent meanings are not contradictory, there is no longer any paradox.
I think it's at the interface of assertive and declarative speech acts. You say (if you'll excuse the paraphrasing)...
Quoting Banno
Yet it seems to me that those statements are true for the very same sort of reason (not the actual same reason).
"The bishop is made of wood" is declarative "this (the bishop) is the sort of thing 'wood' is" It's the continued use of these speech acts which creates the institutional class 'wood'. At lot of these things also have scientific bodies who act as authorities for the definitions, but these are post hoc, the definition preceded their attempts to codify it.
"Game" might be easier, and more familiar an example. There's a class of objects {games} such that it can be seen as a world-to-word fit (assertive) to say "Monopoly is a game". But the membership criteria for {game} is created ad hoc by the very repeated use of expressions like "Monopoly is a game".
I think, maybe, we'd agree about 'game' but disagree about 'wood'? So I suppose the relevance of active inference and 'spooky' QM is to explain why I would think the same of 'wood' and you and I both might think of 'game'. That we create, by interaction, models of our environment, and, more importantly here, social methods to keep our models similar to each others. One of those social methods is the institution of naming and grammar.
To say "that's a tree" is jointly a mere assertion, but also a method by which I keep my model of what-sort-of-thing-a-tree-is similar enough to your model of what-sort-of-thing-a-tree-is that we can get along and do stuff cooperatively (such as harvest apples from the tree), and so in that sense it's a word-to-world fit because other models were possible, but I want yours similar to mine and you want mine similar to yours - we have a mutual interest in each other's model.
And when I say that we can't make iron into gold by decree I'm saying that we can't just decide that those elements which have 26 protons now have 53 more. That's the sensible interpretation of my claim. Which is why I don't understand why you respond by saying that we can just redefine the word "gold". That we can change the meaning of a word has nothing to do with this discussion.
But we can just decide that a stone is a bishop. That's why a stone being a bishop is an institutional fact but iron not being gold isn't.
First, language is an instituation, and it's a pervasive one. Almost all other institutions will involve langauge in some capacity, but it's not central. For a bishop to be a bishop, you need to treat it like bishop while playing the game. Calling it a "bishop" is one way to treat a bishop like a bishop, but it's not a necessary part of playing the game chess. I, who speak no Chinese and don't know what chess pieces are called in Chinese, can play chess with a Chinese player of chess who doesn't know what chess pieces are called in any language I speak. If we announce our moves in our respective language, we can learn those terms, and I'd argue that we'd have learned more about each others language than the game of chess, which we were using to learn.
In terms of "collective intentionality", we share the institutional context of chess, which is why my meaningful move is followed by my opponents meaningful moves. If I say, "bishop d 2 - e 3" and move my bishop, and if this goes on long enough, a non-English speaker could eventually figure out what the piece is called, and what the letters and numbers are. But I could be pranking them and say "knight d2 - e3," while moving my bishop (and be consistent all through the game). This would lead to false assumptions about the language of chess, but the game would go on without a hitch.
The point about institutions is that you can only meaningfully engage in them, if you share assumptions. Austin/Searle divide, for this reason, speech acts into illocutionary acts (what you intend to say), and perlocutionary acts (what actually gets across). A successful speech acts needs both illocutionary and perlocutionary acts to succeeds. In layman's terms, if you talk to me in a language I don't understand, you're not really saying anything to me.
Collective intentionality is easiest to understand with formalised transactions. Consider the following sentence:
"I sold you my car, but you didn't buy it." Out of context, that's rather hard to make sense of. If I succeed in selling you my car, you bought it. On the language front, that's just ye olde married bachelor. Selling and buying are the same transaction viewed from the perspective of two different stereotypical participant roles. That's what the institution is.
Selling isn't an "illocutionary act", because the locution-part means speech. But it's the equivalent half of institutional behaviour. "Buying" is the other. If two people aren't on a page, a muck-up may occur, and then saying something like "I sold you my car, but you didn't buy it," might make sense (and mean something like "I thought I sold you my car, but you thought it was a gift.") We can understand the sentence as institutional failure: what we have in common is not the institutional transaction of buying or selling, but the situation of the muck-up (and only after we both realise that there's been a muck-up, and what it's nature is).
"Institutional facts" are what we need to know to perform institutional acts. And performing institutional acts, is what reproduces institutional facts. We create a chicken-egg situation, here. And metaphorical mutations are possible: Institutions change, sometimes by conscious negotion, sometimes by unacknowledge "reproduction error".
I feel like Michael's distinction between mention and use is a red herring, because institutional facts aren't about language in the first place. They're about shared meaningful behaviour, such that whenever I sell something to someone that person buys that thing from me. Institutional facts aren't absolute or eternal; but they must hold to some degree for their to be any interaction in the first place.
That English is a nominative accusative langauge and not an ergative absolutive language is an institutional fact about English, and that we have these terms is an institutional fact about linguistics. What this means is:
Yes: [I'm eathing a cake.] and [I'm eating.]
No: [I'm eating a cake.] and [Me's eating.] [Disclaimer: I don't actually know about verb agreement in ergative absolutive language. It might have to be "Me am eating." I don't know. Anyone here speak Basque?]
Basically, an ergative absolutive language treats the agent of an intransitive verb like the object of a transitive verb. It's... weird if you're not used to it; normal otherwise.
(It's possible that some dialects display situational eragtivity in that way. Not sure. It's not the default.)
Linguistics describes this state of affairs; it's native speakers who create and recreate it. It's rooted in their practical consciousness to a degree that it's invisible and it takes awareness of other languages to see that what they do could be different. The sentence "I'm eating," and the linguistic analysis of this sentence occur in different institutional contexts. This means in practise that native speakers of English use "I" instead "me" before an intranstive verb like "to eat" (as opposed to it's transitive version "to eat something"), without being able to use linguistic terms to describe what they do. That linguists might not agree with other on how best to describe this instituional fact does nothing to change this. Non-linguistically-trained people can't even join that conversation; they lack knowledge of the relevant instituional facts - how to talk like a linguist about what they routinely say.
