November 2019 • Contact: matthias@uli-holweger.de • ~ 22700 words Matthias Holweger, "The Simple Nature of Institutional Facts" Abstract Facts such as the fact that Donald Trump is the US president or the fact that Germany won the 2014 world cup final are commonly referred to as "institutional facts" ("IFF"). I advocate the view that the nature of these facts is comparatively simple: they are facts that exist by virtue of collective recognition (CR), where CR can be direct or indirect. The leading account of IFF, that of John Searle, basically conforms with this definition. However, in his writings Searle has considered or defended several other conditions as potentially necessary for the existence of IFF. In particular, he has considered whether (a) IFF necessarily involve deontic powers, (b) IFF are necessarily so-called "status functions", (c) IFF require speech acts of Declaring for their existence, (d) IFF require language for their existence. Each of these considerations, if valid, would seem to render the nature of IFF less simple. In this paper, I argue that none of these considerations stand up to scrutiny. Being unaware of any other serious considerations of this kind, I conclude that the nature of IFF is simple as captured by my definition. There is a respect, however, in which my view is possibly less simple than Searle's, for he suggests that CR is always direct, and never indirect. I reject this suggestion. Indeed, I think that most of the facts existing by virtue of CR exist by virtue of indirect CR. Some authors have (or at least might be construed as having) objected that CR is not even necessary for the existence of IFF. I argue that the account defended here is immune to these objections. (1) Introduction It is commonly assumed that our world is home to a special variety of facts, such as the fact that Donald Trump is the US president, the fact that Germany won the 2014 World Cup final, the fact that Prince Philip is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, or the fact that French citizens have the right to form associations. Facts of this variety are commonly called "institutional facts" (IFF1). The debate on IFF presumably started with Elizabeth Anscombe's seminal paper On Brute Facts (1958), which discusses statements about facts that presuppose the existence of certain institutions. The statement "that I gave someone a shilling", Anscombe argues there, requires "the institution of money and of the currency of this country [...] as background in order so much as to be the kind of statement that it is" (1958, 69); (only) if "the institution behind [that statement] exists, then 'in normal circumstances' [it] holds" (1958, 72). Drawing on Anscombe's paper, J.R. Searle introduced the technical term "institutional fact" for this variety of facts, describing them as facts whose "existence [...] presupposes the existence of certain institutions" (1969, 51; cf. 1964, 55). Later he makes it clear that he takes this property to be the defining property of this variety of facts: "Institutional facts", he says at the beginning of The Construction of Social Reality, "are so called because they require human institutions for their existence" (1995, 2). This, I believe, may be considered Searle's original semantic definition of "institutional fact": Searle's original semantic definition of "institutional fact": By definition, 'institutional facts' are facts that require (human) institutions for their existence. In Searle's sense, 'institutions' are "systems of constitutive rules" (1964, 55, 57; 1969, 51-2; 1995, 2; 2005, 10, 21; 2010a, 10-1), a single constitutive rule being the limiting case of such a "system". A 'constitutive rule', as Searle uses the term, is a rule that makes possible or 1 I abbreviate the singular form with "IF", and the plural form with "IFF". 2 constitutes new kinds of entities2 (cf. 1964, 55; 1991, 341; 1995, 27-8; 1997b, 455; 1999, 123; 2005, 9, 16; 2007a, 11; 2007c, 88; 2010a, 10; 2012, 28; 2017b, 305; 2017c, 226), taking the form 'X counts as Y (in C)' (cf. especially 2005, 10 and 2017b, 305; cf. also 1995, 114; 2006c, 58; 2010a, 10).3 'Getting the ball inside the goal [X] counts as scoring a goal [Y]' is an example of such a rule. To say that a rule of the form 'X counts as Y (in C)' exists, Searle suggests, amounts to saying that X counts as Y (in C); and X counts as Y (in C) by virtue of the collective recognition that X counts as Y (in C) (cf. 2010a, 58; cf. also 2007c, 91-2, 2006b, 85; 2006c, 62). Thus, getting the ball inside the goal counts as scoring a goal only if it is collectively recognized that getting the ball inside the goal counts as scoring a goal. The satisfaction of a constitutive rule is, according to Searle's original basic account, necessary and sufficient for the existence of an IF. Thus, given that getting the ball inside the goal counts as scoring a goal, the IF that Mike scored a goal exists if and only if Max got the ball inside the goal. That IFF require institutions or constitutive rules for their existence implies, according to Searle, that they are facts that exist by virtue of collective recognition. As Searle puts it, "institutional facts [are] facts which exist only within systems of constitutive rules, and which are, therefore, facts by virtue of human agreement [= collective recognition4]" (1983, 172; emphasis added).5 Thus, the fact that Mike scored a goal exists by virtue of the collective recognition that Mike scored a goal. That IFF are facts that require collective recognition for their existence is something Searle affirms throughout his work. In The Construction of Social Reality, for example, he describes IFF as being "dependent on human agreement" (1995, 2); in another passage he states that 2 Searle's definitions of constitutive rules usually entail that constitutive rules do not only 'constitute' but also 'regulate'. I do not see how these kinds of rules should 'regulate' anything. Fortunately, nothing in the present paper essentially depends on this point. 3 Note that thinking of a constitutive rule as a rule of the form 'X counts as Y (in C)' is somewhat misleading. When people collectively recognize or agree that getting the ball behind the line inside the goal counts as scoring a goal, then they collectively agree upon the fact that it is accepted that a goal is scored when the ball is gotten behind the line inside the goal; that means, they agree upon a certain sociological fact rather than upon the fact that a goal is scored when the ball is gotten behind the line inside the goal. Evidently however, what is actually required is the acceptance of the latter fact rather than the former. Barry Smith makes a similar point in Smith & Searle 2003, 296-7. Note, however, that there is some indication that Searle (occasionally) uses the 'counts as' phrase idiosyncratically. At one point, for example, he suggests that to say that people make something the case by counting it as existing just amounts to saying that they declare it to be the case (cf. 2010a, 101). At another point, he suggests that when people collectively accept that X counts as Y, then this implies that they make it the case that X is Y by representing it as existing (cf. 2008, 453). Cf. Smith & Searle 2003, 301, 308-9 for even another (but somewhat obscure) suggestion of how the 'counts as' formula should be understood. In this paper, I shall not pursue this matter any further and simply adopt Searle's diction. For my purposes, it is sufficient to see that the basic idea behind constitutive rules is this: they are rules that 'constitute' facts given that their conditions are satisfied. The entities satisfying the conditions of constitutive rules acquire an 'institutional' status by satisfying these conditions. Accordingly, in Making the Social World, Searle suggests to explicate the form of the constitutive rule in the following way: 'for any x that satisfies condition p, x has the status Y and performs the function F in C' (2010a, 99). 4 Searle treats "recognition", "agreement" and "acceptance" as synonyms. 5 Given Searle's suggestion that to collectively recognize something (as existing) is to collectively (mentally) represent it as existing (see section 7), this is a non sequitur. Fortunately, this problem will not need to concern us any further here, because, as we shall see in the following section, Searle made a revision to his account that involves the abandonment of the assumption that IFF require institutions for their existence anyway. In his revised account, it is simply a datum that IFF exist by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing; it is not something that is supposed to follow from something else. 3 "[t]he secret of understanding the continued existence of institutional facts is simply that [...] members of the relevant community must continue to recognize and accept the existence of such facts" (ibid., 117; cf. also ibid., 51, 62-3). In What is an institution?, he says "that institutional facts only exist in virtue of collective acceptance of something having a certain status" (2005, 9). In Making the Social World, Searle argues that institutional facts exist "only in virtue of collective recognition" (2010a, 8), that institutional facts are "only facts by human agreement or acceptance" (2010a, 10), that an object receives an institutional feature, "not in virtue of its physical structure, but in virtue of the fact that there is a collective recognition or acceptance by the people involved" (2010a, 94), and that institutional facts "exist only as long as they are so recognized or accepted" (2010a, 103; cf. also ibid., 116). In a later writing, he suggests that a fact "is not yet an Institutional Fact if it is not collectively accepted" (2014, 23). Finally, Searle implies that institutional reality in general "exists only in virtue of collective acceptance or recognition by the members of the society" (2002a, 14; cf. also 2006d, 53, 58).6 In my view, characterizing IFF as facts that exist by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing is perfectly adequate and successfully picks out the full range of phenomena that Searle and others (including myself) aim at with the term "institutional fact". That is, I believe that the following definition captures the nature7 of institutional facts quite properly: Definition of "institutional fact": That the (putative) fact that p is an 'institutional fact' means that p is a fact that exists by virtue of the collective recognition that p exists. Some passages in Searle's work suggest that he would be willing to agree that this is a perfectly adequate definition. For example, when he considers the question of whether works of art might be cases of IFF, he writes: "[I]nsofar as [a] work of art is a publicly accepted object as such, then it satisfies our definition of an institutional fact" (2010b, 43; emphasis added. The phrase "publicly accepted" refers to collective recognition). Or consider a passage in The Construction of Social Reality, in which he says: "[t]he point is that the Y term must assign some new status that the entities named by the X term do not already have, and this new status must be such that human agreement, acceptance, and other forms of collective intentionality are necessary and sufficient to create it (1995, 51; emphasis added; cf. also ibid., 47; 1997b, 452; 2010c, 228-9). Or consider the following sufficiency claim in Making the Social World: "As long as there is collective recognition or acceptance of the institutional facts, they will work" (2010a, 107), where 'working' clearly is supposed to entail 'existing'. Finally, in a reply he suggests that collective recognition is necessary and sufficient for the creation of institutional facts: "[S]omeone can be made the leader just by being treated as the 6 Contrast 2011, 741. 7 The voluminous metaphysical literature on 'the nature' of entities shows that it is a challenging task to offer an adequate definition of this term in its relevant conventional sense. I think an adequate partial explication of "the nature of an entity" is this: that a property P is part of the nature of an entity e means that P is a 'certain' necessary property of e, i.e., a 'certain' property e necessarily has. The difficult task is to state which of all the necessary properties of an entity are among these 'certain' necessary properties. In my view, it is possible and useful to distinguish between different kinds of natures that (certain) entities may have. The kind of nature that I am interested in is what may be called the "conceptual nature" of an entity. The conceptual nature of an entity e is constituted by its defining properties, that is, the necessary properties of e that are represented by the concept of e. This kind of nature is similar to Locke's "nominal essence". Thus, while it may be a necessary property of sugar to be soluble in water, it does not seem to be a part of the conceptual nature of sugar because the property of being soluble in water does not seem to be represented by the concept of sugar. By contrast, being female clearly is part of the conceptual nature of a vixen, because the property of being female clearly is represented by the concept of a vixen. 4 leader, or recognized as the leader [...]. The point [...] is that some form of representation is essential to create the institutional fact in question" (2010b, 35; cf. 2012, 35). However, everyone who has carefully studied his works on social ontology is well aware of the fact that other passages abound in which Searle considers or defends several other conditions as potentially necessary for the existence of IFF. Throughout his work, we find passages in which he considers whether (a) IFF are necessarily so-called status functions, (b) IFF necessarily involve deontic powers, (c) IFF necessarily require speech acts of Declaring for their existence, (d) IFF necessarily require language for their existence. Each of these considerations, if valid, would seem to render the nature of IFF less simple. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that none of these considerations stand up to scrutiny. Being unaware of any further serious considerations of that kind, this leads me to the conclusion that the nature of IFF is simple as captured by my definition. There is one respect, however, in which my account of IFF is possibly less simple than Searle's, for he suggests that collective recognition is always direct, and never indirect. I reject this assumption. Indeed, I think that most of the putative facts existing by virtue of collective recognition exist by virtue of indirect collective recognition. Some authors have (or at least might be construed as having) objected that collective recognition is not even necessary for the existence of IFF. I argue that the account defended here is immune to these objections. In section 2, I briefly present and discuss some problems with Searle's original basic account that prompted Searle to revised it in such a way that it comes even closer to mine. In sections 3-6, I present and reject Searle's considerations of other conditions as potentially necessary for the existence of IFF. In section 7, I reject Searle's suggestions that collective recognition is always direct, and never indirect. In section 8, I briefly discuss the idea that the restricted efficacy of collective recognition might be a matter of the nature of IFF. Finally, in section 9 I argue that the account defended here is immune to several (putative) objections to the effect that collective recognition is not even necessary for the existence of IFF. (2) Two problems of Searle's original basic account According to Searle's original semantic definition, IFF require institutions for their existence. As explained, 'institutions' in Searle's sense are systems of constitutive rules; 'constitutive rules' are rules that make possible or constitute new entities, taking the form 'X counts as Y (in C)'. In some of his more recent writings, however, Searle discusses cases of facts that are clearly supposed to be part of the extension of "institutional fact", that, however, do not seem to require 'institutions' in this sense for their existence. So these cases starkly conflict with the original definition. (2.1) The ad hoc case The first type of case is what Searle calls an "ad hoc case", a case of an IF that exists "on an ad hoc basis" (2010a, 20). In Making the Social World, for example, he suggests that "a tribe might simply count a certain person as their leader [...] though there is no existing institution" (2010a, 19; cf. ibid., 21, 94, 96; 2007c, 91). And in a subsequent paper, he makes the same point by saying that "sometimes we can just create an institutional fact [...] without a constitutive rule. You just decide collectively to treat somebody as the boss. [...] So, we have what we might call ad hoc cases, where there is no constitutive rule, but you just create [institutional facts] out of the blue" (2012, 31; cf. 2017b, 306). 5 (2.2) The freestanding Y term The second type of case is what Searle calls a "freestanding Y term", a case of an IF that does not exist by virtue of imposing a status on an entity (cf., e.g., 2010a, 20). It is a case where "[t]here is indeed a 'counts as Y' but there is no X which counts as Y" (2006c, 63); and thus, it just is another case where "[y]ou just, so to speak, create an institutional fact out of the blue" (2012, 31; cf. also 2005, 15; 2006c, 63; 2010a, 18; 2016, 11; 2017b, 306). Classic examples are the existence of money and corporations (cf., e.g., 2005, 15-6; 2006c, 63; 2007b, 20-2; 2008, 454; 2010a, 20, 22, 97-100, 101, 108-9; 2012, 31-2). The reason why freestanding Y terms seem to exist independently of 'institutions' or 'constitutive rules' is this: IFF existing by virtue of constitutive rules are necessarily facts the representations of which entail that there is an entity having the status of being something else. Freestanding Y terms, however, are by their very nature facts the representations of which do not entail that there is an entity having the status of being something else. (2.3) Consequences of these cases for Searle's original basic account Searle notices that there is some "awkwardness" in calling IFF created on an ad hoc basis "institutional facts"; he rightly doubts whether "everybody would agree that we ought to call such facts Institutional Facts" (2014, 18). It is clear that the same awkwardness arises in connection with freestanding Y terms. Both ad hoc cases and freestanding Y terms strongly suggest that 'institutional' facts are not necessarily related to 'institutions' in Searle's sense.8 Thus, with respect to the extension the term "institutional fact" is supposed or intended to have, Searle's original definition of "institutional facts" in terms of 'institutions' turns out to be inadequate. Moreover, the term "institutional facts" itself turns out to be possibly misleading, because it contains the term "institutional", which might evoke false associations.9 These problems provide a good reason to stop using the term and replace it with a new one, for example with the term "CR-fact". However, "institutional fact" is already established in such a way that the introduction of a new term which aims at the same exact extension as "institutional fact", as it is used by Searle and others (regardless of Searle's original definition), may create even more confusion. Thus, continuing with this term and redefining it 8 One might argue that I am being a little rash here. Freestanding Y terms, you might say, could easily be brought into accordance with Searle's original definition by abandoning the requirement that constitutive rules be rules of the form 'X counts as Y (in C)'. I agree that freestanding Y terms could be tackled this way . But what about the ad hoc cases? In these cases, you might argue, there is one thing to consider: Contrary to the passages cited above, there are other passages in Searle's writings that might actually be consistent with Searle's original definition of "institution facts". Sometimes he describes ad hoc cases as cases where "institutional facts can exist outside of any established institutions" (2010a, 24; emphasis added), or as cases "where there is no prior rule of the form, 'X counts as Y in C'" (2010c, 232; emphasis added; cf. also 2008, 455), or as cases where an IF "can be created without a preexisting institution" (2014, 18; emphasis added; cf. also 2010a, 19, 22, 23; 2010c, 2289), or, finally, as cases where people create an IF "without having a general constitutive rule" (2010a, 19; emphasis added; cf. also ibid., 20; 2007b, 25; 2008, 455). These passages suggest that what is missing in ad hoc cases are constitutive rules (a) that exist prior to their initial application and (b) that are not (yet) general. These passages do not seem to imply, however, that in such cases there are no constitutive rules at all. Perhaps, one could argue that in such cases an IF and the rule by virtue of which it exists emerge simultaneously, and that the rule applies only to that particular case and is thus non-general. I admit that this is a possible interpretation, even though I find the idea of a non-general rule emerging simultaneously with the corresponding IF that exists by virtue of this rule somewhat peculiar; I am not sure whether this is what people would be willing to consider an adequate description of these cases. Be that as it may: the essential parts of this paper do not depend on how you decide at this point. 