The following text originally comes from a course paper on the same theme – the order is
somewhat rearranged here and parts of the original text is left out. I ask the reader to try to
ignore the structure and concentrate on the content!
Social Entities and Constitution
Susanna Salmijärvi
Institutional entities such as laws, governments and money are indispensable ingredients of
our everyday world. We refer to, quantify over and interact with them. However, what
ontological status do institutional entities have? Are they identical with material objects in the
world? If they are – which material objects? Or, are they psychological entities? If they are –
how should one account for the objectivity of institutional entities? And further, if they are
neither identical with material objects nor mental objects – what ontological status do they
have?
John Searle (1995, 2010) has argued that all institutional entities can be analyzed from his
formula for constitutive rules: X counts as Y in context C. The X-term stands for any material
object in the world and the Y-term represents a status function which is imposed on a material
object. A status function is a function which the material object could not have solely in virtue
of its material constitution (Searle 1995:13f, 2010:7f). The Swedish krona in my pocket can
be analyzed thus: this piece of metal (X), counts as money (Y) in context C, Sweden.
Searle’s formula is important for our understanding of the social reality. Above all, it accounts
for the relations between our minds, institutional entities and the material world. The “count
as” locution suggests that there is a collective intentional act involved in the creation of
institutional entities – thereby the mind-dependence, characteristic for institutional entities1, is
accounted for. The relation to a material object (X) further suggests that institutional entities
are closely related to the material world.
Despite the benefits of Searle’s formula, it has been widely criticized for a variety of reasons.2
In this text I would like to highlight the ontological unclearness in the formula, and lift a more
general discussion about the relations between our minds, institutional entities and material
objects. More specifically, is the relation between the X- and Y-term a relation of identity?
Or, is it a relation of constitution (with or without identity)?
1. The Ontological unclearness in Searle’s formula
Searle claims that his formula for constitutive rules is the common feature for all institutional
entities3. Since all institutional reality, according to Searle, is based on the formula one could
think that the formula would be explained in detail so that no misunderstandings occurred.
However, there is a large ontological unclearness concerning what the components: X, Y and
the “counts as”, and the relations between these components are. To give the reader a taste of
the ontological confusion, I will in this section present some of the different ways in which
the components of the formula are outlined. I will also bring up a few interpretations of it. In
1
The assumed mind-dependence of all institutional reality can be questioned. See Smith (1992), Zaibert (2004)
and Andersson (2007).
2
See for example Smith (1990), Smith & Searle (2003), Thomasson (1997, 2003) and McGinn (2010).
3
”Entity” should be understood as ontologically neutral as possible, including objects, processes, events,
properties, states of affairs etc.
1
the next section I present four different ways in which I believe that the relations between the
terms could be interpreted.
At first, Searle is unwilling to accept the actual existence of social objects (See for example
1995:36) but at the same time he seems unable not to use the expression social object: “I said
that the form of the constitutive rule was “X counts as Y in context C”; but as I am using this
locution, that only determines a set of institutional facts and institutional objects […]”
(1995:43-44) and “the imposition of status-functions on these objects creates a level of
description of the object where it is an institutional object, e.g., a twenty dollar bill” (1995:57.
My italics) In the first quote one could understand Searle as admitting both institutional facts
and institutional objects (as two kinds of social entities), and the second quote could mean
that institutional objects are existing “on top of” material objects (since they are institutional
objects at “a level of description”). Although both of these interpretations are plausible to
make (and I will come back to them at a later point), it becomes clear that Searle is trying to
explain away the existence of any social objects:
It is tempting to think of social objects as independently existing entities on analogy
with the objects studied by the natural sciences. It is tempting to think that a
government or a dollar bill or a contract is an object or entity in the sense that a DNA
molecule, a tectonic plate, or a planet is an object or entity. […] process is prior to
product. Social objects are always, in some sense we need to explain, constituted by
social acts; and, in a sense, the object is just the continuous possibility of the activity.