Each and everything we ever do, whatever is meaningful, occurs in an instituional context. So much is true. We can talk about the number of protons in iron till the cows come home, but we've been processing iron for longer than we've known about protons. Iron itself isn't an instituon, but whatever we do with iron occurs within instituions, and those instituitions are interconnected. Forging a sword from iron, and then cleaning it so it won't rust as quickly doesn't require knowledge of the periodic table. There's a cultural connection, an we can trace a memetic path for iron through inconnected institutions. We can't talk about iron without referencing institutions. We can't use iron without engaging in instituions. But iron itself isn't something we do; it's something that means different things in different contexts and provides cross-intstituitional continuity, by virtue of being real. But at the same time, whatever is real about iron doesn't necessarily need to give rise to "iron" as cross-instituitional cutlural practise (of which language and naming is a minuscle albeit pervasive part).
Long post, and i'm not even sure I made sense to myself.
The use-mention distinction is important. There's a difference between using the word "iron" in the context of saying "iron has 26 protons" and mentioning the word "iron" in the context of saying "'iron' refers to the element with 26 protons". Isaac and StreetlightX appear to be saying that because the latter is an institutional fact then the former is an institutional fact, but that's a non sequitur precisely because of the use-mention distinction.
Iron will continue to have 26 protons even if we change the meaning of the word "iron", and Joe Biden will continue to be President of the United States even if he changes his name.
I wouldn’t know where to start with this. All I know is everywhere I look and everything I think about is a messy mess of a mess. Nothing makes ‘sense’ and people seem to just be doing stuff unconsciously all the time … and why this is part of my day-to-day life (this ‘view’) is in and of itself an absurdity.
Ironically (considering your apparent stance) I call the whole thing ‘religious’. Meaning that all ‘facts’ are at different layers of resolution relative to our experiencing self and how we ‘constitute’ ourselves as ‘among’ and ‘apart’ - the intentionality.
A book is not a book, and a tree is not a tree. Things we experience (or imagine) make up our world. How we ‘feel’ about things matters more than we seem to let on to ourselves. The possession of items or the experiences of items are one and the same yet we split them into distinct categories.
There is a a coffee cup on the table and a glass of chilled water … everything about them is spectacular to observe and contemplate … where did they come from? Who made them? Who designed them? Why that design? Was it given much though? The dried froth around the rim of the cup of coffee I recently finished. How now can I look at this items as merely ‘a glass of water’ and ‘an empty cup of coffee’. I have imbued them with emotional content and for those reading this maybe you too will now look at something near you and imbue thoughts and feelings into items that were previously mundane and never really worthy of note.
There is no end to this. It is horrifically beautiful! It is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’.
They don't appear to me to be saying that, though.
See, the use/mention distinction is only relevant to the word iron. And words occur in the instituion of language.
"Iron has 26 protons," is not an instituional facts because "'Iron' refers to the element with 26 protons." is an instituional fact. They're both institutional facts because you need to understand chemistry to make sense of it.
"Iron has 26 protons," is an instituional fact within the instituion of chemistry. It's meaningless if you don't know what protons are, and why they're important to the periodic table.
"'Iron' refers to the element with 26 protons," is an instituional fact within the instituion of language. You still need to know about chemistry (because it's the specialised language of chemistry), but before that you need to know that what it means for words to refer.
Both these sentences express an instituional fact, but you can just demonstrate knowledge of those facts by engaging in relevant institutional activity (looking through a microscope and counting protons; using the word "iron" correctly).
I think the cunfusion here comes from an overfocus on language (understandable in a thread about Searle). Language, as a social institution, is used to talk about relevant things. And it's hardly a coincidence that instituions form around relevant things. Without boundries of relevance, you can't demarcate facts of any kind, and since relevance guids action, and we live together with other acting people, our personal relevance structure grow together with those of people around us. That's how we get institutions: a stream of call-and-response, consistently meaningful to all successful participants. That you talk about iron in terms of protons tells me you're more likely to wear a lab coat than a blacksmith's apron.
Instituional facts are the imputed shared meaning that makes instituions work. They needn't be expressed in words, and if they're not, there's really nothing the use/mention distinction could be applied to. If the imputation of shared meaning fails, what you thought was institutional fact ended up merely a personal, mental fact, and you need new theories.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Isaac
This is a textbook use-mention distinction error.
The fact that iron has 26 protons does not depend on human institutions. The statement "iron has 26 protons" does depend on human institutions.
Conflating the two is to collapse the use-mention distinction.
This alien experiences time as weight (not too far fetched, actually). If iron weighs as much as a bag of sand, she can't tell the difference. It's an amount of time, not material.
So would we say that "You can't change iron into gold" is true eternally? Or is it only true for people to whom it's meaningful?
What constitutes being a bishop? If I said "that stone is a bishop" and then preceded to use it as a rook, would you assume the rules of chess had changed, or would you say "it's not a bishop, it's a rook"?
We can collaboratively agree that "that stone is a bishop", but it's contingent on the human activity of it being used that way. The moment it isn't, its status as 'a bishop' is called into question, no matter what I say.
Likewise with "that stone is iron", it's contingent on the human activity of us classifying elements by their proton number. The moment we stop doing that, its status as iron is called into question.
You can say "but it will still have 26 protons no matter what we call it", but the claim in question was not "that stone has 26 protons", the claim was "that stone is iron".
And if the claim were "that stone has 26 protons" (with 'iron' just standing in for [something with 26 protons]), then, as points out, it would still be contingent on the human activity of classifying subatomic particles by their mass, charge etc.
Being used as such in a game of chess.
Quoting Isaac
You're making a use-mention mistake again. Joe Biden doesn't stop being President of the United States if he changes his name.
The answer is that it depends on what we think of as a truth bearer. If a sentence has to be placed in context before it's truth apt, then the issue of 'true for you, but not true for her' doesn't exist. We don't locate facts or speak of them as occurring here, but not there. A statement is always indexed. This is the concept of a proposition.
If the truth bearer is something else, like an utterance, then relativity seems inevitable.