9 To be sure, "institutional facts" has always been possibly misleading in this respect, for some people who miss the fact that "institutional" is used by Searle and others in a technical sense, might believe, when they hear or read this term, that these kinds of facts are related to 'institutions' in the ordinary sense of that term. 6 adequately seems to be the lesser evil. In my view, Searle's revision of his original account suggests an adequate (partial) redefinition. (2.4) Revision of Searle's original account Searle seemed to have thought within the context of his original basic account that the creation and existence of IFF always has the following form: 'We make it the case that the constitutive rule 'X counts as Y (in C)' exists (by representing it as existing), and 'X' is realized'. In his later writings, he states that he has now realized that this is "not the only form in which we implement what I have called the most general logical form of the creation10 of institutional reality" (2010a, 101, cf. ibid., 19), which is this: 'We make it the case that IF exists (by representing IF as existing)'11 (cf. 2008, 453-5, 2010a, 101, 13, 88, 93, 99). According to his later writings, there are actually three forms in which this 'most general form' can be 'implemented'12: [1] 'We make it the case that the constitutive rule 'X counts as Y' exists (by representing it as existing), and 'X' is realized'; [2] 'We make it the case on an ad hoc basis that a particular object X has the status Y (by representing X as having the status of being Y)'; [3] 'We make it the case that a certain IF exists (by representing it as existing)' (cf. 2008, 453-4, 2010a, 13, 19, 88, 93-102, 122). I shall not discuss nor criticize this revision. The only thing that is important for my purpose is that this revision clearly entails that you can create an IF simply by collectively representing it as existing. Assuming that when Searle speaks of 'collective representation', he refers to collective recognition13, this revision entails that you can create an IF simply by collectively recognizing it as existing. So this revision entails an abandonment of the original definition of IFF, according to which they require institutions for their existence. I emphatically welcome this revision. Together with the proposition that IFF require collective recognition for their existence, which is something Searle affirms throughout his work, the revised account suggests that it is necessary and sufficient for the existence of IFF that they are collectively recognized as existing. 10 Sometimes, Searle speaks only of the 'creation' of IFF. However, it is clear from other passages that he is always concerned with the creation and continued existence of IFF. Cf., e.g., this passage: "the main point I am making is that the mechanism that creates and sustains institutional facts is always the same. It is that of the Status Function Declaration whereby we create an institutional reality by representing it as existing" (2008, 455; emphasis added). 11 His actual formulation of the 'most general form' is: "We make it the case by Declaration that the Y status function exists". I replace "Y status function" by "IF", because I have not yet introduced the notion of a "status function", and because Searle identifies status functions with IFF (whereas I think that this identification is unwarranted, cf. section 4). Moreover, I omit the 'by Declaration' clause because it is untenable even according to Searle's own account, cf. section 5. 12 For reasons of consistency, my formulations of these forms are slightly modified. 13 Cf. sect. 5.5 and 7 of the present paper. 7 This contrasts with the passages in which Searle considers or defends several other conditions as potentially necessary for the existence of IFF. I now turn to my examination of these passages. (3) Do IFF essentially involve deontic powers? Many passages in Searle's work suggest that IFF essentially involve deontic powers. I call this the "deontic powers claim": The "deontic powers claim" (DPC): IFF essentially involve deontic powers. That Searle endorses DPC is obvious: for in his view, "there are no institutional facts without some form of deontology" (2010a, 91), "institutional [human] reality [...] necessarily contains a deontology" (2010a, 139; emphasis added), where this necessity really seems to be a semantic necessity: for Searle quite frankly says that "all institutional facts by definition carry a deontology" (2010a, 24; emphasis added), that deontic powers are "the defining trait of institutional facts" (2015, 512; cf. also 2005, 18).14 Searle introduces the term "deontic powers" by means of a partial extensional definition, saying that 'deontic powers' are things such as rights, duties, requirements, permissions or obligations (cf., e.g., 1995, 100; 2010a, 8-9, 123). It is important to see, however, than when Searle speaks of 'deontic powers', he usually (idiosyncratically) refers, not to 'powers' in the conventional sense of the term, but to what I suggest to call "deontic consequences", which are entities that belong to the category of facts or states of affairs. Hence his (otherwise incomprehensible claim) that deontic powers have a 'propositional structure' (cf. 2014, 19; 2016, 3, 9), which they clearly do not in the conventional sense of the term. What does it mean for an IF to 'involve' deontic powers? What exact connection is there supposed to be between an IF and deontic powers? Searle does not elaborate on this point in detail, and he often uses figurative language in describing their connection15. Some passages in his writings, however, are illuminating. These are the passages in which he is concerned with how the connection between IFF and deontic powers is actually established: He suggests that the connection is established in the same way that IFF and deontic powers are established, namely by virtue of collective recognition. Adapting one of Searle's examples, let us assume that John is the president, and that John's being the president 'involves' the deontic power of being permitted to veto legislation passed by congress. This implies that John has the power to veto legislation passed by congress. And the connection between the IF that John is the president and the fact that John has the power to veto legislation passed by congress is, according to Searle, established by the fact that people collectively recognize something like the following: 'Whoever is the president has the power to veto legislation passed by Congress, and because John is the president, he has the power to veto legislation passed by Congress' (cf. Searle 2005, 16-7; 2006b, 83; 2007b, 21f.; 2008, 452; 2010a, 103). Thus, the fact that there is a connection between the IF that John is the president and his power to veto legislation passed by Congress exists by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing. From this brief discussion, we may derive a rough definition of the involvement of a deontic power in the case of an IF: That a certain IF 'involves a certain deontic power' DP means that 14 Accordingly, when confronted with the question of whether certain facts are cases of IFF or not, he often uses the involvement of deontic powers as a test criterion (see, e.g., 2007b, 23, 26; 2010a, 23, 92, 117, 118; 2011, 735; 2014, 19). 15 For example, he says that IFF 'provide us with' deontic powers, or that they 'create' or 'assign' or 'carry' deontic powers, or that deontic powers 'derive from' IFF (see, e.g., 2010a, 23, 24, 117, 123, 164, 178). 8 there is someone who has DP by virtue of this IF. And the fact that there is someone who has DP by virtue of this IF itself exists by virtue of collective recognition. DPC marks a deviation from Searle's original account. In his original account, he cites the socalled "honorific cases" as clear counter-examples, explaining that these are cases "where the recipient has the honor or dishonor of the new status, but no real powers. Honorary degrees, knighthoods, presidential medals, and beauty contest victories are all examples" (2005, 10; cf. also 1995, 55; 2007b, 23). Yet, in later writings, he more officially and more clearly sticks to an assumption that he already tentatively states in his 1995 book: the assumption that honorific cases are cases that involve deontic powers, although 'limiting cases' (cf. 2010a, 8, 24; 2011, 736; cf. also 1995, 109-10; 1997b, 452). "I now say", Searle declares and concludes in Making the Social World accordingly, "that all status functions [= IFF] create deontic powers", and that "all institutional facts by definition carry a deontology" (2010a, 24). Considering this announcement, it is somewhat surprising that Searle subsequently returns to the original assumption, that is, the assumption that honorific cases do not involve deontic powers (cf. 2014, 19). But in my view, of course, there are good reasons for this return. (3.1) Searle's attempts to overcome the problem of honorific cases One strategy suggested by Searle to overcome honorific cases refers to 'usefulness' and 'theoretical elegance': "it is more useful", he argues in his 2010 book, "to treat honor as a kind of deontic power" (2010a, 24); and in another work he suggests that "you get a more elegant theory if you treat honorific powers as a limiting case of power" (2011, 736, cf. also 1995, 110; 1997, 452). The strategy suggested by such passages is highly doubtful from the start. Apart from the fact that Searle seems nowhere to explain how such a 'treatment' could be "more useful" or make the theory "more elegant", it is doubtful how usefulness and elegance could provide reasons for substantial changes to a theory at all. Searle might object that treating honorific cases as limiting cases of deontic power does not involve substantial changes to the theory: the question of whether honorific cases involve deontic powers "asks not for a matter of fact but for a decision" (1995, 10), and is not a "substantive point in dispute" (2011, 736; cf. also 1997, 97). However, I cannot see how this could not be a substantive point in dispute. How could it be possible to claim that "[n]o power is carried by purely honorific statuses", and to say in the same breath that "it is more useful to treat honor as a kind of deontic power" (2010a, 24)? If honorific cases are, as a matter of fact, cases that simply do not involve deontic powers in the strict sense, what sense could it make to simply 'decide' that they do involve deontic powers? Clearly, this cannot be just a matter of decision. Such a 'decision' would be blatantly inconsistent with the facts. I think we can make sense of Searle's remarks by assuming that they involve an implicit change of the meaning of "deontic power" and therefore an implicit change of subject. DPC, the claim under discussion, presupposes the sense of "deontic power" that is indicated by Searle's partial extensional definition. Searle's statement, however, that "it is more useful to treat honor as a kind of deontic power" even though "[n]o power is carried by purely honorific statuses" (ibid.) seems blatantly absurd unless we assume that Searle here uses "deontic power" in a different (perhaps 'weaker') sense, possibly without him even noticing. But if he uses the term in a different sense, then it is obvious that the statement cannot support DPC, for DPC presupposes the original sense of the term. Accordingly, when Searle now says that all IFF (by definition) involve 'deontic powers', we must interpret this not as a formulation of DPC but in fact of something else. What I am interested in here, however, is 9 whether there are good arguments for DPC. And it is now clear that Searle's manoeuvre does not provide a basis for such an argument. In a short passage in his 2010 book, Searle hints at a different strategy, namely to show that honorific cases, contrary to the first impression, do involve 'deontic powers' (in the original sense); they might be 'weak', but they are nevertheless real (cf. 2010a, 24). Searle's own suggestion in the case of honour is that if you are honoured, you are "supposed to be accorded respect" (ibid.). Even though the term "deontic power" exhibits strong vagueness, it seems clear enough that 'being supposed to be accorded respect' is not a case of 'deontic power', not even one of 'weak' power; for if a person is supposed to be accorded respect, this means that it is expected that this person be accorded respect; and it seems clear that being expected to be accorded respect is not supposed to be part of the extension of "deontic power" (in its original sense). In my view, it is not a case of 'power' at all. One might object that what Searle obviously means is that you are entitled to respect. Indeed, being entitled to respect is a better candidate for a deontic power. However, the question is whether 'being honoured' necessarily involves 'being entitled to respect'. I doubt this. I think someone can be honoured and at the same time denied the entitlement to respect. Suppose that Maria wins a game and thereby acquires the honorific status of being the winner. Let us further assume that her opponents only very reluctantly agree that she is the winner, thinking that even though she played the game according to the rules, she should have played fairer and taken more account of the fact that some of the opponents are still beginners. In such a case, it is not far-fetched to assume that even though Maria is assigned the honorific status of being the winner by being collectively recognized as the winner, she is not thereby collectively recognized as being entitled to respect; and so she does not seem to be entitled to respect. In short, 'being the winner' and 'being entitled to respect' seem to be ontologically independent.16 To conclude, Searle's attempts to handle honorific cases seem unconvincing. It looks like Searle's original opinion, to which he returned in a more recent writing, is correct: honorific cases are indeed counterexamples to DPC. (3.2) Other cases of IFF that do not seem to involve deontic powers Honorific cases are not the only cases of IFF that seem to pose a threat to DPC. There are other kinds of facts that do not seem to involve deontic powers although plausibly they should be classified as IFF. So even if one should succeed in arguing that honorific cases involve deontic powers, the case for DPC is not complete. Certainly, it is an IF that Adriano Malori finished last in the Tour de France 2010. But does it involve any deontic powers? I am unable to identify any powers of that kind. Consider another case: Suppose a group conducts an election in order to choose a new leader. Let us assume that Mark votes for Anna. Clearly, it is an IF that Mark votes for Anna. Now suppose that shortly after Mark cast his vote the election must be cancelled for some reason. In such a case, the IF that Mark voted for Anna would not seem to involve any deontic powers (cf. Searle 1995, 102), at least not any actual powers. 16 Accordingly, it would be counterintuitive to maintain that Maria is in fact not the winner in such a case, because she is not (collectively recognized as being) entitled to respect. This, however, seems to be what we would have to maintain if we believed that 'being a winner' necessarily involved 'being entitled to respect'. 10 I think there is a general problem for DPC. Remember that IFF, roughly speaking, involve deontic powers only if they are collectively recognized as involving deontic powers17. Arguably, in the case of some IFF, the involvement of deontic powers is a matter of conceptual necessity. For example, it might be a matter of conceptual necessity that if you are the legal owner of a pencil, you are legally allowed to use that pencil. If a potential IF involves certain deontic powers by conceptual necessity, collectively recognizing it as existing 'includes' collectively recognizing it as involving the corresponding deontic powers in some sense. Arguably, collectively recognizing Pete as the legal owner of a certain pencil 'includes' collectively recognizing him as being legally allowed to use that pencil. In some sense, this is 'part of' collectively recognizing him as the legal owner of that pencil. While it seems plausible that for some IFF there is such a conceptually necessary connection to deontic powers, this does not seem to apply to all IFF. For example, a group may collectively recognize Anna as their leader and thereby make her their leader, but they may fail to collectively agree upon what exact powers a leader is supposed to have in their group. In such a case, it seems that the IF that Anna is the leader of the group exists, but it seems doubtful that this fact involves any deontic powers. One might suggest that this IF at least involves the very vague and general power to lead, because 'being a leader' conceptually entails 'having the power to lead'18. However, even if this conceptual claim were true, what kind of power could the power to lead be if it is not agreed upon what 'leading' consists in in a particular case? I think it is rather implausible to describe such a vague and general 'power' as a real case of deontic power. A similar reasoning applies to getting married. It is true that getting married is, as a matter of empirical fact, collectively 'associated' with many different kinds of deontic powers. Nevertheless, it seems implausible to assume that the concept of getting married is such that getting married necessarily involves deontic powers of any kind.19 I hope that the line of reasoning presented here makes it clear that the number of IFF that might turn out not to involve any deontic powers is considerably bigger than has hitherto been assumed. I acknowledge that some of the proposed counterexamples might be defeasible; but I am confident that there are at least some examples about which there is no doubt. I therefore conclude that there are strong reasons for rejecting DPC. (4) Are IFF essentially 'status functions'? I now turn to the discussion of what I call the "status function claim": The "status function claim" (SFC): IFF are essentially 'status functions'. It is not entirely certain whether Searle really endorses SFC. Given the evidence at hand, it seems logically possible that he only endorses the weaker claim that IFF and status functions are strictly co-occurrent. But I think the evidence at least strongly suggests that Searle is also willing to endorse the stronger claim. In Making the Social World, he commits himself (at least) to the view that there is a strict co-occurrence between IFF and status functions: "all and only institutional facts", he says there, "are status functions" (2010a, 23; cf. also 2008, 456; 2010b, 37; 2013, 423; 2015, 508). Similarly, in a more recent writing he states that there is "a complete equivalence between Status Functions and Institutional Facts" (2014, 18; cf. ibid., 17 See my introduction of the current section. 