A twenty dollar bill, for example, is a standing possibility of paying for something.
(1995:36. My italics)
Searle’s proposal, that what we think of as social objects, are actually some kinds of activities
or processes becomes even more evident considering the following text:
What we think of as social objects, such as governments, money and universities, are
in fact just placeholders for patterns of activities. Such material objects as are
involved in institutional reality, e.g., bits of paper, are objects like any others, but the
imposition of status-functions on these objects creates a level of description of the
object where it is an institutional object, e.g. a twenty dollar bill. The object is no
different; rather, a new status with an accompanying function has been assigned to an
old object. (1995:57)
The question is what ontological status “possibilities of activities” and “placeholders” have?
One can also wonder whether an important institutional entity such as money, is in fact only
“a level of description” of reality, or a “placeholder” for activities? Unfortunately Searle does
not develop the discussion concerning the ontological status of these entities any further – and
therefore it is very unclear how his account should be understood from his point of view.
One interpretation of Searle’s formula that seems to fit many parts of Searle’s theory is one
put forward by Amie Thomasson (1997). She understands the relation between X and Y as a
relation between a material object X, and a property (a status function, the Y-term) ascribed to
the material object. Thomasson writes:
The simple picture that social reality simply involves laying some new facts over old
material objects is embodied in the formula for creating institutional facts: ”X counts
as Y in C,” for there must be some preexisting X to which we can refer initially,
2
endowing it with the status-function that makes it serve as Y. “Where there is a
status-function imposed on something, there has to be something it is imposed on.”
[Searle 1995] Thus the resultant social or institutional “entities” are simply the same
material entities with the addition of new features (Thomasson 1997:122)
The problem which Thomasson ascribes to Searle’s account, based on her interpretation, is
that not all institutional and social entities do have any particular material object “X” to which
we could ascribe a status function:
Entities such as the U.S Constitution […] obviously have close relations to individual
material objects, but in no case is there some particular material object (with
additional social properties) with which we can identify the entity in question – they
seem to be abstract in the sense of not being identifiable with any particular material
object. (Thomasson 2003:273)
There seems to be a tension between the two quotations: in the former a new feature (a
property, fact etc.) is ascribed to an old material object – in which case the Y-term stands for
this new feature. According to this account a certain piece of paper counts as having the
feature “being money”, but need not be identical to the old object. There is an old material
object + a property ascribed to it, and when the property is ascribed to the old object, the old
object counts as a social entity (material object + property). However, in the latter quote
Thomasson is asking for a material object with which entities such as the U.S Constitution is
supposed to be identical with. What does this claim amount to? The latter quote suggests that
the social “entity” just is the material entity, they share the same spatiotemporal position – but
how could it be? There is one further dimension to the interpretations here. With the risk of
making it even more complicated, Searle at one point writes:
The [material] object is no different; rather, a new status with an accompanying
function has been assigned to an old object (or a new object has been created solely
for the purpose of serving the new status-function). (Searle 1995:57)
As I see it Searle suggest two different ontological accounts in the same sentence. On the one
hand we have an old material object that is assigned a new status function (material object +
social property), and on the other hand a new object has been created with the status function
(in this case the social object is constituted by the old material object + social property). As
far as I can see the two proposals are not ontologically equivalent. In one case there is
identically the same material object, and with the ascription of a status function – the same
material object counts as having a social property: old material object + social property.
However, in the other case, the material object becomes a constituent of the social object, i.e.
the combination of old material object + property. The social object is a new object. The latter
account clearly differs from the first since identity and constitution are different things. I
cannot see how these suggestions would be ontologically equivalent.