A car is not it's engine. It is a car. Models are typically a smaller scale than what is being modeled and typically less complex. You can't sit in or drive model cars. As such you shouldn't be able to use models of language-use because it wouldn't be an actual language. You would be simply using language, not models of language, and using language is using scribbles and sounds to refer to some state-of-affairs, which could be how someone uses language, or how someone plays chess, or how the sun sets in the sky.
Quoting Isaac
...which is a different state-of-affairs than that stone's properties independent of our naming conventions. You're confusing one state-of-affairs with another.
No, but he does if we change what it means to hold that office.
That stone (A) is a bishop (B).
That rock (A) is iron (B).
Joe Biden (A) is the president (B).
In all cases, A counting as B is contingent on the human activity of how we count things as cases of B.
With bishops it's using them as such in a chess game, with iron it's classifying elements by proton number, with presidents is assigning office on the basis of votes.
Your example of Joe Biden changing his name would be the equivalent of us no longer referring to 'that stone' or 'that rock', changes in our A component, not our B component. We're talking about claims of the form "A is B" and whether they are always dependent on the human activity of classifying B.
And still a use-mention error.
That we determine what "iron" means isn't that we determine what is or isn't iron. The number of protons an element has determines what is or isn't iron, and the number of protons an element has isn't a human institution.
Doesn’t everything have a status?
This piece counts as a bishop in chess.
This cord counts as a leash in walking.
A circle counts as a o in English.
A circle counts as a zero in math.
A circle counts as a o in tic tac toe.
Quoting Isaac
There are ambiguities to be sorted out here, but I'm not convinced that it's worth the effort.
First we might reintroduce Austin's term "locution" for the utterance considered without an illocutionary force.
Then we might note that the locution "That's a tree" might in different speech acts be given different forces. So it may be that it is treated as an assertion: "That's not a statue, that's a tree"; Or as a question, "That's a tree?"; or as a declaration "That is a 'tree'". The same group of words, with the same extension, can have differing illocutionary force in different circumstances. Indeed, it is possible for the same utterance to have different forces at the same time. The point of developing this nomenclature is to be able to discuss these complexities.
So there is a sense in which the assertion "that is a tree" is simultaneously, in virtue of it's using English, the declarative "We will divide the world up such that 'tree' counts as a reference".
I don't see this as problematic.
Notice that if you are using the locution "This is a 'tree'" , then you are indeed mentioning the word "tree" and not using it - as can be seen by the quote marks.
So again, it looks to me as if both you and @Michael are correct. And further, that you are working within Searle's scheme, not disagreeing with it.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Well, we can have institutional facts without language, but language allows us to compound and iterate institutional facts. So you may well be able to pay chess without language but can you plan to play chess in a competition starting at ten o'clock tomorrow without language?
And further, your example of playing chess with a Chinese speaker is dependent on their already knowing how to play chess, which is in turn dependent on their already having a language.
So even if we grant that there are institutions that do not requirer language, it is language that both forms the most persuasive social institution and is basic to all but a very few social facts.
Yes, the analysis becomes ubiquitous.
So pity poor @Harry Hindu, who sees all language as mere assertion, and hence can't begin along the path.
The more you think about it the more it seems that, besides our own experiences, all fact are social or institutional (patterns of organization) facts.
But we still need to agree on brute facts. I may doubt my own experiences but in the absence of others there’s no one to agree or disagree with. Indeed in many occasions people may disregard brute facts in favor of “alternative facts”. Maybe the only true brute facts are our own experiences.
So brute facts are true regardless of our representations of them - treat this as a definition of brute fact.
They are true regardless of our asserting them, knowing them, believing them, demonstrating them, sharing them, doubting them.
Regardless of any role they might have in our speech acts.
The realism arguments go on around our posts in this very thread, between @Isaac and @Michael and @StreetlightX and various others; it is ubiquitous and all-consuming, And mostly irrelevant.
Actually, it was Searle.
This is a thread about Searle.
Oh, and you raised the issue here: ; but did not seem to recognise it.
Funny. The post does not contain the word "real", let alone "realism". That you somehow recognized it nonetheless, speaks to the crappy assumptions built into the insitutional/non-institutional distinction. A recognition that has nothing to re-cognize is usually called projection.
Of course it is. Same as the elements. What counts as a proton is determined by a human institution; if we ever find a fourth quark, we'll have to decide whether its presence makes a proton not a proton anymore and iron (yes even 'the-substance-we-currently-refer-to-with-the-word-"iron") may have 27 protons.
"Ah but the-thing-we-currently-refer-to-as-a-proton will always have three quarks" - again, not if we change what counts as a quark.
"Ah but the-thing-we-currently-refer-to with-the-word-'quark' will always measure X on the quark-o-meter" (my knowledge of physics is breaking down - can you tell?) - again, not if the responsible institutions change what counts as a measurement on the quark-o-meter...
Do I need to go on? At its base all facts are institutional facts, because all facts are built from classifications which are done by human institutions (language, science, culture). Absent those classifications, there's just stuff and happenings.
A quick intuition pump to see how incredibly facile the distinction is: is gender an institutional fact, or not?
Well that may well be on me. My understanding of Searle is in your hands right now. My understanding of how facts arise is much broader and mostly derived from other sources. I'm just trying to apply the latter to the former.
Quoting Banno
Well, don't let me keep you, if you're busy!
Quoting Banno
Well good. I thought it might be, on account of the division made between declarative and assertive statements. It seemed that the fact that all assertive statements are also declarative might have been a problem for the scheme, but if there's no problem with one category being wholly within another then sure. No problem.
Quoting Banno
Indeed, but the same would be true of any continued use of the word. "I'll meet you behind that tree" serves the same function when I go to what I think of as a tree and find you there - "great, our model of trees seems to be consistent still". If, however, I find you behind what I thought was just a shrub, or worse a herb, ...
Gender is a grammatical category within a wider activity (language).
Gender use is deontic: "Tout vas bien ma fils?" would be an incorrect usage.
So yes, at first glance, gender does seem to fit the description of institutional fact given by banno in his opening post.
Man and woman are markers for ‘sex’ and used as ‘gender’. The problem is how language is put together over time - meaning how people USE the terms.
People adhering to more hard and fast rules will have issue with saying that ‘gender’ is anything but ‘sex’. The general social shifts recently don’t make this at all surprising.