18 Cf. Searle 1995, 114, where he suggests an objection along these lines. 19 Assuming, as Searle does, that the fact that a certain event is a cocktail party is an IF, then this is perhaps an even more striking example. For it seems exceedingly implausible to assume that cocktail parties involve any deontic powers by conceptual necessity. 11 23). I think it is natural to suppose that by saying such things Searle in fact intends to imply something stronger, for he also says things like "[t]he creation of the status function, which is the same thing as the creation of the institutional fact, only works to the extent that it is collectively accepted" (2008, 453; emphasis added; cf. 1999, 134). And in a recent paper he clearly states that "[i]nstitutional facts are the same as status functions" (2016, 5; emphasis added).20 Note, finally, that Searle consistently claims that institutional facts are created by so-called "Status Function Declarations" (cf., e.g., 2008, 453, 455; 459; 2010a, 13, 19, 102, 103, 112; 2010b, 35; 2014, 17, 18), which is just another hint that IFF and status function are supposed to be one and the same thing. Thus, I find it reasonable to think that Searle actually endorses or is willing to endorse SFC, even though he does not explicitly say so. Before I turn to my reasons for rejecting SFC, I shall first critically examine Searle's usage of the term "status function". It is surprising to observe that he uses the term inconsistently, even though it is evidently supposed to play a central role in has account. As a consequence, it is difficult for a reader to determine what exactly a status function is actually supposed to be. Searle's writings suggest at least two incompatible (partial) definitions of this term: (Partial) definition of "status function" (A): A 'status functionA' is a function that can be performed only in virtue of the existence of a certain institutional status. (Partial) definition of "status function" (B): A 'status functionB' is an institutional status 'involving' a certain function that can be performed only in virtue of the existence of this status. Roughly, an instance of a status functionA would be the function of a piece of paper as a medium of exchange which it could perform only in virtue of having the status of money. And instance of a status functionB would be the status of being money which involves the function of being a medium of exchange, where this function can be performed only in virtue of the existence of this status. The usage according to definition (A) is well-attested: Very often, Searle explicitly describes or even defines status functions as kinds of functions (cf., e.g., 1995, 27; 1999, 126; 2005, 8; 2007a, 12f.; 2007b, 14; 2008, 449; 2010a, 4, 74, 94, 117; 2012, 29; 2013, 423; 2014, 18; 2017a, 1459); and indeed, this usage conforms to the English rules of word formation. However, there are many passages in which Searle also seems to use the term in a sense that is captured by definition (B). At some points, Searle's formulations unambiguously imply that status functions are kinds of statuses. At one point, for example, he says: "Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the status in question is a genuine status function and not simply a false physical attribution" (2006a, 115; emphasis added). A bit less clear, but clear enough, is the following passage in Making the Social World, in which he says: "The same tribe that created the status function of boundary might also create the status function of the leader of 20 Cf. also 2014, 18, where Searle seems to imply that the terms "institutional fact" and "status function" are actually interchangeable, which again would be evidence for the assumption that Searle thinks that IFF and status functions are identical: „[a]ll Institutional Facts (Status Functions)", he says, "are both created in their initial existence and maintained in their continued existence by representations that have the logical form of Status Function Declarations" (emphasis added). And indeed, Searle himself sometimes varies between these terms with no apparent reason, except stylistic reasons: see, e.g., 2006c, 66; 2010a, 119; 2010b, 35; 2012, 31, 367. 12 the tribe by simply assigning that status to a particular person" (2010a, 96; emphasis added), where he seems to refer by "that status" to the aforementioned "status function of the leader of the tribe" (cf. also 2006b, 87). In another passage of this book, he implies that a more explicit version of the formula "We make it the case by Declaration that object X now has the status function Y in C" is "We make it the case by Declaration that X has the status Y and this is able to perform the function F in C" (2010a, 99; emphasis added). Moreover, in his 'X counts as Y (in C)' formula, the "Y" is usually intended as a placeholder for statuses (cf., e.g., 1995, 46, 48, 51, 69, 114; 2005, 7; 2007a, 14; 2007c, 92; 2010a, 181; 2010c, 229; contrast 1995, 48, 49, 50, 87). Hence, saying that Anna counts as the leader of the group amounts to saying that Anna counts as having the status of being the leader of the group. Now, since Searle often says things like "there is no fact of the matter about the X term having the Y status function, other than the fact that we do so represent it[; t]he man is only President insofar as we represent him as President; the piece of paper is only a dollar bill insofar as we represent it as a dollar bill" (2010a, 120; emphasis added; cf. also 2008, 452; 2010a, 118; contrast 1995, 76 and 2010a, 181 though), it is clearly suggested that status functions are supposed to be kinds of statuses. Accordingly, he also says things like "Jones has the Y status function: Possessor of $1,000" (2008, 457; cf. also 2007b, 21), where "possessor of $ 1,000" clearly does not refer to a function; the same holds when he says "George W. Bush [...] has the Y status function, President of the United States" (2007b, 21). The same applies to the following examples: "I have the status function of holding University degrees" (2002a, 15); "[o]nce the piece of paper has the imposed status function of being money, then its possessor has deontic powers that he would not otherwise have" (2004, 278);"he is assigned the status function of 'licensed driver'" (2006c, 67); "[b]eing money is a status function" (2011, 735); "[t]he status function of being chair of the department imposes rights and obligations that the occupant did not otherwise have" (2010a, 167); "many Americans thought George W. Bush got the status function of president in an illegitimate fashion (2010a, 168); "it is no more logically absurd to assign a status function of a right directly to humans than it is to assign a status function of being money to a piece of paper or a piece of gold" (2010a, 181). Finally, when Searle introduces or explains the notion of a "status function", he often does so by using examples that are difficult to imagine as cases of functions: "[m]oney, professors, political institutions, marriages, and governments are Status Functions. I am a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and that position is a Status Function" (2014, 18), "[a] football game, a stock market transaction, a cocktail party, private property, and the adjournment of a meeting are all examples of status functions that are brought into existence by constitutive rules" (2010a, 10), "Status Functions include money, property, government, and marriage, and also universities, lawyers, doctors, summer vacations, and cocktail parties. All of these are institutional facts and all such facts are cases of Status Functions" (2010b, 35, cf. also 2002a, 14; 2010a, 181; 2012, 30). So, the initial problem is this: It is unclear whether "status function" is supposed to refer to a certain kind of status or rather to a certain kind of function. As a consequence, it is unclear what SFC is actually supposed to express. I think it is fair to say that this provides a prima facie reason against SFC. However, instead of further dwelling upon this matter, I try to show in the following that there are reasons for rejecting SFC on both interpretations of "status function". This will spare us vain speculations about how Searle is most likely to use this term. (4.1) SFC involves a category mistake Searle uses the term "status functions" to apply either to functions or statuses. In neither sense, however, can a status function be identified with IFF, because neither functions nor statuses are kinds of facts. 'Functions' can be assigned or possessed, facts cannot. 'Statuses' 13 can be imposed or possessed, facts cannot. 'Serving as a medium of exchange' is a possible function, but not a possible fact, as opposed to 'The piece of paper in my wallet serves as a medium of exchange'. 'Being the US president' is a possible status, but not a possible fact, as opposed to 'Donald Trump is the US president'. In either sense, status functions may be proper parts of IFF, but they cannot be IFF themselves. The assumption that status functions are proper parts of IFF is even supported by some passages in Searle's work. For example, at one point in Making the Social World, he says: „[i]n typical institutional facts there are three elements: the X term, the Y term, and the status functions [...] attaching to the Y status" (2010a, 181). Clearly, if status functions are proper parts of IFF, which is entailed by this description, then they cannot be identical with IFF. A somewhat more charitable interpretation of Searle would, perhaps, ignore the fact that Searle officially defines status functions as kinds of functions and the fact that Searle's formulations in numerous passages are such that you cannot help but assume that he uses the term to apply either to functions or statuses. This interpretation might focus on the fact that in a later writing, Searle insists that status functions are "factitives, and that they have a propositional structure" (2016, 9; cf. also 2014, 19), and that Searle says (a very few times) such things as "[e]xamples of status functions [...] are reported by 'That is a twenty dollar bill' and 'He is an attorney'" (1995, 124), or "I am eligible for Social Security, I use various credit cards, I have a bank account at a local bank, I am a member of the Squaw Valley Ski Club, and so on and on, are all status functions" (2016, 5; cf. also 1995, 54; 1999, 154; 2002a, 15). According to this interpretation, what Searle actually means by "status function" is roughly what is captured by the following definition: (Partial) definition of "status function" (C): A 'status functionC' is a fact having the form '(entity) e has (status) s involving (function) f'' (cf. 2010b, 35). The fact that Donald Trump is the US president might be considered a status functionC, because it is (arguably) the same as the fact that Donald Trump has the status of being the US president, which involves a certain function. This interpretation, however, cannot save SFC either, since many IFF obviously do not have the form of status functionsC: (4.2) Some IFF do not have the form 'e has s involving f' First, some IFF are clearly not facts about some entity having a certain status. Searle himself provides some examples, two of which are quite prominent: the fact that a certain corporation exists and the fact that certain electronic money exists (cf. Smith & Searle 2003, 305; 2005, 15-7; 2006c, 63f.; 2007b, 20-2; 2008, 454, 456; 2010a, 20-2, 97-102, 108f., 115, 119-21; 2012, 31f.; 2016, 11f.). In either case, there is no e having an s.21 One might counter this observation by suggesting that definition (C) is not what Searle actually has in mind: Status functions, one might suggest, are more adequately defined as facts having the form 'there is (an) s involving f' or 's involves f'. I think this change would not be much help: 21 If you accept that the existence of a constitutive rule is a case of an IF as well, then you have yet another critical case, for the existence of a constitutive rule is an IF that is clearly not a fact about some entity having a certain status. 14 (4.3) Some IFF neither have the form 'there is (an) s involving f' nor 's involves f' Some IFF clearly neither have the form 'there is (an) s involving f' nor 's involves f'. For example, it does not seem to make sense to say that in the cases of corporations and electronic money there is a 'status', because a 'status' is something that is 'had' by something else, and in these cases there is nothing having a certain status.22 Moreover, even many of the more 'ordinary' cases of IFF neither seem to have the form 'there is (an) s involving f' nor 's involves f'. That Donald Trump is the US president, arguably, entails that there is the status of being US president involving a certain function. And this fact may have the form 'there is (an) s involving f'. However, this does not entail that the fact 'Donald Trump is the U.S. president' itself has this form. Indeed, this fact does not seem to have this form on any reasonable conception of what it is for a fact to have a certain form. Accordingly, the fact that Donald Trump is the US president is a fact about Donald Trump, and the fact that there is the status of US president involving a certain function is an ontological fact about a certain status. Clearly, these facts are not identical. I think that this reasoning applies to a great multitude of IFF. Let us consider another IF, an IF that does not even seem to be a status functionC, namely the fact that Bill votes for Anna. That Bill votes for Anna (fA) may entail that a certain action of Bill has the status of being a votingevent involving a certain function (fB), and, arguably, (fB) entails that the status of being a voting-event involves a certain function (fC). However, it does not seem that fA, fB and fC have the same form; therefore, they do not seem to be identical. fA is a fact about Bill, fB is a fact about an action of Bill, fC is a fact about the status of being a voting-event. Another reason why some IFF cannot have the form 'there is (an) s involving f' nor 's involves f' suggests itself when we consider Searle's use of the term "function" in these contexts: As in the case of "status function", Searle does not seem to be consistent in what he means by this term. I shall not go into detail this time, but I would like to note that Searle uses the term at least in two different senses: In one sense, the 'function' in the case of a status functionA/B/C is supposed to be an entity which 'creates' or 'carries' deontic powers (cf., e.g., 2005, 17; 2008, 455-6; 2010a, 8-9, 23, 24, 164, 179; 2010b, 36; 2011, 734; 2013, 434; 2014, 17); and in another, the 'function' is supposed to be identical with deontic powers (cf., e.g., 1997, 451; 2010a, 20, 98, 99, 176, 181, 198; 2012, 38; 2015, 508).23 If the 'function' 'creates' or 'carries' deontic powers, or is identical with deontic powers, then all the critical cases introduced in section 3 pose a problem, because these cases do not seem to involve deontic powers. These cases of IFF, provided that they are genuine counterexamples, cannot have the form 'there is (an) s involving f' or 's involves f' in any sense, for in these cases, there is simply no involvement of a 'function'. To conclude, there does not seem to be any interpretation of 'status functions', according to which it would be possible to maintain SFC. So SFC should be rejected. 22 Searle realizes that there is a problem. But his construal of these kinds of IFF cannot avoid my objection. He thinks that "[w]hen a corporation is created, its status functions accrue to actually existing people" (2010a, 98), while "status functions are, in general, matters of deontic power" (2005, 16; cf. 2010a, 99). And this, according to Searle, is the reason why „such things function" even though „there is no physical object on which the status function is imposed" (2005, 16). In this description, 'status functions' seem to be identified with the deontic powers (or deontic consequences) involved by the IF that a corporation exists (except, perhaps, in the latter case, where the term is presumably used to refer to a status functionA/B). However, we are concerned with the question of whether this IF itself is a status function in any sense, not with the deontic powers or consequences involved by it. Again, Searle seems to see that there is a problem (cf., e.g., 2010a, 108), but he does not seem to offer any solution; instead, he seems to evade the question by subtly changing the topic. 23 Cf. 1997, 451, for yet another construal of the relation between the 'functions' and deontic powers. 15 (5) Do IFF essentially require speech acts of Declaring for their existence? My next issue is what Searle himself, in Making the Social World, heralds as a "very strong theoretical claim" (VSTC) and, indeed, as the "main theoretical innovation" of that book. It says, literally, that "[a]ll institutional facts [...] are created by speech acts of a type that in 1975 I baptized as 'Declarations'" (2010a, 11). In this original version, which is the strongest version24, VSTC clearly implies that the nature of IFF is more complex than I propose, for 'existing by virtue of CR' does not entail 'being created by a speech act of Declaring'. Notice, however, that VSTC comes in many different versions. Before starting to discuss VSTC, we would do well first to sort out those versions which Searle himself abandons in order to eventually identify that version which he maintains. This final version I will then take as the basis of my discussion. However, the critical discussion and rejection of this final version will not be carried out in this section but in the two that follow. One thing that will become clear in this section, however, is that IFF do not essentially require Declarations or speech acts of some other sort for their existence. (5.1) The first variant of VSTC Let me begin with the strongest version of VSTC: VSTC1: IFF are essentially created by Declarations (cf. 2010a, 11; cf. also 2010d, 7). The notion of a "Declaration", as used here, is a technical term introduced by Searle in A Classification of Illocutionary Acts. The "defining characteristic" of a 'Declaration' is that their successful performance "brings about the correspondence between the propositional content and reality". Examples of Searle are the act of appointing a chairman, the act of nominating someone as candidate, the act of declaring a state of war and the act of marrying (1976, 13). It is obvious that when people create an IF by collectively recognizing it as existing, this does not include the performance of any speech acts. The mere presence of certain mental states is sufficient for this. Thus, VSTC1 conflicts with my definition of IFF. However, VSTC1 also conflicts with apparent facts. For example, when we buy a bottle of milk, or pay our drink in a pub, we are supposed to be creating IFF. In these cases, people may perform several speech acts, but it does not seem to be required that they perform 'Declarations' in Searle's sense. Searle himself observes this fact: "sometimes we just linguistically treat or describe [...] an object in a way that creates a reality by representing that reality as created"; in such cases, he frankly admits, "there is no Declarational speech act" (2010a, 13; cf. also e.g. 2008, 454; 2010b, 35). This leads him to offer a new version of VSTC (without officially announcing it as a 'new' version, though): (5.2) The second variant of VSTC VSTC2: IFF are essentially created by speech acts that have the same logical form as Declarations (cf. 2010a, 12f.). 24By "strongest version" I mean, not that version which is most resistant to refutation, but that one which has the greatest number of implications. 