There is another interpretation of Searle’s formula than the one Thomasson suggests (no
matter exactly how one should understand it). According to this interpretation Searle is
obliged to accept social objects. The starting point for this interpretation is that the old
material object becomes changed in some way with the imposition of a status function. For
example, a piece of paper becomes money with the imposition of a status function. But if this
is the case, the old object becomes a new kind of object and cannot be identical with the
former. Hansson-Wahlberg seems to be suggesting something like this when he writes:
3
But notice that if (and this is the normal case) the term “F” expresses a status
function that defines an institutional kind of object (roughly, if the term is a countnoun and not just an adjective), then “F” prescribes what sort or kind of object a is.
And if a is prescribed as being an institutional kind of object (a president, say), then
a is an institutional kind of object (i.e. it is not merely a mind-independent object
having a “characterizing” institutional property […]) If so, a is both an institutional
and a mind-independent object: it falls under two different sorts of kind terms,
“president” (an institutional kind term) and “human being” (a brute kind term).
(Hansson-Wahlberg (draft):10)
[…]
Hopefully, the reader is convinced that there is important ontological work to do concerning
institutional entities and their relations to consciousness and to the material world. From now
on I will discuss more generally how the relations between institutional entities and material
objects can be outlined.
2. Different views on the formula for constitutive rules
In this section three different ways in which the relations between X and Y in Searle’s
formula for constitutive rules will be presented and discussed.
The first account is a Non-constitution account presented by Hansson-Wahlberg (draft) and
Smith (2003). According to this interpretation the social entity (the Y-term) is reducible to the
material object – the social entity and the material object are identical. The second account is
a Fictionalist, or Eliminativist account in the sense that it denies the existence of social
entities. This view is primarily ascribed to Searle’s account in Hansson-Wahlberg (draft) and
Smith (2012). According to fictionalism there do not actually exist any social or institutional
objects, they are just constructions of our minds. The third account is a Constitution-withoutidentity account supported by Frank Hindriks (2013a, 2013b). In this account institutional
entities are constituted entities, never reducible to their constitution base. Hindriks claims that
the constitution base for institutional entities are people.
2.1 NON-CONSTITUTION - REDUCTIONISM
According to the first account of investigation, Searle’s formula for constitutive rules should
be analyzed as a reductionism about institutional objects (Hansson-Wahlberg (draft), Smith
(2003)) Hansson-Wahlberg claims that the relation between the X and the Y-term is a relation
of numerical identity:
An institutional object is not an entity over and above a brute object: an institutional
object neither supervenes on, nor is constituted by, a brute object. Rather, an
institutional object is numerically identical with a brute object […] the assignment of
such a status function to a brute object does not, on this account, create a new
particular object that exist “on top” of the brute one, although the status function as
such is an institutional addition to the brute object. (Hansson-Wahlberg: 6)
First, this account is reductionist in the sense that institutional objects are identical with
material objects, rather than being identical with a material object X and a status function Y.
4
If an institutional object would be identical with the sum or conjunction of a material object
and a status function, the relation between X and Y could not be an identity relation, since
“the institutional object would be regarded as containing the brute object as a proper part or
constituent”.4 (Hansson-Wahlberg: 6) Hansson-Wahlberg argues that if the material object
was a constituent or part of Y, the X could not “count as” a Y. However, since Searle
explicitly claims that the material X should count as a Y, he must accept a reductionist
account of institutional objects.
Second, Searle’s reductionism about institutional objects does not imply that he is also a
reductionist about intentionality. Searle claims that his theory of intentional acts is an
irreductionist account of intentionality. However, as Hansson-Wahlberg points out, the claim
that collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality is compatible with the
claim that institutional objects are reducible to material objects.
Hansson-Wahlberg calls Searle’s account an externalist account of institutional objects. He
argues that institutional objects should not be seen as constituted by minds, for the same
reason that they should not be seen as constituted by material objects. It is not the case that Xobjects + our representations of institutional objects count as institutional objects, in the sense
that institutional objects exist partly in our minds. Intentional objects are external since they
exist outside our minds. Hansson-Wahlberg does not deny that there are other relations
between people’s minds (attitudes) and institutional objects but these relations should not be
understood as parts of the institutional objects (not a relation of constitution).
