Subjective objectivity

In The Construction of Social Reality and now again in Making the Social World , John Searle has explored the ontology of social facts. How can things that are themselves basically atomic particles and forces become objects like dollar bills and Presidents?

Social facts are attributed subjectively by people, by a collective of people, and yet they are not merely subjective. The dollar bill is a dollar bill, not merely “counted as” one; but it is one because of that “counting as.” Subjectively constructed, social facts are objective realities.

That’s an important problem, and one that Searle explores with a great deal of insight and skill. But he makes the problem harder by the reductionist starting point: The “basic facts” are those given by physics, evolutionary biology, chemistry and the other natural sciences. “Our mental life depends on the basic facts” ( Making , 4). He wants to show that “money, universities, cocktail parties, and income tax” are all “not only consistent with but in various ways derived from and dependent on the basic facts” (4).

In this, he makes social facts seem very strange indeed. But that is only because he misses the opportunity to challenge scientific reductionism and naturalism, to challenge the premise that everything is ultimately reducible to brute, physical realities.