16 However, VSTC2 is untenable as well. Searle attempts to explain the existence of IFF with reference to performances of Declarational speech acts. On his account, however, performances of speech acts themselves are IFF. Thus, it seems, as Searle frankly acknowledges (see, e.g., 2010a, 14), that the existence of a speech act must be explained with reference to another speech act, which in turn must be explained with reference to yet another speech act (ad infinitum, causing an infinite regress). To avoid this problem, Searle introduces another variant of VSTC: (5.3) The third variant of VSTC VSTC3: Nonlinguistic IFF are essentially created by Declarations (cf. 2010a, 16; emphasis added; cf. also 2010a, 12f.). Notice that in this variant, Searle seems to return to the assumption that it is only Declarations that create IFF. That this cannot be true was already shown above and admitted by Searle. Thus, a more charitable reading suggests a version including the revision that has led to VSTC2: (5.4) The fourth variant of VSTC VSTC4: Nonlinguistic IFF are essentially created by speech acts that have the same logical form as Declarations. However, the difficulties do not end here. According to VSTC4, the creation of an IF requires the performance of a speech act. But, as Searle clearly sees and repeatedly confirms, IFF can be created without the performance of any speech act. For the creation of an IF it suffices, for example, that we just "think about an object in a way that creates a reality by representing that reality as created", as Searle himself admits (2010a, 13). In such a case, there is no speech act. For example, "someone can be made the leader just by being treated as the leader, or recognized as the leader, or otherwise represented as the leader" (2010b, 35; cf. also 2008, 454; 2012, 35; 2017b, 308). How are these observations compatible with VSTC? Searle uses two strategies to sort this problem out. [I] For one thing, he introduces a new terminological convention: "[l]et us call", he stipulates, "these cases where we create an institutional reality of status functions by representing them as existing as 'Status Function Declarations' [...] even in cases where there is no explicit speech act of Declaration" (2010a, 13; emphasis added). Thus, the term "SF Declaration" is defined in such a way as to refer, not to a speech act of Declaring, and not even to a speech act, but just to people's representing something as existing. Moreover, Searle introduces the term "standing Declaration". Here, too, the term "Declaration" is used to refer to entities that are not speech acts: "Constitutive rules of the form 'X counts as Y in C' are what we might think of standing Declarations" (2010a, 13). One of his examples is the rule "The oldest surviving son counts as the new king"; it "is a standing Declaration", he says, and it "makes something the case by representing it as being the case" (2010a, 97). For my purpose it is crucial to notice that this account does not entail that speech acts are required for the creation and existence of IFF; instead, it entail that representing IFF as existing is sufficient. It is also worth noticing that Searle sometimes uses the term "Declaration" as an abbreviation either for "SF Declaration" or for "standing Declaration". Consequently, some alertness is 17 required from the reader whenever the term is used. When Searle, for instance, represents the basic structure of the creation of an IF by "We make it the case by Declaration that the IF exists" (cf., e.g., 2010a, 99), then the reader is supposed to bear in mind that this simply amounts to saying "We make it the case by 'collective representation' that the IF exists". [II] In addition to such terminological subtleties, Searle offers just another variant of VSTC in which the unwarranted speech act requirement is abandoned: (5.5) The fifth variant of VSTC VSTC5a: IFF tare essentially "created and maintained in existence25 by (representations that have the same logical form as) SF Declarations" (2010a, 13; emphasis added; cf. also 2008, 451; 2010c, 227f.; 2014, 18). From VSTC5a we can infer that it is possible to create IFF by SF Declarations, but that SF Declarations are not necessary for creating and maintaining IFF in existence. VSTC5a implies that the existence of 'representations'26 that have the same logical form as SF Declarations is sufficient. Taking this observation into account, we may reformulate VSTC5a as follows: VSTC5b: IFF are essentially created and maintained in existence by collective representations that have the same logical form as SF Declarations. The question arises, "What does it mean for representations to have 'the logical form of SF Declarations'?" At one point, Searle gives a straightforward answer: "When I say that the representations have the same logical form as [SF] Declarations I mean that they have the double direction of fit" (2010c, 228). And that representations have 'the double direction of fit' amounts to saying, according to Searle, that they are representations that 'make it the case that something exists by virtue of representing it as existing' (cf. 2012, 35; cf. also 2008, 452, 459; 2010a, 86; 2010b, 35; 2012, 35). Thus, we can formulate an equivalent variant of VSTC5b: VSTC5c: IFF are essentially created and maintained in existence by collective representations that make it the case that something exists by virtue of representing it as existing. According to Searle's conception of collective recognition, it is 'the collective recognition of p' that instantiates 'the collective representation that makes it the case that p exists by virtue of representing p as existing'. Thus, VSTC in this variant may alternatively be taken to express that IFF are essentially facts that are created and maintained in existence by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing. So, at first glance, this variant appears conform to my conception of IFF. However, there are two things to consider: [1] Even though it is not explicit in VSTC5c, it is clear from Searle's general account that what is required for a particular IF to exist is not only the collective representation of 'something', but a representation of this IF as existing (cf., e.g., 1995, 62f., 68, 74; 2005, 13; 2006c, 61; 2008, 459; 2010a, 116, 170; 2010c, 235; 2011, 738; 2014, 17, 25; 2015, 508). 25 Notice that the clause "maintained in existence" did not appear in the previous variants of VSTC. This is understandable, because it would be even less plausible to say that the continued existence of IFF requires the performance of speech acts. 26 Clearly, with "representations" Searle refers to collective representations. 18 Correspondingly, it is part of Searle's conception of collective recognition that for an IF to exist by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing, this IF must be collectively represented as existing. I shall critically discuss this conception in section 7. [2] Searle thinks, and tries to argue, that IFF require language for their existence. Accordingly, Searle states that "all institutional reality is created by sets of linguistic representations that have the same logical form as Declarations" (2010a, 13; emphasis added; cf. also 2010b, 35; 2010d, 1; 2012, 26, 35, 36; 2013, 423; 2016, 5). This view will be discussed and subsequently rejected in the following section. Taking [1] and [2] into account, we get yet another variant of VSTC: (5.6) The sixth variant of VSTC VSTC6: IFF are essentially created and maintained in existence by collective linguistic representations that make it the case that these IFF exist by virtue of representing them as existing. Similar to the case of VSTC2, we have to assume that Searle is aware that the problem of infinite regress (or circularity) looms. In The Construction of Social Reality, for example, he notes that "if we are going to say that institutional reality requires language, what about language itself? If institutional facts require language and language is itself an institution; then it seems language must require language; and we have either infinite regress or circularity" (1995, 59-60; cf. 2006d, 65; 2010a, 109-16). Searle's solution to this problem is the same as in the case of VSTC2: he subsequently restricts VSTC to nonlinguistic IFF. This fact is obscured by Searle's decision in Making the Social World to make the following stipulation: "[f]rom now on, when I say 'institutional fact' I mean 'nonlinguistic institutional fact' unless otherwise noted" (2010a, 93). Since restricting a claim about the nature of a certain kind of entity to a subclass of this kind amounts to giving up this claim as a claim about the nature of this kind, we seem to have a compelling reason for rejecting VSTC6. However, the situation is somewhat different here. For I do not believe that language is an 'institution' anyway, and I do not believe that linguistic facts are IFF. So, in my view, VSTC thus restricted still applies (at least) to all putative facts that exist by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing27, which means that it applies (at least) to all IFF, on my conception of IFF. Accordingly, I shall not formulate yet another variant of VSTC; instead, I take VSTC6 to be the ultimate variant of VSTC. 28 I started this section by asking whether IFF essentially require speech acts of Declaring for their existence, as was suggested by VSTC1. Very soon, it was clear that this cannot the case. Indeed, we have seen that, contrary to the suggestions of VSTC2, VSTC3 and VSTC4, an IF does not even require a 'speech act' for its existence: certain representations are perfectly 27 Incidentally, Searle suggests that 'linguistic' IFF do not require collective recognition for their existence (cf., e.g., 2010a, 110f.). Therefore, even according to Searle's own conception of IFF, 'linguistic' IFF actually cannot be cases of 'IFF', because Searle assumes, as I do, that existing by virtue of being collectively recognized as existing is at least part of the nature of IFF. Presumably, Searle is not aware of this inconsistency. 28 Notice, however, that in a later passage in Making the Social World and in a more recent work, the qualification that the representations must be "linguistic" does not appear: see 2010a, 93 and 2014,17. This is a bit puzzling. However, considering the fact that Searle very often states and emphasizes that language is necessary for the existence of IFF (see section 6), and never explicitly revokes this claim, I conjecture that these two passages are cases of careless writing rather than indications that Searle has tacitly or temporarily changed his mind. 19 sufficient. The remaining variants of VSTC, that is, VSTC5b/c and VSTC6, turned out to be almost entirely in line with my conception of IFF. I pointed out that there are two aspects that render the ultimate variant of VSTC inconsistent with my conception; [1] Searle's conception of collective recognition and [2] his claim that IFF require language for their existence in a certain way. The two sections to follow will critically discuss and reject these aspects. My ultimate conclusion will be that VSTC, in none of its variants, motivates the assumption that the nature of IFF is in any way simpler or more complex than I propose. (6) Do IFF essentially require language for their existence? In the previous section, we already had a quick encounter with what I call the "languagedependent existence" of IFF: The language-dependent existence of IFF (LDE): IFF essentially require 'language' for their existence. There is no doubt that Searle endorses LDE. For example, in Making the Social World, he states that "all institutional facts are linguistically created and linguistically constituted and maintained" (2010a, 93), that "you cannot have institutional facts without language" (ibid., 63), for "language" is "essential to the creation and maintenance of institutional reality" (ibid., 19). In fact, Searle already defended such a view in his early paper Intentionalistic Explanations in the Social Sciences, where he first presented certain aspects of his conception of IFF: "I do not believe that it is possible to have [institutional] facts without language" (1991, 342), he argues there, and implies that they are "essentially linguistic" (ibid. 343; emphasis added). In The Construction of Social Reality, he seems to make the same point by implying that IFF "require a language as a matter of conceptual necessity" (1995, 65).This view runs through his entire work (cf., e.g., 1995, 27, 37, 60-78; 2005, 12-4; 2006c, 60f.; 2006d, 65; 2007b, 16; 2007c, 95, 105-6; 2008, 449; 2010a, 63, 85, 95, 109, 130, 170; 2014, 18; 2015, 513; 2010d; 2010e). Now, in what exact sense, one might legitimately ask, do IFF require 'language' for their existence? This is a difficult question, since even Searle's more specific formulations of LDE are often vague in certain respects, and many of his formulations do not even seem to be equivalent. This fact renders a discussion of LDE rather difficult. I shall attempt to deal with this unfortunate situation by distinguishing several (potential) variants of LDE. This will not eliminate all obscurities, but it will facilitate a serious assessment of LDE somewhat. In the following, I shall formulate three variants of LDE and assess them individually. My goal is to show that neither of these variants survives scrutiny. This will lead me to the conclusion that LDE is untenable. (6.1) The first variant of LDE The first variant of LDE, which I formulate only for the sake of completeness, is already present in the previous section. It is based upon the disjunction of VSTC1 and VSTC2: LDE1: IFF are essentially language-dependent in the sense that they are created by Declarations or speech acts that have the same logical form as Declarations. As we saw in the previous section, this requirement is far too strong. Remember that Searle himself observes, for example, that "someone can be made the leader just by being treated as the leader, or recognized as the leader, or otherwise represented as the leader" (2010b, 35), 20 which entails that neither Declarations or any other speech acts are necessary for the existence of IFF. Here I am in complete agreement with Searle and therefore conclude that LDE1 is untenable. (6.2) The second variant of LDE In a passage in The Construction of Social Reality, Searle offers a definition of what it means for a fact to be 'language dependent'. The definition requires that a fact satisfy two conditions: "First, mental representations [...] must be partly constitutive of the fact; and second, the representations in question must be language-dependent" (1995, 62; cf. also ibid., 65). This definition yields another variant of LDE: LDE2: IFF are essentially language-dependent in the sense that they exist by virtue of representations that are language-dependent.29 LDE2 is intended to imply that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF are such that they cannot emerge unless the respective people possess a language (or 'linguistic devices' of some sort; cf. 1995, 61). What are the reasons in favour of LDE2? To start with, this claim does not seem to be very intuitive. After all, it seems that we can easily imagine a group of apes or hominids without a language make someone their leader by collectively representing her or him as their leader, or make some feature of the landscape the border of their territory by collectively representing it as a border. Searle does not present his justification of LDE2 (and of LDE in general) in a very clear and systematic way. However, scattered through his works there are several passages that provide us with actual or potential reasons for endorsing LDE2, some of which are worth closer examination. I shall go through them one by one. (6.2.1) First argument: The communicability requirement In a passage in The Construction of Social Reality, Searle suggests that IFF, "being inherently social, must be communicable", for "[y]ou must be able to tell people that you are married, that you are the chairman, that the meeting is adjourned if the system is to function. Even in simple cases of institutional facts, this communicability requires a means of public communication, a language" (ibid., 77). Finally, about 15 years later, in a reply to Colin McGinn, he makes more or less the same point by saying that "the representations that are constitutive of institutional reality have to be collectively shared and thus have to be communicable from one person to another" (2010e). In short, Searle's argument seems to be this: P1: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF have to be 'collectively shared'. 29 I have found exactly one passage in Searle's work that might suggest that LDE2 is not intended as a claim about the nature of IFF, but merely as a claim about 'most' IFF: „A necessary condition for having the appropriate thoughts where most of institutional reality is concerned is the possession of the linguistic means of expressing the concepts. one cannot have the appropriate thoughts about the presidency, the elections, and deontic powers generally without language" (2010c, 235; emphasis added). Perhaps, Searle had his distinction between linguistic and nonlinguistic IFF in mind when he wrote this. If not, his statement would seem to be inconsistent with a great many other statements he makes. 21 P2: In order that they can be 'collectively shared', they must be communicable. C1: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF must be communicable. (P1, P2) P3: The communicability of these representations requires language. C2: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. (C1, P3) I agree with Searle that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF "have to be collectively shared", for being a 'shared' representation is (part of) what it is to be a 'collective' representation. However, I also agree with McGinn who points out that the requirement that these representations be 'shared' does not entail the requirement that these representations be 'communicated': "clearly two people can think the same thing without one of them having communicated the thought to the other, linguistically or otherwise" (McGinn 2010e), he rightly insists. If everyone in a group individually represents Anna as their leader, then the members of this group 'share' the representation that Anna is their leader; thus, in my view, the group 'collectively' represents Anna as their leader, which is exactly what we need in order to create the IF that Anna is their leader.30 Thus, I deny P2 and therefore believe that the argument is unsound. (6.2.2) Second argument: The non-perceptibility of IFF In The Construction of Social Reality, Searle states that "the thoughts that this is a twenty dollar bill and that this is my property require a language as a matter of conceptual necessity" (1995, 65). In the subsequent pages he presents a somewhat obscure, long-winded and unorderly argument in favor of this claim. To illustrate the intricacies involved in reconstructing this argument, and to make my interpretation of it open to scrutiny, I shall cite the crucial passages at full length, asking the reader for indulgence: "To argue for this claim, I want to begin by considering some fairly simple facts regarding games [...]. Consider the case of points scored in a game such as football. We say 'a touchdown counts six points.' Now, that is not a thought that anyone could have without linguistic symbols [... , b]ecause points can exist only relative to a linguistic system for representing and counting points, and thus we can think about points only if we are in possession of the linguistic apparatus necessary for such a system. [...] Why can points exist only relative to such a linguistic system? The answer, to put it simply, is that if you take away all the symbolic devices for representing points, there is nothing else there. There is just the system for representing and counting points" (ibid., 66). "Even if we don't have words for 'man,' 'line,' 'ball,' etc., we can see that man cross that line carrying that ball, and thus we can think a thought without words, which thought we would report in the words 'The man crossed the line carrying the ball.' But we cannot in addition seethe man score six points because there is nothing in addition to see. [...] Points are not 'out there' in the way that planets, men, balls, and lines are out there" (ibid., 68). "I hope the reader shares my intuitions so far, because I now want to state the general principle that underlies them. At the lowest level, the shift from the X to the Yin the move that creates institutional facts is a move from a brute level to an institutional level. That shift [...] can exist only if it is represented as existing. But there can be no prelinguistic way to represent the Y element because there is nothing there prelinguistically that one can perceive or otherwise attend to in addition to the X element [...]