There is one further feature concerning the reductionist account worth mentioning. Searle
claims that the formula for constitutive rules can be iterated in the sense that an institutional
object, say, a citizen of U.S, can function as a X-term in another formula. For example, a
president is a citizen of the U.S, and in turn, the citizen is a human being. In this sense all
institutional objects bottom out in a brute, mind-independent material object (pp. 6-7). This
means that the identity between X and Y can be indirect, but importantly all institutional
entities are ultimately identical with brute objects.
At least three problems seem to threaten a reductionist account. The first problem has to do
with institutional objects that do not have any particular material object with which it can be
identified. Hansson-Wahlberg (draft) and Thomasson (1997, 2003) believe that reductionism
might work for certain kinds of institutional objects such as (paper-) dollar bills, presidents
and other more concrete objects “that can be seen, touched and heard” (Hansson-Wahlberg:
10) Other kinds of institutional entities, for example those consisting of pluralities
(governments etc.), must be left out from the reductionist account (Hansson-Wahlberg).
Thomasson (2003) points at other problematic cases for reductionism:
Entities such as the U.S Constitution, General Motors, or Calvinist doctrine
obviously have close relations to individual material objects, but in no case is there
some particular material object (with additional social properties) with which we can
identify the entity in question. (Thomasson 2003:273)
Searle (in 2010) has accepted that his formula does not cover all kinds of social and
institutional entities. He argues today that some institutional entities are what Barry Smith
calls - Freestanding Y-terms (See Smith 1995, Smith & Searle 2003). Since this suggestion
4
Compare with the distinction made on page X between(a) a social object being the combination of an old
material object + social property, and (b) old material object + social property constituting the social object
5
seems incompatible with the kind of reductionism discussed here (it is in fact an argument
against reduction of all social and institutional entities), I will discuss this suggestion in the
next part of this paper under the heading “fictionalist” or “eliminativist” account.
The second problem with reducing institutional entities to material objects, I will argue, is a
problem also for those concrete entities which Hansson-Wahlberg and Searle mentions: dollar
bills and presidents. My objection is based on the fact that material objects and institutional
entities differ in important aspects. Take the institutional entity “president” and compare it
with “Barack Obama”. First it seems that a president and Barack Obama have different
temporal properties – for example, the social entity “president” existed before Obama was
even born – and probably will outlive the person Obama. Second, a president and Obama
have different persistence conditions. The president is, for its existence, dependent on some
kind of complex social acceptance of there being such an institutional entity as a president in
the first place. However, Obama is not dependent on anyone accepting that he exists for him
to exist. It does not matter if people regard him as existing or not for him to exist. Third, a
president and Obama differ in kind. While a president is an institutional mind-dependent
entity – Obama is a material mind-independently existing human being. I take all of these
differences between an institutional entity and the material object to indicate that they can
never be identical with each other. This is a consequence of Leibniz law.
2.2 NON-CONSTITUTION – FICTIONALISM AND ELIMINATIVISM
Fictionalism (or the fictionalist account) or Eliminativism (the eliminativist account) are not
two accepted theories about social objects. They are two possible accounts which can be
derived from parts of Searle’s theory, especially from his (2010). I have chosen to discuss
both accounts under the same heading since they have in common the ambition to solve the
problem of “Freestanding Y-terms” (Smith 2003) that I mentioned in the last part.
In the last section I described the problem as a problem emerging from Searle’s demand of a
material X, on which a status function should be imposed. The problem for Searle’s account is
that there does not always exist a material object on which a status function can be imposed.
Searle has accepted that this is a genuine problem, and Smith (2012) presents two alternative
ways in which Searle tries to solve the problem – one proposal is the account I call the
Eliminativist account5 and the other proposal is what I, after Smith, call the Fictionalist
account.
