Searle's conception of institutional reality

pages: 185-198

Abstract

This paper aims to present Searle's conception of institutional reality as an important contribution to contemporary political philosophy and social theory. Its importance notwithstanding, the two objections will be raised concerning the central notion of collective intentionality. Searle thinks of this notion as crucial for explaining human cooperation and social reality. The first objection is that Searle missed to take into account the rationality assumption in his explanation of cooperation and human interaction. The second objection is related to the previous one. Additionally, Serle missed to investigate the role of autonomous moral agent in the procedure of constructing social reality. Given this shortcoming there is no possibility for addressing the question of justice within Serle's theory of institutional reality. Keywords: institution, social reality, collective intentionality, constitutive rules, rationality