. Without a language, we can see the man cross a white line holding a ball [...]. But we cannot see the man score six points or want the man to 30 Notice that my objection is independent of Searle's assumption – which I reject – that individual representations are insufficient for the existence of a 'collective' representation. In his view, 'collective representation' requires 'mutual belief' among the participants (cf. 2010a, 57f.). Even if that were the case, the question would be whether the existence of 'mutual belief' requires communicability; and I would suggest that the answer is negative. 22 score six points without language, because points are not something that can be thought of or that can exist independently of words or other sorts of markers. And what is true of points in games is true of money, governments, private property, etc., as we will see. The lessons from this example can now be extended to institutional facts in general. The very design of status-functions is such that they both are partly constituted by thoughts and that prelinguistic forms of thought are inadequate to do the job. The reason is that they exist only by way of collective agreement, and there can be no prelinguistic way of formulating the content of the agreement, because there is no prelinguistic natural phenomenon there. The Y term creates a status that is additional to the physical features of the X term" (ibid., 67f.; cf. ibid. 69, 70; 2005, 13; 2006b, 84; 2006c, 61). I propose that the gist of the argument can be represented as follows: P1: IFF are 'non-physical' (or 'non-natural'). P2: If an entity is 'non-physical' (or 'non-natural'), then it cannot be perceived. C1: IFF cannot be perceived. (P1, P2) P3: If entities cannot be perceived, then they cannot be represented as existing by representations that are independent of language. C2: IFF cannot be represented by representations that are independent of language. (C1, P3) P4: It is necessary for the existence of IFF that they be represented as existing. C3: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. (C2, P4) My target is P3. I think it is a blatant empirical fact that human beings and other animals can and often do have 'language-independent' representations of non-perceptible things. We can safely assume that dogs can think and believe; and I think it is exceedingly plausible to assume that it occurs from time to time that dogs erroneously think and believe due to certain auditory perceptions that their master is approaching the door. This, I believe, is exactly a case in which something is represented as existing that cannot be perceived, for it does not exist. Examples of this kind could be multiplied indefinitely. I therefore conclude that P3 is untenable, and the argument unsound. One could attempt a counter-attack with a similar but slightly different argument based on the distinction between representations entirely consisting of concepts that are or may be acquired by observation, and representations partly consisting of concepts that cannot be acquired by observation, because they refer to entities that are non-perceptible. It might be proposed that 'institutional' concepts such as the concept of money, the concept of property or the concept of leadership are such concepts. On this basis, it might be argued that the acquisition of such concepts requires 'language' in some way, and that in this sense the representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent.31 The problem with such an argument would be that it leaves us completely unclear as to what exact role language is supposed to play in the acquisition of such concepts. Searle does not give us any clue, and in general, it seems hard to imagine a priori what role language could take in this case. Undeniably, there is a set of mental capacities that is required for the acquisition of institutional concepts; but without any empirical scientific evidence, it remains a mere speculation that possessing a 'language' is among this set. Searle does not provide us with any empirical evidence, and I do not know of any such. Since this claim does not strike me as having any prima facie plausibility, there is no reason to believe in its truth for the time being. 31 Cf., e.g., 2010c, 6, where Searle suggests an argument along these lines. 23 (6.2.3) Third argument: The compositionality requirement In Making the Social World, Searle states that there is a difference between "language" and "prelinguistic intentionality": "in language [...] syntactical elements can be manipulated freely, whereas nonlinguistic intentional states have no such manipulable components" (2010a, 68). "It turns out", he argues, "that this is going to be crucial for the construction of human civilization" (ibid.): "given compositionality, the animal can do much more than just represent existing states of affairs; it can represent states of affairs that do not exist but which can be brought into existence by getting a community to accept a certain class of speech acts" (ibid., 85). I represent this argument as follows: P1: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF require that people can represent states of affairs that do not (yet) exist. P2: Only compositionally constructed representations can represent states of affairs that do not (yet) exist. P3: [Only]32 language introduces the possibility to construct representations compositionally. C: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. (P1, P2, P3) I shall first focus on P2. Suppose that a pre-linguistic animal, a wolf for example, represents its own mother as the leader of the pack. Ex hypothesi, the thought is non-compositional. Now, can the conclusion that the wolf's mother is the leader of the pack be justified solely by referring to the fact that the thought is not compositional? It seems perfectly clear to me that such an argument is completely unfounded: that a representation is non-compositional does not entail that this representation is true. One might argue that Searle aims at representations that the person is aware are non-realized. However, consider the perfectly natural idea of a wolf that sees a carrion in the clearing and intends to go there and eat it. An 'intention' is naturally understood as a mental state involving a representation of the intended aim. Since we think of the wolf as a pre-linguistic animal, we would seem forced to conclude that it mistakenly represents itself as standing in the clearing and eating the carrion while having the relevant intention. This conclusion, however, is certainly unwarranted. At one point, Searle argues that a "dog might think that someone is approaching the door. But he cannot think the false thought, the door is approaching someone, and he cannot even distinguish the thought that someone is approaching the door from the thoughts that the door is being approached by someone" (2010, 68). The problem of this explanation can be presented in the form of a dilemma. Either Searle relies on empirical knowledge concerning dogs, or he relies on a priori knowledge of a relation between the ability to construct representations compositionally and the possibility of fictional representations. As to the first horn of the dilemma: It seems obvious that Searle cannot rely on any privileged empirical knowledge of that kind, and neither does he seem to pretend to. Thus, it seems that the argument is based on an a priori assumption of a relation 32 This addition is required for the argument to be valid. Searle's formulations in the relevant passages do not clearly express necessity. But it seems natural to assume that Searle believes that the compositional construction of representations is impossible without language. 24 between the ability to construct representations compositionally and the possibility of fictional representations. My intuition does not support Searle's idea. It may be tolerably plausible that most or all dogs never have the representation of a door approaching a person. But then, the example, slightly eccentric as it is, seems to sell the problem short. Consider a less eccentric example, where the dog erroneously thinks that her master is approaching the door. Nothing seems to be wrong with this. Alternatively, consider the case where a dog intends to get a bone thrown into the meadow by his master. In such a case, the dog represents himself in a state that is not (yet) real. Again, nothing seems wrong with this. Thus, we can see that when we turn to less eccentric examples, there is no evidence that the ability to construct representations compositionally is a precondition of fictional representation. An implication of P3 has a similar problem: P3 implies that unless you possess a language, you do not have the ability to structure representations compositionally. Again, the question arises, "How does Searle know that?" Quite certainly, even if this implication were true, it would not be an a priori truth. But then, Searle should provide us with empirical evidence, which he does not. Thus, the claim is unfounded as it stands. At one point in Making the Social World, Searle seems to provide a partial explanation of P3. He suggests that in the absence of language there is a strong "connection between the representation and the perceptual stimulus"; and only "with the addition of linguistic syntax to animal intentionality we enable speakers to [...] intentionally construct many different representations of actual, possible, and even impossible states of affairs in the world. [...]. The speaker can now think and say not only 'The man is coming toward me now,' but 'The man will come toward me next week,' or 'The mountain will come toward me,' and so on endlessly" (2010a, 79-80). The argument seems to be that a special feature of language "breaks" (cf. ibid., 80) this connection between representations and 'perceptual stimuli', enabling us to construct representations compositionally. However, here, too, we can raise the same objection (mutatis mutandis) that I have just raised against P3. Therefore, the claim remains unfounded. Incidentally, even Searle himself seems to make suggestions in support of my conclusion. At one point, he characterizes "prelinguistic forms of consciousness" as follows: "in the possession of prelinguistic forms of consciousness, the animal is already able to operate with a rather large number of traditional philosophical (e.g., Kantian and Aristotelian) categories" (2010a, 67). "What I am claiming", he explains, "is that the prelinguistic conscious experiences of animals [...] are already structured by metaphysical categories such as space, time, individuation, object, causation, agency, and so on" (2010a, 67f.). It is a "fact", according to Searle, "that conscious experience already segments objects and features" – a fact, indeed, which "will provide a basis for corresponding elements of language" (2010a, 70). Apparently, Searle conceives of pre-linguistic representations as at least potentially structured. But then, Searle's argument is in serious trouble. To start with, if it is assumed that the experience of a being "already segments objects and features", and his or her thoughts are "structured" by "metaphysical categories such as space, time [etc.]", then the idea that this being should be necessarily unable to compose thoughts that potentially represent nonexistent states of affairs seems not very plausible. Thus, to provide his argument with some force, Searle would have to make clear what difference he sees between being 'prelinguistically structured' and being 'linguistically composed', and why the former is not sufficient for the existence of IFF. As far as I can see, Searle does not address this crucial and difficult question anywhere. 25 (6.2.4) Fourth argument: The argument from counterintuitivity In the manuscript version of Searle's reply to McGinn, Searle says: "He [= McGinn] thinks that words and concepts are two distinct kinds of entities, and just as you can have words without concepts, so you can have concepts without words. This, then, is the substantive disagreement between us. It is not about institutional reality as such, but about the relation of language to concepts"; one thing McGinn allegedly failed understand is that "you cannot have concepts of the kind we are talking about without language or some form of symbolism [...]. McGinn persistently assumes a possible complete separation between language and thought. There is no such separation. In the areas under consideration where we are thinking about systems of government, private property, money exchange, etc., thinking consists in operating with words. You cannot have the thought without some vehicle in which the thought is expressed" (2010d, 2f.). So far, this only seems like an explication of LDE2, and not yet like an argument for it. Searle's first genuine argument for LDE2 in this paper is based upon a thought experiment which I call "Tribe Discovery": Tribe Discovery: "If an anthropologist tells us that that he has discovered a tribe that has language but no institutions, such as private property, government or money, we find this acceptable. [...] But if an anthropologist tells us that he has discovered a tribe that has the complete gamut of institutions – they have marriage, divorce, government with a separation of powers, money and banking complete with loans and interest rates – but they have no language whatever, we know that this is incoherent. All of those phenomena require linguistic means of representation for their very existence" (2010d, 4; cf. also 2010e). In a conveniently abbreviated form, the argument seems to be this: P: Tribe Discovery makes us realize that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. C: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. (P) I deny that Tribe Discovery makes us realize that the existence of IFF is language-dependent. One big problem with the thought experiment is its design: It compares a tribe without any (nonlinguistic) institution with a tribe that "has the complete gamut of institutions". Certainly, it is very suggestive to think that a tribe that has 'the complete gamut of institutions' requires language, because having 'the complete gamut of institutions' means having a very complex institutional structure and organization, and it seems difficult, if not impossible, to maintain such a structure and organization without sophisticated forms of cooperation, and these forms of cooperation seem to require that the participants are able to communicate with each other in such a way as is characteristic of language-speaking animals. However, the crux is that we are not interested in the thesis whether having 'the complete gamut of institutions' requires, as a matter of empirical fact, language in some way. We are interested in whether IFF essentially require language for their existence. A thought experiment that could provide evidence for this claim should be designed in such a way as to show that it is inconceivable that there is group of people or animals that does not have a language but that is able to create and maintain any old IF in existence. I doubt that any such experiment could be designed. It seems far more intuitive to imagine, e.g., a group of apes or hominids without a language make someone their leader by collectively representing her or him as their leader. In any case, the present thought experiment, Tribe Discovery, fails to support LDE2 due to its inapt design. (6.2.5) Fifth argument: Language as a medium for the 'realization' of 'institutional thoughts' "[T]he most crucial point for the present discussion", according to Searle, is the putative fact that "concepts never come pure" (2010d, 4),"[c]oncepts require a medium in which they are 26 realized" (Searle's emphasis), because "the concept cannot, so to speak, operate as a pure mental content on its own. It requires some expression, some medium in which it occurs" (2010d, 7f.; cf. also 1995, 73). For "simple concepts", such as the concept of red, the medium of "imagery" may be enough, "but for complex institutional concepts, you have to have words or symbols" (2010e, cf. also 2007c, 95; 2010d, 3). Indeed, "the phenomena in question are extremely complex", and thus they "require a complex system of representation for their existence, and such complex systems of representation are languages" (1995, 77; cf. also 2017a, 1466). Searle tries to support the idea that IFF are too complex to be thinkable without language by offering another thought experiment, which I call "Complex Thought": Complex Thought: "think any complex thought involving institutions in words[,] then think the same thought without words. Here is a thought I had this morning at breakfast: 'The problem with current discussions of deficit reduction is that the authors typically fail to distinguish between the deficit and the national debt. Short term deficits are only dangerous to the American economy if they produce an intolerable increase in the national debt.' Now, McGinn thinks I can think exactly that same thought with or without words. I do not think you can. First, think it in words. Now, think it without words; just think the pure concepts, I do not have any idea what I would do except think the same words but in an abbreviated form" (2010d, 4-5, cf. also 2010e). I stipulate that concepts and thoughts be called "cogitative representations", and representations of IFF that are thoughts be called "institutional thoughts". I think a charitable reconstruction of Searle's line of reasoning is this: Presupposition (PRE): Concepts and thoughts require for their existence some medium in which they are 'realized'. P1: If some types of concepts and thoughts have a certain complexity Cd 33, then a complex system of representation (CSR) is required to 'realize' these types of concepts and thoughts. P2: Complex Thought shows that institutional thoughts have Cd. C1: A CSR is required to 'realize' institutional thoughts. (P1, P2) P3: [Only]34 languages are CSRs. C2: Languages are required to 'realize' institutional thoughts. (C1, P3) P4: If languages are required to 'realize' institutional thoughts, then the representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. C3: The representations necessary for the existence of IFF are language-dependent. (C2, P4) To start with, Searle's idea of the relation between cogitative representations and the media in which they are 'realized' is rather obscure. The remark (which is obviously intended as a paraphrase of PRE) that a cogitative representation "requires some expression, some medium in which it occurs" is too vague to be of any help.35 This makes a proper assessment of PRE somewhat difficult. A hint on how to interpret this claim is provided by Searle's comment on Complex Thought. There he distinguishes between thinking 'in words', and thinking 'without 33 "Cd" stands for a definite (but obscure) degree d of complexity C. 34 This addition is required to make the argument valid. Searle's wording does not exclude the possibility that there are complex systems of representations other than languages that are capable of 'realizing' the representations of IFF. However, in the present context it seems clear that Searle intends to convey that languages are the only complex systems of representations that could do the job. 35 Indeed, assuming the conventional sense of the words used, 'requiring a medium for its realization', 'requiring a medium for its occurrence' and 'requiring some expression' are not the same thing. 