First, a reminder of the problem with freestanding Y-terms: On the one hand, Searle claims
that his formula for constitutive rules is constructed to be able to handle all kinds of
institutional entities (Searle 1995) – even more complex entities such as political rights, states,
laws and corporations (See Smith 2102:15). On the other hand, such entities are not material
entities. As we have seen, Searle claims that institutional objects must “bottom out” in
physical reality, although social and institutional entities are not material. According to Smith
this is a problem for Searle, since these non-material entities seem to be able to be bearers of
status functions (Smith 2012:15). For example a “citizen” (as a social entity) can have the
status function of being a “teacher”. But the question is what ontological status these nonmaterial bearers of status functions have? What I take Smith to be asking for is an explanation
of the ontological status of the Y-term.
5
Smith does not use this notion
6
One way to handle this dilemma is to deny that there really are such things as laws,
corporations and states. In (1995) Searle denies the existence of social objects, and argues that
the things we sloppily refer to as social objects, are in fact “possibilities of activities or
actions” or “placeholders for patterns of activities” (See Searle 1995:36,57 and Smith 2012
16f). For example, instead of analyzing a dollar bill as an institutional object we should
analyze it as “a standing possibility of paying for something” or something like that. This
account I will call eliminativism since it denies that there really are such entities which we
commonly take for granted, like laws, electronic money and corporations.
There are many problems associated with an eliminativist account of social objects. At first, it
clearly goes against our intuitions that entities having such a massive impact on our lives like
money, insurances and states would not exist. Second, even if one could redefine the way in
which different kinds of institutional entities exist, Searle’s proposals that these entities are
“placeholders” or “patterns of activities” are ontologically far too unclear to have any
explanation value. Third, and more substantially, Smith points out the practical significance of
us actually referring to social and institutional entities, such as, for example, to the law:
How is such a law [a law against trespass in relation to a certain plot of land] to be
understood from Searle’s point of view? Certainly some reference to possible
activities must be included in any coherent account, both to possible activities of
breaking the law and to possible activities of enforcement. But how would we
formulate this account without making any reference to the law itself? (Smith
2012:17)
The practical importance of such an analysis is that we sometimes (or - often!) do refer to
entities such as laws and corporations directly.
The other way of trying to handle this dilemma is to rewrite the formula for constitutive rules.
Searle (2010) claims that the formula in (1995), “X counts as Y in context C”, only applies to
a restricted class of entities. Other entities such as corporations or electronic money can be
described under the more general form of creation of social reality:
We (or I) make it the case by Declaration that Y status function exists in C. (Searle 2010:101)
What does it mean that a Y status function exists in a context by collectively recognizing that
it does? And how does such an account uphold Searle’s naturalism?6 According to Smith, the
imposition of status functions in these cases is on people:
“[…] for all the major kinds of putative non-physical social object, there are
corresponding persons who bear the corresponding status functions and have the
corresponding powers. In the case of money, the person is the possessor of money. In
the case of rights, laws, corporations and structured investment vehicles, multiple
corresponding persons have specific powers and obligations in mutual correlation
[…] multiple persons who are the bearers of the pertinent status functions.” (Smith
2012:18)
6
Naturalism, with the sole meaning that all social and institutional entities ”bottom out” in something material.