All I know for sure is that a trans woman is a not a woman (that is why the term trans woman exists!), yet I have no issue with referring to a trans woman as she/her because it makes perfect sense to do so. If said person was to tell me they are a woman through and through and insisted that I except they are a woman … well, they cannot do this. It is impossible to make someone agree with you about anything. People can be presented with arguments and evidence, but really it is down to them to make the change or not.
I find all identity politics to be quite vile and oppressive. It is not really too surprising that something like this has surfaced in societies today given that everyone on the planet can more easily than ever before made their voice heard somewhere, find like minds somewhere and be exposed to things they would never normally be exposed to.
All the categories given as examples are in themselves ‘institutional facts’. There is a speck of black within white and vice versa. If not then there would be no possible distinction. Identity politics operates under the guise of ‘liberation’ but really it is about drawing starker and starker lines between people … which some people like either because they feel more ‘the same’ or ‘more different’ (ironically!).
We all die anyway so it doesn’t matter that much :D
So now we have the groundwork for creating institutions. We have a language that can create declarations, we can use these declarations to create status functions, and we have collective intent to explain social actions.
A few examples. A small community builds a wall of stones around some area, perhaps the cemetery, such that certain activities are only performed inside the wall of stones. Over time the wall collapses, but folk still perform those activities only inside the old boundary. The boundary has taken on a certain status for the community. It has a status function.
Notice also that the status function might never be declared; but it is declarable. That is sufficient. Those activities count as improper within the boundary: hence the general form X counts as Y in C.
Anther example: filing the appropriate paperwork creates a corporate entity. Follow the rules and the company comes into existence. We make it the case by declaration that the company exists in the context of Australian Law.
There are variations on the general form, X counts as Y in C, which I will leave aside, since here I'm mostly concerned with showing how institutions and institutional facts come about.
Social institutions all come about in some way similar to this. Money, private property, legislatures; but also schools, clubs, partnerships, friendships. But not literature, not science, not eating. The test, according to Searle, for whether the given item is an institution is that it has deontic power; that some duty or obligation follows from the status of an institution. So CSIRO is an institution, with obligations and duties, but science is not.
Indeed, these deontic powers, these duties and obligations are the purpose of creating institutions. And they are created by status declarations assigning status functions.
Next: Language
"Je vais prendre ma voiture."
Which chromosomes does my car have?
Shut up transphobe and don't talk to me.
Edit: attributed quote to wrong person, disastrously.
That would be in line with feminist thinking.
I would prefer to say that chromosomes track biological sex. Not gender.
Do you want to ask whether biological sex is an institutional fact?
Again: what we call 'institutional' and 'non-institutional' is a matter of institutions.
But all facts bear such deontic forces, by virtue of having a garmmar at all. Witt: "grammar tells us what kind of object anything is". And all grammar has a normative function, obligating us to speak about things in this or that manner, even and especially when we choose to mark certain facts - by virtue of our institutions - as non-institutional.
Probably. We might for now consider just those that are not created in virtue of grammar - like the ones in the examples.
If we call a dog's tail a 'leg', then a dog has five legs. There are no brute facts.
A dog has four legs, no matter what we call them. There are brute facts.
I was curious where the example comes from and it turns out it's used by many from the early 19th C onwards. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/11/15/legs/
[quote=The Construction of Social Reality, Searle quoted in Michael's post]We cannot impose an electrical charge just by deciding to count something as an electrical charge, but we can impose the office of the Presidency just by deciding what we will count as becoming President, and then making those people President who meet the conditions we have decided on.[/quote]
Onward and possibly upward.
This is exactly the problem.
We can impose an electrical charge just by deciding to count something as an electrical charge, that's exactly how electrical charges are distinguished from other properties - by deciding to distinguish them. (Note this is before we even give what we distinguished a name, hence use-mention distinction doesn't even enter the story).
Also, if we are not going to ignore use-mention distinctions, then it's simply not true that "we can impose the office of the Presidency just by deciding what we will count as becoming President". If we decide that having red hair determines who is president and the office involves no power at all, but is just a typing position in the office, then we're no longer talking about the president (use), we're talking about a secretary (use) which we've decided now to call "president" (mention).
This appears to be all assertions to me. I win everytime you type scribbles on your screen, Banno, because everytime you use scribbles you assert your intent to communicate.
A reductio ad absurdum against the first, highlighting the use-mention error that Isaac repeatedly makes:
P1. There is 1 red pill and 1 blue pill in a bag
P2. All red pills are poisonous
P3. All blue pills are not poisonous
C1. There is only 1 poisonous pill in the bag (from 1, 2, and 3)
P4. We now decide that the word "red" shall refer also to the colour blue and that the word "blue" shall be retired
C2. There are 2 poisonous pills in the bag (from 1, 2, and 4)
C2 is both false and contradicts C1.
Searle says that within social institutions are duties and obligations
Within a social institution are duties and obligations. I sit down with someone for a game of chess, and we both agree that a particular piece is a bishop. For me, that the bishop moves diagonally is declarable even if I don't declare it. For the other person, that the bishop moves perpendicularly is declarable even if they don't declare it. We both promise to use the bishop correctly.
Searle in Ought and Is wrote: "With these conclusions we now return to the question with
which I began this section: How can my stating a fact about a man, such as the fact that he made a promise, commit me to a view about what he ought to do? One can begin to answer this question by saying that for me to state such an institutional fact is already to invoke the constitutive rules of the institution."
Who has the right to determine the duties and obligations within a society
As soon as the game starts I am annoyed that they have broken their promise to use the bishop correctly. The question is, why do I believe that the other person is under a duty and obligation to follow my understanding of the game. I could argue that the majority agree with me that the bishop moves diagonally and therefore the other person must have a duty and obligation to follow the majority.
But if the majority believe that the world is flat, why am I under a duty and obligation to also believe that the world is flat. Why does the minority have a duty and obligation to follow the majority ?
Edmund Burke - "The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny."
Arthur Balfour - The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of kings.