27 words', and he clearly suggests that it is possible to realize by means of introspection that thinking certain thoughts 'without words' is impossible. Presumably, to 'realize a thought by words' is supposed to be equivalent to 'thinking that thought in words'. However, what does Searle mean by 'thinking in words'? I have a conjecture based upon the following observations. When I perform Searle's thought experiment, I observe at least three things: I observe that while reading the sentences, the thoughts expressed by the sentences occur to me; I observe that a corresponding inner speech occurs to me, and I observe that it is quite difficult to think the thoughts expressed by the sentences without the occurrence of the corresponding inner speech. What I conjecture is that what I call "inner speech" is exactly what Searle thinks to be the medium of the thoughts occurring to me while reading the sentences.36 'Inner speech' would then turn out to be one medium among others by which cogitative representations could be realized. Following Searle's reasoning, another medium would be 'images'. Images would serve as a medium that could, for example, realize the concept of red; and, analogously, the realization of the concept of red by means of an image would presumably just amount to the occurrence of an image of red. If this interpretation is correct, then PRE seems untenable. In my view, it is quite evident that at least some cogitative representations can and do occur without the occurrence of some putative medium such as inner speech or images. According to my intuitions, it is rather easy to think the thought that the sun is yellow or the thought that Romeo loves Juliet without simultaneously imagining the sun to be yellow or Romeo loving Juliet (which seems impossible anyways), and without the sentences "the sun is yellow" or "Romeo loves Juliet" occurring in my inner speech. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is something which is most naturally described as a case where concepts or thoughts occur to us without a corresponding inner speech, and in the case of abstract concepts or thoughts, necessarily without a corresponding image. These two observations are evidence in favor of the natural assumption that concepts and thoughts are independent of mental events such as inner speech or images. An indication that mental events such as inner speech or images are also independent of concepts and thoughts is that we can imagine things for which we do not have any concepts, and utter meaningless expressions to ourselves, which involves the occurrence of inner speech without the occurrence of corresponding concepts or thoughts. Thus, concepts and thoughts on the one hand, and the putative media of concepts and thoughts, such as inner speech and images, on the other, really seem to be ontologically independent. Moreover, it seems quite plausible to assume that children think before they have learned a language, and that they are capable of thinking abstract thoughts, thoughts that could not plausibly be realized by a 'corresponding' image. There is also evidence that some animals incapable of learning a language can think certain abstract thoughts. Their cogitative capacities might be more limited than ours, but there is no a priori reason why they should be 36 Cf. also 2010a, 68, where he makes a remark that seems to support my suspicion: "Suppose I now have the thought, 'Because it is getting cold in here, I must turn on the heater.' That thought occurs in time because it occurred to me in an English sentence that went through my brain in a temporal sequence" (emphasis added). 28 incapable of thinking abstract thoughts. If Searle thinks otherwise, then he carries the burden of proof. So far, he has not provided us with any argument for believing otherwise. Thus, PRE does not seem very plausible. Therefore, the associated argument seems doubtful from the start. Why, for example, should we believe in the truth of P1 if there is no reason to believe that concepts and thoughts in general are even entities that require for their existence some medium in which they are 'realized'? Defenders of P1 would have to retreat to the assumption that only some concepts and thoughts require for their existence some medium in which they are realized, while other concepts and thoughts can exist independently. Clearly, however, this assumption would be ad hoc; and I do not see how it could be defended. Of course, it might be objected that my interpretation of PRE is simply mistaken. However, in this case I would like to ask you for clear evidence in favor of another interpretation. As far as I have an overview of Searle's works, there is none. Fortunately, there are independent reasons for rejecting the argument: One problem, for example, is that Complex Thought suffers from a problem similar to that of Tribe Discovery. The thoughts Searle asks us to think are not suitable for what he has to demonstrate: he has to demonstrate that any institutional thought has Cd. For this purpose, however, he should choose an institutional thought that is as simple as possible, for example: 'Trump is the U.S. president'. And then he should try to convince us that the phenomenon that he is aiming at even occurs in a most simple case like this. I believe, however, that the phenomenon that he is aiming at does not necessarily occur in such cases. In any conceivable sense of 'thinking a thought in words', the thought that Trump is the U.S. president can be 'thought without words'. Thus, there does not seem to be support for the claim that institutional thoughts have Cd. Another weak spot in the argument is P4. This premise requires that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF be institutional thoughts. On any empirically plausible account of IFF, this requirement is far too strong. IFF are supposed to have a continuous existence during certain time intervals by virtue of the permanent existence of certain collective representations during these intervals. Now, if IFF could only exist by virtue of certain thoughts, then this would mean that people whose representations constitute a collective representation during these intervals would have to think permanently all the thoughts that would be necessary for the existence of all the IFF existing in the respective group or society. And this seems very implausible.37Any realist about IFF should be willing to accept that when the members of a group collectively representing Anna as their leader fall asleep, they do not stop collectively representing her as their leader during the time of their sleep. As a consequence, and quite plausibly for a realist about IFF, Anna does not stop being their leader at the moment where they fall asleep just because the members of the group stop occurrently representing her as their leader at that time. Fortunately, Searle's own account does not imply that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF must be institutional thoughts. In any case, it should be clear that P4 is unlikely to be true. In this section, I have reconstructed five (possible) arguments of Searle for LDE2. Each of these arguments turned out to be flawed. Since I am not aware of any passages in Searle's texts that provide other arguments for LDE2 worth considering 38, and since I cannot think of 37 Incidentally, it would even seem more implausible that these thoughts exist only by virtue of being realized by what I have called 'inner speech'. 38 Actually, there is one passage in Making the Social World that might have been taken into consideration as well. In this passage he (roughly) argues that IFF necessarily have deontic consequences, and that these 29 any other plausible argument in support of LDE2, I conclude that there is no reason to believe in its truth. (6.3) The third variant of LDE The last variant of LDE to be discussed is implicit in VSTC6 of the previous section, according to which IFF are essentially created and maintained in existence by certain linguistic representations. Speaking of 'linguistic' representations, Searle could have the idea in mind that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF themselves are in some sense 'linguistic', indeed "necessarily linguistic" (2007b, 24) or even "essentially linguistic" (2010a, 85).39 This claim differs from LDE2 in that LDE2 requires that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF be dependent on language, not that these representations themselves be in some sense 'linguistic'. Let me capture this variant as follows: LDE3: IFF are essentially language-dependent in the sense that they exist by virtue of representations that are essentially linguistic.40 To begin with, the question arises as to what distinguishes 'linguistic' representations from plain representations. A natural assumption is that 'linguistic' representations are linguistic entities capable of representing. Possibly, some would call the sentence "Aristotle is a philosopher" a "linguistic representation", because it is a linguistic entity that represents something: it represents Aristotle as a philosopher. Possibly, some would even call certain actions involving the use of linguistic entities to represent something a "linguistic representation". For example, some would probably call the action of saying "Aristotle is a philosopher" a "linguistic representation". However, it is highly unlikely that Searle uses this term in line with these considerations, because that would entangle him in a blatant inconsistency with his official account; for remember that he repeatedly emphasizes that the representations necessary for the existence of IFF "need not always be explicit". For example, "someone might become the boss just by being treated as, or regarded as, or in other various ways represented as being the boss" (2012, 35; cf. also, e.g., 2008, 454; 2010a, 13; 2010b, 35, 227f.; 2017b, 308). Indeed, in the manuscript version of his reply to McGinn, he makes it clear that "in a limiting case" an IFF can already be created when "there is a community of thought, just by collectively thinking about something in a certain way" (2010d, 1f.). consequences can only exist if you have the respective deontic concepts, and you cannot have these concepts unless you possess language (cf. 2010a, 95-6). However, in section 3 I rejected the view that IFF necessarily have deontic consequences. Thus, in my view, the argument is a non-starter; not to mention the fact that Searle again establishes here a completely non-evident premise without any further elaboration: the premise that you cannot have deontic concepts unless you possess a language. 39 For more sources of this variant of LDE, see the paragraph preceding the formulation of VSTC6 in the previous section. Cf. 2010a, 170 for a passage in which he seems to weaken this necessity claim to a 'typicality' claim. 40 Although it is easy to conceptually distinguish between this variant of LDE and LDE2, it is even easier to blur the distinction by vague or ambiguous formulations. And, indeed, in Searle's writings it is often hard to discriminate remarks related to LDE2 from those related to LDE3. One natural explanation for this problem is certainly that Searle actually does not observe the difference himself. Another explanation is that what he has in mind when he is talking about the language-dependent existence of IFF in general is one of these variants rather than the other. However, I think there is sufficient evidence for ascribing both variants to him; and in any case, by considering both variants separately, we can make sure that whatever Searle has in mind: it is (most likely) taken into account here. 30 What else, then, could he mean by "linguistic representations"? In Making the Social World, Searle seems to offer an explanation of that term by opposing it to the notion of 'expressing': "[I]f I say 'Ouch!' as a spontaneous expression of pain", he says, then I "do not represent anything". In contrast, "if I say 'Rain!' I represent the wheather" (2010a, 72f.). This dichotomy, apparent as it is, does not seem to reveal anything about 'linguistic representations' except that they represent. Searle continues to explain this matter in the following; here is the full text: "Let us now make a generalization that will make our task clearer: simple expressive speech acts, even when performed intentionally, are not "linguistic" in the sense we are trying to make explicit, and the corresponding words of actual languages are not "words" in our sense. Ouch! Damn! Yuck! Wow! are all used to express mental states, both intentional and nonintentional, but they are not the kind of linguistic phenomena we are trying to explain here. Why not? Because, though in the way that I am imagining them used, they give vent to intentional or other states of the speaker, they do not represent. What we want to understand is how our early humans could have evolved linguistic representation. What is the difference exactly between representing and expressing? If I say "Rain!" with the intention of describing the state of the weather, my utterance can be literally true or false, because it represents the current state of the weather. I can, for example, lie when I make this utterance. But if I say "Ouch!" though I do convey information about myself, I say nothing that is literally true or false. If I say "Ouch" when I am not in pain I may mislead and misinform, but I do not strictly speaking lie. In our investigation, we will be concentrating on representation, not on expression" (2010a, 72f.). I provide, with apologies, this lengthy quote in order to demonstrate what, in my view, is the result of this analysis: Searle's attempt to explain what he means by the term "linguistic representation" gives us no indication of the possible difference between what he calls "linguistic representation" and plain representations. Thus, it does not give us any idea of what concrete feature the qualification "linguistic" might be intended to introduce. Now, one way of accommodating this outcome would be to assume that Searle adheres to the view that thinking or cogitative representation in general is in some sense 'linguistic' from the start, just as such. Incidentally, exactly this seems to be the impression of McGinn in his reply to Searle, when he asks the rhetorical question, "[W]hen did Searle become a language of thought theorist?" (2010e). He rightly notes that when you read Searle, you might get the impression that he believes that "anything that involves thought involves language" (ibid.). Although this interpretation would conform well to some of the things Searle says, it suffers from at least two problems. First, it seems plausible that this interpretation could only be deflationary: One could argue that this interpretation relies on a sense of "linguistic" which is such that it includes no more than what is already included in the term "(cogitative) representation". Secondly, and more importantly, Searle apparently rejects the thesis that (cogitative) representations are linguistic from the start: "[S]ome philosophers [...] claim that without language, there can be no thought at all", he remarks, and replies: "I believe that this view is more than a philosophical error" (2010a, 61). These observations taken together are a little perplexing, and I doubt that the textual evidence is sufficient to resolve our issue. However, I think it is fair to say that as long as Searle fails to provide us with a clear notion of 'linguistic' representation, LDE3 does not motivate a change of opinion regarding the nature of IFF. Finally, I must deal with one last possible objection. It might be argued that even though the exact nature of 'linguistic' representations may be obscure, there is at least one distinctive feature, one feature "that prelinguistic thoughts lack", which Searle attributes to 'linguistic' 31 representations: They are "representations that have the double direction of fit" (2010a, 68). As explained in section 5.5, representations having the 'double direction of fit', according to Searle, are representations that 'make it the case that something exists by virtue of representing it as existing'. This capacity is a distinctive feature of linguistic representations: "prelinguistic intentional states", Searle argues, "cannot create facts in the world by representing those facts as already existing" (ibid., 69). This objection is question-begging. If, for instance, pre-linguistic animals are able to make someone their leader by collectively thinking the pre-linguistic thought, 'she is our leader', then the double direction of fit will apply to this thought. My intuition is that nothing tells against such an analysis41, and I would refer to such cases in order to show, using Searle's terminology, that either the "double direction of fit" is not restricted to 'linguistic representations', or that the pre-linguistic constitution of IFF involves 'linguistic representations', which is absurd. To assume that pre-linguistic thoughts cannot have that double direction of fit is to assume what is disputed. Before concluding this section, I would like to point to another surprising passage in Searle's manuscript version of his reply to McGinn, in which he suggests that, after all, he has never really endorsed LDE: "He [= McGinn] says I claim it's 'logically impossible' [...] for there to be any beings that have institutional reality without having language". The dry answer Searle gives is, "I make no such claim. [...] The subtitle of my book is "The Structure of Human Civilization" (2010d, 8). This is puzzling, because there is unambiguous evidence that he does imply that (nonlinguistic) IFF in general require language for their existence. It therefore seems strange that he is now suggesting that he has been interested all along only in IFF 'characteristic of human civilisation'. In any case, what I am interested in here is the nature of institutional facts in general. If Searle thinks that IFF in general do not essentially require 'language' for their existence, then this is fine by me. Yet, since so many passages in his work suggest the opposite, it was inevitable to meticulously examine Searle's views on the relation between language and IFF. The result of this examination is that no matter which variant of LDE Searle prefers, LDE seems untenable. (7) Do IFF essentially require being collectively represented as existing? As noted in section 5.5, part of Searle's conception of collective recognition is that 'collective recognition of p' entails 'collective (mental) representation of p'. If Anna is collectively recognized as the leader of the group, then this entails, according to Searle, that she is collectively represented as the leader. I call this the "mentalist conception of collective recognition": The "Mentalist Conception of Collective Recognition" (MC-CR): That p is collectively recognized as existing entails that p is collectively represented as existing. Given the (partial) definition of IFF as facts that require collective recognition for their existence, MC-CR entails what I call the "representation requirement": The "Representation Requirement" (RR): IFF essentially require being collectively represented as existing. 41 At this point, my intuition hypothetically presupposes, of course, that there really are such things as representations with a double fit. In fact, I deny this; but this is an issue for another paper. 