7
Since people are material entities, Searle can continue to claim that all social and institutional
entities bottom out in material reality. The complexity of social and institutional reality can
according to Searle be explained by iterating the general formula above:
The enormous diversity and complexity of human civilization is explained by the
fact that that operation is not restricted in subject matter and can be applied over and
over in a recursive fashion, is often applied to the outcomes of earlier applications
and with various and interlocking subject matters, to create all of the complex
structures of actual human societies. (Searle 2010: 201)
Smith argues that Searle’s account is dependent on the correctness of Searle’s claim that the
formula can be iterated in the sense Searle describes. So the question is if it can? Smith
concludes that Searle must accept some kind of fictionalism since Searle has no explanation
what ontological status money and corporations have. The only thing existing (if I understand
his interpretation of Searle correctly) is our beliefs that there exist such things as money and
corporations. In fact however, there are no such things but only “complex social interactions –
[persons] trick [ing] [them]selves into believing that there are such entities in order to be able
to go about their” (Smith 2012:20). In this account naturalism is saved since all entities
bottom out in physical reality, but it also allows institutional entities to play an “organizing”
role. Smith’s interpretation is also supported by something which Searle writes: “It is a
mistake to treat money and other such instruments as if they were natural phenomena studied
in physics, chemistry and biology. The recent economic crisis makes it clear that they are
products of massive fantasy” (Searle 2010:201. My italic). If the whole institutional reality is
a massive fantasy though, it seems that Searle must give up his naturalism.
Smith points at two problems with this fictionalist account. The first problem has to do with
the iteration of the general formula for creating social facts. Smith claims that if the first base
does not involve any institutional entities but only some complicated social interactiontricking, then all the other iteration-“levels” must also involve some complicated tricking.
Therefore, none of the entities we daily take for granted exists. Second, as I pointed out earlier
in relation to the eliminativist account – it is simply nonsense to claim that there does not exist
laws and corporations.
2.2 CONSTITUTION (WITHOUT IDENTITY)
Hindriks (2012) account is based on Searle’s ideas of constitutive rules, but is, according to
Hindriks, a better account since it includes a solution to the problem of freestanding Y-terms.
[…]
Hindriks account has two main features. First, it suggests that the relation between
institutional entities like universities and money and the entities which these institutional
entities depend on is one of constitution without identity. In Hindriks account the relation
between institutional entities and their constitution base is analogue to the relation he takes to
obtain between a lump of clay and a statue (Hindriks 2012:15f). A lump of clay and a statue
are not identical, Hindriks claims, for reasons such as the fact that a lump of clay exists before
the statue exists, and because the statue bears certain essential relations to the art world which
the lump of clay does not bear. (Hindriks 2012:17) Hindriks argues that the same things that
can be said about the relations between the lump of clay and the statue can be said about
institutional entities and the material objects on which they depend.
8
The constitution base for institutional entities is according to Hindriks people. I will discuss
exactly what this claim amounts to soon, but I will focus on the constitution relation here. Just
as a lump of clay can exist before the time at which it constitutes a statue, people can exist
before they constitute some social or institutional entity. For example, individual people exist
prior to different organizations or companies – but the reverse is also true – an organization
might outlive the people constituting it. For example, the Swedish bank SEB has existed since
1856 but the people who constituted the bank from the start are no longer alive. The bank still
exists though and is constituted by other individuals. Hindriks also claims that just as a statue
bears essential relations to an art world, an institutional entity like a bank bears essential
relations to the financial world.7
Hindriks account differs in important aspects from Searle’s. Most importantly Hindriks
account presupposes a layered ontology – the constituted entities always exist “on top of” the
constituting entities, a view which Searle explicitly denies (Searle 2006)8. In Hindriks theory,
the X and Y-terms should never be mixed up with each other since they are distinct entities.
Hindriks describes the constitution relation as a “metaphysical determination relation of unity
without identity” (Hindriks 2012:15) consisting of three important properties: irreflexivity,
transitivity and symmetry. The irreflexivity between the X (the constituting entity) and the Y
(the constituted entity) term means that X and Y could never be identical to each other.
Further, since a Y term can figure as an X term in another constitutive rule, the relation is
transitive. (The citizen being a president or whatever.) The asymmetry of the relation means
that when a Y term figures as a X term in another rule, the Y term in the new rule must be
distinguished from the X-term in the first rule.