Mark Twain - Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil - The European herd man, on the other hand, puts on airs nowadays as if he were the only acceptable type of man, glorifying the characteristics that make him tame, docile, and useful to the herd as if they were the true human virtues: such as public spirit, benevolence, consideration, industriousness, moderation, modesty, concern, sympathy.
Summary
I am sure that Searle is correct when he says that the test of a social institution is whether it has deontic power in establishing duties and obligations on others. These deontic powers can only come from its own members, whether an elite minority or a heterogeneous majority. One further question to ask is how does one set of members gain deontic power over others of differing opinions. A further question is once having gained such deontic powers, how do they keep them.
Duty and obligation may be admirable, but surely not at the expense of the tyranny of a small elite or a heterogeneous majority.
If the other person is using the same words as I do, but defining them in different ways, I may be mistaken in thinking that they have made me a promise, and should not be surprised if they break what I think are their obligations.
Changing the name doesnt change the pill. Its so simple i dont understand why theres any issue. I think that too many here think that making it complex also makes them smart.
Which the same as asking, isnt everything a state-of-affairs?
Quoting Banno
:clap:
Neither do I, which is why I don't understand why Isaac thinks that we can turn lead into gold by changing the meaning of "lead" and/or "gold". That's a use-mention error. Regardless of the words we decide to use to refer to lead and gold, lead has 82 protons and gold has 79 protons. Regardless of what we decide to mean by "leg", dogs (typically) have four legs. Regardless of what name he chooses to call himself, Joe Biden is President of the United States.
With that in mind it is quite straightforward to say that being paper is a brute fact but being money is a human institution. There is no money if there are no people, but there will be paper.
Yes, changing names is a language act. Changing elements is a chemical act and changing presidents is a voting act. Changing one has no effect on changing the other because different causes are required.
Quoting Michael
Humans and their societies with their institutions are planted firmly within the world and not separate from it. Talking about our institutions, or even our mental states, is talking about the world. It is a brute fact that humans have mental states and use paper to make money to exchange for goods and services.
The concept of paper exists without people?
The concept of paper doesn't exist without people but paper exists without people.
Doesn’t but does exist… maybe you mean that something exists, like quantum particles for instance, but how are those particles distinguished from other particles without people?
And numbers exist without people? Surely we'd still be 93 million miles from earth if people had never existed.
You are the sun god, and I claim my eternal life!
There's little point in us continuing if the only relationship you're going to allow is one where you explain things to me. I'm not here for a lecture.
The concept of money wouldn't exist without people and neither would it's physical incarnation in coins, paper, and computer bits.
Quantum particles can't distinguish themselves?
I don't think we can identify something without distinguishing it from what it's not, and even then the same thing could be identified differently depending on the context of the thing. An O could be a letter in the alphabet or an O in tic tac toe, for example.
Good question. I'll do the math.
:chin: Think I forgot to carry the one somewhere.
:lol: What potential you use?
Since we're assuming some version of realism, I think we can continue assuming whatever the hell we want.
Why don't you write
[math] \frac{4\pi\alpha}{\sqrt{2}\mu}[/math]
as
[math] \frac{2\sqrt{2}\alpha\pi}{\mu}[/math]?
It's soul tearing! What is told here?
It would still be bishop....badly moved! The piece has a physical form that informs us of our obligations when moving it. But I get Yours and Searl's point.
Great philosopher...Natural Philosopher, especially his work on Consciousness.!
We don’t need to identify something for it to exist.
Quoting RussellA
There's quite a lot in there that needs unpacking, but it again gives me the opportunity to use a favourite cartoon:
Language games are not decided by majority vote. The game cannot continue if Sartre decides to exercise his radical freedom, regardless of what the majority say. In much the same way as the game of the US constitution cannot continue if a small group of folk storm the Capitol Building whenever their preferred candidate for President is not elected.
Sartre was perhaps frustrated by the lack of any volition in Candyland. But not all language games are so restrictive.
You are right that one may be mistaken in thinking that others are following the same rules as we are. Indeed, @Ciceronianus and @Tobias should be thankful of this, as otherwise they would be out of work. While society consists in the institutions and institutional facts, politics, res publica, consists in their constant renegotiation.
I assume you mean because it has been previously identified and we can re-cognize it.
This takes us to the philosophy of politics and law. I must say, the more I delve into law, the ore I admire the simplicity of it, but also the deep understanding that goes into that apparent simplicity. The question ou asked is answered by the power of procedure. The base of deontic power is simply social convention and these social conventions arise out of the fact we can make things clear to each other using language. Through this possibility, we have devised a game in which bishops move diagonally, we call it chess. Does that mean chess cannot be played any other way? Sure it can. The rules of the game have changed over time. People have brought proposals to change the rules to the table, some have been adopted some have not. Usually through a change in customs. Custom is a form of law. People use a certain rule and feel that the rule in fact should be used and take issue with people who do not. Later on, when customs became codified and systematized and/or when egal professionals started to adhere to the judgments of their predescessors and this adherence became a rule in and of itself, law arose.
I mention legal professionals, because not all proposals to change rules have equal weiight and not all votes to change or not change have equal weight. In society a class of people started to emerge which had more knowledge of rules and also knew which rules were in place in earlier times. Some people were very skilled at arguing for the good or bad of certain rules. These were 'wisemen' and ' wisewomen', shamans or priests. They shared this knowledge among themselves. With professionalisation the lawyer entered the fray. They have an overview of the rules in place and therefore they are better equiped at arguing whether a rule change makes sense. Their sanctioning of a certain rule carries weight. So indeed often we are ruled by other people and our actions are sanctioned, in the end by a class of people chosen to do so, those are now known as judges.
Is that bad? Are we ruled by an elite of judges? Not really, because we have devised systems of checks and balances, further procedures, i.e. bodies of rules. They govern how one becomes a judge and what powers they have. Those rules also cover legislators, administrators, bayliffs to uphold judgments and so on. As long as procedures are in place and as long as these procedures are considered legitimate, there is no problem. You do not have to worry about the rules of the game of chess yourself. It has been codified for you. If your adversay moves the bishop in a wrong way you just tell her so. And you would be right to be annoyed. Had she bothered to look it up, she would have known. Of course, she mmay propose a rule change, but she should follow the designated procedures to make such a proposal. The whole paradox of the rule has something of Zeno's paradox for me. It is all nice in theory, but practice has found a way to easiluy refute the theory.
