This short treatise looks at how we construct a social reality from our sense impressions; at how, for example, we construct a "five-pound note" with all that implies in terms of value and social meaning, from the printed piece of paper we see and touch.
The building blocks of social reality; creating institutional facts;
language and social reality; the general theory of institutional facts part I
- iteration, interaction, and logical structure; the general theory of
institutional facts part II - creation, maintenance, and the hierarchy;
background abilities and the explanation of social phenomena; does the real
world exist? part I - attacks on realism; does the real world exist? part II
- could there be a proof of external realism?; truth and correspondence.
John Searle is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 2002 and the National Humanities Medal in 2004.