Second, Hindriks proposes that the constitution base for social and institutional entities are
people. Hindriks claims that one problem with Searle’s account is that he does not accept that
social and institutional entities are constituted entities. He agrees with Searle when claiming
that corporations are not identical with any material objects (like buildings), not with the
person who created the corporation, or any other (group of) persons. However, he disagree
with Searle that there are some kinds of freestanding Y terms that are not imposed on
anything material. According to Hindriks, Searle must claim that Y terms are constituted by
nothing (Hindriks 2012:8). It is from this criticism that Hindriks suggests that there are no
freestanding Y terms, since these Y terms are always imposed on people. In line with Searle,
Hindriks claims that all institutional entities must bottom out in something non-institutional –
and his proposal is that this non-institutional entity is people.
What does it mean that people constitute an institutional entity like a university? In order to
understand what Hindriks claim amounts to, it is important to realize what he takes
institutions to be ontologically. In Searle’s theory institutions are systems of constitutive
rules, more specifically: “any collectively accepted system of rules (procedures, practices)
that enable us to create institutional facts” (Searle 2005: 21). Searle’s suggestion means that
he is more concerned with the issue how social and institutional entities are generated rather
than what they are ontologically, Hindriks claims. In order to solve the ontological question
what institutions are – one must not only take into account the preconditions that must be
fulfilled in order for an institutional entity to come into being, but one must also take account
7
What kinds of relations would it be?
But on the other hand, in some sense Searle does accept that there is a hierarchy of institutional facts (Searle
1995:121)
8
9
of the normative powers connected to roles in different organizational institutional entities.
He writes:
[…] organizations are constituted by one or more persons. These people fill the roles
of task-right systems. The members of a particular organization have the obligations
and other normative powers that go with the roles that figure in its status rule.
(Hindriks 2012:20)
In Hindriks account it seems that people materially constitute organizations since they fill the
roles of a system of rules. Hindriks account implies that the roles themselves can however not
be material, so what are they? He argues that there can be material objects that indirectly
constitute institutional entities like universities:
Perhaps universities are constituted directly by institutions such as colleges,
departments, and libraries. However, such institutions are themselves constituted by
people. So even if they do not constitute them directly, ultimately people constitute
universities. (Hindriks 2012:20. My italic)
Hindriks account is in many aspects more promising than the non-constitutional accounts
presented earlier. For example, it can explain the intuitive fact that organizations can have
rights and obligations, which individual persons do not have. However, many new questions
arise concerning the ontological picture which Hindriks account provides with.
[…]
Literature
Hansson-Wahlberg, T. “Institutional Objects, Reductionism and Theories of Persistence” A
draft presented on the higher seminar in Theoretical Philosophy at Gothenburg University,
2012-09-25.
Hindriks, F. (2013a). “The Location Problem in Social Ontology”. Synthese.
Hindriks, F. (2013b). “But Where Is the University?” Fortcoming in Dialectica.
McGinn, C. (2010). “Is Just Thinking Enough”: New York Review of Books
Searle, J. (2010). Making the Social World. Oxford University Press
Searle, J. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. The Penguin Press
Smith, B & Searle, J (2003): “The Construction of Social Reality: An Exchange”. In
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 285-309.
Smith, B. (2012). How to Do Things with Documents. Rivisita di Estetica.
Smith, B. (2003). “John Searle: From Speech acts to Social Reality”. In B. Smith (ed.) John
Searle. Cambridge University Press.
Smith, B. (1990): “Aristotle, Menger, Mises: an essay in the metaphysics of economics”. In
History of Political Economy. Annual supplement to vol 22, pp. 263-88.
Thomasson, A. (2005). “Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects”. In Existence,
Culture and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden. Chrudzimski (ed.)
Thomasson, A. (2003). “Foundations for a Social Ontology” in Proto Sociology.
Thomasson, A. (1997). “The Ontology of the Social World in Searle, Husserl and Beyond”.
Phenomenological Inquiry. Vol. 21: pp. 109-136.
Wasserman, R. (2009). “Material Constitution” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Summer 2012 Edition).
Zaibert, L (2004):
10