32 In this section, I present my own conception of collective recognition, arguing that it is more adequate than MC-CR in that it is able to account for a specific range of IFF that MC-CR cannot account for. Since my own conception does not entail RR, I conclude that RR can be dispensed with. As a preliminary, I would like to point out that the terms "recognition", "collective recognition" and related terms are used by Searle and others (more or less consciously) as technical terms. For example, it is taken for granted in the debate on IFF that if people collectively 'believe' that a piece of paper is money, then they collectively 'recognize' this paper as money. Clearly, this would be false given any relevant ordinary sense of "recognize". However, in the debate on IFF the term "collective recognition" is used in a sense in which 'collective belief' entails 'collective recognition'. It is not entirely clear in what respects exactly the use of these terms deviates from their relevant ordinary uses; however, for the purpose of the present work, these terms seem to be sufficiently clear. Let me now turn to my conception of collective recognition (CR). I draw a distinction between 'direct' CR and 'indirect' CR. In the case of 'direct' CR, an IF is created by virtue of being collectively represented as existing. When people of a group collectively represent Anna as their leader, then this makes it the case that Anna is their leader. The notion of "represent as existing" I define partially42 as follows: If S 'endorsively' thinks of p as existing, or (tacitly) believes that p exists, or presupposes that p exists, then S 'represents' p as existing. I define "direct CR" as follows: Definition of "direct CR" (DCR): That p is 'directly collectively recognized' (DCR-ed) means that p is collectively represented as existing.43 While there is no doubt that the existence of many IFF goes back to DCR, I believe that the existence of most IFF goes back to 'indirect' CR, which simply amounts to CR that is not direct. For example, most if not all cases of IFF that Searle leads back to constitutive rules are cases of indirect CR. Adapting an example of Searle, imagine that it is DCR-ed by a group that the oldest son of the deceased king is the new king, and let us suppose that Blake is in fact the oldest son of the present king. Then, given the existence of the rule that the oldest son of a deceased king is the new king, Blake will be the new king as soon as the present king dies. What is special about this case is that Blake will not have to be collectively represented (DCR-ed) as the new king in order to actually be the new king. Even if his younger brother should insidiously succeed in convincing the people that he is the older brother, Blake would still be the 'actual' (or 'legitimate') king. Yet in this case, this would be not due to him being DCR-ed as the king, but due to the DCR of something else (that the oldest son of the deceased king is the new king), together with matters of fact (especially the fact that he would the oldest son of the deceased king). Thus, just like DCR, indirect CR involves collective representation. What distinguishes indirect CR from DCR is that it is not the fact itself which is collectively represented as existing, but something else. Definition of "indirect CR" (ICR): That p is 'indirectly collectively recognized' (ICR-ed) means that p is CR-ed, but not by virtue of being DCR-ed. 42 It would be a challenging and worthwhile task, in order to provide a complete definition, to examine more closely which mental states exactly are candidates for 'recognition' in the sense customary in the debate on IFF. However, for the purposes of the present paper, this is not necessary. 43 By "collectively represented" I shall always mean 'collectively mentally represented'. 33 "But", it might be asked, "why should we even assume the presence of collective recognition in cases where a given fact is not collectively represented as existing?" My principal reason is this: It is often the case that the assumption of the existence of certain IFF, given representations of other facts, almost inevitably leads you to the assumption of the existence of certain other facts which plausibly should be classified as IFF as well. Blake, the oldest son of the king, will be the new king after the king's death because it is DCR-ed that the oldest son of the deceased king is the new king. Granted that in this example it is a fact that Blake will be the new king after the king's death, are there any good reasons not to classify this fact as an IF? I do not know of any such reasons. Thus, given that IFF are by definition facts that require being collectively recognized as existing, we are, as it were, practically committed to defining "collective recognition" in such a way as to apply in theses cases as well. Having defined "direct CR" an "indirect CR", I now wish to define the general term "collective recognition". My suggestion goes as follows: Definition of "collective recognition": That p is 'collectively recognized' means that some content of collective representation (COCR) (or the conjunction of some COCRs) logically entails p, given representations of the facts. In the case of DCR, other COCRs and representations of the facts are negligible because p is logically entailed by a particular COCR. For example, if it is DCR-ed that Anna is the leader of the group, then there is some COCR, 'Anna is the leader of the group', which logically entails that Anna is the leader of the group. Therefore, it is CR-ed that Anna is the leader of the group. In the case of ICR, however, p is not logically entailed by a particular COCR, but only by the conjunction of a COCR with other COCRs or with representations certain facts. In the case of Blake, the oldest son of the king, it is CR-ed that Blake will be the new king after the king's death, not because there is a particular COCR logically entailing that he will be the new king after the king's death, but because 'Blake will be the new king after the king's death' is logically entailed by the conjunction of some COCR, namely 'the oldest son of the deceased king is the new king', with representations of other facts, in particular the fact that Blake is the oldest son of the king. At the outset of this section I asserted that my conception of CR is more adequate than that of Searle. That my account is more adequate can best be seen by looking at the problems Searle is getting into with his endorsement of MC-CR. Consider the following passage in Making the Social World, in which he explains the notion of a "constitutive rule": "By contrast, the constitutive rule, ''The oldest surviving son counts as the new king,'' is a standing Declaration. Its function is to make it the case that a certain person becomes the new king on the death of the old king. No one has to do anything to satisfy it except to accept its consequences, to count the oldest surviving son as the new king. [...] I call it a standing Status Function Declaration because it makes it the case into the indefinite future that anyone who satisfies the condition of being the oldest surviving son of a deceased king is the new king. It makes something the case, but it applies to an indefinite number of such somethings" (2010a, 97). Given the (partial) definition of IFF as facts that require CR for their existence, Searle cannot adequately account for cases in which IFF are created by the satisfaction of 'Standing Declarations', that is, cases in which IFF exist by virtue of ICR. Endorsing MC-CR, Searle 34 cannot simply say that these newly created facts are, as it were, 'automatically' recognized by those people who recognize the Standing Declarations. For this reason, he seems compelled to retreat to the locution that people recognizing the Standing Declarations are committed to recognizing these newly created facts: "[F]or example, the Constitution of the United States makes it the case by Declaration that any presidential candidate who receives the majority of votes in the electoral college counts as the president-elect. Because the constitutional provision functions as a standing Declaration, no further act of acceptance or recognition is necessary to accept that such and such a candidate is now the elected president. The acceptance of the constitutive rule [...] is sufficient to commit the participants in the institution to accepting that anybody who satisfies such and such a condition is the president-elect" (2010a, 13-4; emphasis added; cf. also ibid., 102f.; 2006b, 85; 2008, 453f., 456; 2010c: 228). Obviously, to say that people 'collectively accept or recognize' a fact is not the same as saying that these people are 'committed to collectively accepting or recognizing' that fact. Thus, given Searle's partial definition of "institutional fact", these facts would not be cases of IFF, even though there are not good reasons not to classify them as IFF. My conception of CR can account for these facts. On my conception, they are IFF because that exist by virtue of ICR, which is a type of CR. So I conclude that my conception of CR is more adequate than Searle's, given the (partial) definition of IFF as facts that require being CR-ed as existing. Since my conception of CR does not entail RR, I also conclude that RR can be dispensed with. (8) The restricted efficacy of CR My last issue in this paper which is directly related to Searle's work has to do with the commonly held assumption that the efficacy of CR is not unrestricted. For example, it is commonly assumed that CR cannot be used to make changes to the physical world. In the manuscript version of his reply to McGinn, Searle admits that it seems like a miracle that CR can create certain facts and not others: "Here is the "miracle" of Status Function Declarations and of human institutional reality. If we all get together and agree that it is raining, that fact by itself will not make it rain. But if we all get together and agree in a certain way that such and such is money then the stuff in question is money" (2010d, 7). The assumption that CR is a means for creating facts seems to go back to the tacit assumption that a principle I shall call the "Projection Principle" holds (at least) in the case of IFF: the principle that if an entity e is CR-ed as existing, then this determines that e exists. This, in turn, entails the requirement that an operation I shall call "ontological projection" is effective (at least) in the case of IFF: the creation or maintenance of an entity by virtue of being CR-ed as existing. The problem is to explain why ontological projection should be effective in the case of IFF (and, perhaps, other kinds of entities), but not in the case of other facts. So far, realists about IFF have not yet thoroughly addressed this problem. Searle only provides us with a few remarks scattered throughout his work (cf. 1995, 96; 2006a, 115-6; 2007c, 93f.; 2010a, 89, 100; 2010d, 9). However, none of these seem to offer even a hint of a solution. In this paper, I shall not deal with this problem either. The only question that is relevant in our context here is this: Should we assume that the impossibility of certain entities to exist by virtue of CR is, as it were, part of Searle's conception of the nature of IFF? In my view, this should not be considered a part of his conception of the nature of IFF. The reason is that the distinction between IFF that can be created by virtue of CR and certain other entities that 35 cannot does not seem to be a matter of the nature or the concept of IFF. First, my intuition tells against such an idea. Secondly, if we assumed that the concept of IFF conceptually excluded the possibility to create certain entities by virtue of CR, then we could hardly avoid accusing people who seriously consider viewing certain facts as IFF that apparently cannot be created by virtue of CR of a contradictio in adiecto. For example, Richard A. Shweder introduces in a commentary on a paper of John Searle the case of "Ngugi", who among the members of his population is CR-ed as having witchcraft, and he seriously considers the possibility to view the putative fact that Ngugi has witchcraft as an IF (cf. Shweder 2006). I think it would be an excessive criticism to accuse Shweder of a contradictio in adiecto in this case. Thirdly, Searle himself does not mention or invoke any such conceptual connection in his reply to Shweder (cf. 2006a). That some kinds of entities cannot be created by virtue of CR is, in my view, not a matter of the concept of IFF, and not a matter of definition at all; it clearly is a matter of metaphysical possibility or impossibility. As mentioned at the beginning, it is commonly assumed that the efficacy of CR is not unrestricted. I think this is a very plausible assumption. There are rather clear cases where the creation of entities by virtue of CR does not work. In any case, the problem shows the necessity of a closer examination of ontological projection and the Projection Principle. For the present purpose, however, we can conclude that the restricted efficacy of ontological projection does not seem to motivate a change to my conception of the nature of IFF. (9) The necessity of CR for the existence of IFF Some authors have or seem to have advanced objections to defining "institutional facts" in terms of CR. Amie Thomasson and Jonathan Friedman proposed counter-examples. Thomasson drew attention to 'recessions' (cf. Thomasson 2003, 276-8), and Friedman to 'business cycles' (cf. Friedman 2006, 72, 75). In Making the Social World, Searle replies to these objections (cf. 2010a, 21-4, 116-9; cf. also 2006b, 84-5). The gist of his reply seems to be his insistence that it is – by definition – necessary for something to be an 'institutional fact' that it be collectively recognized as existing. And since recessions and business cycles do not seem to require collective recognition for their existence, we are urged to conclude that "[s]trictly speaking, these cases are not cases of institutional facts" (2010a, 24). I agree with this line of reasoning. Other (putative) objections came from Pekka Mäkelä & Petri Ylikoski (2003), Brian Epstein (2014a; 2014b; 2015) and Francesco Guala (2014; 2016). I think that the account defended here is immune to these (putative) objections. In my view, all these objections, if they are supposed to be directed against an account like mine, either go back to a conception of CR that is narrower than mine or to a misguided conception concerning the notion of an "institutional fact". Brian Epstein, for example, claims that it is 'highly dubious' that 'social institutional facts can only be anchored in collective acceptance' (2014a: 67). Given the breadth of our notions of 'CR' and 'represent as existing', however, his more serious objections (cf. especially ibid.: 61-3, 67) do not apply to the definition here proposed. Essentially the same is true with the cases presented by Pekka Mäkelä & Petri Ylikoski (2003: 265-7). All their examples seem to be compatible with my account.44 In another paper, Epstein offers examples he apparently thinks speak against a view like Searle's (cf. Epstein 2014b, 48-9), thereby suggesting that he is concerned with IFF (cf. also ibid.: 41, 43, 44; 44 As for their example C2, I wish to note that, according to my intuition, this is not a case where any institution concerning the monetary value of coins comes into existence (cf. ibid., 266). Thus, in my view, this is not a potential counterexample. 36 2015: 49, 50, 58, 74). In fact, however, the examples he presents (the 'Aldino typeface', 'Pocket books', and the 'Italic type') indicate that Epstein confuses 'social kinds' or 'social objects' with IFF (for a similar case, see 2014a: 66). Another author who appears to be sceptical about a definition of "institutional fact" in terms of CR is Francesco Guala (cf. 2014; 2016). Yet, a closer inspection shows that many of his suggestions, construed as addressing not only 'institutional kinds' but also 'IFF', are perfectly compatible with my definition (cf., e.g., 2014: 64-7; 2016: 167-70; 174-5), possibly without Guala noticing it. But what about Guala's (putative) 'core' argument? I have in mind his argument that some 'paradigmatic' institutional kinds such as 'money', 'private property' or 'professor' are not dependent on collective representation at all. For they are, Guala suggests, 'ultimately [...] nothing but [...] set[s] of actions and [...] related set[s] of expectations' (2014: 66; cf. also 2016: 172). Even if we ignore that the argument is not explicitly about IFF, the argument fails for at least two reasons: Given ordinary English, it involves obvious category mistakes, and it apparently presupposes a conception of the notion of "institutional fact" that is, in my view, misguided. In the sections to follow I shall try to explain where Guala and others seem to go wrong. (9.1) Some observations about the term "institutional fact" First of all, it should be noted that "institutional fact" is a technical term. Ideally, a technical term, once introduced and defined, is not redefined and does not have to be, and people using that terms use it consistently in the sense in which it was introduced. Thus, ideally, the meaning of a technical term can be determined simply by looking up how the person who introduced the term defined it. In this respect, technical terms fundamentally differ from terms of ordinary language, where meaning must be determined by conceptual analysis. However, the situation can be, and often is, non-ideal, for a variety of reasons. To give just a few examples: the author introducing a technical term provides a semantic definition that is so obscure that the term is unsuitable for the purpose for which it is introduced; the author provides, not a semantic definition, but only a partial extensional definition, thereby giving rise to vagueness; the author semantically defines the term multiple times, but in such a way that the definitions are inconsistent with each other; the author provides a semantic definition that is inadequate with respect to the hypothetical extension of the term, which is the case when the author introducing the term obviously intends the term to refer to some particular entities and not to others, but provides a definition which is such that the term's hypothetical extension does not correspond to this intention. Situations such as these may justify and necessitate either abandoning the term altogether or redefining it in an adequate way. What about the term "institutional fact"? The first occurrences of this term date back at least to the 19th century. The uses of the term within social ontology, however, originate from Searle's introduction of the term in his paper How to Derive "Ought" From "Is". As observed in section 1, Searle initially semantically defined "institutional facts" as facts that require institutions for their existence. Unfortunately, the definition turned out to be inadequate with respect to the hypothetical extension of the term: it turned out that some facts that are clearly supposed to be part of the extension of the term do not seem to require any 'institution' for their existence, neither in a relevant ordinary sense nor in Searle's technical sense. Assuming that abandoning the term altogether is undesirable all things considered, this inadequacy justified and necessitated a redefinition of that term. Regardless of his original 'official' semantic definition, ample evidence suggests that Searle seems to have always thought that the (essential) defining characteristic of IFF is actually that they exist by virtue of CR. And indeed, that they exist by virtue of CR was supposed to be entailed by his original definition. Discussants following Searle have been using the term accordingly. So it was a reasonable manoeuvre by Searle in the course of revising his account to suggest a redefinition 37 according to which existing by virtue of CR is the (essential) defining characteristic of IFF. Given that "institutional fact" is a technical term introduced by Searle, Searle's definitions45 and usage of the term should be considered authoritative and should therefore be acknowledged, all things being equal. And this means that it should be acknowledged (all things equal) that IFF have always been supposed to differ from other entities in that their existence depends on CR. Using the term in a different sense would ultimately only result in the introduction of ambiguity, and this in turn might entail the danger of people talking at cross purposes, and clearly, this cannot be desirable. (9.2) The import of these observations for the present subject From these observations it should be evident that denying the semantic necessity of CR for the existence of IFF makes little sense. There is ample evidence that Searle has always been assuming the necessity of CR, and there is no compelling reason to reject it. So the necessity of CR is a condition of adequacy for the use of "institutional fact": Condition of adequacy for the use of the term "institutional fact": 'IFF' are facts that depend on being CR-ed as existing. This means that anyone who uses the term in a sense in which IFF do not depend on being CR-ed as existing uses the term inadequately. In such a case, he or she de facto talks about, and refers to, something else in using the term. (9.3) A possible qualification of these observations One might suggest that I am a bit rash, that the observations just made need to be qualified: One could point out that Searle usually introduces the term "institutional fact" in his texts by means of partial extensional definitions. His paper Language and Social Ontology, for example, starts as follows: This article is concerned with the ontology of a certain class of social entities and the role of language in the creation and maintenance of such entities. The social entities I have in mind are such objects as the $20 bill in my hand, The University of California, and the President of the United States. I also include such facts as the fact that George Bush is President of the United States; that the piece of paper I hold in my hand is a $20 bill; and that I am a citizen of the United States. I call such facts "institutional facts" (2008, 443; cf. also 1964, 54; 1995, xi, 1; 2006a, 114; 2010b, 35). Passages like these might give rise to the following idea: Searle acquired the concept of an IF through observation. He observed that there is a class of facts in the social world that share some distinctive feature(s). Since he originally believed that these facts differ from other facts in that they require institutions for their existence, he introduced the term "institutional fact" to refer to these phenomena. On this construal, the definition I have called "Searle's original semantic definition" is in fact an empirical hypothesis used as a kind of non-semantic definition.46 When it became clear that some facts the term "institutional fact" is clearly supposed to refer to are facts that do not require any institution for their existence, his definition was empirically refuted.47 So Searle adjusted his hypothesis. His new hypothesis was (in part) that IFF are facts that require CR for their existence. 