I think this the wrong way around, but the point is moot.
Elsewhere you made the point thatQuoting Tobias
It may be that what must be added to the conversation are those status functions that we needs must accept in order that our conversation also acts upon the world and the body politic. So some parts of the conversation count as actions and implementations as we do things with words.
Thanks for dropping past.
:lol:
Quoting Banno
It is legal technical, my apologies, I ran a little roughshot: I meant to say " custom is a source of law". In the early days there was little else.
Quoting Banno
Yes and the question becomes who gets to do what with words. Austin's speech acts. When a witness takes an oath he she is by her speech act under obligation to tell the truth. When a legal professional such as a judge swears in a witness special criminal rules start to apply. Not everyone can do so though and not under all circumstances. who can do so and under what conditions depends on procedure. Shared intentionality is one thing, Yes we want there to be such procedures and they developed in the contunuous dialectic of rule creation and rule contestation. This is essentially what law is, a case by case redefinition of rules which get refined and systematised, sometimes end up codified over time.
It shows shared intentionality, but to a lawyer it shows more. It shows the performative and enabling nature of conflict. Every judication brings about new rules that allows us to calibrate our expecations of loving together better. Ontologically, it also shows we are rule following creatures. We perceive regularities and impose them on our world, the way we see them imposed by nature. We like regularity.
Quoting StreetlightX
In social cnstructivism this is known as the debate between radical and moderate social constructivism. To me the latter seems incoherent, because what is considered ' non institutional' is itself a product of social construction. Especially in the English tradition there have been distinctions between primary and secondary qualities between essential and non essential properties etc and now between institutional and non institutional facts of which I do not see the point. There might be good arguments for making the distinctions that we make, such as between wood and lead, but those ddistinctions rests on them being commonly accepted. In the end the inspiration for the distinction will probably be bodily. Wood is just easier for us to lift. Chess pieces made of lead weigh a ton. So we decided it was useful ot distinguish between the two materials on some ground, lately their chemical make up I guess. That does not make them any less socially constructed though.
Is there in the modern day? Isn't the source of law not still based on custom and habit? Good habits, bad custom? Be it custom of conduct and behavior, or habit of thought?
Quoting Tobias
I feel like Daniel thrown into the lion's den.
There are different kinds of games
Within a particular game are duties and obligations. An institution has deontic powers in establishing duties and obligations on those who want to take part in that institution. The participant of the game must accept these duties and obligations. The game of the US Constitution cannot continue if the rules of the game are not followed by its citizens. The game of chess cannot continue if the rules of the game are not followed by its players.
However, the game of chess and the game of society are different. If I am not willing to accept the duties and obligations within chess, I am able to leave the table. However, society is different, in that if I am not willing to accept the duties and obligations within society I am not able to leave, as one of the rules of society is that everyone is a member.
Problems arise in obligatory games
Problems arise for those who disagree with the rules and obligations imposed by an institution that they are not able to leave. To illustrate the problems that arise when members of a society disagree with the rules and obligations imposed on them, one can look at a contemporary situation, the 6 January event, and a historical event, Galileo's championing the Copernican heliocentrism.
Galileo
At the time of Galileo's conflict with the Church, the majority subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the centre of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies. Galileo championed Copernican heliocentrism - the Earth rotating daily and revolved around the sun. Galileo's position met with opposition from within the Catholic Church, the matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was foolish and absurd. For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. In 1632, Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and was called to Rome the same year to defend it. He was brought to trial in 1633 before the Inquisitor. Throughout his trial, Galileo steadfastly maintained that since 1616 he had faithfully kept his promise not to hold any of the condemned opinions. However, in 1633 he was threatened with torture if he did not recant, ultimately being found "vehemently suspect of heresy", his Dialogue was banned, and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Promise and obligation in games
Searle wrote: "How can my stating a fact about a man, such as the fact that he made me a promise, commit me to a view about what he ought to do ? In thinking about games, there are different situations:
1) There are voluntary games such as chess that the person neither needs to take part in nor wants to take part in, and as they make no promise to follow the rules, they are under no obligation to follow the rules, and therefore make committent as to what they ought to do
2) There are voluntary games such as chess where the person when promising to follow the rules is declaring that they will be playing the game of chess, not through obligation but through choice, and make no committent as to what they ought to do, only what they will do.
3) There are those obligatory games such as society where the person need make no promise to follow the rules are they are obliged to follow the rules and are committed to what they ought to do.
Unfortunately, I have to leave this game of philosophy, as we are about to get underway for Las Vegas to play a different kind of game.
Quoting Michael
Does it hold outside of such a framework? Are there institutional facts outside of such a framework?
Quoting RussellA
I disagree. Tanks rolling over a national border is a historical event. A "tank" token's being pointed at one or more tanks (or a "word" token's being pointed at "tank") is a myth, requiring continual reinforcement, itself no less mythical.
Inscrutability of reference, and all that.
I see an ambiguity here that seems odd. On the one hand you have that there is no point in distinguishing institutional from non-institutional facts; on the other that "Wood is just easier to lift!".
This should be a very minor point, on that we can agree. Yes, "...we decided it was useful to distinguish between the two materials on some ground", but e can only do this because they are different.
Perhaps it will be clear if I say that that difference is marked by, but not found in, those materials. That we can make the distinction shows that the distinction is there to be made.
Or here: Someone who insists that lead is less dense than wood is mistaken, either in their perception of the world or in their use of words.
And yes, we might have used the words differently, but we did not.
To be clear, I do not think that you, Tobi, will disagree. This clarification os for the sake of others.
Don't worry, Tobi's a nice bloke.
In the OP I cited an article by Mary Midgley, The Game Game. In it she has soemthing to say about problems that arise with the overuse of the notion of games. One of her examples is Hare's criticism of Searle's work on promises. See pages 234-5 fort he discussion. Midgley has much the same argument as you present; there is something different about "the game of society" as you call it; we cannot just get up and leave if the game does not suit us. Her point is that game and institution are used for things of very different sizes, and that Hare is wrong to think that because in one we can change the details, we can also do so in the other (p.252). I cited the article in order to have it at hand for an expected objection, but instead I find you making much the same point.
Humans are far too embedded in their social institutions for even the most ardent individualist (@NOS4A2? @Harry Hindu?) to opt out.
Quoting RussellA
Good luck, or don't get caught, whichever is appropriate.
If I might interject, and @Michael may disagree, but it seems to me that this is where @StreetlightX's point comes into play; for us there can be no outside the framework. There's nothing can be said about wood or lead without using words, and so one is always already in the framework, so to speak.
But this is entirely compatible with there being brute facts. Brute facts can be shown and said. Here, hold this piece of lead in one hand, and this piece of wood in the other. See how they feel different? We call this difference weight, and further, the difference in weight of objects of the same size we call density. Things like this show how our words "lock onto" the world around us. (@Isaac - hence what you say about language is correct, but nevertheless there are brute facts; also, this is the same point as I made to @Tobias, above.)
And again, this ought be a small point; I do not think anyone here actually thinks words could, by some "spell", make lead less dense than wood.
No. It is also based on case law, codified law, treaties and some say legal principles, but that is debated. I know you mean something deeper with your question, but that to me, as the lawyer I am now in this discussion, is meaningles. the source thesis is also a technical aspect of and within law.
Good luck and have fun in Vegas. Tell me, where do you see the problem? That you are not asked for consent to the rules or have been asked to promis to follow the rules? Do you think you are that important that, for the rules to apply, you have to give permission? You are not. You either play by the rules or you do not. If you do not, eventually, society will remove you from the game. In modern times it means they will lock you up. The funny thing is that people think they have made some agreement with society. They have not. They are simply thrown in.
So the law accepts objective measures of moral, independent of human interest?
They are different only because we decided that this difference merrited a distinction. Every material is different. My porcelain cup is different from your porcelain cup. The material will be different. However, we decided the difference was too small to distinguish between these materials altogether. Apparently we did find it useful to distinguish between some material we named lead and another we named wood. My guess would be we did so because we eperienced a difference in weight.
Quoting Banno
How can it be 'marked by, but not found in' materials? It must be a distinction useful to us to make. A being of infinite strength would not need to distinguish between the wood or the lead.
Quoting Banno
Certainly. However the proposition only makes sense when the distinction between wood and lead is already accepted. Let's say there is a a society in which the distinction between lead and wood is not made. Actually no distinction is made within matter at all. It is all just named 'matter'. Then the result is a meaningles statement: "matter is less dense than matter".
I guess I am not a realist, Well, perhaps only in streelight's sense that I thin the world could not care less about any istinction we make in it.
que?
It has become increasingly more difficult.
Well, I asked if modern day law is not based on habit and custom just as well. You replied it's based on case law, codyfied law, treatise, and legal principles. So law is based on codified law? Isn't that circular?
It’s not magic but simply lack of experience or honesty. Mere words can flatten the earth. Maybe true brute facts are our own experiences.
I feel your pain. That we are social animals is not the most comfortable thing.
Yes!
Quoting Tobias
They are different because we decide the difference merits the distinction. Ipso facto there is a difference for which we might make that distinction.
Some distinctions work; others do not. And to"work" here is to fit in with our form of life. Hence the dual direction of fit of a declarative utterance. We make the words fit the world, and we also make the world fit the words. We know what wood is by cutting, carving, burning and talking about, wood. We know what lead is by melting, folding, feeling, and talking about lead. We cannot melt, fold, or feel wood. That we decided there was a distinction of merit is because there was indeed a distinction of merit.
No, because the word law in English is used in a dual connotation. It denotes the whole body of law, the legal institution, but it also denotes a certain codified piece of text, a certain law. In Dutch and German the distinction is much clearer. They make a difference between 'Gesetz' (Gr) or 'wet' (NL) and 'Recht' (NL GR), the latter denotes the legal institution, the former a particular written text with binding legal force.
Texts issued according to the proper legal procedures count as a source of law because they creates binding rights and duties an aspire to legitimacy, that is, they are meant for legal professionals and the populace to adhere to, often under threat of some penalty.
I think what you mean is whether ultimately the sources of law depend on custom and habit. I would say partly. They also depend on power. Not all law is an articulation of a prior habit. Some laws (texts) also mandate a certain behaviour to create such a habit. For instance the obligation to wear seat belts, or to drive on the right hand or left hand lane.
For me that whole question is so odd to comprehend. Ipso facto there will be a difference between the bread you eat in the morning and that I do, even if it would so happen that we eat the same kind of bread, Yet yours will have slightly different ingredients than mine, more sugar, more grain, baked harder or what have you. Still we would say, "hey, what a coincidence, we eat the same kind of bread". The reason is we do not notice any difference, which might, ipso facto still be there. That would mean all our distinctions are not dependent on the matter in re, but on our finding some sort of importance in articulating it. Whether the bread is really really different or the same is a question of metaphysics that I think is pointless.
Quoting Banno
Indeed, but that is the problem here no? The distinctions come to the fore in our practices. They are therefore institutionalized facts, not very different from say law. We also 'find law' by artculating it, drafting it, codifying it and applying it.
[quote=The Construction of Social Reality, Chapter 3, Language and Social Reality]There is a weaker and a stronger version of my claim. The weaker is that in order to have institutional facts at all, a society must have at least a primitive form of language, that in this sense the institution of language is logically prior to other institutions. On this view language is the basic social institution in the sense that all others presuppose language, but language does not presuppose the others; you can have language without money and marriage, but not the converse. The stronger claim is that each institution requires linguistic elements of the facts within that very institution. I believe both claims are true, and I will be arguing for the stronger claim. The stronger claim implies the weaker.[/quote]
Or the meaningful "this is less dense than that."
But the meaningfulness of the statement is irrelevant to the distinction. As he says:
Regardless of what numbers or words we decide to use, whether it be "93 million miles" or "150 million kilometres" or "1 astronomical unit", the space between the earth and the sun is a brute fact. We can't make it further from or closer to us just by deciding that it is.