45 Of course, both semantic and extensional definitions are of importance here. 46 This kind of definition would be similar to the chemist's definition of gold as the element with the atomic number 79, with the exception that "gold" is a term of ordinary language with a pre-existing meaning. 47 Searle's admission that there is some "awkwardness" in calling IFF created on an ad hoc basis "institutional facts" and his doubt whether "everybody would agree that we ought to call such facts Institutional Facts" (2014, 18) might support the present construal. If Searle had clearly intended what I called "Searle's original semantic 38 Given this construal, it would make perfect sense to object that there are IFF that do not require CR for their existence. Strictly speaking, all the (putative) objections of Mäkelä & Ylikoski, Epstein and Guala, in order to be conceivable objections at all, rely on this or appropriately similar construals. However, I doubt that this (or an appropriately similar construal) is actually correct. Consider the following (putative) facts: (a) Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany, (b) Germans have the right to form associations, (c) The Trump Tower Organization owns the Trump Tower, (d) the paper strips in my wallet are Euro notes, (e) Manushi Chhillar was elected Miss World 2017, (f) John Searle is married to Dagmar Searle. (a)-(f) are clearly supposed to be part of the extension of the term "institutional fact". Suppose it could be shown that some of these facts do not require CR for their existence. Given the suggested construal, Searle and others following him would have to say that there are IFF that do not require CR for their existence. However, I suspect that Searle (and others following him) would rather say it turned out that these facts are not institutional facts. For example, if it could be shown that the fact that Angela Merkel is chancellor of Germany does not require CR for its existence, I suspect that Searle (and others following him) would say that it is simply not an institutional fact. If Searle (and others following him) are disposed to say something like this, then this is strong evidence against the suggested construal. My suspicion is supported by numerous passages in Searle's work. For example, remember that Searle argued that (facts involving) recessions and business cycles are, "strictly speaking", not cases of IFF. On my interpretation of his reply, Searle argues that they are not cases of IFF because they do not require CR for their existence. Consider another passage: Thus, the fact that Obama is president or the fact that I am a licensed driver or the fact that a chess match was won by a certain person and lost by a certain other person are all institutional facts because they exist within systems of constitutive rules. (2010a, 10-1; emphasis added) In my view, this passage clearly indicates that Searle uses "institutional fact" on this occasion in a sense in which it semantically entails that IFF require CR for their existence. In What is an institution?, he considers whether being a scientist is an IF, and argues as follows: "[I]n my subculture to say that someone is a 'scientist' is to state an institutional fact, because it assigns a Y status, on the basis of meeting certain X criteria" (2005, 19). And a bit earlier in this paper, he argues that being an intellectual is not a case of an IF "unless there is some collective recognition of my status" (2005, 18). These passages, too, clearly suggest that it by virtue of the very meaning of "institutional fact" that IFF require CR for their existence (cf. also 1995, 88; 2007b, 26 2014, 24). Finally, consider again the passage cited in the introduction, in which Searle discusses whether works of art might be cases of IFF: "[I]nsofar as [a] work of art is a publicly accepted object as such", he said there, "then it satisfies our definition of an institutional fact" (2010b, 43; emphasis added). In this passage, he clearly implies that the necessity of CR for the existence of IFF is a matter of semantic necessity. So the evidence against such a construal seems overwhelming. I therefore conclude that it is unfounded. definition" to be a 'semantic' definition, then he could have simply said that these cases are not cases of IFF, or that his original definition is inadequate with respect to the hypothetical extension of the term. 39 (10) Summary The primary goal of this paper was to argue that the nature of IFF is comparatively simple: they are facts that exist by virtue of CR, period. To this end, I extensively discussed several ideas of Searle suggesting that the nature of IFF is indeed more complex. In particular, I discussed whether IFF essentially involve deontic powers, IFF are essentially status functions, IFF essentially require speech acts of Declaring for their existence, and whether IFF essentially require language for their existence. I argued that none of these ideas stand up to scrutiny. Moreover, I showed that there is a respect in which my view of IFF is possibly less simply than Searle's. Searle suggests that CR is always direct, and never indirect. I argued that such a conception is inadequate given the (partial) definition of IFF as facts that require being CR-ed as existing. I presented my own conception of CR which is based on a distinction between direct and indirect CR and suggested that it is able to account for obvious cases of IFF that Searle cannot account for. Finally, I briefly discussed (possible) objections to the view that CR is necessary for the existence of IFF. I argued that these objections, if they are supposed to be directed against an account like mine, either go back to a conception of CR that is narrower than mine or to a misguided conception concerning the notion of an "institutional fact". (11) References Anscombe, G.E.M. (1958) On Brute Facts, Analysis, 18 (3), 69–72. Friedman, J. (2006) Comment on Searle's 'Social Ontology: The Reality of the Imagination. Anthropological Theory, 6 (1), 70-80. Epstein, B. (2014a) Social Objects Without Intentions. In Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents. Contributions to Social Ontology, ed. A. Konzelmann Ziv and H.B. Schmid, vol. 2, pp. 53-68. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Epstein, B. (2014b) How Many Kinds of Glue Hold the Social World Together? In Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition, ed. M. Gallotti and J. Michael, vol. 4, pp. 41-44. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Epstein, B. (2015) The Ant Trap. Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Guala, F. (2014) On the Nature of Social Kinds. In Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, ed. M. Gallotti and J. Michael, vol. 4, pp. 57-68. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Guala, F. (2016) Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Guala, F. & Hindriks, F. (2015) A Unified Social Ontology. The Philosophical Quarterly, 65 (259): 177-201. Mäkkelä, P. & Ylikoski, P. (2003) Others Will do it. In Realism in Action. Essays in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, ed. M. Sintonen, P. Ylikoski, and K. Miller, pp. 259-268. Dordrecht: Kluwer. McGinn, C. (2010) Reply to Searle. Retrieved from https://www.nybooks.co.m/articles/2011/02/24/just-thinking-enough/. 40 Searle, J.R. (1964) How to derive "ought" from "is". Philosophical Review, 73 (1), 43-58. Searle, J.R. (1969) Speech-Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J.R. (1976) A Classification of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society, 5 (1), 1-23. Searle, J.R. (1983) Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle J.R. (1991) Intentionalistic Explanations in the Social Sciences. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 21 (3), 332-344. Searle, J.R. (1995) The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press. Searle, J.R. (1997) Responses to Critics of The Construction of Social Reality. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57 (2), 449-458. Searle, J.R. (1999) Mind, Language, and Society. New York: Basic Books. Searle, J.R. (2002) Speech acts, mind, and social reality. In Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality. Discussions with John R. Searle, ed. G. Grewendorf and G. Meggle, pp. 3-16, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Searle, J.R. (2004) Realism Reconstructed: A Reply. Philosophical Forum, 35 (3), 275-280. Searle, J.R. (2005) What is an institution? Journal of Institutional Economics 1 (1), 1–22. Searle, J.R. (2006a) Reality and Relativism. Shweder on a which? hunt. Anthropological Theory, 6 (1), 112-121. Searle, J.R. (2006b) Reality and social construction. Reply to Friedman. Anthropological Theory, 6 (1), 81-88. Searle, J.R. (2006c) Social ontology: Some basic principles. Anthropological Theory, 6 (1), 51-71. Searle, J.R. (2006d) Searle versus Durkheim and the waves of thought: Reply to Gross. Anthropological Theory, 6 (1), 57-69. Searle, J.R. (2007a) Social Ontology and the Philosophy of Society. In Creations of the Mind, ed. E. Margolis, S. Laurence, pp. 3-17, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Searle, J.R. (2007b) Social ontology: The problem and steps towards a solution. In Intentional Acts and Institutional Facts, ed. S.L. Tsohatzidis, pp. 11-28. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Searle, J.R. (2007c) Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power. New York: Columbia University Press. Searle, J.R. (2008) Language and Social Ontology. Theory and Society, 37 (5), 443–59. 41 Searle, J.R. (2010a) Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Searle., J.R. (2010b) The Basic Reality and the Human Reality. In Thinking About the Real World, ed. D. Franken, J.G. Michel and A. Karakus, pp. 19-44, Frankfurt a. M.: Ontos Verlag. Searle., J.R. (2010c) Replies. In Thinking About the Real World, ed. D. Franken, J.G. Michel and A. Karakus, pp. 201-236, Frankfurt a. M.: Ontos Verlag. Searle, J.R. (2010d) Language and Society: Reply to McGinn. Retrieved from htttp://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/articles.html. Searle, J.R. (2010e) Is Just Thinking Enough? Retrieved from https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/02/24/just-thinking-enough. Searle, J.R. (2011) Replies. Analysis, 71 (4), 733–41. Searle, J.R. (2012) Human Social Reality and Language. Phenomenology and Mind (2), 2739. Searle, J.R. (2013) Reconciling the Basic Reality and the Human Reality –Post Kantian Themes. In Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. KantKongresses 2010, ed. S. Bacin, A. Ferrarin, C. La Rocca and M. Ruffing, pp. 407-430. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Searle, J.R. (2014) Are There Social Objects? In Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition, ed. M. Gallotti and J. Michael, pp. 17-26. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Searle, J.R. (2015) Status functions and institutional facts: reply to Hindriks and Guala. Journal of Institutional Economics, 11 (3), 507–514. Searle, J.R. (2016) The Limits of Emergence: Reply to Tony Lawson. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 46 (4), 1-13. Searle, J.R. (2017a) Money: Ontology and Deception. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41, 1453-1470. Searle, J.R. (2017b) Status Functions. In The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality, ed. M. Jankovic and K. Luwdig, pp. 300-309. London and New York: Routledge. Searle, J.R. (2017c) Some Remarks about Social Ontology and Law: An Interview with John R. Searle. Ratio Juris, 30 (2), 226–231. Smith, B. & Searle, J.R. (2003) The Construction of Social Reality: An Exchange. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 62 (1), 285-309. Thomasson A. (2003) Foundations for a Social Ontology. Protosociology: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 18/19, 269–90. 42 Contents Matthias Holweger, "The Simple Nature of Institutional Facts" ............................................................................. 1 Abstract .............................................................................................................................................................. 1 (1) Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 1 (2) Two problems of Searle's original basic account ............................................................................................... 4 (2.1) The ad hoc case ......................................................................................................................................... 4 (2.2) The freestanding Y term ............................................................................................................................ 5 (2.3) Consequences of these cases for Searle's original basic account .............................................................. 5 (2.4) Revision of Searle's original account ........................................................................................................ 6 (3) Do IFF essentially involve deontic powers? ....................................................................................................... 7 (3.1) Searle's attempts to overcome the problem of honorific cases .................................................................. 8 (3.2) Other cases of IFF that do not seem to involve deontic powers ................................................................ 9 (4) Are IFF essentially 'status functions'? .............................................................................................................. 10 (4.1) SFC involves a category mistake ............................................................................................................. 12 (4.2) Some IFF do not have the form 'e has s involving f' ............................................................................... 13 (4.3) Some IFF neither have the form 'there is (an) s involving f' nor 's involves f' ....................................... 14 (5) Do IFF essentially require speech acts of Declaring for their existence? ......................................................... 15 (5.1) The first variant of VSTC ........................................................................................................................ 15 (5.2) The second variant of VSTC ................................................................................................................... 15 (5.3) The third variant of VSTC ....................................................................................................................... 16 (5.4) The fourth variant of VSTC ..................................................................................................................... 16 (5.5) The fifth variant of VSTC ........................................................................................................................ 17 (5.6) The sixth variant of VSTC ....................................................................................................................... 18 (6) Do IFF essentially require language for their existence? ................................................................................. 19 (6.1) The first variant of LDE........................................................................................................................... 19 (6.2) The second variant of LDE ...................................................................................................................... 20 (6.2.1) First argument: The communicability requirement .......................................................................... 20 (6.2.2) Second argument: The non-perceptibility of IFF ............................................................................. 21 (6.2.3) Third argument: The compositionality requirement ........................................................................ 23 (6.2.4) Fourth argument: The argument from counterintuitivity ................................................................. 25 (6.2.5) Fifth argument: Language as a medium for the 'realization' of 'institutional thoughts' ................. 25 (6.3) The third variant of LDE ......................................................................................................................... 29 (7) Do IFF essentially require being collectively represented as existing? ............................................................ 31 (8) The restricted efficacy of CR ............................................................................................................................ 34 (9) The necessity of CR for the existence of IFF .................................................................................................... 35 (9.1) Some observations about the term "institutional fact" ............................................................................. 36 (9.2) The import of these observations for the present subject ......................................................................... 37 (9.3) A possible qualification of these observations ......................................................................................... 37 (10) Summary ........................................................................................................................................................ 39 (11) References .....................................................................................................................................................