So, no? Ok.
Are there brute facts outside of such a framework?
Yes. See above.
That passage addresses only institutional facts?
This.
Ah. Ok.
Are there brute facts that exist only inside such a framework?
So, they are the facts that aren't fiction?
Oh. Are they hallucinations?
How aren't they fiction? Weren't you stressing their lack of correspondence with actual states of affairs?
I think the trouble I’m having is that I don’t think that words lock onto the world around us (objective idealism?) but lock onto our mental representations or model of the world.
Status function:
Lead and wood count as matter in reality.
But is reality “the world around us” or is it only our model of reality?
I am Dutch... but I do not understand what you mean. You man that somehow judges judge wrongly because of custom? Every practice of course has its 'habitus' as Bourdieu would put it. I do not see so much legal wrongheadedness. Usually, if there is a judicial error it depends on faulty fact finding, but not faulty legal deliberation.
Just to translate your last line, which actually doesn't translate well in English, but you state the judge is crooked not straight. (Using a pun on the word straight in Dutch which in dutch also means judge). Why do you think that? You did not agree with the fine, because you had a rough financial situation. The judge found for the state because the law is the way it is... I do not see something crooked there. The judiciary does not have the power to say, 'ohh, no matter what the law is, I find such and such fair and therefore the outcome is such and such!' If that was possible the juddges would de facto rule the country. They do not. The legislature does. Content wise I might be on your side, the judge might also be, but that is the point of procedure I dealt with above. If such outcomes are considered unfair, the law should be changed. The judge does not have the power to do so as she lacks democratic legitimacy. Materially the outcome might feel wrong for you, but legally the outcome does not seem wrong per se. That does not imply law is built on custom, it means law is a binding, authoritative rule.
And who made the law? Mainly the possessing class. Als de rechter linkser was (of linker) had ze aan mijn kant kunnen komen staan!
I would like to ask to ask you to write in English, though I applaud your comment of Dutch. You are mistaken though. Also a left wing judge would rule against you. She is a judge not a political activist. She might agree with you in terms of content, but the role of the judge is not to be a political activist and misuse her power to force through social change. That is simply not her role in the legal system. Even if she would have found for you, the juddgment would be overturned by a higher court and with reason because it would be against the law. There are extreme cases of course and sometimes a judge has to go contra-legem, but that is very rare and only in case of overt violation of other legal principles. That is not the case here as far as I can see.
Quoting Hillary
I am not so sure Hilary. Most people in the Netherlands, including the least well off, voted for right wing political parties with a law and order agenda. I would not be against fines that are dependent on the income of the person fined. In some countries such a system exists. However, in NL we do not have it. There is also no movement for it, no one asking for it and like I said, most people vote right...
Yes. The incasso woman might have taken it a level higher. And the verdict would be that the judge operated against the law. But suppose, just suppose, the highest level judges (why is it called "rechter: in Dutch?) spoke the verdict I didn't have to pay because I couldn't pay the 580 euro? True, I didn't reacted to repeated pressure of the insurance company. But suppose they said, 1000 euro extra, for doing nothing (except sending a woman to court). What then?
Then you would not have to pay. However they will not do so because they will have to give their reasons for such a verdict and these reasons have to have their base in the law (including principles of law). If they do not, because legally it cannot be defended, we would have a constitutional crisis on our hands. People would legitmately ask: are we ruled by the chosen legislator, or by the supreme court? We have a legal principle in the Netherlands arguing for judiicial restraint because the judge does not have democratic legitimacy.
And I could ask: am I ruled by some stupid rule if law allowing incasso to raise my debt by almost 1000 euro?
That seemed to be @Isaac's problem, too. In his case it has to do with the notion of modelling used in neuroscience. And @Tobias is caught in a form of conceptual relativism perhaps resulting from a diet of legal mumbo.
Realism here is simply that not just any account of how things are will do.
The alternative conceptual relativism presents a muddled picture. I am astonished that otherwise erudite folk find it appealing. It seems to be a metal picture that has folk inthralled.
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.
Even a neural network corrects itself against its inputs, and therefore has inputs that are independent of the neural net. A neural net with no inputs is just as inept as the ubiquitous example of an engine in neutral or a car with its wheels spinning in the air. But of course the "model" used in talking about neural networks is non-representational, and so is a very different thing from a conceptual model. This fact gets lost int he discussion, such that folk treat neural networks and conceptual models as equivalent.
Realism is nothing less than the truely alarming contention that there is a world within which our representations take place, within which we are embedded and against which our words my be tested.
And of course none of you will deny this; and yet you pretend to conceptual relativism of one sort or another. Despite your protestations, you cannot walk through walls.
Yes of course you could. The fact that a law is applied and even upheld in court, does not mean it is a good law. So by all means, campaign against the rule, mobilize citizens, make sure it appears on the political agenda. However a court of law is not a political arena. Granted, it does become more and more of a political arena, but there are severe problems associated with that. I rather ddo not see the politicization of the courts.
I do not think I am a conceptual relativist. Some concepts work better than others. There might be better arguments for some distinctions than for others. I do think that the dstinction between brute facts an institutional facts is not easy to maintain. Every fact depends on some form of institutionalization to be aaccepted as such. The distinctions we accept as meaningful depends on the way we interact with the world.
Searle accepts both realism and conceptual relativism.
Although perhaps the issue is that Searle's account of realism differs from yours? He defines external realism as the view that "the world (or alternatively, reality or the universe) exists independently of our representations of it" which he says "is not a theory of truth, [is] not a theory of knowledge, and [is] not a theory of language."
Regarding my repeated accusations of a use-mention error, it appears Searle has something to say about it to:
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.
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.
More assertions. I'm winning our game.
Quoting 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?
Quoting 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.
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.
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.
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" is that we determine whether or not this is gold. Being so, not being so. A fact nonetheless.
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".
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.
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.
Which is why it is a good thing that nothing I have said argues this.
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.
Are there institutional facts about immaterial or imaginary things? Or is that what would make them fictions?
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Next: 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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
:scream: We can do that?!
:snicker:
Is that an institutional fact ? It seems to fit the definition.